Review: Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw
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John Persons is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable.

He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.

As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker than the expected social evils. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential.
A Lovecraft-inspired Noir detective story? Count me in!

The Story:
"John Persons is a private investigator with a distasteful job from an unlikely client. He’s been hired by a ten-year-old to kill the kid’s stepdad, McKinsey. The man in question is abusive, abrasive, and abominable.

He’s also a monster, which makes Persons the perfect thing to hunt him. Over the course of his ancient, arcane existence, he’s hunted gods and demons, and broken them in his teeth.

As Persons investigates the horrible McKinsey, he realizes that he carries something far darker than the expected social evils. He’s infected with an alien presence, and he’s spreading that monstrosity far and wide. Luckily Persons is no stranger to the occult, being an ancient and magical intelligence himself. The question is whether the private dick can take down the abusive stepdad without releasing the holds on his own horrifying potential."


Disclaimer
I received an ARC of this novella from the publisher. Keep that in mind while reading the review.

The Review:
Hammers on Bone is a lovecraftian noir detective story set in present day London. It features a cocky detective, a somewhat creepy kid and eldritch horrors, so the premise alone was an exciting one to me. I am a massive admirer of H.P. Lovecraft's works, and will re-read various stories of his every so often, to the point of knowing many passages by heart. So of course I was going to read this novella.

First off, I very much enjoyed the first person narrative. Following John Persons, our detective and host to a cosmic horror. In fact, the otherworldly being is the dominant force in Person's body, with its original owner exerting minor influence. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't act, or at the very least speak, like its host might. The whole story is full of old-timey, noir-suitable terms and behaviors, and that made this novella highly appealing to me. The fact that other characters find it jarring due to the highly antiquated ways of Persons amused me, and turned the detective into a bit of an oddball character - odd, but competent.

The case itself starts with a kid attempting to hire the private investigator to kill his step-father.
What turns that from a ridiculous request into a proper job is that the boy seems aware of what's lurking below the surface of Person's outward appearance.

“Tell your mom to call child services. The bulls will have your old man dancing on air in no time.”
“I can’t.” He shakes his head, curt-like. “He did something to my mommy. And he’ll do something to the police, too. I know it. Please. You’re the only one who can help.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because you’re a monster too.”

We are treated to the protagonists thoughts all the way through, and some of them give insights into his true nature, or the threats and powers involved. These I enjoyed greatly, as he is quite a snarky bastard. Various Lovecraft reverences appear, as do original threads of cosmic horror and concepts unique to Hammers on Bone.

In a lot of places I felt that Khaw pulled it off well. It doesn't feel truly Lovecraftian to me, which is mostly down to the setting (which would have been fine being set a couple of decades earlier in my opinion) and the inkling of a romantic involvement between the protagonist and a waitress. I wasn't quite sure about an older being getting attracted like that, and it stripped away a lot of the bleakness for me. It returned later, with a vengeance, but for a while I wasn't sure where the story was headed with it all.

Sometimes I also felt unsure just how much of a threat the monstrous entity arrayed against Persons really was. He seemed powerful and intelligent, whereas the antagonist lacked subtlety.
I was happy to find that the subtleties ended up coming from a different angle, and that the whole case was still challenging and straining enough to excite.

Thankfully, the way it tied up was both exciting and illuminating, though a few threads were left dangling. I hope some of them will be picked up again in potential future stories, though part of the fun with cosmic horror stories is not getting all the answers and resolutions.
I certainly wouldn't mind reading a sequel or loosely-related story to see what else Khaw has up her sleeve when it comes to cosmic horror detective stories, however.

Hammers on Bone on Goodreads
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Review: The Beast Must Die by Gav Thorpe
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The time has come – if the Imperium is to survive the ork invasion, it must strike at the heart of the greenskin empire. Their home world has been identified, and Koorland, aided by a primarch, leads the assault…

The Imperium has been brought to the edge of extinction by an ork invasion of unprecedented scale and depth. Piecemeal strikes against the invaders prove ineffective - for every ork fleet destroyed, five more appear. The only solution is to find and kill the orks' warlord - the Great Beast. Surely if its leader is killed, the greenskins' empire will fall apart in agony of infighting and confusion. Lord Commander Koorland assembles a mighty army, but when they arrives on the orks home world, the forces of the Imperium discover they have disastrously underestimated the might and ingenuity of their enemy.
Back from vacation, so let's go back to Ullanor and pay the Great Beast a visit!

The Story:
"The time has come – if the Imperium is to survive the ork invasion, it must strike at the heart of the greenskin empire. Their home world has been identified, and Koorland, aided by a primarch, leads the assault…

The Imperium has been brought to the edge of extinction by an ork invasion of unprecedented scale and depth. Piecemeal strikes against the invaders prove ineffective - for every ork fleet destroyed, five more appear. The only solution is to find and kill the orks' warlord - the Great Beast. Surely if its leader is killed, the greenskins' empire will fall apart in agony of infighting and confusion. Lord Commander Koorland assembles a mighty army, but when they arrives on the orks home world, the forces of the Imperium discover they have disastrously underestimated the might and ingenuity of their enemy."

The Review
The Beast Must Die takes the fight back to the orks for good. It is full of action and, oddly enough, development for the orks and the Great Beast. The latter makes it one of the coolest ork focused books in Black Library's stable (at least as far as 40k is concerned), which is at least in part due to Gav Thorpe's attempts to feature old and forgotten pieces from the background.

Political intrigue is at an all-time low. I expected to be bummed out by that and end up lukewarm on the book, but while the High Lords aren't on the stage for almost the entire book, their appearances in the first chapter, and their confrontation with Primarch Vulkan therein, left me excited and satisfied regardless. It is down to Thorpe's excellent pacing and raising of the stakes throughout the rest that I never really felt like a change of pace via Terra-based politics was necessary.

The rest of the book, meaning chapters two to twenty-two, are set on and around Ullanor. I highly anticipated the Imperium's strike at the Beast's home world, especially for how much of a symbolic value that planet had during the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy series. Seeing the orks build a new empire of their own springing from the place of their greatest defeat at the hands of Horus and the Emperor was such a promising idea, it would have been easy to deliver an underwhelming novel that didn't meet my expectations.

Thankfully, The Beast Must Die met them. Indeed, it is one of the top novels in the series so far, despite its heavy action focus.

Most of the chapters are prefaced with the introspections of Primarch Vulkan. I've seen people call them "emo", and indeed, they are depressing in many ways, but oh were they telling and fitting for a character like Vulkan. For all his legendary status, he is weary of life and seeing the Imperium's decay. He has a heavy cross to bear (see: Vulkan Lives and onwards in the HH series) and it makes perfect sense for him to take these mental turns over the course of one and a half millennia. Considering he was always presented as the most human of the Emperor's demi-god sons, I fully approve of how Thorpe depicted his inner turmoil.

Even on the active side, Vulkan's depiction is spot on. He is aloof where he should be, reminiscing about the glories of a lost age in places, and feels very disconnected from the rest of the Imperium. He rarely utilizes the authority inherent in his nature, but when he does, he moves the plot and characters forward in clever ways. In one chapter, he defends Chapter Master Koorland's authority as Lord Commander in a way that made me smile and cemented both Vulkan's subtle genius and Koorland's suitability in his role for me.

In other situations, Vulkan is a mighty warrior who goes head to head with mighty war machines - something we have seen in The Hunt for Vulkan already, but here he feels both less and more like a one-man-army. More, because he isn't fighting on his own anymore and leaves the Space Marines with him watch on in awe, and less so because he actually coordinates with them. Where The Hunt for Vulkan aimed to excite and awe the reader with how mighty Vulkan is, here it becomes clear that despite all that, he cannot fight this war alone.

The ork civilization meanwhile is sketched with great detail and should appeal to longtime fans who have seen old editions of 40k come and go. Many ideas and concepts long scrapped are alluded to, and the greenskins of Gorkagrod are far from the usual brutes. Unlike most Black Library novels, we see orks living in "peace", as a functioning society. It is a chilling prospect that bodes ill for the Imperium, but manages to elevate the ork threat of the series to even higher levels.

This is also the first time since the first book that we get a direct confrontation with the Great Beast. If you have been waiting for that, this is your book. Whatever you expected: Go bigger.
That final confrontation of the novel was excellently handled, and leaves the reader with a bit of a blown mind. Personally, I am not sure where the series can go from this. David Annandale's Watchers in Death has a big task ahead of it to continue on from that cataclysm.

The Beast Must Die is an excellent book. The series needed it, both in regards to plot, reveals, resolutions of subplots and moment to moment action. Seeing the Imperium act as a truly united force against the biggest threat since the Heresy was glorious, especially after all the backstabbing previously. Of course, there are still intrigues going on behind the scenes, but they are secondary here. The Beast Must Die, or all shall fall.

The Beast Must Die on Goodreads
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Info: Back in Action!
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This is just a quick info post, rather than a review. Sorry to disappoint!

I have been on vacation in the United States for the past month. As of this week, I am finally home again. There have been some problems with my flight back getting canceled and everything going wrong that possibly could, bar crashing. Yes, they also lost my bag - what joy!

Either way, I am back and exhausted. I got a lot of reading done over the past weeks, however, and looking forward to reviewing most of it over the coming week or two, depending on how quickly I can recover from airport-PTSD and jetlag. I typed up a few relatively short reviews on Goodreads while I was away, but did not have access to this blog to post them here, and some need rewriting/expanding before I will share them further. Besides, I am not used to QWERTY keyboards (we've got QWERTZ in Germany, which is very different when it comes to punctuation!), so I probably typo'd a lot.

Anyway, I have returned to my normal work environment, and will keep you posted.

Some of the books I read and plan to review here:


And I still have Warcraft by Christie Golden and The Jewel and Her Lapidary by Fran Wilde left over from before my trip, which I may or may not tackle. I have a bunch of thoughts on both, but the further they fall behind, the less likely I will be able to write a coherent review of either.

Currently I am reading Michael J. Sullivan's Age of Myth (or rather, listening to the audiobook!), Yoshiki Tanaka's second Legend of the Galactic Heroes novel, Ambition, and Tallarn: Ironclad by John French, as well as a bunch of comics (which I occassional write notes on over at Goodreads, but don't feel competent enough to review in earnest). Without having finished Age of Myth or Ambition yet, I can honestly say that both live up to my expectations (so far) and are well worth reading. Looking forward to reviewing them soon!

That's it for the "quick" info post. Here's hoping I can wrap my head around all those reviews asap!
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DarkChaplain's bookshelf: read

The Dragon Engine
Tomb Raider II #7
Star Wars #22
Star Wars: The Force Awakens Adaptation #3
Deathwatch: The Last Guardian
The Harrowing
Whacky
The Awakening
Blackshield
Poe Dameron #5


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