WH40k The Outcast Dead

[dragon]

Saw this at the book store and was wondering if it's good to get as Graham McNeill is usally decent.

[Elheru Aran]

It's okay.
Spoiler

There's a good bit of talk about the Primarchs, and we see some remnants of the Emperor's unification of the Earth. Some talk about the Palace, lots of good Custodes stuff. We also get to see the impact that the conversion of the Imperial Palace is having on the local population, and we also get a pretty good look at how the Imperial astropaths work, the different types of astropath, etc.

As far as McNeil goes... I wouldn't say it was as good as Thousand Sons or Fulgrim, but it was better than Legion or Prospero Burns.

I'm looking forward to the Corax book coming out in January, though... still haven't managed to get my hands on Battle of the Fang. Grrrr.

[khursed]

I liked it, we get a very different view then most previous books that focus on the war itself.

Now we actually get more of a psychological thriller with a big reveal at the end.Spoiler

The gist of it is this, a man learns an unfathomable secret in the psychic aftermath of magus the red's invasion of terra, what he learns is so potentially devastating to the future of the war effort that it could literally change it. That secret is then hidden within the broken psyche of an astropath who's survived the horror of seeing his whole ship become invaded by the full might of the warp after a complete failure of the ship's geller field. We learn along the story that the ship was miraculously saved from being consumed by the warp entity by an unknown force in the form of a powerful beam of saving light (possibly the astronomicon, hinted that it might have been the emporor himself). The main protagonist is Kai, and to extract his secret the legion custode brings to bear the very best extractor, however their plans are foiled by an impromtu escape made by a cadre of traitor legion astarte lead by a thousand son's powerful sorcerer. Along their escape we come to learn a lot about how the warp is fluid and capable of revealing almost anything, and that time is truelly meaningless as a concept when applied to it.

The story climaxes when the hunted traitor astarte are confronted in a "death temple" where a culexus assassin forces the thousand son's sorcerer to unleash an horror beyond comprehension in an inhuman effort to defeat the pariah. Kai face his greatest shame and fear, all the thousands of people who died on the Argo the ship he was on, bolstered by the navigator who also survived and was at the temple, together they make sense of the senseless slaughter of the ship's crew and begin a healing process that finally reveals the greatest secret possible, and perhaps the most damaging truth possible for the imperium. Horus Lupercall will kill the Emperor, and the greatest tragedy is that the Emperor himself knows about it. Nevertheless, after multiple mind communication with the Emperor, Kai learns of one redeeming quality through the use of the game of regicide. The game can be won in many way, sometime you play it as if it represented life itself, yet, a sacrifice can be the hardest and most important move. Thus having learned multiple lessons from the Emperor, foremost that sometime the only victory is to deprive your opponent of victory, Kai comes to peace with everything he has learned and decides to deprive the enemy of the Imperium of the possible complete victory by denying them the truth of what he knows, which would fatally defeat the spirit of the Imperium were it to learn of the upcoming death of the Emperor.

Very nice novel indeed.

[Black Admiral]

I'm ultimately ambivalent about Deliverance Lost (avoiding spoilers here, and thanking God for living in the UK since we get it early). The Raven Guard stuff is mostly pretty cool (especially details like finding out more of Corax's background - he started as he meant to go on when awakening on Lycaeus, rather thoroughly killing a guard/overseer/slave driver (all three could apply) for harming the child of one of the miners who'd just unearthed him - and just where part of the Mk. V power armour design came from (although Mk. is a general header that covers all the misc. improvised variants); a Raven Guard Techmarine improvising it using the molecular bonding studs for locking tank armour into place), and even some of the Alpha Legion-related things - like Omegon working to rally the deposed Kiavahran Tech-Guilds to rebel against Corax, or Alpharius telling Erebus to shut the hell up to his face - are neat.

But, I don't like the retcon of the Raven Guard's rebuilding after Isstvan V, and to be perfectly honest I don't like the Alpha Legion either. They're frankly dull as fuck, and a lot less bright than they're bigged up as being.