Review: Luthor Huss

And yet another excursion into the Warhammer Heroes range, and would you know it; for once I ventured into the ranks of the goodies.

In Middenheim, one of the great cities of the Empire, Witch Hunter Lukas Eichmann has been investigating the machinations of a new cult. Another day, another misbegotten heretic creed, and it seems as if there's no end and no point to the stamping out of heresy and corruption. Over the years Eichmann has grown weary of his duty, and the faith that once gave him unshakable purpose has diminished with the never-ending tide of human weakness. Now, the desperate confessions of dying cultists are pointing him away from Middenheim onto a new trail of darkness.

In the heart of the Empire, in the borderlands where humanity's vies for dominion with beasts, at the edge of the massive Drakwald forest, a young girl's hopes and dreams for a normal life are brutally crushed with the coming of a plague of undeath. With no hope of survival, with everyone dying around her, Mila Eichen takes up sword to rage against the coming darkness. But as death closes in inescapable with ravening teeth, the undead horde is smashed aside by faith and steel.

She is saved by the wandering priest Luthor Huss, a dour, uncompromising man of faith unlike any she's ever known, and with her life in ruins she follows him as he barrels from battle to battle, to crush the enemies of mankind wherever they are found. Soon they find themselves inexorably drawn towards lands where humanity holds no sway.

Because in the depths of the Drakwald something monstrous is stirring. In answer to an unseen design the beastmen have begun to march. And as everywhere the dead rise to kill the living, and as in the cities, the corrupted and the mutated are compelled to cast off their disguise, to respond to a secret summons, it slowly becomes certain that Chaos is on the move, and that it has made plans for the men who rally against them.

     I really enjoyed Luthor Huss. It's a novel that pretty much epitomizes what the Black Library puts out, and it is probably one of, if not the best novel in the Warhammer Heroes range. Chris Wraight is a solid writer and though nothing he puts out here is truly extraordinary, the story, writing and in particular the characters are put together well and delivered with skill. Huss himself is an interesting character and a rather unique one at that. He is in fact a saint, one of those characters who genuinely are able to channel the divine might of their god, whether that is the Emperor in 40k or Sigmar in the Old World doesn't really matter, wat matters is that it's a very rare thing to see and read about, and it gives the story a much different flavour than what is usual for these books. But even though he is a holy man, he can be one harsh bastard at times. He has a complete contempt for human weakness and at times doesn't seem to understand it, and he has a divinely inspired oratorical gift which allows him to raise up from the gutter the downtrodden people of the empire and to turn them into raging zealots as he so chooses. It's a strange and frequently disturbing thing to behold and Wraight depicts it well enough.

     And as for any problems the book might have, apart from some tiny lore-errors that bothered me personally (like why the hell is Morrslieb yellow? or what the hell is that whole Well of Souls business at the end?...), those're pretty much a matter of personal taste depending on the reader in question. Some people seem to think it's too slow, others that the book focuses on battles too much, yak yak yak blablabla.
     To any one reading these books I offer this bit of advice: your expectations are too high. These are corporate-mandated novels: the page count is limited, and there are certain things that they can not deviate from. The story and the lore can't expand too much, and there's almost no leeway for experimentation.
     Now, true enough, in the recent year specifically, the Black Library has gone out of its way to actually encourage creativity in its novels, but you can bet your ass this certainly wasn't always the case, and a lot of these older books, written during the post-2006 years of Black Library will read the same way.

     These days the individual novel is out of print but can be found in the Heroes of The Empire Omnibus from the Warhammer Chronicles range, which also collects the Kurt Helleborg and Ludwig Schwarzhelm duology plus their own short stories, all of which are also very good, though in grim-darkness they are miles beyond the rest of the Old World fiction, which can be a little jarring.

Also included is Luthor Huss' own short story the March of Doom which is awesome, and which I had totally forgotten reading already until I remembered that I also own this little booklet, where I had already read it before.

It's a very short little tale which follows Huss as he and an army of zealots march to relieve a town from a siege by Beastmen. It's a bit like the main novel except here there's almost no real plot to speak of, and instead the story puts a little more emphasis on how messed-up the lives of the people who follow Huss are. Messed-up, a shadow of what they once were, and yet also lifted up into a level of grace reserved for saints and madmen. It is fascinating to see how Huss thinks of them and it shows why that he pretty much is a perfect representative of Sigmar: Fighting for humanity, cherishing so much of them, but demanding that they fight with all they have.

 This little story is a must read for pretty much anyone. It is just fucking great.

Try not to fear.

Pain is fleeting.

Then his smile truly broke out.

Salvation, I tell you, is eternal.

Review: Wulfrik

So, a week ago I finished the first book in CL Werner's Warriors of the Chaos Wastes Omnibus, a trilogy of standalone novels set in the Old Warhammer World. The individual novels aren't really connected directly, so it's not an actual trilogy, but they do share the common theme of focusing on a few characters, well-known or not, from the Old World's Chaos faction. Now, Chaos, or the Ruinous powers, tends to be flat-out, over-the-top, and always horrifically evil, so these novels are a safe bet for when you're just out to have some fun.

You see, I just finished Gravity's Rainbow and I just wanted something easy, something quick and engaging, something as far away from the so-called 'literature' that everyone seems to want to put on a pedestal, no matter what its many, many flaws.

Yeah, I didn't like Gravity's Rainbow. I understand it is important, and I can distinguish some of the really good stuff in it, but it just did too much awful, awful shit for me to ever like it or even recommend it. Maybe I've got blinds on or something, unable to see genuinely awesome writing and structuring when I see it, or maybe it's just that I don't like page-long descriptions of oh-so-loving acts of paedophilia. But anyway, I'm very much of track, Gravity's Rainbow's for another time to talk about, or not at all, I haven't decided yet.

Wulfrik ended up being a nice, quick read, not without its flaws but enjoyable and interesting enough. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of Wulfrik yet, so I had to crack the spine on my Warriors of the Chaos Wastes omnibus to read it.

Cursed by the Gods for his arrogant boasting, Wulfrik the Wanderer has been set on a never-ending quest to seek out the world's strongest warriors. to vanquish them in mortal combat, and to offer up their skulls to the Dark Gods he so foolishly challenged.

A mighty warrior even before his curse, Wulfrik has been gifted with a magical longboat capable of travelling through the dark Daemonrealm that links all places, better to seek out his new offerings, and a gift of speech, allowing him understanding of all of the Old World's tongues, and a powerful magic, leaving anyone challenged by the mighty warrior unable to deny him a chance for combat.

Renowned as he is, hated and feared in equal measure, the wild warriors of Norsca flock to his command, eager for fame and riches, for an awesome death worthy of the attention of the Gods.

But before his hubris brought his doom down upon him, before the gifts, before the curse, Wulfrik was just a man, a man with hopes and dreams, and with a chance for love.

Always desperately seeking for a way to appease the Dark Gods, to cheat them if he can, in order to return to the life he'd envisioned for himself, Wulfrik listens to a sorceror's promises of an escape from his plight, and sets out on an epic quest to undo the Gods' awful curse.

     Wulfrik was originally part of the Warhammer Heroes range, a series of novels detailing the origins for some of the Old World's most famous hero characters, and as such the novel kind of has a foregone conclusion. Maybe this is the reason why the prologue is one of those that I hate seeing in any story; you know the one, where we're actually being spoiled to events much, much later than where the novel actually begins. Maybe it's something that Werner felt he could get away with "Everyone knows how this is going to go, so why not show them our protagonist in his direst straits at about 80 percent into the novel." I don't know, I don't like the technique, its meant to wow the reader with excitement and spectacle so the author/ director can dial it back and take his time setting up his story in earlier chapters without having to worry much about boring the piss out of any regular viewer/ reader.

     It's not as if there's no action at the start even, where we find Wulfrik and his crew of the moment hunting Yhetees in some frozen place somewhere. And this honestly would have been a more than decent opener.

     Either way, foregone conclusion or not, Werner crams enough elements into the story to make it pretty much constantly engaging. Most notably there are Fire/ Chaos Dwarfs, a faction that has been sorely underused in the setting, and who were awesome to read about, endowed with a ruthless ingenuity and a culture built off of a mesh of steampunk and daemonism.

     As our central characters pretty much all hail from the Chaos branch there's constant scheming going around with various characters working against Wulfrik for their own ends, all of which revolve pretty much around Hjordis, Wulfrik's love interest and princess of a sizable Norscan settlement.

     The book moves fast and is fairly engaging throughout, and if there's one complaint I could make then it's that the ending ended up feeling a slight bit abrupt, where a few progression leaps seem to happen where events are skipped over that we should've maybe seen happen.

     This might have been an attempt of Werner's to keep his protagonist likable, keeping the truly unconscionable evil shit off-page, showing the aftermath of certain events rather than showing us the point where Wulfrik goes irredeemably too far.

     At the same time though, I wish we could've been given 'that scene', or at least that there had been a decent foreshadowing leading up to Wulfrik's decision, but as it was it felt a bit as if there was a part missing. It doesn't detract from the ending, and it might even add some proper alienation to Wulfrik's character, as we don't get to understand Wulfrik's reasoning, but we only get to see the aftermath of the violence, and it is jarring enough to finally put him beyond the reach of the reader's immediate comprehension and right into the status of a legendary character worthy of the forces of Chaos.

Some few Thoughts

For myself, because at this rate I'll never write anything down anymore: In 10 sentences write down your thoughts about the final book in the Aspect Emperor Quartet.

     1. Well, here I am, at the end of the long slog, and though I pretty much got exactly the ending (to the Aspect Emperor cycle, at least) that I wanted, there's more than enough reasons to be both profoundly disappointed and baffled by exactly how we got here.
     2. I came into the final two novels of the Aspect Emperor books without foreknowledge, but with pretty high expectations, a lot of them actually very concrete, having built my 'Road of Faith' blog-posts around my ideas on how these final two novels were going to go.
     3. But even though I guessed the heart of the matter correctly, and knowing that I actually will still (probably) end up getting what I want in the books yet to come (if they ever do), I finished The Unholy Consult very troubled.
     4. There are several reasons for this; the incredibly poor editing, the gratuitous level of sexual violence (which I, this time, find myself quite unable to accept the in-book reasons for), the repellent (though also immensely compelling) chapters of various characters' various descents into madness, the sudden appearance of certain elements at the novel's eleventh hour that completely derail plot developments into avenues heretofore impossible to foresee, and other elements I can not talk about without going into major spoilers.
     5. A very large part of my distress (and it truly is that) derives from having gone into the final novel certain in the knowledge that I knew where this was going to end up (the bubble of my assumption that author and the novel's prime subject's goals had been in alignment all along was, at the novel's close, quite ruthlessly held to a candle's brilliant flame and popped without compunction) and this is something that I'm aware of, and don't hold against it, seeing the fault as mine, but there still are niggles here and there that lead me to declare that this novel would have been served a lot better with maybe a year or two extra in the editing phase, (maybe even for the quartet as a whole).
     6. The relationship between Overlook Press and Bakker lies at the root of this, deadlines passed or no, and it is a shame that art and vision can be pressed in such a way that the cracks become plain for all to see, and it is my sincere hope that Bakker will eventually release a preferred author's text for the last few novels in the Aspect Emperor Quartet.
     7. But even with a strenuous bout of editing to streamline the vague mess that calls itself the Unholy Consult, strange choices have been made; storylines and characters are truncated and altered, respectively, to a very confusing and unsatisfying extent, new plot elements are introduced way too late in the game without enough foreshadowing to build them up, and some of the book's many revelations and heel-turns just don't seem to make much sense.
     8. For me it is plain that there needed to be more build-up for many of these elements.
     9. That being said, The Unholy consult's final stages are so bold, and the final page and paragraph might as well just go to a hospital emergency room right now because no way is that normal, the size of those balls, and I applaud it all the way.
     10. Though the Aspect Emperor Quartet is almost fatally flawed, and mars much of the perfection that was the Prince of Nothing trilogy, it does eventually work pretty well, provided that one can accept that this is a story that is unlike any other and that it plays completely by its own rules, and that it simply does not give one shit about your expectations or your satisfaction.

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More concrete thoughts, though random, these pretty much are  definite spoilers.

- Kelmomas does the deed. Brilliant, and a truly head-slapping moment of 'why didn't I see this coming?' and built up satisfyingly, but then also how is it even remotely possible that Kelmomas is here, in this place? You could explain it, yes, but still it just doesn't seem to be possible.

- Ajokli. Holy fuck.
In a way this could have been awesome, but the fact this is introduced here, a dozen or so pages from the end, makes this feel like a massive deus ex machina. This might precisely be the point, but there should have been precedent for this, and the W-L-Warrior concept does not compare to what this is. What happens here is unprecedented, and for some reason it happens to another major character after this as well? The rules surrounding this are nonexistent and it feels like a massive cop-out, and feels very unsatisfying. There are loose threads everywhere here regarding this thing and it is this, more than anything else in the novel, that made it feel unsatisfying.

- The Encyclopedia's Notes on the Decapitants are extremely chilling, and it feels as if this is one of the things that should have been in the novel proper in order to build up the aforementioned point.

- The whole 'Resumption' chapter doesn't seem to make sense. Proof prime of much needed editing.

- The reveal of the Unholy Consult. Brilliant. Makes sense and is completely believable. And just as I knew it would had to: it actualizes the author's goal in an identity within the story. My mistake was that I assumed that this identity would be Kellhus, but in this way it probably works out better.

- The meeting of the three who are able to love made me quite teary-eyed. Hands down best part of the Aspect Emperor cycle.

- Plotlines get radically truncated:
Sorweel's journey is probably the most indicative of this. Though he is pretty consistent in the Judging Eye and the White-Luck warrior, he is so inundated beneath change and upheaval in the subsequent books that it can be safely stated that his character ceases to be after the beginning of the Great Ordeal. Of course, characters can change. But Sorweel is just reshaped according to the needs of the plot. In ishterebinth he is bonded to a Nonman soul which makes him completely different, and in the Unholy Consult he ceases to be himself and is ridden by the White-Luck until his death. There was almost nothing recognizable from his point of view, he became a supremely alien character in the last two books of the quartet.
     I recognize that this is the danger of how this world works, but it is heavily inimical to conventional storytelling and character-building.

I might just add some thoughts when I feel like it, the series is too big in my head and my thoughts too disordered to properly write much down these days.

Review: The Wicked and the Damned

     The Wicked and the Damned is the second short story collection under the new Warhammer Horror imprint. Unlike Maledictions this one takes place entirely in the 40k universe and showcases three very different types of horror tales. If you are up for the dispassionate ramblings of a psychopath, an actual honest-to-the-God-Emperor haunting, and some good old fashioned Warhammer splatterpunk, then this is definitely one to pick up.
     Like with the Maledictions anthology, people's favourites seem to vary and most are still unconvinced of the imprint's merit. But for my part; any doubts I had about whether or not The Black Library could actually deliver horror that could stand out from the rest of the Warhammer fiction are now laid to rest. I had a lot of fun with this one, and it's been a while since I have been so taken with any amount of horror prose.

On the cold and misty cemetery world of Silence three strangers meet.

Led here by the guidance of the half-dead mortuary servitors they have been corralled together, and for some reason they are now not allowed to leave. Mystified with how they got to this remote place, normally only suitable for the burial of the God-Emperor's servants, they begin to question each other, trying to discern a common thread.

And as the servitors chatter and look on in the distance, they each tell their story. 

You can pretty much guess what is going on here, but that shouldn't really be a deal-breaker. The framing story of Silence is just a little extra on top of three well-crafted novella-length short stories.
But because of how the framing device is laid out, any reader will also likely be able to guess where these stories end up and as such, they will individually need to be able to deliver some serious tension, mood and dread if they're going to keep the reader engaged. It was a bit of a gamble, but wouldn't you know it: it worked out quite well in the end.

    The first one up, The Beast in the Trenches, is an absolutely riveting read.
Through the eyes of a commissar we are regaled to the horror of trench warfare. Under a sky filled with shrapnel and fire, while drowning in boiling mud and choking on cloying smoke, he begins to become aware of an insidious enemy hiding among the troops. With calculation and violence he starts to root out the threat, but as he slowly becomes aware of a vast conspiracy, he begins to realize that he'll have to take more drastic measures if the Imperial Guard are to win this conflict.
   This one is a tense affair, one moment seamlessly leading into the next, compelling any reader to keep turning the page. Josh Reynolds, who is also responsible for the overarching Silence narrative, delivers an interesting character piece of a complete sociopath in the middle of war.

    The Woman in the Walls is my favourite Warhammer horror experience, bar none, and as that horror hasn't got a capital, this means that even outside of the imprint it's been my best horror experience from Warhammer as a whole. And I've read a lot of those books let me tell you.
     The second story is a chilling little tale of a vengeful haunting. A beating gone wrong delivers a woman to the top echelon of power, but her murdered rival was well liked and now someone seems warp-bent on vengeance, legal or otherwise. But as long as she keeps her head cool and her henchmen in line, the investigation into the murder will most likely blow over. But as her allies start dying in brutally violent ways, and as her dreams begin to spiral into an almost continuous nightmare, she knows that something is already well on its way to get her.
     Phil Kelly delivers a phenomenal horror story.
Part mystery, part slow-burn gothic horror story that turns into full-on violent nightmare-vendetta, this is the cream of Warhammer Horror Fiction. This is how it should be written. This is what Warhammer can offer.
   Tension building throughout, a tapestry of military characters all at odds with each other, politicking and scheming, with strange new beasts and engaging lore that might just have expanded the rules of the universe a little, and an ending in perfect serendipitous convergence where all the threads get solved, preferably bloodily. Just perfect.

The third story, The Faith and the Flesh, is a mad sensory overload of imagination, peppered with brief bursts of gore. While it isn't my favourite tale here, David Annandale nonetheless delivered a story that goes above and beyond in its depiction of how absolutely insane Warhammer can get. In the Warhammer universe there are forces that can come to be understood as unending description in themselves. This is fine in theory, and honestly quite a neat concept too, but in practice there always comes a point where an excessive level of description can cross the line from horrific straight into cartoonish, and this story crosses that line at several points. Despite of this, the steady escalation of the insanity on display makes it all very readable.
    To go with the rampant levels of body horror, we have the Wicked and the Damned's most introspective and annoyingly apologetic character.
    On what is likely to be his last tour of duty around a system, a missionary priest stops at a Ship-Wrecker installation to find guidance and support from his lover. No longer willing to meet his obligations to a religion that has grown empty, he has come here desperate for a way out, to ask her for a miracle. Leaving himself open to the guiding will of the God-Emperor he prays for help, for a sign that faith is what this bleak and uncaring universe warrants, and that the Emperor would show Himself to dispel his creeping doubts.
    And then one of the Ship-Wreckers approaches the station with a derelict vessel in tow, and a mysterious signal coming from deep within.

Given that all three stories are relayed to us by unreliable narrators, there are obvious fabrications, and it can be quite fun to spot where exactly the truth ends, and the lies begin. But don't hold it against them though; because sometimes the truth is just too hard to face.

-----

    I've seen a lot of complaints about the ending either being predictable or abrupt, but it should be obvious that the Silence chapters, about 2 or 3 pages in between the bigger stories, are merely meant to serve as the narrative framing device to tell 3 individual tales. They're not meant to be hiding some grand twist; they're here for framing, and to serve as mood makers.
    Any reader will likely quite quickly figure out, after the first Silence chapter even, what exactly the deal is with these characters and why they might be here. The moody environment of Silence, its nature, the audience that looks on as the characters tell their tales, they all speak for themselves.
   
But outside of that I did think this was interesting enough to merit some thought as I found there is a strangeness here. You see, what is interesting in these Silence chapters is how the characters whose stories we have learned appear to still have an influence on the world around them, and after their respective narratives had drawn to a close, this plainly should not have been possible. It is this that I had the most questions about. There's a fascinating enigma here, but to be given an answer to it would dispel the mystery, of course. I wonder if this might become something interesting; some sort of new folklorish element to the Warhammer universe. I'm not sure why this grabbed me so. But I really, really liked it.

Obviously, I hugely enjoyed this collection. I'm already looking forward to the Warhammer Horror yet to come. Drachenfels and Genevieve Undead will get a re-read and a respective review after I've done the Grendel Reading-goal, else I might just keep stalling it, and that just won't do anymore.

And so, though it is for now gone from us, rest assured; Warhammer Horror will return!

Annoyed Review: The Tower of Living and Dying, Anna Smith Spark

I'm not sure if I have read a book before that I enjoyed less than this one. certainly not within the last few years. This is in large part down to the style... It quite simply might just not be for me.

I suspect that a large part of my ire and irritation with it comes from me not being a native English speaker. I can read it very fluently and I speak it just as well (sort of). But when a novel goes against the grain like this one does, when you have a style that wavers between poetry and stream of consciousness writing it can be incredibly jarring, and so it better make god damn sure it does it right.

And for the most part it just simply does not. The poetic style that Anna-Smith Spark is so lauded, so known for, isn't quite so present in this novel. There are beautiful flashes of it throughout but on the whole it seems to me that what people are so very insistent to call 'her poetic style'  are instead 'the limitations in her writing style trying to masquerade as a conscious choice to make it more poetic'. Taken on its own, that's pretty great: take your weaknesses and turn them to your advantage, make something new, something to make you stand out among the barrage of post GoT grimdark fantasy writers.
But it is quite frankly sorely lacking in its execution.

I've always been of the school that you should write as you wish. There is no single homogeneous way of writing. Experiments should be encouraged, but the damn fact of the matter here is that this novel just comes off as rough, as a draft that needed more work, more time. Because, again, there's really good parts here, but they are few and far in between. And in between there's a lot of irritation: self-contradictory information (to the extent that things contradict each other within paragraphs), logical fallacies, massive inconsistencies within points of view, grammatical errors that can not be accounted for by choice of style, switches in point of view within a single line (multiple sentences within a single line; one of those is in first person, the second in third), too vague almost minimalist-type description and yet, at the same time, description that is too tainted by hyperbole; poetry driven to extremes, to excess, without bounds, without good sense, to the extent that you get to have colours rather than pictures... it's vague-speak is what I'm getting at, but this might again be part of that non-native-English-speaker background so, you know; fine, this one's one me.

Nonetheless, past the novel's halfway point I found myself  hurrying on to get it over with rather than give it the benefit of the doubt anymore. At a certain point, you've lost my good will, my attention and my patience.

Regardless of anything you could say to explain or explore Anna Smith Spark's style, this book needed some serious editing.

God damn how annoying.
How about I say something good, instead?

Okay then: the psychological aspects are very good. They feel real.
The characters make a very human kind of sense: Driven by emotion, tortured and inconstant, always ready to be altered by the fears, the paranoia and the joys of the moment. They aren't remarkably intelligent or have anything to make them stand out (I'm talking psychologically here) from the common herd of humanity, they feel part of them. And yet Spark wants to marry the myth of larger than life characters; A practical God of Death and Goddess of Life, to a very grounded human narrative and for the most part, despite the deeply counter intuitive goals of the former, they do come across as (mostly) believable. They come across as very fallibly human, their actions and responses are pretty much always inspired by selfish motives, driven by self-destructive urges, by lust or greed.

And in fact, I quite love a lot of what Spark puts out here. The context is pretty great, it's just the wrapping that sucks.

I do know she has dyslexia. This is fine, as I said, this can be worked with. And then you have the beautifully poetic prose. Fine, this is a choice, can be molded into something stunning.

But you need to be aware that these things together do not allow for a good editing process. Poetry is something that is incredibly hard to edit. It's called "poetic license" for a reason, after all.
And then sneak in the errors, and who is to say these are mistakes?
Fine. You accept it as it comes with the territory. So you gloss over the style, because it does indeed deliver occasional poetic beauty amidst the mud of errors and grammatically flawed sentences.

Because the contents are there, the promise of grimdark destruction and violence is there. And when it is delivered it is interesting to behold, though the originality of its delivery, its inventiveness, isn't as gripping or surprising as it once was, but there's probably better to come, right?
But past the halfway point. our principal protagonist, his actions, no matter how vile, have become rote. You see, there is another glaring problem here: Despite the darkness, despite the violent actions that are taken, none of these seem to come as a surprise. They are completely inside the remit of our main character, and as such they are expected.
The problem is that Marith doesn't have a baseline, no status quo to start from. He's not any one thing. Instead he is all the violence. Instead he is all the love and all the adoration for Thalia. He is the golden boy. He can't die. And he is so fucking boring and everything to do with him is boring. He isn't interesting, and yet he is the plot.
And then a lot of the actions he takes lead directly to failures, and the ways in which those failures are responded to do not make any human sense. I understand what is being said, what Spark was going for: The Iron Men and Saints type of faith and fervour, the heights that belief and love and faith can drive us to, the actions they can make us take, but the problem is that I don't believe it for a second. I've read, seen and felt better than this and this book can not convey what Spark wants me to see, feel and believe.

Thalia is just as problematic. Believable and yet, rote. I suspect this is because both she and Marith are supposed to be two sides of the same coin, light and dark, life and death, a dichotomy made manifest in two people in love. They are characters second, first they are the writer's intent. It's what makes them dull, what makes them predictable. Book 3 in the trilogy is called the House of Sacrifice... is it just me or can just about anyone guess from this paragraph where this all is leading to?

The Sorlost plot and characters are interesting, and the best parts of the book take place here, but it is an incomplete and unsatisfying narrative that absolutely needs a continuation. It's also absolutely nothing new, this has been done before, in wildly varying shades, if not shades exactly like this one. The only place it really differed from what I had seen before, was in the relationships between particular characters.
And that's pretty much the only place where the book shines; the relationship between the principal character of the Sorlost story and his lover was pretty riveting at certain points, to the extent that I felt that the book had scored a few points in a way that I hadn't seen done before. Except, of course, it doesn't really go anywhere, doesn't end up anywhere concrete or justified within the bounds of the novel.

Ugh, fucking hell. I'm done with this.

The Tower of Living and Dying is not well written. Its story is not well considered.
This book will not be remembered in the fantasy genre. And it shouldn't.

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I'll buy book three. I'll read it. Because that's just what I do. If I start reading something, I will finish it.

But if I don't like it then the blog post for it will consist of a single fucking line, ire condensed into a single sentence of dismissal, and to hell with any valid points anyone might make. To hell with seeing the good behind the bad. Some things just aren't worth it, there's way better things out there.

Solar War Book Haul

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.

Review: Angron, Slave of Nuceira

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.

Massive Spoilers below.

March Book Haul

Tum tum tum tuuuum.

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.