The Remnant Blade - Mike Vincent

[Tolmeus]

Might as well start a new thread for this one, right?

 

So far I am 50 pages in (310 total).

I like it. It introduces rather early a mixture of action and intrigues one may know well from the Night Lord Omnibus of Aaron-Dembski Bowden, which really is a good sign.

Once I finish it, I will give a more conclusive review.

 

Feel free to share your thoughts on this one.

[sitnam]

Definitely gonna keep track, I'm interested but I didn't like the ABD trilogy and it kind of killed my interest in Night Lords. I did like one of Vincents short stories though, so we'll see

[Scribe]

4 hours ago, sitnam said:

I didn't like the ABD trilogy and it kind of killed my interest in Night Lords.

 

....

 

May I ask why?

[sitnam]

11 hours ago, Scribe said:

 

....

 

May I ask why?

 

I don't know man, it just didn't jive with me. It's been a few years, but from my memory:

 

1. I didn't connect with any of the main characters. I actively hated most of them actually.

2. I wasn't a big fan of the voice acting.

3.  Didn't care for the plot. The story is character focused, and I didn't think the plot was strong enough on its own. Since I didn't like the characters, it just didn't work for me.

 

Looking back, I think the trilogy is better then I gave it credit. I really think the biggest issue was all the hype it got. I just wasn't blown away like I thought I was gonna be. Black Legion was just way more interesting as a CSM series. 

[darkhorse0607]

1 hour ago, sitnam said:

2. I wasn't a big fan of the voice acting.

 

Agreed there, I had already read the series but if I had to do the audio version exclusively, I probably wouldn't have finished it

 

*also, Audible put Remnant Blade up this morning if anyone else was waiting for it

Edited October 3, 2025 by darkhorse0607

[Roomsky]

Yeah ADB's one of the authors I always recommend be read rather than listened to, his quality of prose in an important element in what makes his books good. I thought the audiobook narrator was quite talented but I disliked how his character voices often skewed how a character was perceived.

I also find positive comparisons to the Night Lords trilogy a great sign and am excited to get to this one eventually (boy I sure do love paperback delay.) If this continues the trend of Lord of the Night and ADB's trilogy, 40k Night Lords have one of the best legion hotstreaks in the stable (shame about their Heresy books, though.)

[sitnam]

1 hour ago, Roomsky said:

Lord of the Night

 

I remember loving LotN as a teenager, I wonder if it holds up? I also wonder how it compares to this one.

 

I think it's bizarre they didn't put this one under the Renegades series. Harrowmaster and Lord of Excess were great

[DukeLeto69]

On 10/3/2025 at 6:22 PM, Roomsky said:

Yeah ADB's one of the authors I always recommend be read rather than listened to, his quality of prose in an important element in what makes his books good. I thought the audiobook narrator was quite talented but I disliked how his character voices often skewed how a character was perceived.

I also find positive comparisons to the Night Lords trilogy a great sign and am excited to get to this one eventually (boy I sure do love paperback delay.) If this continues the trend of Lord of the Night and ADB's trilogy, 40k Night Lords have one of the best legion hotstreaks in the stable (shame about their Heresy books, though.)

Totally agree some books need to be read rather than listened to so your own brain/imagination brings it to life rather than another creative interpreting the authors words.

 

I love the ADB NL trilogy but think it had diminishing returns. The first book is by far the best. The second is the second best and the third is third!

[The Scorpion]

I liked the third book :(

 

It had some really poignant stuff.

[grailkeeper]

About 50% of the way through, and I have to say I am not a fan.

 

It's a Night Lords book about Night Lords things, so if you are a fan of torture porn it might be for you.

 

The characters seem a lot less fleshed out than ADBs characters. They seem like cartoon characters in comparison. Most of the Nightlords are just a name, although many are introduced with a specialisation at the start. At any point if one other than the main character or second in command appears (usually just to be killed off quickly)  I find myself asking "Who is this again"? 

 

The characters dont appear to have any personality beyond "Night Lord". I find it very hard to root for the protaganist. He does horrible things for little to no reason. I get he's a Night Lord and this is how they act. But I'm able to root for plenty of other baddy protaganists from Walter White to Talos Valcoran. This guy I have little sympathy for. Very early on in the book he starts torturing and killing some civilians, essentially to blow off steam. ADB would have handled that a lot better. 

 

I'm sad to say there's a decent chance I wont finish this book. 

Edited October 20, 2025 by grailkeeper

[theSpirea]

I'm quite enjoying it. Might not be as good as ADB but heck, even his writing has plenty of issues and at least Mike Vincent doesn't have the need to shove wifey or servant characters everywhere like ADB.

[cheywood]

Also reading it now. I think it’s decent enough. I’m not really seeing much in the way of comparison to ADB’s work. It features the Night Lords, but it’s not a deep character dive by any means. It’s a darker take on the same concept as Shroud of Night in my mind. More plot focused and interested in character interplay between a squad of marines more than introspective depth. The writing is good for a first novel, though I wouldn’t call it especially remarkable overall. 
 

I would agree that it seems a little nihilistic, but I don’t mind that especially given some recent works’ tendency to be rather hopeful by 40k standards. 

[Tolmeus]

I took my sweet time writing a review, so here it is.
First, my rating: I liked the book and would give it a 7.0. It would have fit well into the former "Space Marine Battles" series.

 

What did I like?

Especially the action and the focus on the Space Marines. These two factors are too often neglected in similiar stories for my taste.

The story offers a lot of action without descending into ‘bolter porn’. The boarding actions and the comprehensive space battles are particularly worth mentioning here.
The focus is clearly on the protagonist. His motivation quickly becomes apparent and determines the rest of the book. The atmosphere or discripitions of the surroundings worked also very well for me. And the author did justice to the overall scale of things (Warships, complements, weapons, etc.), something that is often overlooked.

 

What did I find bad/in need of improvement?

As has often been mentioned, all the characters are quite superficial. The comparison to Aaron Dembski-Bowden's "Night Lords" series is obvious, and here you can see that apart from the protagonist, hardly anyone else sticks in your memory. The story is dominated by many intrigues, which perhaps occur a little too often. I realise that Chaos Space Marines generally have a problem with loyalty, but here it almost gets out of hand. In terms of content, I particularly noticed that the time periods are often difficult for me to understand, or rather, they greatly benefit the protagonist. 
 

Spoiler

For example there is the scene when the allied warband of the World Eater Warlord catches up to the Night Lords rather quickly. Afterwards, it took weeks for another one to catch up to them or for the renegade Night Lord to reach the World Eater Warlord again. Notice, that everything happens within the same star system and without need for Warp travel. Doesn' make sense to me. 
Another example is, that nearly all of the inventions of the renegade Mechanicum adept seamlessly work out within in short time: Fix the Astrates weapons, armours, artificial limps, create a device to travel to a Black ship and so on.

So I do recognise the problems with this book. But in all honesty, I just had fun reading a (maybe simple) Chaos Space Marine book with its focus on action (not Bolter-Porn!).

[Felix Antipodes]

Agree with @Tolmeus about the strengths and weaknesses of this book.  I would only add that I was also confounded by the way various Astartes recovered from their (extremely serious) wounds.  Some were almost Wolverine-like, and not in a believable way imho.

[1ncarnadine]

Just finished this yesterday, and yeah, it was a fun little romp with chaos space marines. I'd rate it close to Lord of Excess and Harrowmaster, maybe a touch shy of either but nonetheless TRB  has its strengths.

 

The Night Lords in the book are the type that haven't operated in the depths of the warp as much and have little (or no) experience of the Legion days of old. Nonetheless they're pretty firmly indoctrinated and are in most ways exemplary Night Lords. They thirst for hunting prey, prefer to stick to shadows, love to flay people, establish control via terror, use the typical tools that seem to have been handed down (knives, chainglaives, lightning claws), and so on. So there's no musing on how the Primarch used to be, no pining for a glorious past, and the only attachment they have to names like Sevatar or Sahaal is old legends that have been passed on, not completely dissimilar from how loyalist Chapters think of their founders and ancient heroes.

 

This book definitely covers the bases on the typical contradictions that curse the Night Lords (and many Chaos warbands in general). They're ultimately often fatalistic, self-destructive, and constantly vying for dominance, but they have to maintain their numbers to some extent or they'll be subjugated by other warbands or won't be strong enough to raid meaningful targets. They don't get along with authority despite craving it. They talk a big game about being skeptical about Chaos but the Gods still worm their way into their confidence in various ways, and when push comes to shove they aren't above using the warp to accomplish their goals.

 

As I started this I was concerned this was going to be more of a sales pitch for the Nemesis Claw Kill Team, but actually the cast doesn't really track directly to the minis, which is a small plus. They are certainly shallow characters for the most part, but that's fine because most of them don't last too long anyway. There's also some little lore callbacks, like the Flylords, who are on the list of chapters lost to Chaos in the Abyssal Crusade. Some of the more interesting characters actually pop up outside the Blades, including the lord, champion, and warpsmith from a rival warband, and a pet techpriest who is also kind of a plot facilitating macguffin thanks to a stolen set of datastacks from the Forge World that they raid in the first chapter.

The main character is a pretty irredeemable, hypocritical jerk. The main antagonist of the novel is potentially worse, but it's very easy to imagine a situation where Dalchian betrays an underling warband of Crimson Slaughter to their doom in the exact same way. There's really no well of sympathy for him, so that leaves the draw being the inherent fascination of following a Chaos Space Marine and his warband around. If that's not something you're in to that could be a big hurdle to enjoying this one.

The middle of the novel transitions into more of a Black Ship heist planning, where the warband(s) raid and plot their way around until they have a means to catch up to a dreaded Black Ship in the system. And the last 1/4 or so is that plot executed, which is fun for a while but honestly kind of overstays its welcome. The action in the rest of the novel is paced well, but right at this point it does start to drag as we go through wave after wave of faceless Black Ship Sentinels in endless corridors designed to confound the psykers onboard the ships, and then they fight the occasional silent sister.

It's well set-up for a sequel if it ever gets one. Nice twist at the end. Good showing for the Sisters of the Ebon Chalice here, and honestly the Silent Sisterhood as well. The tech priest who facilitated the plot in this story would be well set-up to be a major complication in a second one.

Yeah, idk, 7/10 or so? I'd recommend it if you like to read about Chaos warbands, the Night Lords, or ever wanted to see the inner workings of a Black Ship.


 

On 10/24/2025 at 8:03 AM, Tolmeus said:

  Hide contents

For example there is the scene when the allied warband of the World Eater Warlord catches up to the Night Lords rather quickly. Afterwards, it took weeks for another one to catch up to them or for the renegade Night Lord to reach the World Eater Warlord again. Notice, that everything happens within the same star system and without need for Warp travel. Doesn' make sense to me. 
Another example is, that nearly all of the inventions of the renegade Mechanicum adept seamlessly work out within in short time: Fix the Astrates weapons, armours, artificial limps, create a device to travel to a Black ship and so on.

 

Spoiler

I don't think there are any World Eaters in this? The Gorelord is from the Crimson Slaughter, the Chaos warband antagonist faction from the Dark Vengeance box set, and formerly the loyalist Chapter known as the Crimson Sabres. It's mentioned in this novel how there's still a dichotomy where many members of the warband act almost like a loyalist chapter (because they were one relatively recently), arranging in parade ranks before combat, and it's contrasted against the ones that have fallen super hard and fast for Chaos.

At two points it's mentioned why Jathok reaches them so quickly: first, as a sorcerer he's been aware that there is a high potency of psykers in system and he's been looking for a chance to peal away and look for a Black Ship, and second, Zorean betrayed the remnant Blades before they ever left the Gorelord's ship, so Jathok was already on the look-out for the Blades using any chance possible to slip away. He likely shadowed them as soon as the Blades took the Red Galentia. I don't disagree that the book plays fast and loose with time, and often notes that days or weeks have gone by, but in this instance there's a good reason.

The star system is fully exploited due to its forge world, and the large, spread-out population is part of why it's fertile ground for harvesting psykers. Which is why a Black Ship is there in the first place. The thrall warbands under the Gorelord are tightly controlled via his influence on their navigators, and the one on the Red Galentia gets slain immediately, so finding a Black Ship is an important plot point for anyone to have any measure of freedom from him. So the novel does explain why they aren't system-hopping through the warp.

Ibriel is definitely overly-capable, and I kept expecting this to have a grim payoff resulting either in his loss, or via his own self-actualization and potential betrayal of the warband. But I think it's been left for a sequel, if there ever is one.