I've been catching up on my reading lately, thanks to a sudden drafting of GW novels added to Audible and GW themselves deigning to finally sell me some of the stuff that I've been asking for in the last year, so let's do a couple of super-fast book reviews.
Spoiler: The Primarchs: Lion El'Johnson
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Dull, irrelevant, and the DA's come off unfavourably as Marty Stu's.
The premise is that the Blood Angels conquer-... sorry, "brought to Compliance" a world that was inhabited by psychic Body Snatchers who possessed human hosts and ate their souls, leaving them dull-witted, passionless and servitor-like. The BA's thought that they had exterminated the xenos, but it turns out that they missed some so the DA's are sent to quell a minor rebellion and refortify the planet while they figure all of this out - by which point, Xenos infiltrators have made it aboard the DA fleet and started another rebellion while the Astartes are stuck down below.
And that's about it. The Lion doesn't even turn up until about halfway through the book, at which point he commends his XO on having done a really good job before telling him to double all the guards and build twice as many fortresses. He then has an extended monologue at the planet telling it that he's going to kill it and tame it for the Emperor... and then he does. There are no long-term ramifications, no other legions or Primarchs are involved, it's just a very long tale about Dark Angels slowly pacifying a planet because they're so great and really REALLY good at doing their job, you guys....
There's some interesting lore in there about how the Dark Angels are perceived by the Emperor. While the Space Wolves are the Emperor's executioners, and the World Eaters are the Emperor's butchers, the Dark Angels are the guys you send to just up and genocide a culture. Their 'thing' is that they are just the best at scouring all life from a world with the minimum amount of effort or fuss, and that is how they earned most of their accolades, and what's more, the Lion is completely okay with this - that is terrifying and also great at the same time.
But the story is a slog; 300 pages of telling us how great the Dark Angels are and how flawless the Lion is, and then some random never-seen before, never-see-again xenos pops up and gets blown up a lot. Nobody looks good because the whole plot is set in motion by the DA's failing basic quarantine procedures and then they resolve it without any particular angst or reflection on why they went wrong or how they could have done better OOOH FORESHADOWING!
Even the Lion is at his most bland. Without Guilliman to snipe at and threaten, or Leman Russ to actively prove himself morally superior, or Night Haunter to do the "dark mirror" thing against, he's very one-dimensional. I don't often come across a literary character who seems to be 'phoning in their appearance, but... yep. Pretty much.
Originally Posted by Wraith
I've been catching up on my reading lately, thanks to a sudden drafting of GW novels added to Audible and GW themselves deigning to finally sell me some of the stuff that I've been asking for in the last year, so let's do a couple of super-fast book reviews.
Re: Warhammer 40k Fluff Discussion XVII: Call Necrosius, The Old Thread Is Dead!
Change a few names and it sounds like a Deathwatch story.
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