New Sisters Novel Up For Pre Order

[WarriorFish]

Hmm. Yes it does sound like it might not be great so some spoiler tags would be a good idea to let people arm themselves with knowledge :)

[Commander Dawnstar]

Just as a reminder: Summaries and spoilers have a way of making things sound worse than they are as you're not getting the complete picture. My own feelings are hardly going to help with giving you an impartial view of things.

 

 

 

In theory the protagonist of Cult of the Warmason is Sister Superior Trishala, the leader of a contingent of approximately 200 Battle Sisters of the Order of the Solemn Vow. The duty of this Minor Order – the solemn vow from which they draw their name – is to stand guard over the sacred relics of the Emperor’s Warmason, Vadok Singh. As such the Battle Sisters spend almost the entirety of the novel beyond the opening scene confined to the Cathedral of the Warmason and its grounds.

 

Warmason starts with a fair bit of promise. Trishala is an interesting enough character (a survivor of a world that faced its own Genestealer Cult uprising) and quickly finds herself in opposition to the Cardinal-Governor and his council after she alone encounters direct evidence that the surge of recidivism in Lubentina’s slums is the work of xenos-lovers and not just mutants and heretics. The powers that be refuse to accept her evidence – a genestealer’s severed claw – as anything more than a severe mutation and the Cardinal-Governor quickly establishes himself as a man who has absolutely no interest in calling for outside interference. Lubentina is a shrine world and to call for the Inquisition or worse would disrupt pilgrimages, harm the world’s prestige, harm its economy etc etc. Lubentina must handle its own problems.

 

From here we move on in a solid direction. The situation in Lubentina worsens as the cultists bring their long-planned tunnels and acts of sabotage to bear, the military fails to contain them (especially once the purestrains show their heads) and the Battle Sisters have to deal with the ever-swelling tide of pilgrims and refugees seeking sanctuary in the Cathedral of the Warmason. We get some nice scenes showing the Genestealer Magus’ relationship with his alien masters and how he exerts his psychic influence through brood telepathy, and things really start building as disguised cultists are found within the cathedral and a significant official within the Ecclesiarchy defies the Cardinal-Governor to send a telepathic distress call.

 

And then the Iron Warriors show up…

 

The tail end of the fourth chapter introduces us to a sorcerer, Cornak, who has attached himself onto the Grand Company of Werner’s Warsmith from The Siege of Castellax and set his eyes firmly on securing a relic held within the Cathedral of the Warmason. Said Warsmith and friends arrive in the following chapter and essentially proceed to warp the shape of the whole storiy. As Space Marines, the Iron Warriors  walk through anything short of the purestrains without breaking a sweat and are given at least as much focus as either of the other factions in the conflict. What makes this feel even worse is that only two of the Battle Sisters really feel like characters – Trishala and Sister Kashibai from the preview – while the Iron Warriors have quite a bit of character to them and are at least recognisable for having distinctive weapons or broad character traits where they lack real depth. They banter, they have their own internal conflicts and ambitions, and they honestly went a long way to make me want to read more of Werner's work with them ... although I'm probably somewhat biased when it comes to the IVth.

 

There is a lot to summarise here (perhaps as much as half of the page count) so I’ll focus on my main bugbears:

 

The Iron Warriors are the winners in this story. They kill the Magos; they kill the Patriarch, and they are the ones who make off with the relic that the Sisters and cult were seeking to protect/desecrate respectively. It’s clear that Werner was very happy to get to write about his characters again and he handles them well, but their presence in this story is totally left-field and ultimately it feels as though with a few tweaks the plot could have hit exactly the same beats even if they weren’t there. The climax of the novel is pretty much entirely about them, while Trishala either shadows them or lies unconscious and bleeding on the floor.

 

The Battle Sisters carrying out a desperate last stand from the cathedral when we last hear of them (some 120+ by my reckoning) all die off-screen. Unfortunately Werner wasn’t really interested in telling their story and none of the important characters were on-site at that point, so in the end we hear of their fate in the epilogue. Yay!

 

Trishala, the lone surviving Battle Sister from the Order of the Solemn Vow, miraculously makes it back to Imperial lines with the shroud of Vadok Singh, a relic that she retrieved from the heart of the fallen cathedral. The memories she has of doing this are vague and muddied to say the least, but an epic tale spreads nonetheless about her one-woman assault on the heretics and her heroism in the face of certain death. As the lone guardian of the shroud she is sent off-world on an Ecclesiarchy mission ship … and while I could be wrong, the choice of wording very heavily implies that she’s unknowingly fallen under the sway of the cult and means to bring her new-found "enlightenment" to foreign worlds that others might know "the glory of ascension."

 

 

I don't feel that I can really judge the quality of Cult of the Warmason because my negative reaction to it is purely emotional. It's a story sold as a Sisters of Battle vs Genestealer Cult tale that ultimately feels like it's being told by an author who was far more interested to talk about his own interests than either of the two once things really get going. The Sisters aren't exactly handled badly but beyond Trishala and Kashibai they really haven't got much character between them. I feel like I would like this story a lot more if I didn't go into it looking for something focused on Sisters of Battle, but as that's exactly what I went in looking for it left me feeling thoroughly let down. 

 

I think this could've been a much better piece if Werner had just kept his focus on what the story claims to be about. The early chapters of Cult of the Warmason seem pretty promising, but as time goes by it's hard to avoid the sense that the original plotline has been invaded by one that is completely superfluous to the conflict and is only drawing focus away from the characters and events who deserve more of it.

[Servant of Dante]

wow. So we get a cool Sisters story setup then the space marines arrive and the Sisters die off screen. And it all ends with the one surviving Sister (another trope we keep seeing, why do all the Sisters ALWAYS have to die :D ) gets stuck in a "just as planned" set up by the cult. Definitely not reading this one.

[Atrus]

Wow. Suddenly the idea I had of this story being about a cult invading society and several sisters being forced into some weird hentai situation with the genestealers sounds a hell of a lot better than what's being presented here.

 

 

"Yeahhhhh about that sisters vs stealer book we agreed to. It needs space marines, and they need to take the stage. So if you could get on that, that'd be great."

 

[Red_Shift]

Man that sucks. I was looking forward to a sisters book.

[Arkaniss]

Thanks for the info Brightstar, personally I think it's much better for me to be disappointed reading your spoilers rather than reading the actual book!

[WarriorFish]

Thanks for that, this is a confirmed not buy and not read for me then.

[Commander Dawnstar]

To play devil's advocate: Some overused tropes/cliches aside, I think the core story behind Cult of the Warmason is solid enough. It covers the cult uprising fairly well, does some decent stuff with politics (even if it's nothing too original) and has some battle scenes that didn't overly grate in terms of bolter porn. You really do get a sense of all the complications that come with dealing with an enemy that specialises in infiltration, sabotage and terror tactics, at least by the standards of most typical 40k writing, and the nature of the story means the protagonist is basically positioned in a "safe" space having to watch as the noose gradually closes in about them. Werner is pretty good with his characters and there was only one of them who I felt didn't come off well enough, and that was more because they mostly seemed to be in the novel to make questionable decisions. It's certainly not bad.

 

Feelings towards the ending aside, I genuinely believe this could've been salvaged if they'd just cut out the unnecessary addition and used the pages that'd free up to bulk up the rest of the novel. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest you'd get an extra 20% of the book to work with by removing that angle, and in rewriting some scenes around that absence you'd be able to refocus some important scenes back where the attention really should be: The Sisters of Battle and Genestealer Cult.

 

 

For one, I'm a thousand times more interested in a finale that consists of a squad of Sisters having to go Space Hulk-style through long-abandoned and highly irradiated catacombs than the Iron Warriors doing it. Rather than playing things for tension and building towards the horror of entering the lair of the beast, Werner just has the Iron Warriors fight their way through one ambush before brawling with the genestealers and the Magus' psychic might until the Patriarch decides to finally show up for the last five minutes. It's used to build on the conflicts between the Warsmith and his Sorcerer, certainly, but really it's just lots and lots of fighting as the Iron Warriors do the real work of decapitating the cult.

 

The final chapter (not the epilogue) only features the Sisters of Battle insofar as it has Trishala rush out of the shadows to corner the Magus while he tries to escape with the relic, break free of his psychic attack as he tries to cripple her with twisted visions of her past ... and then the Iron Warriors shoot her in the back as she moves to put the Magus down. Everything else in the last chapter proper (killing the purestrains, Magus, Patriarch and retrieving the relic) falls to the Iron Warriors.

 

[Goonbandito]

Sigh.  I almost bought this the other day, and the only reason I didn't was because I wasn't gonna have time over the weekend to read it.  But based on those spoilers, I'm kinda glad I didnt.

 

Why couldn't it have been the Word Bearers that showed up?  Sure I'm biased since the Word Bearers are my favourite Legion, but isn't the "Zealous Faith in the God-Emperor vs Zealous Faith in the Ruinous Powers" thematic angle of a Sisters of Battle vs Word Bearers story just an obviously awesome thing to make a novel about? 

[Knight of the Raven]

 

IRON WARRIORS IN UR CATHEDRAL, STEALING UR JOB LOL NEWB

 

You know, when I saw the cultist on the cover, I knew sisters of battle wouldn't be the main characters.

 

I just didn't expect the genestealer cult to also not be the main characters.

 

The protagonist's implied fate doesn't really help.

[Servant of Dante]

Nice to see you around the forum again Raven . . . even if you're not our friend :P 

 

(this post has no actual on-topic content)

 

but I'm not super surprised about this either. Just disappointed that what sounds like could have been an awesome Sisters-centric story wasn't because

space marines

 

[Knight of the Raven]

Sisters of battle are rarely lucky in their books. In Faith and Fire and Hammer and Anvil;

 

 

they'd have all died if Maverickiya didn't get lucky behind the scenes.

 

 

But it seems they have it even worse when dealing with genestealer cults. If I'm not mistaken, in the novel that accompanied the latter's codex release;

 

 

one sister is brainwashed by the cult and lets the cultists into the convent at night so that they slit every sister's throat while they sleep, and then she goes on to get knocked up by a higher-up of the cult and is ecstatic about it.

 

 

And in this novel;

 

 

Chaos space marines come in and pry the spotlight from their cold, dead hands. Not even loyalists mind you, chaos space marines. Seeing as they're usually mooks in loyalist books, this says a lot about what Games Workshop thinks the sisters are worth.

 

At least the protagonist was lucky enough to secure a relic before going back to imperial lines, else she'd have been executed for desertion. But since she's apparently a tool of the Hive Mind now... yeah.

 

I guess "murder your darlings" is foreign to the author.

 

[Red_Shift]

We need a bit less of that and a bit more daemonifuge. That said there was a good short with a power axe wielding sister chasing down a former ultramarine turned nurgle champion.

[Montford]

Thank you for the synopsis, you've saved me a little cash and a lot of frustration :)

 

Does anyone else here get the notion that someone at GW HQ is intimidated by women, and / or never got past the adolescent stage of "girls are yucky" ? :D

[Servant of Dante]

Well, that second spoiler tag Raven posted has me more than a little pissed. It hits basically all of the "these are things that Sisters just wouldn't do" buttons I have.

 

Do I even want to be part of the 40K community anymore? Sometimes I'm not sure.

 

Montford: I get the impression that large chunks of the community, including some people at GW never got past the idea that they're women so there just HAS to be some sexual content in the book.

[Knight of the Raven]

I don't know if sisters would actually be immune to a magus' brainwashing, but I'd expect there to be some sentinels guarding the convent at night to prevent that kind of problem. Then again, I've not read the book so maybe they get around them somehow.

 

I'm very familiar with feeling sickened by either the community or the creators, but I won't go on and on about it or I'll never shut up.

 

While Games Workshop made some questionable choices regarding women such as the repentia and their whip happy boss, they're still better than companies like DC, Marvel and Bioware. Sure, the sisters of battle spend their time dying but I feel it's more because a general "who cares about them" for reasons unknown than "women ew." And there's actually very little if any sexual content in their books when daemons of Slaanesh or dark eldar aren't around (the Emperor's Children, for their part, don't seem to extend their "your consent is appreciated but optional" ways beyond mass murder and melting people into drugs).

 

I actually like that there's so little sex in Warhammer 3/40,000, it's a refreshing change from every other franchise above the kids show rating.

[Blackarmor_redtruth]

The focus on a grim dark eternal war is appreciated over anything "hey, female so lets sexualize it" attitude for sure. As for just being a book  with three factions, where two are promoted (GSC & AS) then to have the IW come in and take all the glory is what cuts my strings. Bleh, pass, even at the local library, pass.