Monday Open Thread – Warhammer 40k Book Review – Night Lords Omnibus

*Remember Games Workshop owns everything Warhammer including the Black Library which is named after an in-game location and is their publishing arm.

Many of the stories of the battles, wars, campaigns and daily life of the galaxy are told from the side of the Imperium (the good guys – if the continuum of good and evil could be reproduced in shades of the darkest black).  Well, here we have a collection of 3 books into the Night Lords Omnibus which was written by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. This omnibus edition contains the novels Soul Hunter, Blood Reaver and Void Stalker, plus some additional short stories.  I have completed the first book and am about half way into the second, but I wanted to go ahead and share a bit about the books.

The link to the book page is here.  But you may be able to find it elsewhere, like any place you would normally buy books.

The books are set just before the Fall of Cadia when Abaddon the Despoiler is about to begin his 13th Crusade.  Which means nothing to most of you, and actually, you do not really need to know any of that lore to enjoy the story which made this easier to talk about, but I will provide some lore to help with the backstory.

Each legion of Astartes are created from the geneseed template of their Primarch, with the Primarch of the VIII^th Legion being Conrad Kurze, The Night Haunter.  He earned this name on his “home” world of Nostramo, remember the Primarchs had been kidnapped by the Chaos Gods when they were children in their cryo pods as they had just finished “baking” (my term for creating a clone or complete organism artificially).  Each of the Primarchs were designed for a specific purpose with them being given traits to help with their purpose.  Kurze was to have been the Supreme Judge of the Imperium and was gifted an enhanced sense of justice, logical mind, little emotion to cloud his judgement, and the ability to see the future and even saw his own death, and the person who would commit the assassination.  Nostromo was a dark world as the atmosphere let very little light reach the planet, and that darkness helped to hide the corruption, violence and predation of the rich and the gangs on the average citizens of Nostromo. Kruze survived all on his own from the moment he woke up in the broken cryo pod.  With his sense of justice what he witnessed as he grew up, enraged him and he started a one man army on the criminal elements, starting at the bottom till he worked his way to the top and then he just took over (there is more about this in the book).

So the book takes place more than 10,000 years after the Heresy and the Night Lords, well they aren’t doing so well.  Low on Astartes, on manpower, weapons, ammo, and armor, they survive by scavenging the battlefields of weapons and armor to have their slave/serfs repair or replace their own weapons and armor.  One of the Night Lords is Talos of the First Claw, who is the anti-hero of the book.  His squad or claw contains 3 others, Cyrion, Uzas, and Xarl.  All 4 completely hate each other after being around each other for 10k years, but they also completely trust each other in battle.  Or do they.  Talos is known as the Soul Hunter and as the Prophet as he has the Primarch’s gift of foresight, although to a weaker degree and not without it’s own price.  All of this is from the Chaos viewpoint, as well as detailing why they hate the Empire and also detailing what prices the ruinous powers force their champions to pay for their help and power.  There are also two slave/serfs – Septimus and Octavia and their discussions and actions give some slight hint to what a mortal’s life is like under the rule of Chaos Astartes.

The book so far has been very descriptive, really evoking what being around the feet of a Titan is like during battle in the second book.  The first book is pretty much to set up all the conflicts to come, but the dialogue and action still make it a very welcome addition to the Warhammer Universe.

Sports tonight:  Playoff hockey?  Interminable baseball?  Sport fucking? (Read a comic which had no nudity but was about Robin (pre-Nightwing) convincing Wonder Woman that sport fucking was real and challenged her to a match.  She kills him after his ruse is exposed, but after being revived in the Lazarus pit, he is addicted to sex with WW.  Pretty funny)

Have a good evening and a pleasant tomorrow.