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..."

 

E3: I'm right at the halfway mark, and I think I see the shape of the story to come (and it's an interesting story). 

 

But we took HALF A BOOK to get here, with some truly, insanely baffling decisions.

 

Spoiler

The main character has just done some soul-searching, resolved to be a better Cadian and given his assembled troops a 'rah-rah' speech. They've got six days before they're the only active Militarum force on the planet - the rebellion has been broken, the rest of the regiments are withdrawing in order but that's gonna take a long time and it's up to the auxilia to make sure things are finished (and a kind of punishment detail anyhow). There are still active rebels around, so it's not totally safe, but the Cadian has resolved to use those six days to WHIP HIS TROOPS INTO SHAPE. Not as Cadians, but each playing to their unique abilities, their strengths, and their common humanity (hooray)!

 

The funny thing is, after the initial assault, the narrative skips over roughly TWO MONTHS of everyone being on planet. The other regiments go off and defeat the rebellion off-screen. The auxilia just dig ditches in front of the city they're defending, whereupon other regiments drive armoured vehicles near them and make them collapse. We just had a perfect opportunity for that training to be done! WHY AREN'T WE DOING IT THEN. WHY DID WE WAIT. AIEEEE.

 

Funnily enough, I'm getting real Honourbound vibes from Auxilia. Honourbound was a great story with a very middling opening action/assault scene, and completely changed gears once that was out of the way into the excellence it became. But we're halfway through the book, and we're only just now doing something. Can it save the story? I dunno! If I hadn't paid for it, I'd have eaten it by now. 

 

E4: I'm done. It's tepid and unimaginative, far too busy playing it safe to make any real impression. The story definitely picks up for the city siege, but the action is largely small-scale and unfocused and doesn't pay off much of what was promised.

 

WRT abhumans, the selling point of this novel, ratlings play a small part; some ogryns turn up later.

 

I hoped this would either be awesome or a disaster, and it unpleasantly surprised me by being just another interminable Guard book. Many such cases.

Edited October 18 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.

[Griefbringer]

I take this as a recommendation not to read this book, if I have choice.

 

Pity to hear that the abhumans play a smaller role than could be expected based on the earlier blurbs.

[wecanhaveallthree]

Yes, it was disappointing. The Kriegers get the biggest bite of the plot outside the main character/Cadians.

 

I wouldn't recommend this book. It's almost the same book as Imperial Creed, beat-for-beat, but with nothing that made that book a delight. 

[Griefbringer]

On second thought, this review made me think about the issue of repeating a given point, which was seen as a weakness here. I can understand it being annoying. The faster paced novels tend to avoid such issues, except when the author really wants to emphasis something (and then it is usually repeated with a very brief sentence for extra emphasis). The lack of repetition also means that you need to pay attention to what you are actually reading (a good thing in my opinion).

 

Another issue that I came to think is the amount of detail. Good authors seem to be able to pick well where to use detail and where not: there are some parts where a lot of detail is introduced to really set the proper atmosphere, but there are also parts where things start moving fast and detail is applied to only the essentials, the rest being left to the reader's imagination (which has been previously primed to the proper atmosphere by earlier, detailed sections).

 

[Personally, I tend to be quite fascinated by detail, and tend to sometimes go to excessive depths of detail in my writing when it is not needed.]

[wecanhaveallthree]

There's an example I often think of when we talk about 'detail' or 'worldbuilding' in 40K books, and it's Wraight spending a few pages discussing the vellum industry on Terra. It's a detective story, and we're investigating someone connected to that industry, and it's Terra, so it's relevant and actually quite fascinating. It earns a place, it doesn't disturb the momentum of the story and it's interesting. 

 

Auxilia does not do this. It will tell you something over and over again, then remind you of that thing over and over again, without clear reason or purpose: rather than priming the reader or creating emphasis, it feels like padding, and for a story with so little actually going on, that feels particularly egregious. 

[Griefbringer]

I certainly enjoy reading good background detail as part of a novel, even on a bit marginal subject (vellum industry on Terra actually sounds interesting!). But it is best served in logical locations. The early chapters of a book are particularly good location, as those will prime the reader to the setting. Another logical place would be at the beginning of a new chapter, if the protagonists have arrived to a new planet, city or another location that would deserve a bit of background explanation before it is explored in practice.

 

As for the Auxilia, it sounds like the author could do with a more critical editor, in order to develop as an author with focus on progressing the story. Also, it sounds like there was some crucial detail missing - like exactly who the opponents were and why they were fighting?

[Gamiel]

I just finished Auxilia and I really liked it.

 

Will try to take time later to give a longer review. 

[wecanhaveallthree]

That'd be good. The general temperature of reviews I've been seeing has been a lot different to mine, and I'd definitely appreciate hearing from fellow fraters on the subject.

[Gamiel]

On 10/20/2026 at 7:11 PM, Gamiel said:

I just finished Auxilia and I really liked it.

 

Will try to take time later to give a longer review. 

Auxilia is in many ways a bildungsroman for the main character who was before the book a middle officer of the "heroic, excellent on the field, beloved by the troops who at the same time don’t think about the consequences for his actions regarding diplomacy between different forces, leave the boring stuff (like deeper planning, paperwork or socilising with fellow officers) to his friends or underlings, and such"-kind. All that is a “was” since at the start of the book he is the surviving highest officer of his force and have been given a higher position thanks to heroics. With the later comes the leadership of a regiment created from the abhuman axilla forces the grand army he is part of has together with the survivors of his old regiments, and all other regiments that have been so decimated that they have been disbanded.

 

The story is about him trying to make a united regiments of the different parts he has been given and realising that part of the problem is sometime him. This as his forces are thrown into combat too early against highly trained troops that have revolted against their homeworld, and this as many of the other regiments, and the people he helped saving, have only disdain for his forces.

 

 

To me the book is well written and I found it a good read and many times funny. I like that the author use many of the regiments named and illustrated in 3ed Codex Imperial Guards but would have liked a bit more time with them, hopefully we will se more of them in next story.

 

Would have actually liked more racism against the ratlings from others, and maybe a story about somebody that dislike them beginning to realise their use, as it is are most of the main characters accepting of them and understanding of their usefulness from the start. The main exception being the commissar that is a hateful bastard with a twitchy trigger finger. We also get lots of institutional racism but surprisingly little personal.

 

I admit that I had hoped for this book to mainly be a deep dive into ratling lore, and perspective. And we get some of that but not nearly as much as I had hopped.

Edited 3 hours ago by Gamiel