Whoops, guess I should've kept that March Book Haul post for a little later, but then, this one does deserve its own page, doesn't it?
Feast your eyes!
I was one of the lucky few who managed to snag a copy of the limited edition of book 1 in the final act of the Horus Heresy. It's a beautiful production as is usual from the Black Library, and I can't help but drool when I think of 8 of these beauties all lined up on my shelves.
Yes indeed, there will be 7 more of these, and when they've all been released, the Horus Heresy will be over and concluded with. Except... probably not, right?
No, there's a reason this isn't just the next book in the Horus Heresy numbered series, and instead that it is book one in Horus Heresy: The Siege of Terra: There likely will be some more heresy novels that take place before the Siege. Maybe just collections of short stories and the novellas that haven't been gathered up until now, but maybe there will be some stories that the writers might want to regale us with still. We'll see.
Again: a beautiful production. Signed by John French.
A poignant dedication, and a new introduction, specific to the Siege of Terra series.
And then this thing, which is so incredibly lovely I don't know quite what to say. Very baroque and as such very in keeping with where we are now in the story: Terra itself: millennia upon millennia of wealth and power conveyed in completely over the top ornamentation: I love it.
Some principal characters, a very far cry from the cartoonish style of earlier internal illustrations of the Horus Heresy Hardbacks. A welcome change, and dare I say it: Quite respectable even.
And Holy Terra, more character pieces, they've really gone all out on this one, huh?
A beautiful monochromatic rendering of the cover artwork that'll be adorning the regular hardback edition of The Solar War.
And a lovely bit of dialogue on the back. Spoken by the prodigal son, maybe?
Returned, indeed.
There you have it: a stunningly beautiful edition of a long awaited novel.
I'm very surprised this was only 70 euros, actually... They really should've made more of these, hmm? Seriously though, I do hope they'll be more mindful of the desires of their fanbase in the future, because as it is, I had a bugger of a time in just getting this one. I don't think I could do this 7 more times if they handle the future releases the same way they did on the on-sale day.
Angron: Slave of Nuceira focuses on the World Eaters, who, in the years of the great Crusade, after their reunion with their Primarch, are divided into two groups over the demand of their violent and deranged gene-sire to have the Butcher's Nails implanted into their skulls. Though the threat of internal strife looms, it is a danger that might never come up, as so far, the Legion's apothecaries and accompanying Mechanicum forces have been unable to even come close to recreating Angron's Butcher's nails. As the captains of the legion argue among themselves over what to do with their father, and his horrifying methods of punishment in the face of their failures, the fleet arrives at the next world to bring into compliance.
It is here, on this world that was once part of the imperium of man, and which has been silent for a number of years, that the World Eaters will finally come face to face with the future their father has envisioned for them.
Slave of Nuceira is about what one would have expected from a story focusing on Angron and his legion, but nonetheless, Ian St Martin does really bring more to the table than just excessive amounts of brutal violence. There is plenty of that, of course, but where the novel really becomes memorable was in the depiction of Angron's early years, before he became the mad beast that he was always going to be. Martin shows, in a few beautiful passages that once upon a time, this was not all that Angron had the potential of being. We get glimpses of a past nobility and more besides. Yet again: The incredible, the tragic Could-Have Been. The book shows that despite all the promise and artistry inherent in each of the Emperor's most impressive creations, even they, even the Primarchs themselves, can fall. Even though he can be of the most blessed nature, and unbroken by the most brutal of nurture, there are certain things that can still ruin a man, and that can destroy him beyond healing. As you can guess; this is pretty much the definitive book on the Butcher's Nails.
Angron is certainly one of the more tragic characters among the 18.
Naturally, knowing where history takes us, we know how this will end, but as I intimated, there are a few surprises to be had. For instance: Even though he's not very prominent here we do get more insight into Kharn, his actions and reasoning, as we do really get to understand the choice that led him down a path of 10 000 years of violence and bloodshed.
It really is a suitable sequel to After Desh'ea as it pretty much picks up a little after that, and builds on the premise laid out by Aaron Dembski-Bowden.
The ending was a bit off, as we're taken out of the realm of the Horus Heresy and into the world of 40k, but as a story in the greater whole of the Warhammer universe it does work. it was just a bit jarring for some reason*. Despite that, it was a good read, though a little predictable in places.
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*Speaking of jarring, here's a cool bit of the book where it (over)indulges itself a bit.
Another month, another bunch of books. In this particular pile you'll find some Warhammer, some new releases and some comics.
We'll start with the smallest book first; quite an old novel, and a personal favourite of mine.
I had already read The King Beyond the Gate; in fact it was one of the first 'darker' fantasy novels I had read, after having first read a bunch of Eddings and Redwall. This one cemented my love for the grim side of fantasy. I got my original copy from my grandmother, and I thought it was about time I finished my Del Rey Drenai collection.
Of these, the only one I haven't read yet is The Swords of Night and Day. I keep holding off on that one, because once it's done, there will no more new Drenai to read. Maybe this year somewhere.
You'll notice that the Knights of Dark Renown and Morningstar are in here too. 'Officially' they're not part of the Drenai Saga but I put them in the whole anyway. This is because I once came upon an observation by somebody on the internet that, there is a reference to places from Morningstar in the Waylander trilogy, to my mind then, cementing the initial two books as part of the whole saga.
Here you'll see the Warhammer novels I got.
Gods and Mortals is a hardback short story collection which I won't read any time soon, but as these things tend to go out of stock pretty quickly I thought it would be good to have it on hand for whenever I felt like it.
City of the Damned is a reprint of a stand-alone Gotrek and Felix novel I didn't yet have.
I must say though, I'm slightly annoyed that the gold reflective theme from the dark omnibus editions wasn't carried through.
Up next, the fifth volume of the Night Shade's Jules de Grandin complete short story collections... which you can see here already gathered with the rest of them.
Though I haven't ever even read any Seabury Quinn, I did pick these up, because of the artwork, because I tend to want to support Night Shade Books, and because of the occult leanings of the Jules de Grandin stories. Also, I seem to have discovered that I like pulp stories of the weird and horror variety, more than I thought I did, and since I'm done reading Lovecraft now I am glad to already have something on the go.
I've had some difficulties with reading lately and I've found over the past few months that reading short stories helps with counteracting some of that. The introduction says these stories aren't of such high-standing quality that they can just be plowed through until completion, and that they might start to blur together after a while. So, on its recommendation, I'll start to intersperse these into my reading now and then over a long period of time, rather than trying to force the read.
Up next is book 2 in Anna Smith Spark's Empires of Dust trilogy.
As you can see, I'm reading it now, so I won't be saying much about this one right now.
The books without their dust jackets.
I did appreciate The Court of Broken Knives when I read it and I posted a very long review on it. I went off on a slightly off-putting tangent during the writing, so I'm not too fond of sharing the review itself. It's still there though, so if you want to read it, go and read it your own self; it's still on the blog somewhere.
lovely cover art by the way.
The limited edition of Angron: Slave of Nuceira.
The Black Library again on form with their special editions.
The book comes in a thick sleeve (War Hounds embossing), which is why the book is actually quite a bit thinner than you'd think, and the book on the whole is only about 200 pages, and I've already read it too. I'll hold off on showing you more, as I've already prepared next post to showcase and talk about the book a little.
Three Horror comics, two of which I've read and can really recommend.
I haven't read Infinite Dark yet, but Space-horror is right up my alley so I picked this one up as soon as I knew it existed. I'm not sure when I'll get round to it, as I tend to wait a while until these types of series conclude.
Bprd: Vampire follows agent-turned-vampire Simon Anders after his experiences in Bprd: 1948 and is one of those side-jaunts in the Hellboy universe that is probably better than some of the stuff it is a side-jaunt of. This is a re-issue that adds a little extra to the original material, and sets up the second volume of the as of yet unwritten Bprd: Vampire trilogy. I do hope this gets continued soon, because it really is quite stellar.
Bloodborne then, the Death of Sleep is one of those gaming comics designed to pilfer a few bucks, or euros, from those fans that just couldn't get enough from just its source material alone, and which generally are not all that great.
Imagine my surprise then, when I found that this one is actually really, really good.
There's a story here, but as in the game, it's rather hidden, and I'm unsure if it was concluded or if it's still an ongoing project. The comic has a lot of mood going for it, relying on empty vistas and bleak imagery to tell its story, rather than relying on dialogue or exposition.
You obviously should be familiar with the source material to make some sense of it though.
It even managed to get some chilling moments in there, I kid you not.
I won't be spoiling those for you though, and instead I recommend, if you're a fan, that you pick this one up yourself.
And, lastly, the comic that I'm giving a read right now.
Caballistics Inc is one of those favourites that manages to hit all the right spots, and I'm finding a lot to enjoy on this re-read. The introduction that comes with this edition is a little startling however. It gives yet another one of those glimpses of discontent between the writing and art teams of 2000ad and their higher-ups. The introduction, written in the pub, isn't all that great and instead serves us up with yet another one of those 'oh-what-could-have-been' moments, but regardless of it now having made sure I'll never actually buy the spin-off novels, I'm glad that this edition at least, has Gordon Rennie's approval.
What's crazy though is that there even seems to be another arc here that I've never even read:
I'm sure that this is the first I've ever come across 'Visiting Hour'.
Which is slightly odd, because when I read the trade paperback editions I found that Volume 2: Creepshow didn't actually have The Nativity story or even To Ashes in it, and I found myself compelled to buy the digital edition of the complete Caballistics Inc last year or so. And I'm sure Visiting Hour wasn't in there back then. Ah well, at least I've got something extra to look forward to now.
Here's the whole Caballistics inc universe, which besides the titular series, also consists of the Harry Absalom series, which is at least as good as its progenitor.
Also, by the way, Absalom seems to be about to conclude in the near future.
And I must admit, I'm quite looking forward to see what'll happen here. Some reference to Caballistics would be nice.
As I might've mentioned before I've been playing a whole lot of the insanely cool Darkest Dungeon, which is a dungeon-crawling strategy game that takes its inspirational cues (mainly) from Lovecraft. I mean, listen to the narrator in the clip, and if you're familiar with the gentleman from Providence's work, you easily get what I'm talking about. Also, note the beautifully !singular! art style. grimdark as all hell.
The strangely familiar melodrama, the foreshadowing, the characters that inevitably succumb to insanity and death. It's absolutely lovely. It's like Pokemon, except this time, whenever Pikachu gets hit with a water gun he might just end up stressing the fuck out, and you'll find that the only way to reduce that stress is to let him drink himself into a mindless stupor, or to satisfy his needs in the nearest brothel, provided he hasn't become known around the town for his 'deviant tastes', and it's indeed very advisable to keep the furry critter's stress levels down, because if you don't he might just start hurting himself, or swear at and criticize every single one of Charmander's flamethrower attacks, which will end up stressing the fuck out of that little bugger too, which is a problem because Charmander doesn't want to drink, gamble or pray to relieve his stress, and in fact, he will only calm down with a good bout of flagellating or something. Let's just hope they'll actually make it to the end of the dungeon, and that they don't suffer heart attacks from too much stress and anxiety, like Metapod and Jigglypuff before them. Let's also hope we don't incur Rabies or the Red Plague either, because the Swinub that hide in these warrens don't have too great a hygiene at the best of days. And all the while, with every mis step, every trap triggered, every body slam from an enemy Snorlax, Ash just keeps on narrating in doom-laden tones, filled with dread and disdain, slowly sapping the will to fight from the creatures that duke it out amongst themselves, until the very end, when they inevitably all end up brutally murdered and devoured or in gibbering madness, weeping into the filthy, dark corners of whatever dungeon they've foolishly ventured into...
Ahem... I got off track a little bit there...
So. Great game, but a lot of patience is a must. Its gameplay mechanics requires a high degree of attention and forethought, frequently requiring you to make sacrifices and make the best out of absolute clusterfuck situations, where everything just keeps going wrong, again and again.
I can't tell how much fun it really is, and also how frustrating it can be.
I held off on sharing anything about it untill now because it's not something I can easily show gameplay of, as most viewers would find it boring and unrewarding and because most clips I have would only show parts of long battles, where I'm constantly just waiting, deliberating what action next to take.
It's a very big game and there's so much to do that it's quite improbable to finish up all that it offers. But having had a look through the trophy list, I ended up having a few 'definite' picks, amenable to just one hugely long play-through, wherein I just explore all that the game has to offer (and so that I don't have to worry about finishing the game on some insane difficulty level or within arbitrary time frame or something). And I at the very least wanted to beat all the bosses, the story, including the various dlc's, and obtain a few select trophies, of which one of the trophies from the Color of Madness dlc stood out to me because of the level of commitment that it would demand from the player to obtain it.
And here's the reason for this post because: today I finally did it! I got it!
Ashes to Ashes
in the
ENDLESS HARVEST!
The Endless Harvest is sort of the endgame mission for veteran players, for special rewards, pitting your characters against endless waves of monsters and bosses, with a few breathing points every so often. It's got special parameters, a changing landscape and it's quite possible for the party to meet pretty much every single monster that the game has to offer, even though most of them are actually unique to the various dungeons the game has on offer.
I've been attempting it for the last week, on and off, pretty much just running away every time before I met a boss past the Miller. Those runs were more just of a preparation for this one; me feeling out the mechanics of the thing so that I could make a decent effort at it in the future.
And then I began playing that mission again yesterday evening, and it just kept going well enough that I, in the end, just decided to keep going.
And here is the finale of that long slog.
I bailed as soon as I could, because this mission had been going on for 7 or 8 hours already at this point. I've seen videos of people going in the thousand kills on this thing, which is not something I wanted to get even close to.
I just wanted enough shards to make some buildings, buy some stuff, and to have at least 300 kills; I'm certainly not here for the glory.
It was also my first encounter with The Sleeper, who could've given me a much harder time than he did, and who I got immensely lucky against.
So yeah, I'm very satisfied to have this trophy done. At the time of playing it's got a 0,1 percent unlock rate, so I confess I'm feeling pretty good about that.
I guess up next is plowing through the Crimson Court dlc and do some odds and ends along the way.
or maybe I'll just throw caution to the wind and continue
right into the
DARKEST DUNGEON!
... where I'm sure my characters won't all go insane this time...
or end up dying to hold off the teeming hordes as the rest of their party make their escape...
Farewell sweet, innocent Bosier... you were diseased, stressed out and had a nasty tendency to miss when you couldn't afford to, but nonetheless; you are missed.
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Bonus my first fight against the Shrieker, who I also had to face in the Endless Harvest dungeon there at the end. he was much harder back then, in week 55, though he still isn't a pushover here in week 126. You don't get any special quirks for kicking his ass in Endless Harvest though, which is a real bummer; I could've done with more dodge or accuracy for some characters.
Aah, there's Bosier again. Yeah that's something I forgot to mention. It's quite common for players to actually get invested in characters that are really supposed to be expendable; they're just arrow fodder on the road to conquering the darkest dungeon. There's no downsides or anything when hiring new recruits as they're always in great supply, but you just can't help getting attached to these characters as they gain quirks and level up, or when you witness them toughing it out on Death's Door time and again. It's quite a strange experience.
Abdul is still alive though, beast of a mad Arab that he is.
I gave him his name, but his class is obviously also inspired by the writings of Lovecraft, specifically the fictional writer of the infamous Necronomicon; Abdul AlHazred. Lovely class to play with, very versatile.
Aaand... Boom! Reading goal 1 out of 5 done for 2019!
I've gone through some stuff over the first months of the year, and one of the consequences of that 'stuff' is that it has left me with loads of downtime, and though I haven't exactly been productive, and have had enormous difficulties in focusing on pretty much anything outside of gaming, I did find that I had enough concentration to finish off a short story or two a day, and because of me finally playing Darkest Dungeon recently, I found that I had a hankering for some good old Lovecraftian madness.
And so, a book I thought wouldn't be finished for a while yet has already met with a swift demise.
I say demise because the short stories in Eldritch Tales weren't all that great and I frequently found myself irritated, baffled or just plain bored by some of them. This'll be a short little write-up as there's not much to really talk about. As anyone knows who has had some experience with plowing through short story collections, after a while everything will start to blur together.
So then, where the best of Lovecraft's stories had already been included in Gollancz' earlier Necronomicon (Big Black Book edition) Eldritch Tales is mostly made up out of the dredges of his work. That is not to say that it's all rubbish, merely that nothing much will stick because, compared to the power and imagination at play in the previous volume, most of the stories in here come across as run of the mill and don't leave much of an impression at the book's close.
There's a few exceptions to this, most notably the works that came about by a collaboration of Lovecraft and another author. I find that Lovecraft's worst literary qualities are somewhat mitigated, or at the very least reined in, in his collaborations. Of these it is the mysterious marine terror of The Horror at Martin's Beach and the Necromantic wizardy of Two Black Bottles I am most fond of.
The lengthy The Last Test is also worth a mention.
Of the Tales written solely by Lovecraft, the drafts and unfinished tales, it's probably The History of the Necronomicon, Memory and The Challenge from Beyond I found most memorable. History is of course a short, but unfinished exploration, of the dreaded book made so famous by the Evil Dead series, and which indeed was thought up by Lovecraft. I found the fate of its author, the mad Arab, Abdul Al'Hazred fascinating to read about, but I do really wish that Lovecraft had taken more time to expand the little he actually set down. As the first 'story' in the collection it does serve as a good appetizer, making one eager to explore the rest of the tales to come. The Challenge From Beyond was almost a perfect return to form for Lovecraft in its sheer compulsive readability, adding some very interesting concepts (though operating from a view on science that is now quite obviously outdated) to his usual formula, but it did suffer from a trite beginning which precluded immediate investment. Past that initial hurdle though, the story became intriguing enough to stand out from most of the other tales in this collection. Memory was short but good, in a very different way than is usual for Lovecraft.
Then there's a whole bunch of tales that weren't so great and likely didn't see much acclaim either during or after Lovecraft's lifetime. Of these I thought Ibid was notable, not because it was any good, or even entertaining, but rather because it seemed to me as if it was Lovecraft's dubious attempt at a humourous tale. Unfortunately it's a kind of humour that is only appealing to a certain breed of historians, and even among those the audience is probably quite niche. Also, if you don't have any knowledge of the subject matter at all, you might be forgiven to think that Lovecraft's chronicle of the journey of a roman skull has its basis in truth.
Mention must go to the Fungi From Yuggoth poem cycle as it is interesting for its imagery, especially as I could finally see the origins of a few of the more obvious inspirations for the more obscure references depicted in Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows' brilliant Providence graphic novel. Its rhyme, it must be said, is quite abhorrent though. But that is obviously just my opinion.
And I shouldn't really have to add that all of this is my opinion, but I do it nonetheless, because apart from the short stories, Eldritch Tales also includes Lovecraft's (by now quite dated) essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature, in which the massively opinionated author will do his level best to spoil the endings to any and all of the gothics and the horror stories of the 19th and early 20th century that you might ever have thought about reading.
I'm not kidding here: he spoiled The Turn of the Screw for me, the book that was literally the next on my reading pile. The Haunting of Hill House season 2 will take its cues from the Henry James' story so I thought I'd get ahead of the curve and brush up on my want-to-read-horror novels at the same time.
That'll be a relatively short read and I'll finish it off this month, but first I'm going to have to finish watching an entire legion hurl themselves into an abyss of violence and blood from where they will never be able to return from, in Angron: Slave of Nuceira from the Warhammer 40k universe.
