snozek

Move the plot daftly.

Revisado: 11-11-24

The Good:
This book certainly moves the plot of the Dawn of Fire series forward.

Some planted seeds from earlier in the series have bloomed.

I've grown to love the Wyrmslayer Queen and her crew, it is nice to see them featured prominently.

Rostov and his retinue are key in this novel, good characters.

The Bad:
Where to start. . . ?

The plot only kind-of makes sense, so be sure to squint when you are looking at it.

Our space dwarves are still on the ill-conceived side. In fact, at this point, I kind of wish they had never been brought back at all.

The ham-handed shoe horning of them into the world makes the entire book more awkward and longer than it should be.

The editing and arrangement is poor at times in the audio production. I adequate pauses and sub-chapter breaks don't help.

John Banks is not enjoyable as a narrator. I have struggled through way too many of his books since Black Library brought him on board. He is lower tier. His tenative voice is frustrating and lacks character commitment. His performance was technically competent, but that could also be the result of an element of the editing process.

The Ugly:
Do you need random characters or McGuffins to move the story along? This book has them!

Do you want DEI character substitution and "the message" to be proclaimed throughout? You've got it here!

With SO MANY of the lead characters being female, it became odd, like guys shouldn't read it, until you figure out that most of the female characters didn't actually act as females, but were simply placed into the story to have a character be female.

The effect is a lack of character credibility and a difficulty in immersion for the reader.

Kesh, the dwarf captain, the rogue trader captain, the Sister of Silence, the ringleader of the Hand of Abaddon, the leader of the Dark Mechanicum, the ascended acolyte, the special xenos working with Rostov, almost every ship master, Inquisitor Greyfax, and the list goes on and on; these are all "female" characters.

I put quotes around "female" because almost nothing in their actions indicates x, x chromosomes. They are storyline place holders with long hair.

They don't have female strengths. They don't have female weaknesses. They don't even struggle with or enjoy female uniquities.

It makes the story bad, even though it advances the general plot.

In this series there have been some decent female characters, the commodore for example, but she is the rare exception, not the rule.

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I wish it were longer.

Revisado: 10-13-24

I am familiar with the author's previous work, which is a different genre.

This book's topic and premise are fun. Many of the characters are life-like. Working the very real location of Yellowstone as the dateline.

That said, I wanted more. I feel like this should have been double the length and still left us with a bit of an unsettled conclusion.

The narration tool was pretty good with general dialog or narration, but suffered with numeric expressions, pauses, breaks, and unique words.

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A good Cade story

Revisado: 10-04-24

I really need Larry to put out more of these, I am getting attached to DI Cade.

manageable length, story that has great pace, the reader knows the author's voice well because he has read for his books a lot.

Sci-fi noir.

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Poor scholarship

Revisado: 07-19-24

For readers familiar with the primary sources in the history of the Spanish Peninsula, this work is galling

The Sunday of the circumstances and history where the Knights Santiago are formed reflects not only a lack of familiarity with the Muslim primary sources, but an incipient understanding of the lives of the people under their rule.

Add to this what can only be presumed to be the intentionally pejorative references to "Christian myths" of Jesus' life.

I can tell what soures they HAVEN'T referenced.

Let me suggest Dario-Fernandez' "Myth of the Andulucian Paradise" as a modern, scholarly, well referenced outlook.

This work was a waste of my time and money, although the reader was excellent.

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Victorian fun!

Revisado: 04-15-24

All in all, this was delightful.

I like Holmes, history, and the eldrich tales of Lovecraft.

The book was immersive, kept a great tempo, and the choice of reader was perfect!

One star was removed from the performance because of a small number of missteps in switching character.

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it is a conclusion, technically. . .

Revisado: 02-04-24

First, Dan Abnett is the best of the Black Library authors. I love his work and particularly he is good in regards to realistic and human dialog. He also has a very good understanding of the lore and canon of the Grimdark.

Second, it's difficult to write a conclusion to a novel series of some 70 books where the fans already know the conclusion.

That said, here's the review.

The book is middling. It really could be better, a lot better.

This is not because the writing is bad, it is because of other reasons.

1st- The book is WAY longer than it should be. I like long 40k books when it is merited, but this got boring IN THE MIDDLE OF FIGHT SEQUENCES THAT WENT ON FOREVER.

It was bad enough that I had to take breaks because it just kept going, non-stop, for way too long.

I was an Army guy and have good experience with martial arts competition, shooting sports, hunting, etc. I like this sort of stuff.

It was still boring.

2nd- A number of things took place without explanation that shouldn't have been able to have happened according to the book itself.

I do not want to spoil the book, so I'll just say it deals with "King-Plot-Armour" Abaddon.

Also, apparently you can win titanic battles between light and darkness through card games, which is dumb. . . really, really, dumb.

Dan Abnett used it as an excellent literary tool during the story, but the premise is stupid. This brings us to the next issue.

3rd- Whereas the writing is good, the premises upon which a lot of the concepts in the story depend are not only poorly founded, but sometimes sophomorically false.

I am a huge 40k fan and have read almost every Horus Heresy work and most of the 40k fiction. I am very comfortable with the grimdark. This novel lacks internally valid logic.

It serves to cheat the established characters, lore, and IP in general. It cheapens the IP.

Time travel and causality gags are apparently very popular with the UK audience but it is pretty nonsense to the rest of us on the customer base. It is a lazy way to not reconcile dilemmas logically within the constraints of the lore.

Of course, this is volume #3 of a book which should never have been this long.

It did end-runs through nonsense where direct resolution could have, should have, been used.

The author even seemed to give a slight mood against some of the daft elements through Dorn and Valdor.

I wish it were better, but it was still written be Dan Abnett, so there's a quality which can't be dismissed.

The reader was very solid, as usual, Keeble is a very good narrator.

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Went nowhere

Revisado: 12-08-23

This is part of a series, right? Chris is usually a great author, but this is meh at best.

This book contributes nothing to the Dawn of Fire series, like how Damnation of Pythos added nothing to the Horus Heresy.

disappointed for the 1st time by Chris.

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by far the best siege of terra book yet

Revisado: 03-08-23

This is why Dan Abnett was saved for this spot, he delivered a human, believable, multilayered, set up novel to the conclusion of the siege.

Dan writes real human beings in a believable way. This is different from other Black Library authors like ADB who can't manage anything more than an inch deep or a single-dimentional, unrealistic person.

Dan also is enough of a professional to keep the lore straight, something several authors have serious problems managing.

Keeble is a professional of a narrator, not falling into traps or messy mispronunciations.

The plot is advanced greatly in this novel. Several elements of the Imperium of the 40th millennium get their start in this novel, such as purity deals, the flamers of the faithful, and many more.

This is the penultimate novel in the Siege of Terra series and I couldn't tell you how it could be improved.

I sincerely hope that the final installment is written by Guy Haley, Chris Wraight, David Guymer, or Dan again himself.

If not one of those authors, I think that the payoff would fall painfully short.

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Garro the hero of the Emperor

Revisado: 02-20-23

This is absolutely a worthwhile addition to the Garro series and the Siege of Terra, with only a small reservation.

Spoiler following:

The culminating battle ends in exactly the same way as it does in the book Warhawk, which came out much earlier.

Why? Don't know.

That's some kind of either disorganized or lazy writing.

I have been a fan of the Garro series, Garro's character himself, and as usual Toby Longworth was the voice of Warhammer!

Don't get me wrong, this story is plenty good, but this was a major error.

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Very good on balance.

Revisado: 11-26-22

Cain is a great and relatable character with a very entertaining series.

This edition is no different, except that our favorite hero of the Imperium is being used more frequently as a way to break new, juicy, lore in the grim-dark!

What can be used to compromise synapse control of Nids? Read this book!

There was only one real problem with the book.

Jurgen is wretched smelling, we know this. The Tau have an extremely keen sense of smell, so much so that normal humans stink in their opinion.

Why aren't they bothered at all by Jurgen in this book?

This book was also free from nonsense political massaging. It was just a really fun story.

I buy every Caiaphas Cain novel, this book is a reason why.

Although there are several voice actors, thank the Emperor it's not an audio drama with cheesy sound effects.

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