#ace's bookclub reviews

[theaceofskulls]

Farsight: Crisis of Faith

I have been sitting on my thoughts on this book for awhile because it's yet another reason numerical ratings would fail me if I ever seriously did reviews.

My feelings on it are complicated but surprising.

Let's back up:

So one day I said "God, I know Phil Kelly's books on Tau are controversial but I'm desperate to listen to any Xenos book and legitimately want to know more about the Tau. I'm going to go ahead and try this out"

That was months ago. I put this down for a bit midway through and finally picked it back up and listened to it straight through in one go.

And then I waffled about how I felt about it for almost a solid month.

First up: whatever you've heard about Phil Kelly, his actual prose is decent actually. When this book is good, it's actually really good, and Kelly cooked with the Tau propaganda footage scene where he literally just describes an average Imperium factory without the intentional detached satire of the setting. It's legitimately one of the best chapters of a 40k book.

When this book is firing on all cylinders, it's easy to go "hey why don't people like this? You just have to excuse- oh right."

Because there's no getting around the fact that the Ethereals are moustache twirling, Saturday morning cartoon villains that are stupidly evil and somehow they're not even the most obviously evil character in this book because Por'Mal'caor exist (btw, thanks for the narrator for making that sound like Paul Malcor the entire book).

And I find that character fascinating and I hate it. A Tzeentch possessed Tau who is dealing with the fact that he's basically experience cosmic horror and is being slowly hollowed out because his species is more resistant but not immune to the warp is just so fun, and his inability to lie due to Tzeentch playing a funny prank on the caste that reveres the ability to lie is great.

But as the story goes on, it's really hard to justify everyone else holding onto the idiot ball around him so that he survives until the end.

And the idiot ball is the best way to describe a lot of the events of the book. The Tau as a whole don't come off as badly as I was led to believe but it's so weird to find some of the most evocative stuff right next to segments of plot where I feel like I'm watching a frustrating cartoon series that's aiming for two audiences at once and makes everyone look stupid because of it.

And the thing that's most frustrating is this: I don't hate the book. I actually kind of liked it, and I can't articulate how that works.

This book cements the Tau mind control issue I have with the faction's current identity where their leaders are 100% already cartoonishly evil rather than just heading down the same potential paths to ruination that all other civilizations went down, as are the water caste who are hilariously petty and cruel in this with almost no redeeming qualities.

Farsight comes off as blind to literally everyone openly plotting against him just as much as he comes off as charmingly naive in other segments (shout out to one of my favorite moments where he thinks he's inspired a slave revolt on the lower decks of the ship... by turning off the geller field that keeps the daemons out. Who knew the imperium kept all these weird alien workers below deck?).

Half of it also feels like it's making winking references to things I don't know about because I don't know enough of the faction in question, and it awkwardly slows down just enough to highlight these call forwards in a way that makes me feel like I'm being excluded, but not enough to yank me fully out of it.

A lot of the book is mindless action that stretches just a bit too long but it doesn't feel as brainless as Guy Haley's Space Marine fights, and there's not a lot of "bolter porn" for xenos so it's hard to complain about it.

Lastly, the narration, as that's a small element that pulled me out the first time and I had to just get through: Andrew Wincott does a great job for the most part alongside Helen McAlpine, but he reads the entire thing in a sinister tone. Despite the title and several characters, it feels at odds with the tone of the book and serves to continuously both make the moustache twirling worse, the main cast seem less heroic (which the idea is that they should be seeing themselves as heroes even if they aren't in the grand picture), and the action scenes stacked against them. Also, the space marines in this book are obnoxious for the voices that were chosen for them which makes the final confrontation something of a slog more than an enjoyable face off. That said, he does a good job with trying to differentiate voices and noticeably avoids accenting the tau too much outside of using regional dialects at points, which is better than most of the community.

And yet, the book is endearing enough to endure these faults in a way that some of the other books I've dropped hasn't been.

I both want to recommend it and want to continuously bemoan it. Watching a young Farsight who sometimes comes off as pathetic and other times as this mythic hero is fantastic, I just wish that to emphasize he's wearing rose tinted glasses and blinders, we didn't have him miss 50ft tall neon signs.

So it remains a tentative recommendation, especially due to its novelty, and I feel like people who like Tau want to kill me for that, regardless of how conflicted I feel on it.

And what probably will earn me even more lashes at my eventual public whipping is that within an hour of finishing the book, I decided to pick up book 2.

Basically: if you're curious about Tau and are willing to make peace with the fact that you'll rarely be able to talk about this book without people immediately jumping on how much they hated it, give it a read.

It's not quite the "it's good when you don't have someone telling you it sucks" but it's close to that, and I can't help but feel that the fact that it fell short by virtue of some creative decisions is what drives most people crazy about it.

[gwen-tolios]

Ace Bookclub Recap - Coffee Cake

I love to share ace book recs, but I was a little wary about talking about this one. But my bookclub talked about it for almost a solid two hours - rare in a group that likes to ramble - and I want to just...collect feelings about the rep I guess.

Book has been added to my Ace Rep Database.

Summary: Bran Kendrick never expected to fall in love. He’s asexual, after all. What chance does he have of finding someone who’ll see past that? So when Malachi Warren catches his eye, Bran tells himself his crush will pass. Malachi disagrees. He has been attracted to Bran for some time, something he is delighted to find Bran reciprocating. They begin to date and feel their way through an intimate relationship that meets both their needs. Suddenly Bran finds himself juggling a new boyfriend, a demanding job, and a college degree he’s not sure he wants, but he couldn’t be happier—until a series of seemingly random accidents befall Malachi. When they escalate, Bran realizes someone is trying to take away the best thing that ever happened to him, and he must scramble to keep Malachi safe while they search for the would-be killer.

Spoilers and smut talk below the cut because surprise! This book a 5/5 on the smut scale. Yeah, we should have read the reviews more closely.

At the end of chapter 5, there had been three graphic sex scenes and that pace continued. And while as a sex neutral ace I don't necessarily mind sex scenes, this many scenes staring two men I saw no chemistry between I couldn't handle it. I DNF'd the book.

Oddly enough, I was the only ace around the table who didn't bring themselves to finish it. Though many people were skimming/hate reading by the end.

We weren't thrilled with the ace rep. Bran does outright says he's ace, but then throws himself into a new relationship - including being the first one to initiate a sexual scene as a virgin - and has zero intrespection about it. For a guy confused and worried about how being ace will get in the way of a relationship in chapter one, it's no longer a concern by chapter three and never is again. It's especially obviously that his orientation was put on the backburner when he does go through a self-evaluation. Determining what his career would be was a plot point, not determining what he might or might not like in a relationship. What a strange thing for a romance.

We never saw him as acting like or embodying an ace mindset. 90% of the book wouldn't change if he had been allo.

That said, the sex scenes were weirdly ace? By which I mean Mal, especially early on, is contanstatly checking in and tells Bran it's okay if he has boundries. (Though they never really have that conversation, and Mal takes Bran initiative in a lot of cases to mean 'always yes'.) There's also never penetrative sex, and I found myself oddly charmed at a scene where Bran gets Mal off and when it's 'his turn' Bran just gets a massage that puts him to sleep. Bran is focused a lot of Mal's pleasure - which does feel very ace - but then he jumps into sex so often it...kinda ruins it.

A lot of us were really happy to see a sexual ace in a book! But the sheer number of times these two did it (multiple times in a hosptial bed too????) cheapened the idea of how rare it is and failed to treat that balance of sex and ace thoughts with any nauence.

Add to that a slew of characters who felt very scripted and a bunch of logical holes in the 'someone is trying to kill Mal plot' every ace at bookclub was just...dissapointed. We had such high hopes.

[fiction-heals]

Heyooooo. It is June 1st, so... time to review this list and see how well am I doing.

I finished 4 out of 24 hitherto, all of them in January. I am in the position to assume that my list lasted a month and that’s it lol

Likely DNFs, I tried and just. meh. Not the time or not interested anymore (*signs the ones I’ll give one more chance someday):

Sea of Tranquility,

O mapa de sal e estrelas* (too sad),

The travelling cat chronicles* (just not the time for the Japanese storytelling yet)

Making my way through (the alarmingly long ones, the first two on the list):

Heaven Official’s Blessing (26%)

Oathbringer (47%) 20-aug-2023

Juniper and Thorn (bookclub pick… 26%)

Cytonic (buddy read that’s kinda forgotten and it’s been a year since we started aa it shan’t be left like that no more)

El día que dejó de nevar en Alaska (28%)

Now, books I read that were not on the list!! But were definitely on my shelf or borrowed from a nice person in my life:

A prayer for the crown shy

The Push

Sixth of the Dusk

Ace: what asexuality reveals about desire, society and the meaning of sex

The Undressed Art: why we draw

Kim Jiyoung born 1982

Tudo é rio

Mo Dao Zu Shi book 1 (reread)

Mil Milhas

End of the year update c:

Just finished a buddy reading that was postponed for like half a year lol In Deeper Waters by F. T. Lukens, though the author is a babe, their book is sadly not. Such inconsistencies wow o.o anyways.

What I have started and maybe plan to finish next year is:

A Taste of Gold and Iron (35%) 5 jan

Cytonic

Oathbringer (still at 15%, hey 21%)

El día que dejó de nevar en Alaska (23%)

Sea of Tranquility (likely dnf)

What Moves the Dead (35%) 10 jan

Remarkably Bright Creatures 20 jan

Books I want to get back to soon:

Heaven Official’s Blessing (15%)

Knappt en Droppe Blod

Kings Rising

Dune Messiah 25 jan

Books I will get to in 2023 *snorts

Vita Nostra

O mapa de sal e estrelas (meh. 21% likely dnf)

The Atlas Paradox

Dark Rise (oh please. It’s time.)

What Big Teeth

A Thousand Splendid Suns

O Clube dos Jardineiros de Fumaça

As Canções da Terra Distante

Juniper and Thorn (21% and??)

O gato que amava livros

The traveling cat chronicles

The Sword of Kaigen

The Mirror Season

31-december-2022

4/24

[theaceofskulls]

I listened to (the rerecorded) Fall of Cadia and my thoughts on it are:

Yeah that was every Guard book ever all at once. Could've trimmed a bit down. Anytime Cawl and Trazyn were on screen (which took most of the book for them to reappear. Don't go into this book for them if you can't stand Guard books) it was standing heads and shoulders above the rest of the book.

It felt overstuffed but it's also one of the few event books that actually feels like it's actually the novelization of the actual events rather than a snapshot of the event (I'm skipping Siege of Vraks for this very reason after hearing several reviews of it).

Oh and the World Eater is solidly the worst part. Especially on the audio side of things where it just repeats and repeats and repeats with every one of his scenes until the book quite literally just starts screaming the word "BLOOD" at you.

The book works and I'm more hesitant than a lot of critics on this book on what I'd cut because most of it actually works out really well and it does come together.

I think my end thoughts are that I have just enough tolerance for Guard storylines to get to the funny robot man, but this book reminded me that my struggles with some other stuff in GW's library is because typical guard stories don't interest me even if I can enjoy some of the best ones on offer.

I do want to take a moment to state that the first half of this book, the early siege, is much slower paced and detailed, often chewing through worldbuilding and character work but I appreciate Rath not going through every individual event in detail. I found the latter section almost breakneck in speed by comparison and almost wished some sections were lengthened. This feels like this book either ballooned or was meant to be a two parter that's struggling to stay within its single volume, though it's less pronounced than in Godsbane.

Sadly this second half is where a lot of very interesting things arrive on the scene and we don't get a lot of time to spend with them in comparison to the first half's cast. So I struggle to say which half I enjoyed more (though the lack of a certain character in the second half definitely improved it).

In the end, my recommendation is very much if you're interested in the event that kicked off the new canon and can deal with a few arcs that are noticeably worse than others running alongside them, it's actually fairly good and a lot of the arcs land fairly well and have several stand out moments throughout them.

[theaceofskulls]

I finally finished Fulgrim and there's something to be said about how we focus more on the bad than the good or the simply alright based on how many posts I've made about it while I've been listening to it, but I think my true takeaway from the book is that it's a fascinating one because you can see how it could've been a good book if things were changed.

The final parts of it felt bad, but it actually made me like Ishvaan V and Ferrus Manus more than every summary I've heard of it as it no longer comes off as stupid as it seems. It takes the time to establish how Ferrus's rage works and how it subsides and makes him come off less as "the guy who gets mad at the drop of a hat and jumped the gun too hard", especially by pointing out why waiting too long would've been just as bad and why they couldn't just shoot down from orbit.

However, this book is about the fall of Fulgrim and that part is handled so badly. You can see the attempt to make it a slower corruption but in the end you also see how this book suffers from being so early in the series, wanting to get to the daemon stuff too soon.

And yet as I've mentioned so many times, individual character arcs are handled so well, and the contrast it puts between the Iron Hands who also idolized perfection and feared failure but were told that refusing to admit failure was worse than the failure itself really helps highlight their fall.

The book also struggles with the fact that it comes off as a sequel to several other books in the series, with a couple of character arcs having large portions of them located elsewhere in earlier books, making this feel more supplemental of a story.

This is honestly the book I most feared from reviews when I started this whole thing and is part of the reason I put off this series in the first place, as one of the central events of the start of it was apparently in a horrendous book, and having finished it, it's different than what I was told to expect.

It fumbles most of its payoffs, from the terrible warp orchestra that feels a little too much for this early in the Heresy, to the moment Fulgrim joins Horus, to the dropsite massacre being over in pages, to what actually happens in the moments when Fulgrim performs the infamous sword swing, but a good portion of the book is actually fairly good.

Fabius, Lucius (if you're like me and enjoy watching Starscream-like pathetic sad sacks, not so much if you're the type who already hates him because of these exact traits), and Eidolon all get great scenes that carry forward with future appearances, and Fulgrim himself actually has several good moments outside of the ones that he really needed to have.

I walked away from this book still wishing I could've liked it, but understanding why this one is so hated. It's not stalling the plot by getting distracted or full of terrible prose (though there are some moments) but it makes the exact wrong missteps that don't leave any opportunity to come back and fix them.

My final recommendation is the same one I thought I'd give it from my early impressions: this is a book that you'll read once if you're interested in the series and can appreciate it as a lesson on what can go wrong in a narrative. Dissecting this book is interesting because it helps you understand what you're looking for from this series as well as from this style of genre fiction in general because the highs and lows are so extreme it's easy to separate them out and the lows leave such gaps that it's easier to understand exactly what you wanted to fill them.

Anyway, this marks the last point of my sequential readings of this series and am now going to be jumping around to different books as they interest me.

In the end I think this is as good a point to talk about the series so far.

Horus Rising is great, classic, and works well on its own. Even with an ending that's setting up the next one, it basically could've ended there with a wink of "well you know what happens next". I stand by my statement that it's almost entirely for 40k fans instead of a newcomer book since half of it is written with dramatic irony thick in the prose.

False Gods is good, being a fantastic sequel with a misstep that plagues the early series where Horus's fall lacks enough characterizing motivation to endear him enough. However, the books are primarily concerned with other characters all of whom feel like a smooth continuation of the previous book's characterizations and it works well in that respect.

Galaxy in Flames has some great heights, especially in its pivotal scenes, but honestly it mostly blends together until you get to the event you're here for.

Flight of the Eisenstein continues the story but is honestly the point where I could tell that the writer switching was changing the tone of the books. It's still a good book but outside of the moment the message is delivered at the end of the book, and a few pivotal moments (the bomb in the hanger), most of it has slipped from my memory.

Finally Fulgrim I've given my thoughts on extensively, but definitely a weak ending to streak of 5 books before they begin to jump around to various perspectives.

[theaceofskulls]

Oh, I forgot to review The Infinite and the Divine by Robert Rath. Here let me rectify that

Stop whatever it is that you are doing and go read this. Or if you can, go listen to the audiobook. I don’t care if you don’t even do Warhammer, just go do it.

There, review complete, because you should all be reading it right now instead of this post.

[theaceofskulls]

This is going to be a weird one because I have to start by addressing the other War- in the room. That’s right, a Warhammer book talk that looks over and says “Hey, let’s talk about World of Warcraft”

Anyways, before I get to that, here’s the subject of this post, Dynasty of Monsters by David Annandale.

And here’s where I immediately begin talking about another book, Before the Storm by Christie Golden.

Both of these book involve the tense relationships between undead and their living counterparts and attempted reconciliations and potentially finding a new path forward as well as the forces that undermine those attempts at peace.

In Before the Storm, there’s a lot going on as it centers itself between two expansions of WoW, tracing how relationships between the two major factions are breaking down after their battles alongside each other to save the world.

This is almost the exact inverse of that, being released right before the new edition of Age of Sigmar where the setting shifted to here, Ghur the Realm of Beasts. Instead of major factions, it centers in on a smaller group, even though one of them has a named character (Lauka Vai, the Mother of Monsters) involved, further focusing on characters within the factions trying to either aid or break down the tenuous peace as they’ve joined together to repel an approach army of Beastmen.

David Annandale loves his vampire stories and as such the feel of this book is more centered on the monstrous lurking within a city built on pistons that adjusts itself on an ever shifting landscape that itself wants to eat and consume. As such a the political intrigue is slightly diminished in favor of the atmosphere of this book, evoking gothic horror alongside bestial horror, not just from the vampires.

Still, I wanted to make the comparison because the book at times feels like what I wished Before the Storm could’ve been. You can feel how fragile the peace is but it doesn’t come down to the ego of one named character (I’m so sorry Blizzard did all of that to you Sylvanas), there’s a lot of tension resting on each side, and it’s actually interesting to see how the two factions taking center stage are divided into different groups.

Sadly, while I do think it has moments of greatness, I feel like the novel doesn’t have enough breathing room and the plot moves quicker than it feels like it should at points towards a great conclusion but with a lot of events occurring rapidly. The book itself begins moving shockingly fast from Ghur’s landscape shifting and cutting off a caravan to it being set upon by beastmen far quicker than I feel like it should’ve been.

The book needed a little bit of the fat that feels like was trimmed for its political intrigue to fully flesh out, but it almost seemed worried about the audience getting bored and bouncing off.

There’s glimpses of a fantastic novel here that could’ve been given more time to unfold but what is there is solid and plays to its strengths. It’s hard to describe but this left me feeling slightly disappointed and yet I could easily recommend it as a book for someone looking to fill some time or get a look at the setting of the Realm of Beasts or the weird vampires that inhabit it.

[theaceofskulls]

Downtime at work means more quick reviews. So time to talk about Alpharius: Head of the Hydra by Mike Brooks.

I’m not going to go into the Horus Heresy here. The prequel for 40k choked bookshelves for awhile there whenever I went to the scifi section of bookstores. It’s over 50 books long, continues to jump between authors and apparently half of it is just anthology collections. If you want someone’s opinions on it, please go check out Arbitor Ian’s thoughts. (Side note, I recommend his channel and if you’re interested in Warhammer but are iffy on the prospect of content creators turning out to be like that, I can handily recommend his stuff)

Anyways, what you need to know is that once upon a time there was the Emperor of Mankind, world’s worst dad, who made 20 super babies to make 20 different flavors of Space Marines to conquer the galaxy. Then he lost them all. So he decided he needed to go and conquer the galaxy anyways for reasons with what he still had. Anyways, along the way, he finds all 20 of the superbabies, now adults, puts them in command of their Space Marine Legions and then we make way for the galaxy’s biggest round of family therapy via extreme violence.

This book focuses on the Primarch of the last legion to find their superbaby and properly join the war, helpfully called the Alpha Legion since they were also numbered 20 of 20 even before this.

Except all of that might be a lie, according to this book which opens by immediately lying to you.

Alpha Legion is like that.

So there’s a hard disclaimer here that this story is being told by 40k’s biggest liar (well, second best. He learned from his dad’s best friend after all, father of the year and all that). It’s also the only Primarch book that’s written in the first person). And in it, we witness most of the prequel to the prequel of 40k from Alpharius’s perspective and it’s just...

The book is the tea. You wanted the tea, here it is. Is it true? Probably? But it is juicy and it is fun and you can immediately tell from the narration that our central character is absolutely not well adjusted at all but also that he’s seeing through a lot of the bullshit going on (like pointing out how the universe absolute operates on Invader Zim logic regarding height).

Moreover, this is one of my favorite kinds of Alpha Legion stories as I’ve discovered, ones where you see what the crazy plans of the galaxy’s most paranoid Rube Goldberg enthusiasts are actually trying to accomplish rather than the “oooooo, but that was actually what I wanted you to do” approach that they sometimes get written as.

The book eventually finds a plot revolving around Alpharius looking for the Primarch that he knows is his true brother. Sadly by this point, if you know who the Alpha Legion are, or even just searched them up to find out more, the mystique of that is already gone, so thankfully we instead see the intersection of this story with one of the few mystery portions of 40k’s lore revolving around an alien race so horrifying that no records exist of them that also involved two missing Legions and their Primarchs.

And the book does a remarkable job keeping that mysterious and unknowable while still working with what is there to provide a great final act.

This is one of those 40k books that I like to recommend to people in the hobby, as Mike Brooks has quickly started to join Aaron Dembski-Bowden and Dan Abnett as part of my favorite authors in the setting (more on that in a future review), as the book has a humor to it as it continues to deliver intriguing reveals and interesting plans.

I said “people in the hobby” though as it’s very much a book meant for those who know what’s going on. It’s not impenetrable if you’re not but you might want to glance over at a quick video or two to look up some names, even if it onboards you with the ones important to the plot.

[theaceofskulls]

Since I’m here, I wanted to give an update on one of the books I covered while back.

The Bookkeeper’s Skull is one of those books that I wasn’t too impressed with given its length and how I just didn’t like it’s ending too much. It’s good for a quick scary ready but not one I’d be able to recommend to people as a book.

Well good news, that’s most irrelevant now because GW packed it together with a bunch of other horror novellas in on book as Unholy

So basically, if you’re scrolling through my recommendations and you’re at all interested in that one, just look for this collection instead to get your money’s worth.

[theaceofskulls]

Woops read a few more Warhammer books and want to talk about them

I’ve gone through a few now but the one I really, really want to talk about is Hammers of Sigmar: First Forged by Richard Strachan.

The book follows the titular Hammers of Sigmar Stormcast Eternals (the posterchildren of the armor wearing Einhenjar paladins of the setting) who are struggling with quite a few things:

They’ve got a huge war going on across all the Mortal Realms stretching themselves thin

The stormhost has been suffering under the effects of their constant reforging

A funny demon man unleashed a cloud up in the air that has the hilarious effect of grabbing their souls up when they usually get grabbed by lightning to be reforged after death

They’ve made armor to deal with that but there’s not enough of it to go around

Oh and the Khorne worshipping warlord who was the first boss they beat when they teleported back into the Mortal Realms to free the realm of fire might be coming back. He’s been on the moon, allegedly. Look all the moons are haunted in this setting.

And to top it all off, the mercenary guild that they’re working with to try and deal with that threat is horribly corrupt

The book centers mostly around the interaction with the last two points, though the threat of the Cursed Skies has certainly changed how the previously immortal-but-at-a-price legion looks at the world. Each of the main characters of the book come from a different chamber of the stormhost, each feeling different strains and all of them clearly coming with their own baggage.

From a new recruit who is surrounded by legends who are at their lowest, clad in the older armor, to the scout who wishes to be a legend, to the warrior priest in the tattered remains of his chamber, looking after the relics of all his fallen brothers and sisters, knowing that soon his chamber is about to be retired, all the characters stand out from each other and feel distinct.

But the reason I want to talk about this story is because it’s exactly the book I thought Space Marine books would read like before I learned anything about Warhammer in general.

It’s an action adventure romp full of blood and action (and a lot of gore, I’ll come back to that in a second), with set of good guys going into a big battle against the spikey bad guys and being very tired when they’re not shouting to each other about comradery.

It’s a safe book in that regard. It has just enough stakes and believable danger for the characters in it that it stays interesting but never something that fully sticks in your mind. It’s fantastic if you’re craving Stormcast Eternals content, especially one to showcase just how recent developments in the setting have humbled but not broken them.

I can’t even fully call it a middle of the road book. The characterization is good and it handles multiple viewpoints fantastically.

Sadly, I feel like it probably comes down to the villains of the book. Khorne as bloodthirsty cannibals with a grasp on battle tactics but no real motivations outside of killing and slaughtering and seeing their rulers put on thrones (not nearly as nice of ones as the one their god is one but still better than a chair) is one of those things that always kind of bores me about that particular aspect of chaos. Problem is that this book is clearly a love letter to the start of the whole setting and Khorne and his general Khorgos Khul as the threat to the legendary Vandus Hammerhand (which are the two generals that came in the first starter box) are kind of necessary to complete the circle they’re going for here.

Meanwhile the plotline regarding the freeguild captain whose corruption has caught up to her, as the guild lumbers along to try and get the one battle she needs in order to retire to a cushy life, is a far more interesting story which crosses paths with a witchunter and a suspicious sorcerer, but it doesn’t get enough of a payoff to really pull the book up another notch.

In the end, the most interesting detail ends up surrounding Actinus, the warpriest who refuses to give any personal details about himself to others. I feel like that’s the character I’m going to remember the most as you barely manage as the reader to pry any of his secrets loose and the few you get are actually memorable.

I said I’d talk about the gore and yeah I do feel like this is worth mentioning as well, as this book really does exemplify it. There’s a feeling like the level of detail is almost out of place, which makes it rather shocking at points. Yes this is a book with the minions of the Blood God taking center stage but it’s always funny to me that Black Library books tend to be devoid of any character cursing and any expression of romance more than a quick peck or a hug, but what feels like a lighter action adventure novel will gladly describe in great detail gorn.

Like I said, it’s what I expected Space Marine books to feel like, especially when I heard the phrase “bolter porn”

In the end, this book is something I’d only recommend to people already into the Age of Sigmar setting and I’d only recommend it after you’ve read a few of the other must-reads first, unless you’re really into Stormcasts or are just wanting an easy good vs evil romp.

It’s nowhere near as disturbing as Gloomspite (which I need to talk about) but you probably want to go in with the content warning at least.

Anyways, I’ll be talking about a few more soon.

[theaceofskulls]

Time for more talking about books from Black Library. And it’s an Age of Sigmar one again instead of another 40k one.

If there’s one book that’s constantly recommended for people to check out getting into Age of Sigmar, it’s Soul Wars by Josh Reynolds. This is not that book.

And if there was another book that’s recommended, it’s Dark Harvest, also by him. I’ve already talked about it though.

But there’s a third book now that I see recommended a lot, quickly rising to the top of recommendations for checking out the setting and that’s Prince Maesa by Guy Haley, and there’s a reason why it has swiftly become one of the must reads.

Prince Maesa is the story of an aelf (the legally copyrightable version of elf) who fell in love with a human woman and got himself exiled long ago for his love, on a quest now to bring her back from the dead. If you know anything about the setting of Age of Sigmar, you’ll know that’s a really, really bad idea, as it turns out the God of Death of the mortal realms really doesn’t like people messing with what he considers his and has punished people horrifically for far lesser crimes than what the prince intends.

The story is an expansion off of some short stories and it at first shows, but as it goes on, the book changes into something different than most other contemporary fantasy novels I’ve read, feeling like it’s midway between one of them and a fairy tale. The prose becomes exaggerated and flighty, sometimes feeling like it’s repeating a point it’s already hammered home as though the story being told is one that would be read out loud over the course of several sessions.

We follow Maesa and the bound forest spirit, Shattercap, along with a few other faces that he meets along the way, through multiple realms, tracing across quite a few, along with stories of others being told throughout the book, painting vivid pictures of strange places and the odd beings in them. This is another “journey” books from Black Library, but unlike a lot of the others, while the atmosphere is fully on display, events constantly unfold in the places and stories that happen, not just fluffy descriptions of the lands. This makes me hesitant to relate this to a lot of the other books I’ve talked about which are more atmospheric than plot heavy, even if the central plot of the book seems to sometimes get lost as we settle in alongside other characters for yet another story within the story being told to them.

It does manage to pull itself together rather well for the finale and all that it entails though. I imagine this one has the potential for people to bounce off the ending (which I will state is probably not what you’re expecting it to be), but overall I really enjoyed it.

The book ends up being a fantastic entry point as well as a self contained story that even people who aren’t huge on Warhammer would probably enjoy. The novel feeling of like a fairy tale alone is enough for me to recommended it not just to people I want to get into this setting.

[theaceofskulls]

I tripped an accidentally read a bunch more 40k novels, so time for another round of these.

First up is Shroud of Night by Andy Clark (who I’m currently halfway through Gloomspite for the AoS side of things).

I’m starting to love these books about the horrible war crime gremlins that make up small bands of Chaos Space Marines. You always have the main character/leader who is walking a tightrope where everything is about to fall apart, the guy who has drunk just a little too much chaos juice, the guy who may or may not betray everyone, and couple other faces that continue to show up, but it never fully plays out the same way in any of these books.

This one is about a small warband of the Alpha Legion, a group so duplicitous that it’s not actually clear if they’re really working against or for the Imperium, and this book really doesn’t answer that question either.

This group, called the Unsung, led by Kassar, are strong armed by another group of Chaos Marines, the Emperor’s Children, into one little job in exchange for their freedom. Battered from years of fighting and emerging into a galaxy that’s all changed after some of the most recent events in 40K, Kassar and the Unsung reluctantly agree to join in this mission.

Said mission involves sneaking through an entire siege of a massive fortress between the warring forces of the Imperial Fist Space Marines with their allies the Sisters of Battle and the forces of the Chaos Space Marines known as the World Eaters who are here for blood and skulls. Alone and with both sides pulling out some big named characters with plot armor and plot weaponry, the Unsung are tasked with getting a barely armored seemingly normal human to the very center of the fortress and escaping with enemies all around them.

While it’s a huge cluster of factions and allegiances, the book primarily centers itself around just the Unsung and their rapidly dwindling warband in their attempts to survive and figure out what their next moves yet are in this galaxy, with personalities flaring and new twists and complications popping up on this tense mission.

While Lords of Silence and Night Lords were both more concerned with long silent trips through space, populated by brief moments of conflict, Shroud of Night is a more actiony book and while it’s still a “fight-for-the-soul-of-your-party” type book, it’s a different kind of flavor here, but no less keeps you wanting to see where the next corner brings the protagonists and if they do make it out, what type of direction will they be heading as their differing views and eventual plans to betray each other begin to bubble up the more heat that gets poured on them.

Like Lords of Silence captured the feeling of its cast being slow, plodding, and toxic, or how Night Lords captured the wistful feeling of soldiers who are stoking embers of their past glory, this book captures the feeling of the Alpha Legion. While the Unsung keep secrets from each other, there’s a strange isolating feeling from the rest of the factions in the book that their secret conversations conducted in coded language around the mortal they’re forced to bring along underscores. There’s an unspoken shared knowledge between the group that doesn’t seem to be shared by the rest of the books’ characters even if it clearly shows that they themselves are ignorant of a lot of current events. It’s hard to accurately discuss without dissecting individual scenes, but Shroud of Night manages to accurately nail the flavor of its central protagonists which makes it a treat if you’re interested in the Alpha Legion.

While the book does have the Sisters of Battle, the Imperial Fists (including a first born who is having a hard time adjusting to the new Primaris marines), the Emperor’s Children, and the World Eaters, along with guest appearances by Celestine and Kharn (I don’t feel guilty mentioning this as all the preview stuff shouts about them showing up), this really isn’t a book too concerned with them, even if nothing is really off about any of their appearances. Just don’t go into this expecting anywhere close to an even split in screen time.

While the book, like a lot of Black Library books, leaves an ending open for things to continue, this is a good self contained novel that really does nail its landing. It’s not too interested in introducing a super important lore revelation or an important for later magic macguffin as much as it is giving you an Alpha Legion adventure to chew on. Worth reading if you’re interested in the faction or enjoy these chaos marine books like I have.

[theaceofskulls]

Okay I really want to talk about Godsbane by Dale Lucas.

I’ll open by stating that I haven’t read his previous work Realm-Lords, but can immediately say that it’s probably fantastic given how much love he has for the Lumineth Realm-lords as evidenced by this book.

They’re the typical High Elf faction of the setting, residing in the Realm of Light of Hysh. After having suffered from Typical Elf Haughtiness^TM and also deciding to turn their entire society into an extreme meritocracy, they almost destroyed themselves in an event called Spirefall.

Since then they’ve taken up an extreme fusion of restrained arcane study, connecting with nature, and rigorous almost monastic training, basically meaning they multiclassed super hard as Wizard/Druid/Monk and are now still very haughty but less at risk for destroying themselves.

Into all of this we have Settler’s Gain, a settlement of mortals on Hysh who have been allowed to stay there by the Lumineth, as well as a magic academy where they rigorously test would-be mages according to their own standards, creating tension as the aelves are determined not to allow the wrong person to learn the magic they forged to prevent another apocalypse, either because said person could never possibly learn it in their lifetime or would misuse it.

But to the mortals who are thrust into this system in a city where their presence seems only tenuously tolerated, they see this rigid and uncompromising system as discriminatory and targeted where their mistakes are seemingly punished more heavily than those of the Lumineth.

Tensions are high and things only get worse when a human student is found in a restricted section. And when her trial is interrupted by mysterious forces, something is uncovered that will change everything, not just the tightrope politics of this city: a weapon made to kill the gods.

This book is massive and it feels almost like a two part series that was smartly combined into one overall book, with the first half focusing on only a few of the main characters and the tensions of the academy and the race to find this weapon before the forces of Tzeentch do.

Meanwhile the second half deals with what is practically an adventuring party running off to deal with the fallout of the first half and dealing with a new threat that emerges.

I’ll say right here that Godsbane is worth checking out and is probably one of my favorite Age of Sigmar stories so far. And the reason I’m saying it here is because in order to properly talk about it, and even give you the reasons to check out this book, I have to spoil some things that occur midway and discuss the party of the second half (this is still going to be mostly spoiler free, but if you care about it, here’s the exit point).

The second half smoothly transitions into a fraught alliance between our four cast members as they attempt to deal with a brand new faction in the setting: The Black Sun, a coalition of Order aligned members who seek to free the realms from the rule of all gods, Order, Chaos, Death and Destruction after the weapon falls into their hands.

The book examines what the relationship between gods and mortals is and hints at further truths about godhood in the setting, including how frightening the concept of all the war of the Warhammer setting being waged in absence of any meaning or any gods or promises of power.

What’s worth talking about is the cast.

Thelana Evenfall is the core protagonist, an idealist Lumineth mage and teacher who believes in the mortal students and advocates for them against the council that governs the academy. She’s forced to confront the worst fears of the Lumineth when the teachings of the academy are abused as well as figuring out what she can trust as even the gods are no longer all powerful with the emergence of this weapon.

Daethus Atairos, a Stormcast mage turned Knight-Questor when he is chosen by Sigmar for some quest, though unfortunately for him, unlike most Questors his purpose is unknown and his meaning in his ordered life has been torn from him. Haunted by visions of twin calamity, one a victory of Chaos and one of oblivion, he struggles to find meaning as the god killing weapon emerges and his own deity is silent. A pull at his core forces him to abandon his brothers to join Thelana’s side.

Sespyra Sepherys, a Daughter of Khaine on the run for the crime of treason in the highest degree: being part of a conspiracy to murder the High Oracle Morathi herself. Seeing the witch as a pretender who was using the religion of her god to empower herself, she wanted to free her people and return them to worshiping the true dark god alongside a group she considered her sisters. Now, she finds herself alone in the Realm of Light, far from Ulgu’s shadows, attempting to get even further. Unfortunately, an ill timed fight at a tavern disrupts her passage. Now she grapples with newfound companionship, revelations about the gods, and Morathi’s own ascension to godhood.

Wodrick Thunderall is a Kharadron Overlord captain at the end of his rope. Shunned for a breach in the code that left several dead for an attempt at heroism, he watches as his crew suffers for him. When his new passengers reveal a threat to the realm at the hands of an ancient weapon of duradin making, he grapples with upholding his deals with them, a chance for redemption, another moment to do the right thing, and the question of what godhood means to a people who abandoned theirs.

As you can see, the book is fantastic for grappling with multiple conflicts, and playing through various sides where there’s no clean easy answer to the questions it raises for the characters. And this is before getting to the antagonists of the book, which I’m not revealing due them being hard spoilers.

The flow of the plot tends to let itself linger on the characters between large moments of action that you see coming clearly in the distance, raising plenty of questions and expectations on who might do what when the chips are down and what they want is right in front of them, and while the overall summary of the plot does end up being rather straightforward in the end, it succeeds on the character level at drawing you in and keeping you hooked.

If I have one complaint about it, there’s two characters involved in Black Sun that are use to help its exposition along and introduce this fascinating faction beyond the central antagonist at the center of it. These two characters are written well enough, but don’t contribute a lot to the overall plot or interact much with the rest of the cast and feel almost as though they were intended for some third part that didn’t manifest. Meanwhile a few other characters could’ve used a little more screentime in the end. I know this isn’t a zero sum scenario but these two stick out as a weaker element which when taken alongside me wanting more party interaction does lead to this feeling.

Anyways, I know the big question is here: the titular Godsbane is such a big thing and the whole premise of the book relies on its central power so naturally Does it get used?

And for anyone who is on the fence on this one that really needs the push.

Yes.

Anymore details are obviously true spoilers but I felt this is necessary to know for those worried a book this size would feel like a let down if it sequestered itself into a neat little self contained entry with no impact on the larger setting.

Anyways, if you’re a fan of TTRPG type adventures, adventures with big macguffins which cause entire armies to mobilize around, seeing political and ethical questions be bounced around in fantasy settings, or learning more about several Order factions all at once, this is a fantastic book and I can’t recommend it enough.

[theaceofskulls]

Time to talk about another book but this time it’s Age of Sigmar rather than 40k.

Dark Harvest by Josh Reynolds is one of the most recommended Age of Sigmar books I’ve seen and I can definitely understand why. (Funnily enough of the three most recommended “for beginners” books of Age of Sigmar, Josh Reynolds has written two of them).

This book is a horror story set in the middle of a swamp dead in the middle of the Realm of Life, deep deep inside the forests. A quick bit of backstory here, the nearest city is Greywater Fastness, and industrial city that’s been agitating the locals, the nature spirits called Sylvaneth. The area is a slowcooking powder keg where the emotionally driven treekin are slowly twisting into something dark and cruel as the mortals cut down their forest in the name of progress.

This is not the story of that city.

This is a story about a strange protagonist who goes by the name of Harran Blackwood investigating a message from an old friend he’s learned is still alive and is in a small town that’s missing off most the maps. The roads to there are shrinking and Harran has no idea what his friend has become since he last saw him.

So he’s resolved to go there and kill him.

Complicating matters is the unfriendly town of Wald, the many mysteries that start piling up on each other, an unwelcome companion who is one of the few friendly faces, and something ancient stirring as a twisted harvest festival sweeps through the town.

The genre is horror and it’s fantastic, feeling like the much better version of The Bookkeeper’s Skull. However, it similarly has a sudden ending, with a small amount of anticlimax but not nearly to the same degree nor the invalidation which that book suffered from in its final pages. This book is less about its mystery surrounding the settlement and more the mystery of how it will resolve and why its characters are doing what they’re doing.

It lays out clearly, stopping short of flat out telling you, what the threats are, and instead lingers more on how close they are, with fantastic scenes where the protagonist observes them playing with their prey only to immediately leave unnoticed by the mortals that were inches from claws and fangs, leaving you with the question of what might happen if the protagonist were himself to turn around and look behind him. The atmosphere is thick with swamp and blood, and the creaking of wood. And the more you learn, the less safe it is.

And this applies to the protagonist too. Harran’s story is unraveled over the course of the book, but all the details are given to us by him and he’s quickly revealed to be unreliable, both in how he lies but also how much he doesn’t know or doesn’t understand. As is usual for horror protagonists of the sort, he comes bundled with a dark secret, a sin that forever changed him, but even once you learn it, it’s difficult to grapple with, especially when other characters forgive him for it while others damn him and he himself offers no defense of it and fails to ever fully reveal his motivations.

This book is great for seeing the melting pot of the Mortal Realms, slow burn tension based horror which indulges in the feeling of being unwelcome in a strange place, seeing into the eyes of religion of the setting, the Sylvaneth including some of their fringe collectives and splinter factions (pun intended), and is just overall a good read.

[theaceofskulls]

Apparently I’m a liar who tells lies because I realized there’s one last book to cover before I have to read some more.

The Bookkeeper’s Skull is a 40k horror novel with a fantastic idea: following someone making the rounds on an agriculture planet right before the tithe comes and having to go to the very outskirts, where they send the most down on their luck and in debt to farm with only a few sci fi tools available to them. Naturally this kind of place attracts some weird things.

It’s not quite Children of the Corn but it’s the sort of story that lingers on the sharp farming equipment in the corner with stains that you can’t really be sure if they’re rust.

That said, I think you can guess my opinion of it by the fact that I forgot about it, this one didn’t end up being my favorite at all.

Don’t get me wrong, most of this book is fantastic. It’s drenched in the anticipation and dread that a good horror story needs. Mysteries and redirections all over the place.

Its finale though is both sudden and too clean in a way. It’s neat, it’s pretty and when you look back and see the biggest clue, it becomes a really hard recommend for more than a casual read, the type of thing you let someone borrow for a bit. It is extremely, extremely hard to talk about why I left unsatisfied any more than that without spoilers, which makes it difficult to talk about.

And after the climax comes a wrap up that feels as though it wanted to have its cake and eat it to, which again I’d love to talk more about to explain but can’t without spoiling a massive part of the mystery of the book.

And honestly, this is one of those books that I feel like was so close to being perfect for me but a misstep at the end really ruined it. I’m considering making a spoiler post for just this one.

I’d say if you ever stumble across this one, it’s worth a read for its visceral environment and worldbuilding, and nice tension throughout it but to be aware that it probably won’t hit any of your top 10 lists.

[theaceofskulls]

Okay this is the last one for now, but I’m chewing on the other Eisenhorn books, the absolutely fantastic The Infinite and the Divine (I’m not done with it but seriously, even if you’re not a 40k fan, do yourself a favor and go read about those gay robots and their weird divorced couple energy across space and time), and of course, the palate cleanser of 40k, the Ciaphas Cain novels, so you can expect more of these in the future.

Anyways, this time it’s Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waagh!

Did I intentionally set two series back to back that both have Prophets as their central character? No, but I’m happy it turned out that way.

This is a story that is carried by it’s framing device: the story being told of the great ork warboss being told to a very radical Inquisitor via translation from Makari the Grot, Ghazghkull’s most constant companion.

It’s a fantastic use of unreliable narration in every way which does a great job of showing cultural disconnects between humanity and orks as well as orks and grots.

I’ll admit that even though I like 40k orks, I’ve never liked the fact that like a lot of 40k, they’re locked into an alignment, which is Always Chaotic Evil. This story doesn’t go out of its way to change that, but it doesn’t 100% lean into it. It tries to understand the orks in a way but never attempts to fully humanize them, and I think it works out for the best.

The book is funny at times, reads in part like tall tales mixed with second hand accounts, and a blend of half truths. Ghazghkull himself feels distant, the narrative only rarely allowing us to see more than he purposefully presents himself as, and the odd cast sitting around the story are insanely easy to get invested in, from the Space Wolf shaman on permanent loan to the Inquisitor, the psycker Ogryn lady who bucks every stereotype, or the translating ork who presents an edge of danger despite his unnaturally calm demeanor.

The plot itself in the story feels like a straightforward, if oddly delivered, retelling of Ghazghkull’s story with only a few cracks from his wiki page being smoothed over or filled in, but with such flavor and personality that it justifies itself. The mysterious nature of orks and whatever is going on with the Prophet really serve to draw you in as you get closer and closer to some unknown truth behind it all, just tantalizingly out of reach.

This is not a complicated book and there’s not a lot to discuss that the book itself doesn’t already lay out without spoiling its more clever twists, so instead I’ll point to some fun bits of fluff from the book to leave off with.

Orks, despite being asexual beings, have a concept of biological sex but also loan the concept of gender, and the book early on goes out of its way to establish correct pronouns. While this is probably just used to establish the fact that the title character has always been referred to with he/him, it’s still interesting to see it be brought up in universe and then to note that at least via translation, they/them tends to be a default for several orks. (Side note, this brings up my biggest pet peeve with orruk in Age of Sigmar where rather than confirming the fungus thing, they refuse to elaborate at all but like every other franchise with orcs in them has moved on from male-only)

And my other fun detail to leave off with is that Makari relates the idea of a grod, an ork’s favorite enemy, to the closest concept an ork has to love (which is translated as “the word for when you like someone enough it makes you stupid). This is further expanded upon when an ork wants to make sure their ship is confirmed by asking if Yorrick ever talks about how much he hates Ghazghkull too.