Roomsky

Behold the review thread. Post thy thoughts. Bjorn The Fell-Handed - Justin D. Hill Hill's typical writing is very clipped and to-the-point. It works great for his Minka Lesk series, capturing the panic of being infantry on the ground while titanic events erupt around you. It also works well to emphasize the busywork to be done between battles, and the frustration of waiting for the killing to begin. His stuff usually reads like on-the-ground in-universe military history, and I love that. However, that style would not suit the Space Wolves and their warrior brotherhood of wannabe skalds. To his credit, Hill recognizes this and varies up his style of prose significantly - this book is written like a fireside tale, full of bombast and repetition of superlatives. I give Hill a lot of credit for taking this swing while acknowledging that his lack of experience with this sort of writing really shows. A lot of the repetition feels unnecessary, like someone struggling to hit a wordcount on their essay (especially odd, since this book is about 100 pages longer than the usual Character Series work). For every poetic aside there's a description that Bjorn's claw struck savagely with the force of a savage strike. It's my main issue with the book and dampened what is otherwise a pretty good effort; what's meant to be epic is often just laboured. Less important, but the climactic battle is also a bit hard to keep track of - mostly because I don't understand how a castaferrum dreadnaught is physically doing what Bjorn is allegedly doing. As is my habit, I blame the editors for not identifying these issues and having Hill do another pass. The story itself is a rarity: it's a plot appropriate to the Character Series banner. Not only is the plot specific to the experience of being a dreadnaught, but we really get into Bjorn's head here. He wears the bombastic façade of a chapter elder while harbouring complicated views about his continued existence. He craves death as much as life - Bjorn the man is set on being present at The Wolftime; he's set on greeting Russ when he walks through the door again, be it in triumph or failure. But is that really his desire? Or has he just internalized his duty to the point where it's inseperable from his identity? He wants to fight alongside Russ as much as he wants to slap him around for his absenteeism. It ends up being more nuanced, IMO, than Haley's Dante. My only complaint is that the Death Guard antagonists only really try to tempt him with the peace of death for a few pages. This is something that I think could have made his inner struggles, already strong, that much more compelling if given the page space. Bjorn, unfortunately, doesn't get to chat with Guilliman, or Grimnar, or Ragnar, or any other big name characters I'd read a whole book about Bjorn conversing with. Excepting that, I think the plot is a pretty good idea. The Death Guard cause a bit of defilement on Fenris, it takes the Space Wolves years to track them down, but Bjorn is only woken up for the fighting. We get to see the supporting characters leap forward years at a time through Bjorn's POV. What's that if not a perfect vehicle for a story about a dreadnaught? It even convincingly shows Bjorn's experience as not really having time (or cause) to bring up how :cuss:ed the Imperium's become. He sees Fenris, he sees feast halls, and he sees the enemy. The decline of the All Father's domain is just not in his POV. I wouldn't have minded this taking place over a greater span of time though. Bjorn knows Guilliman's returned, but hasn't met him yet. That constrains a plot that could have spanned decades into just a handful of years. Imagine seeing the Bloodclaw begin as a suicidally brave initiate and end as a cautious greybeard? Could have hit mighty hard, that. This book's heart is in the right place, and while I won't hold what I view as a bit of lost opportunity against it, the middling prose really drags it down for me. Some passages are brilliant, but many more are tedious. I love the concepts on display, but some of the most interesting ones are barely given time. This isn't Bjorn's life story, but if you want to understand who he is, and why you should care, in the 42nd millennium: this book delivers. That's more than I can say about most Character Series books.

Raldoron: Revenant – Guy Haley I’ve always thought that the title character of a book doesn’t need a ton of page time for the book to be an effective insight into their character. I learned a lot about Ferrus and Sanguinius in their Primarchs entries, despite their minimal pagetime. Thing is, you actually need to possess some insight into the character you want to impart. Raldoron is frequently out of focus in this book AND we learn very little about him. Makes me wonder what the point even was. He’s criticized by a portion of the fandom, myself included, for having no real defined personality. His defining moment was (and still is) kicking Skraivok off a wall. What this book does reveal is that his being dull was apparently intentional. You see, Raldoron is stoic. A stoic space marine! End me now What a concept. Sigh. I don’t know man. What am I supposed to say about this? Haley’s slowed his pace of writing down, which improves his prose. That’s good. Raldoron does get a pittance of decent scenes scattered throughout, but they’re all half-baked and disconnected. He has trouble emoting, but it only means anything in the last 10 pages. He imparts the legion’s methods of controlling the Red Thirst onto a junior officer but never gives much thought to it after it doesn’t work. There’s no interesting cognitive dissonance either, because his relationship with Sanguinius is ill-defined at best. His one conversation with the primarch, often a highlight for an officer character, is remarkably bland. The last quarter of the book turns into the Simeon and Assan show, presumably in an attempt to get the reader more invested in them before the big tragic moment happens, but being that this is allegedly the Raldoron book, that just made me annoyed with them. There was an earlier moment in the story where a similar tragedy could have occurred, where neither of those characters had overstayed their welcome. Might have been a better spot for it. The final conversation of the book is interesting but its themes could have used much more time to breathe than a handful of pages. So Raldoron gets called out at the end for being disconnected from the human cost of everything, which was presented well in the moment but doesn't really have anything to do with the ~200 pages leading up to it. If anything, Raldoron’s character shows that he’s deceptively empathetic to individuals. There’s a major father-son dynamic going on with Faisal and Assan, but that has literally zero parallels with Raldoron because Sanguinius is a non-entity here. There’s also a brief moment where he builds a sort of unwanted rapport with a Death Guard captive, but that too goes nowhere. This book has no actual themes, it’s just a pile of things that happen. The trend of Character Series books only being good when the title character doesn’t actually need one continues. MEDIOCRE.

I will once again go against the grain when discussing cover art and say the Raldoron LE looks leagues better than the standard hardback art - you can't even tell if Tiny-Head Mode is enabled in the LE. Also there's just more artistry to the painting, and while "character's face" isn't terribly inspired, I like it better than "space marine stands stiffly with sword".

If you're taking fantasy suggestions for your backlog, Rowland, then I must suggest my absolute favourite dark "fantasy" series: R. Scott Bakker's Second Apocalypse. It's not just dark and gritty! It's black and sticky! It's like 40k but not written by cowards! It evolves Tolkien's tropes instead of just imitating them! Be transported to a fantasy Middle East and say "God, I hate it here!"

Ward's novels are apparently really good! I wouldn't write them off because of his codex sins; entirely different beast.

Can't comment on Sun Eaters, but I feel there is a point where this particular brand of grimdarkness is inevitably going to fall back into being 40k, which in turn falls back into being Herbert/Moorcock/Wolfe etc. etc. etc. I try to just embrace the fun of spotting the similarities. The Locked Tomb is, as a good friend once described it, "40k for lesbians." That said, despite Muir's prose stumbling a bit in the first book, The Locked Tomb is ultimately a lot deeper than any 40k fiction from the past 20 years, and goes places GW is too cowardly to let their novels explore. Highly recommended.

It's great. McNeill really did seem to be the only one who remembered the human cost needed to be something other than a B-Plot, for a while.

The novel sees a ghost ship bearing down on Bjorn’s homeworld carrying an ancient foe, and with heretics from the traitorous Death Guard set to bring poxes and poisons to Fenris, the ancient warrior rises to its defence. This will either be boring as sin or a much-needed look into what it's like to be the only loyalist Heresy survivor circa 40k that isn't a primarch or a mishmash of different brains. Weird how little this element is ever touched on - Bjorn's always "he's really old" and not often "this guy walked with the Emperor."

Chiming in: Dropsite Massacre - Does this add much to the original heresy series? Yes, if you're already familiar with the book's huge cast. It reads like a missing puzzle piece; it feels like Isstvan V is finally covered in full, but it very much reads as something written with hindsight for the series as a whole. There's a lot of "what was this guy doing at Isstvan V?" without establishing them for new readers. It's a good read within that context, though. Eidolon - I enjoyed him in the hersy books but wasn't sure about this one Non-essential, but fun in a bolter-porny sort of way. ECs are all self-obsessed so it doesn't devolve into being bland, impersonal violence. Ghazghul - I like orks but just couldn't get into Brutal Kunnin, is this more of the same? Ghazghkull's Character Series book is usually regarded as much better than Brooks' writing, though it also dials back a lot of the comedy. If you want Orks well-written and taken mostly seriously, it's great. Infinite and divine - I really like Trazyn as a character but no very little about Necrons. Based on the internet's reaction, it's worth the read and an easy starting place with Necrons. I'm a little lukewarm on it and prefer Twice-Dead King. Tomb World Not great, probably the worst Necron-focused novel out ATM. Don't write off the author for it though, The King of the Spoil and Dominion Genesis are both very good. Voidscarred The only honest-to-god romance in the Black Library catalogue. It's also Elf Yaoi. Read it if you think you'd enjoy that. Might make you want to play Corsairs. Elemental Council The best Tau book, bar none. Highly recommended.

This re-release is the first one I don't better than the original. Galaxy in Flames' original art is actually kinda decent, and this one captures neither the grit nor the scale of the book's contents.

Can it be? Raldoron is finally getting a personality? They said it wouldn't be done. They said it couldn't be done. Cautiously optimistic for this, even with Haley not being my favourite. Man's probably the least interesting first captain among the first-founding chapters, and he really shouldn't be. Edit: His head is very small.

Horus Rising (Director's Cut) parts 1, 2, and 3 would be absolutely shameless. I'd buy it. (Heresy'd still have been better if 1 author tackled the whole thing.)

The Ork sections were lots of fun - especially impressive because Brooks has written more Orks than anjyone else at this point, but they didnèt feel stale here. I just thought the two protagonists had a very compelling energy to them. Mixed with decent Eldar focus being (weirdly) so much rarer than good Ork focus these days, it just gave me the experience of "yes, yes, very amusing. But do hurry back to the meat of the story." Which, I'll concede, could have been intentional on Brooks' part to build tension.

Well, it's certainly no Twice-Dead King.

Some fresh paperback listings from Amazon: October 20 - Apostle, Dropsite Massacre, Master of Rites November 17 - Deathrider, Ghost Legion December 15 - Ashes of the Imperium, Ghazghkull Thraka: Warlord of Warlords, Chem Dog