Auxilia - Russel Zimmerman

[wecanhaveallthree]

I've just picked this one up, and I'm a few chapters in, and I wanted to discuss it with fellow fraters. Zimmerman has written a few shorts for 40K, has a lengthy pedigree in Battletech and Shadowrun, and this is his first full-length treatment for the setting. I picked this one up because it seemed like it would be, for good or ill, something interesting in the morass of middling Guard books of late.

 

But gadzooks.

 

This is possibly the most annoying opening to a book I've ever read. 

 

Spoiler

Maybe it's just a combination of my personal bugbears, Maybe it's the main character being a Cadian castellan who speaks like a blimey chimney sweep who'll shine yer shoes for a groat, guv. Maybe it's the complete lack of confidence where simple things are mentioned five or six times in a few paragraphs (a similar habit was present in his shorts), like the author nervously standing just behind your shoulder pointing things out so you won't get confused or lost. Maybe it's the absolutely interminable asides, the constant telling - we spend the FIRST SEVERAL PAGES TALKING ABOUT HATS AND HOW/WHERE IT'S APPROPRIATE TO WEAR THEM - but god, it's a slog. And then when the story finally looks like it's getting going, when we get out of the formal dinner and the Point Of The Book has been reached - where's Roane's regiment? who are they? this is the 'auxilia' that the book is supposed to be all about - we... deep breaths, wechat, deep breaths - WE CUT AWAY.

 

WE CUT AWAY.

 

ROANE IS TOLD WHERE TO FIND THEM AND GOES TO FIND THEM AND IS LIKE 'DANG... MY COMMAND... IS AN ABHUMAN AUXILIA (as written on the blurb)... I, A CADIAN CASTELLAN, IN CHARGE OF AN ABHUMAN AUXILIA... I SHALL SURELY HAVE TO ROLL UP MY SLEEVES...'

 

I'm sitting there like 'oh thank god here we go, the author has cleared their throat, it's time to get to the meat and potatoes, here's what I picked up the book for' - but no. No. Of course not. Let's CUT AWAY from the first meeting. Let's cut away to a RANDOM BATTLE SCENE, where we're in a tank, assaulting an enemy position. Oh, okay? I guess that's fine? We're gonna do like, a Gaunt's Ghosts kind of thing where we're going to introduce everyone in combat, skip the establishment and logistics stuff, just go straight to them cohering as a regiment? Bold choice, but okay, I'm down with bold choices.

 

But actually, no, after we've cut to a combat scene and a new chapter, we start delivering the first meeting, intercut with the combat scene. AS FLASHBACKS. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

 

I had to put it down. I had to close my reader. I can't do this to myself on a Sunday morning. 

 

PICK A LANE.

 

E: I am at the end of Chapter 4, and nothing has happened. My reader suggests I'm roughly a third of the way in, and the story has yet to do anything. We have spent this entire time cutting back and forth between some first meetings, then back to combat, where we'll get a scene of that character's thoughts/opinions/speciality. At the same time, they address the incredibly unspecific 'enemy force' which is an amorphous renegade/rebel position outside a city, on terrain the narration isn't interested in describing. A character will say or do a thing, confirming the lengthy flashback assessment of their character; some indistinct mass of rebels will appear in the middle distance somewhere to be observed and killed, and the cycle repeats.

 

My eyes have glazed over. I don't care about any of these people, even though I've been introduced to them twice (and some of them multiple times across different flashbacks). I have only the most vague idea of this landing assault, which exists entirely in a strange limbo state where the protagonists nobly advance but never seem to actually go anywhere.

 

The worst part on a craft level is how we're just told the same thing over, and over, and over. There is absolutely no confidence in the writing, and whenever it starts to gain any momentum, we cut/flash somewhere else to start again.

 

Let me reiterate that we are a third of the way through the book.

 

AIEEEE.

 

E2: Let me provide an example.

 

Spoiler

Shamefully, her Korpsmen had not one proper field gun to their name. It was an ironic twist that, dismembered and insensate, promoted by the high marshal from afar, the castellan-colonel and the wreckage of the 13th Laessian had made it through their clerical decimation with their armoured inventory still intact. Lagorse, meanwhile, had seen the 94th’s biggest artillery pieces meticulously inventoried, then taken away to be given to other units. The luck of it was uncanny. The unconscious, near-dead Cadian simply hadn’t filled in some sort of Departmento Munitorum form, from somewhere, to be given to someone, that would have led to all of the broken regiment’s armour being parted out to nearby units. Lagorse, dutiful and loyal, had seen to every detail to the letter, and in doing so had lost every gun worth the name. She could acknowledge the irony. The God-Emperor’s plans were not always clear to His most loyal servants.

 

[snipped a brief paragraph]

 

The point remained, however: the auxilia had more armour than they could fully utilise. The opposite was true when it came to artillery. The 94th had been a siege regiment, experts in their field, and appropriately outfitted. Major Lagorse had kept, in proper Korpsman fashion, meticulous records of every one of their field guns, mortars, siege cannons, and quad launchers, and of the ammunition for each. They had spent the bulk of Morville Quartus’ siege defending the city itself, and the city’s factoria had kept the artillery fed, but she had never taken it for granted. Unlike the half-dead Orysian Roane, Lagorse’s records had been clear and accurate, and her inventories cross-checked and handed over to the Departmento Munitorum upon the dissolution and reassignment of the 94th.
            

Who had then kept them, insisting that abhuman auxilia had no need for such.

 

And so Major Lagorse was a siege officer leading a siege regiment that suddenly had not one siege weapon in its inventory[...]

 

"Oh, right. The poison. The poison for Kuzco, the poison chosen especially to kill Kuzco, Kuzco's poison..."

Edited 2 hours ago by wecanhaveallthree

[Felix Antipodes]

Try Swan’s recent Voice of Command as an antidote to this.  Clearly defined characters (imho) that I was interested in following the fate of, some abhumans who aren’t paint by numbers, and a war zone described with depressing reality.  Your view may vary but I can’t see it being worse than what you describe above.