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elfsGrey Knights by Ben Counter is the first book in Counter's Grey Knights Trilogy, set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
For those unfamiliar with the WH40K universe, let me just say that it's an utterly depressing, grim, and gruesome setting for any writer. It's a baldly supernatural faster-than-light space opera, where two factions battle for supremacy: The Chaos From Warp, and the Empire Of Humanity. Chaos threatens to swamp the universe in the guise of daemons and powers, destroying all of humanity in a terrible blaze of horror, and humanity must fight back with everything it's got, unendingly, and in the process it becomes as nasty and vicious as its enemy. The Empire is led by the transcendent Emperor, a being who once was human but who has become part of the Warp and directs the empire with his infinite reach.
Computers don't work well in this universe, so lots of information is kept on books. Starships are strewn with incantations scrawled along their surfaces, and the most valuable warships have long flowing runes embedded in precious platinum alloys along every square inch of hull and pipe. Low-class cargo haulers are thick with smoke and machine oil. Since demons from the Warp can only be killed by physical touch backed with a will there exist the Space Marines, melee specialists in three-meter tall powered armor who have mystical protections tattooed on their skin and engraved on their armor.
This is over-the-top space opera fantasy cranked far beyond 11. There's new terms for everything: "Cogitators" for ticker-tape spewing computers, "vox" for radio, "medicae" and "apothecarists" for doctors, the "adeptus mechanicus" is a from-the-grave guild for fixing machines and has its own Machine God, and so on. This is no future history: it starts with an alternate origin from the very founding of humanity.
How does it work? In the hands of someone familiar with it, works suprisingly well. Ben Counter knows this grim future history better than most.
Grey Knights follows the adventures of Grey Knight Brother Alaric, a young man on the verge of getting his first command. A vast tear in reality has happened in the Empire and every soldier is heading out that way. Except for Alaric's Squad and the Inquisitor Lady Legia, who believe that a terrible threat is emerging along a decrepit backwater hyperspace path known as St. Evisser's Trail. They come to believe that a vast demon known as Gahrgotuloth will re-emerge somewhere along the trail and create a vast army that will swamp the Empire.
It's all grim, ugly, charnal stuff. There are no nice people in this book. Alaric is trying to do the right thing and preserve a universe in which humanity might live, but in the process he leaves behind his own wake of death and destruction, because he must. Counter is aware of how grotesque the scenario really is; demons and other humans frequently taunt Alaric with his awareness that all he's doing is helping preserve polluted worlds where up to a trillion people live desperate, violent lives in vast underground warrens called "hives," waiting to become fodder for the Emperor's army, thrown against Chaos in bloody, unending battle.
And yet, what sucked me in was the comprehensiveness of the universe. It has so many layers and is so well thought-out that it summons an effective suspension of disbelief even from the very beginning. Counter's not a great writer-- he repeats himself at times to emphasize the ghastliness of it all, or the age and dedication of the Knights, and will occasionally use a cliche'd phrase-- but he knows this stuff so comprehensively that he wades into it completely undaunted. His characters pray to the Emperor constantly., and Counter has done a great job of cataloging the prayers, the books from which they pray, the kinds of prayers, and which divisions pray which ways. He does the same thing with locations, planets, histories. He produced a satisfying story with such a surprisingly effective twist at the end that I had to admire what he'd pulled off.
There's actually not a lot here for powered armor fans. The armor doesn't make a whole lot of sense; it's hard to tell if it's mechanical or magical in power, and it's not closed to environmental horrors so our heroes are at constant risk of having their heads chopped off. Apparently, that's a necessity of magical effectiveness.
Alaric is a pretty good character. He has no heart for humanity itself. His staff is made of mind-wiped and surgically altered humans, some of whom are simply "destroyed" after they have been used to record magical histories lest they be tainted themselves, others kept simple to avoid their being spies. Yet he comes across as the Good Guy, or as Good As It Gets Guy, in this horrific universe. He wants to do the right thing. Unfortunately, he cannot question his Emperor; he knows if he did, he would lose the faith and power that allows him to conquer over the demons. His supporting characters aren't cardboard and they do make sense for the WH40K milieu.
Grey Knights is about 400 pages long. Almost half of that is battle scenes, including the 100-page raw, gruesome climax war at the end as Alaric and his Knights fight a starship battle to the planet's surface and then layer after layer of corrupted human armies to reach the Pit of Gahrgotuloth and a final confrontation with the very face of corruption and evil.
It's like the anti-Journal Entries.
As a horrifically grim story with an all-encompassing backstory and a universe with absolutely no place for love, Grey Knights nonetheless still works. If you've a taste for this kind of stuff, this is the kind of stuff you will like.
Grey Knights is published by The Black Library.
For those unfamiliar with the WH40K universe, let me just say that it's an utterly depressing, grim, and gruesome setting for any writer. It's a baldly supernatural faster-than-light space opera, where two factions battle for supremacy: The Chaos From Warp, and the Empire Of Humanity. Chaos threatens to swamp the universe in the guise of daemons and powers, destroying all of humanity in a terrible blaze of horror, and humanity must fight back with everything it's got, unendingly, and in the process it becomes as nasty and vicious as its enemy. The Empire is led by the transcendent Emperor, a being who once was human but who has become part of the Warp and directs the empire with his infinite reach.
Computers don't work well in this universe, so lots of information is kept on books. Starships are strewn with incantations scrawled along their surfaces, and the most valuable warships have long flowing runes embedded in precious platinum alloys along every square inch of hull and pipe. Low-class cargo haulers are thick with smoke and machine oil. Since demons from the Warp can only be killed by physical touch backed with a will there exist the Space Marines, melee specialists in three-meter tall powered armor who have mystical protections tattooed on their skin and engraved on their armor.
This is over-the-top space opera fantasy cranked far beyond 11. There's new terms for everything: "Cogitators" for ticker-tape spewing computers, "vox" for radio, "medicae" and "apothecarists" for doctors, the "adeptus mechanicus" is a from-the-grave guild for fixing machines and has its own Machine God, and so on. This is no future history: it starts with an alternate origin from the very founding of humanity.
How does it work? In the hands of someone familiar with it, works suprisingly well. Ben Counter knows this grim future history better than most.
Grey Knights follows the adventures of Grey Knight Brother Alaric, a young man on the verge of getting his first command. A vast tear in reality has happened in the Empire and every soldier is heading out that way. Except for Alaric's Squad and the Inquisitor Lady Legia, who believe that a terrible threat is emerging along a decrepit backwater hyperspace path known as St. Evisser's Trail. They come to believe that a vast demon known as Gahrgotuloth will re-emerge somewhere along the trail and create a vast army that will swamp the Empire.
It's all grim, ugly, charnal stuff. There are no nice people in this book. Alaric is trying to do the right thing and preserve a universe in which humanity might live, but in the process he leaves behind his own wake of death and destruction, because he must. Counter is aware of how grotesque the scenario really is; demons and other humans frequently taunt Alaric with his awareness that all he's doing is helping preserve polluted worlds where up to a trillion people live desperate, violent lives in vast underground warrens called "hives," waiting to become fodder for the Emperor's army, thrown against Chaos in bloody, unending battle.
And yet, what sucked me in was the comprehensiveness of the universe. It has so many layers and is so well thought-out that it summons an effective suspension of disbelief even from the very beginning. Counter's not a great writer-- he repeats himself at times to emphasize the ghastliness of it all, or the age and dedication of the Knights, and will occasionally use a cliche'd phrase-- but he knows this stuff so comprehensively that he wades into it completely undaunted. His characters pray to the Emperor constantly., and Counter has done a great job of cataloging the prayers, the books from which they pray, the kinds of prayers, and which divisions pray which ways. He does the same thing with locations, planets, histories. He produced a satisfying story with such a surprisingly effective twist at the end that I had to admire what he'd pulled off.
There's actually not a lot here for powered armor fans. The armor doesn't make a whole lot of sense; it's hard to tell if it's mechanical or magical in power, and it's not closed to environmental horrors so our heroes are at constant risk of having their heads chopped off. Apparently, that's a necessity of magical effectiveness.
Alaric is a pretty good character. He has no heart for humanity itself. His staff is made of mind-wiped and surgically altered humans, some of whom are simply "destroyed" after they have been used to record magical histories lest they be tainted themselves, others kept simple to avoid their being spies. Yet he comes across as the Good Guy, or as Good As It Gets Guy, in this horrific universe. He wants to do the right thing. Unfortunately, he cannot question his Emperor; he knows if he did, he would lose the faith and power that allows him to conquer over the demons. His supporting characters aren't cardboard and they do make sense for the WH40K milieu.
Grey Knights is about 400 pages long. Almost half of that is battle scenes, including the 100-page raw, gruesome climax war at the end as Alaric and his Knights fight a starship battle to the planet's surface and then layer after layer of corrupted human armies to reach the Pit of Gahrgotuloth and a final confrontation with the very face of corruption and evil.
It's like the anti-Journal Entries.
As a horrifically grim story with an all-encompassing backstory and a universe with absolutely no place for love, Grey Knights nonetheless still works. If you've a taste for this kind of stuff, this is the kind of stuff you will like.
Grey Knights is published by The Black Library.
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Date: 2008-05-28 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-29 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-28 05:16 pm (UTC)Which doesn't change the fact that I play Dawn of War obsessively.no subject
Date: 2008-05-29 09:49 pm (UTC)I want to thank you for writing this review. Not only genre fiction, but genre fiction based on a gaming universe, Warhammer gets absolutely no respect -- but the quality of the talent behind the game is quite high. I've read some great W40K fiction even though I have no interest in the game aspects of the setting.
I do, however, play and write for WFRP -- the "Fantasy"-setting role-playing game, Warhammer40K minus about 38K, a gritty late-medieval dystopia, an alternate earth in which a Chaos warp portal opens over the north pole and the planet is premanently arrested at about the level of the Hanseatic League... But the fiction I've picked up for this setting? So far, all atrocious, lol.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-29 10:36 pm (UTC)Yes, but without the sex.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-31 12:08 pm (UTC)Yes, I can agree with this. My bf plays, occasionally now, but has many books lying around, both source material and fiction. He lent me the 'Ravenor' series, also by Dan Abnett, as he thought I'd enjoy them, and I did, surprisingly. Or not, as I've always liked a bit of sf and dark future lit.