This one took me a while to get through, and a while to review. Like, you know, about everything these past six months or so. Apologies.
I'm not feeling too good about this review, to be honest. John French is a solid author overall and I've enjoyed most of his works. His Warmaster audio drama script is one of my favorite pieces of Black Library fiction ever. Reading over this review, I feel like a fusion of Negative Nancy and Debbie Downer. So I want to preface by saying that I still consider Resurrection worth reading, despite my many gripes.
I'm not feeling too good about this review, to be honest. John French is a solid author overall and I've enjoyed most of his works. His Warmaster audio drama script is one of my favorite pieces of Black Library fiction ever. Reading over this review, I feel like a fusion of Negative Nancy and Debbie Downer. So I want to preface by saying that I still consider Resurrection worth reading, despite my many gripes.
The Story:
"Inquisitor Covenant and his warband go on the hunt for a traitor within their holy order.
War rages in the Caradryad Sector. Worlds are falling to madness and rebellion, and the great war machine of the Imperium is moving to counter the threat. Amongst its agents is Inquisitor Covenant. Puritan, psyker, expert swordsman, he reserves an especial hatred for those of his order who would seek to harness the power of Ruin as a weapon. Summoned to an inquisitorial conclave, Covenant believes he has uncovered such a misguided agent and prepares to denounce the heretic Talicto before his fellows. But when the gathering is attacked and many left dead in its wake, Covenant vows to hunt down Talicto and discover the truth behind the mysterious cult apparently at the heart of the massacre. In the murky plot into which he is drawn, Covenant knows only one thing for certain: trust no one."
War rages in the Caradryad Sector. Worlds are falling to madness and rebellion, and the great war machine of the Imperium is moving to counter the threat. Amongst its agents is Inquisitor Covenant. Puritan, psyker, expert swordsman, he reserves an especial hatred for those of his order who would seek to harness the power of Ruin as a weapon. Summoned to an inquisitorial conclave, Covenant believes he has uncovered such a misguided agent and prepares to denounce the heretic Talicto before his fellows. But when the gathering is attacked and many left dead in its wake, Covenant vows to hunt down Talicto and discover the truth behind the mysterious cult apparently at the heart of the massacre. In the murky plot into which he is drawn, Covenant knows only one thing for certain: trust no one."
The Review:
Resurrection feels like a tricky novel to rate and review. I was anticipating its release a great deal, it being one of the two new Inquisitor novels this year, and unlike Chris Wraight's The Carrion Throne with its original cast, John French's series promised to drag Inquisitor Covenant into the limelight. Covenant originally appeared in the Inquisitor specialist game by Games Workshop and, as a result, is about as venerable a character as Gregor Eisenhorn. Him and his henchmen deserved the best treatment possible, which I was sure John could deliver.
Sadly, I came away from it with mixed feelings all around. Resurrection was far from what I was hoping for, at times formulaic and at others pretty out there. Its biggest problem, especially when put up against the classic Eisenhorn: Xenos, is that it doesn't feel like a compelling, self-contained narrative. Many points set up future novels, like the sequel Incarnation, due in 2018. But in the process of setting up many branches, the core of the novel felt strangely out of focus. This I'd attribute mostly to how John chose to present "his" Inquisitor. Whereas Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn trilogy gives us a first person narrative from the man himself, and Wraight's Carrion Throne offers viewpoint chapters for Inquisitor Crowl, Resurrection places Covenant into an awkward position. He is a peripheral character in his own first novel outing, felt just beyond your field of vision, but rarely at its center. Understanding him as a character proves a difficult, nebulous endeavour - which I will assume was the author's intent. It just so happens that it did not manage to grip me as a result of that.
Now, I'm no stranger to having to puzzle things out on my own. Heck, that's one of the main reasons I adore Peter Fehervari's stories so much - they make the reader get involved and think through implications, hints and connect dots themselves. I just did not feel like French managed to pull it off here. There's too little to go on to form any halfway solid picture of Covenant. Even what is straight up said about him by his henchmen, like preacher Josef Khoriv, himself a character from Inquisitor, only gives the reader rough strokes while keeping his master mysterious. We find out tidbits about Covenant's past from second hand sources, biased ones at that, and everybody in his retinue seems to avoid discussing much of anything beyond the immediate action. What worked in short stories like The Purity of Ignorance, which I loved, or the Agent of the Throne: Blood and Lies audio drama, didn't really hit home here. Covenant is not the hero of his own novel, and that is a damned shame.
Likewise, Covenant's retinue didn't really appear to have a proper connection to the master. Josef would probably be the most interesting and fleshed-out character of the bunch, having been with Covenant for long enough to care for him, and even Idris, to a great degree. His character arc felt a bit stunted, though. It was still satisfying, but I expected certain things to happen that never did. The book also ended without really exploring the changes to his mindset properly, which I assume will be a larger point in the sequel.
Sister Repentia Severita meanwhile was, as is to be expected, almost entirely defined by her own zealotry and I never warmed up to her much. Koleg, in the Dramatis Personae only described as "Specialist", was a character I often forgot existed.
At least the Von Castellan siblings Cleander and Viola were great to read about for how they juxtaposed Cleander's selfdoubts and feeling of being out of place in his own role with Viola's inherent competence and meticulousness. I hope their roles will stay as interesting in the follow-ups.
On top of the issue of characters never feeling fully formed throughout, the plot has some problems as well. At the center, Covenant is hunting a radical colleague who has been creating daemonhosts left and right and may be part of the Horusian sect within the Inquisition itself. The Horusians share their origins with the Thorians, which Covenant himself counts himself among, but their purposes follow far more sinister lines. Where Thorianism concerns itself with the resurrection of the God-Emperor and follows more puritanical philosophies, the Horusians are radicals working towards harnessing Chaos to create an unholy avatar for the Emperor's soul. Resurrection tries to play off these two sides of the resurrectionist coin, and doesn't do a bad job at it when it takes center stage, but I felt that it could've used more time in the oven.
In fact, the whole Thorian angle didn't get put into the open until almost halfway through the book, and the Horusians only got declared as such, and their methods elaborated on, until later still.
Contrasting this with Eisenhorn again, where we saw various philosophies at play even in the first book, all feeling distinct and somewhat at odds with one another, all with their own methods, Resurrection felt relatively light on the matter. While it opens up with a great assembly of the Inquisition, telling us how everybody has his own perspectives, it fails to really show those ideas to the reader. It pays lip service to the concept, but doesn't spend the time to really drive the point home. Said assembly quickly devolves into rampant action due to a Horusian plot, forcing Covenant and co to make an emergency exit. Covenant also adopts his colleague Idris's acolyte Enna Gyrid in the process, as his old friend is lost in the radicals' plot.
This presents another problem to me, because we didn't get to spend much time with Idris and Enna at all, while the novel itself is overshadowed by Covenant's past alongside Idris. Again we learn very little about it all until absolutely necessary, which meant that I really didn't care as much about any of it as I should have.
While yes, I can see how fitting the lack of information would be in the wider shadow war theme within the Inquisition, it made for a bit of a frustrating read.
It didn't help that the initial action-heavy escape from traitor traps gets roughly repeated two more times throughout, one being at the very end. Every time we get close to some answers, some hints, some evidence, some revelations, things are cast in doubt again and force the protagonists to fight and run for their lives. In many ways, the book felt very reactive.
I don't mean to hold up Eisenhorn as the gold standard again, but both Resurrection and Xenos have their respective Inquisitors follow leads to uncover a great conspiracy. Both hunt their prey in their own ways, make alliances on the way, adopt new specialists to their retinues and have old friends and allies. Both end up in tough spots, but for some reason Covenant himself never really felt at risk to me. Gregor Eisenhorn got tortured in Xenos, while Covenant always seemed more or less aloof, in control, when I was hoping for more emotion even if he is a stoic bastard. Likewise, Eisenhorn hounded his quarry and got in its way on multiple occasions, figuring things out along the way. Covenant's findings seemed rather limited and most hints occured out of the blue, at the end of it all. He always felt just three steps behind his target until the climax. As a result, the Horusian antagonist felt even less substantial to me as the reader.
During the final chapters, there was also a big event taking place that, in the end, holds more implications for the setting as a whole than for the novel itself, and I am not entirely sure yet why it was in here to begin with. I assume it will be tied more closely into the resurrectionism theme in Incarnation, but right here, it felt like a jump from A to D rather than a more natural progression of events and character growth. It was one of the things that felt like they happened for some greater reason, rather than that the plot of this particular novel required it to be this way.
What I did like was how French managed to depict the inherent suspicion between colleagues within the Inquisition. Even Enna Gyrid isn't trusted into the inner circle, mind-probed by psyker Mylasa, kept at arm's length. Covenant's alliances with Lord Inquisitor Vult likewise are strained to the limit and riven by doubts. "Trust no one" really is the tagline here, and something that, thematically, Resurrection does better than Eisenhorn, where Gregor seems to have friends all around (outside of the more radical characters like Molitor). Resurrection showcases just how dysfunctional the Inquisition has become as an institution, how at odds with its own goals, how arrogant its members and associates. It presents us with the problems of giving a large group of individual agents nigh-unlimited authority while lacking a central, unifying purpose and code of conduct. In that regard, it is as grimdark as it gets.
I must also praise the use of "silver coins" throughout the book. Their symbolism wasn't lost on me, and gets only more important in hindsight. It is small details like these that add a lot of atmosphere to the book and underline the mystery without getting in the way of it.
But in the end, this is part one of what looks like it is going to be at least a trilogy, hopefully more. Many aspects here serve as setup for plotpoints down the line, and while that may prove to be a great strength as the series progresses, it hamstrings this particular novel as a one-off experience. I seriously enjoy the overall approach to the series that John has taken by spreading it out through various character-focused short stories, a mostly separate audio drama series in Agent of the Throne, and a core novel series. I just felt that the short stories did the nebulous mystery angle a good deal better than Resurrection, where I was hoping for a tighter, more insightful story.
Looking back once the series is over, it might turn out that my assessment isn't really fair anymore, in the broader scheme, but on its own, right now, I feel disappointed and disillusioned.
I sincerely hope that Incarnation proceeds to show us more, rather than handing us cliffnotes on the characters. I want to understand them on a greater level, get into their heads more thoroughly and anticipate plot developments a little better, rather than running up against twist A, B and C with little pretext. I wouldn't mind the sequel dialing back on action sequences either, as fun as they can be. Inquisition stories are most compelling to me when they focus on the investigations, the hunts, the philosophical dilemmas and individual conflicts between characters, be their friends or bitter foes.
Resurrection has a deal of all of this, but in my opinion needed to be tighter, more focused on making the cast feel real and well-rounded. It needed Covenant to stand up for himself more and dominate the pages rather than isolating himself in his office and remaining quiet and aloof. I have faith that John French will be hitting it out of the park with the sequel, now that the basics are mostly established, however. Growing pains, and all that. I'm sure that I will come to appreciate Resurrection more as John expands on his Horusian Wars in the coming years, and pieces fall into place. After all is said and done, it is undeniable that The Horusian Wars are going up against incredibly strong competition in its own niche of Black Library fiction, and doesn't do too badly in comparison either.
Sadly, I came away from it with mixed feelings all around. Resurrection was far from what I was hoping for, at times formulaic and at others pretty out there. Its biggest problem, especially when put up against the classic Eisenhorn: Xenos, is that it doesn't feel like a compelling, self-contained narrative. Many points set up future novels, like the sequel Incarnation, due in 2018. But in the process of setting up many branches, the core of the novel felt strangely out of focus. This I'd attribute mostly to how John chose to present "his" Inquisitor. Whereas Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn trilogy gives us a first person narrative from the man himself, and Wraight's Carrion Throne offers viewpoint chapters for Inquisitor Crowl, Resurrection places Covenant into an awkward position. He is a peripheral character in his own first novel outing, felt just beyond your field of vision, but rarely at its center. Understanding him as a character proves a difficult, nebulous endeavour - which I will assume was the author's intent. It just so happens that it did not manage to grip me as a result of that.
Now, I'm no stranger to having to puzzle things out on my own. Heck, that's one of the main reasons I adore Peter Fehervari's stories so much - they make the reader get involved and think through implications, hints and connect dots themselves. I just did not feel like French managed to pull it off here. There's too little to go on to form any halfway solid picture of Covenant. Even what is straight up said about him by his henchmen, like preacher Josef Khoriv, himself a character from Inquisitor, only gives the reader rough strokes while keeping his master mysterious. We find out tidbits about Covenant's past from second hand sources, biased ones at that, and everybody in his retinue seems to avoid discussing much of anything beyond the immediate action. What worked in short stories like The Purity of Ignorance, which I loved, or the Agent of the Throne: Blood and Lies audio drama, didn't really hit home here. Covenant is not the hero of his own novel, and that is a damned shame.
Likewise, Covenant's retinue didn't really appear to have a proper connection to the master. Josef would probably be the most interesting and fleshed-out character of the bunch, having been with Covenant for long enough to care for him, and even Idris, to a great degree. His character arc felt a bit stunted, though. It was still satisfying, but I expected certain things to happen that never did. The book also ended without really exploring the changes to his mindset properly, which I assume will be a larger point in the sequel.
Sister Repentia Severita meanwhile was, as is to be expected, almost entirely defined by her own zealotry and I never warmed up to her much. Koleg, in the Dramatis Personae only described as "Specialist", was a character I often forgot existed.
At least the Von Castellan siblings Cleander and Viola were great to read about for how they juxtaposed Cleander's selfdoubts and feeling of being out of place in his own role with Viola's inherent competence and meticulousness. I hope their roles will stay as interesting in the follow-ups.
On top of the issue of characters never feeling fully formed throughout, the plot has some problems as well. At the center, Covenant is hunting a radical colleague who has been creating daemonhosts left and right and may be part of the Horusian sect within the Inquisition itself. The Horusians share their origins with the Thorians, which Covenant himself counts himself among, but their purposes follow far more sinister lines. Where Thorianism concerns itself with the resurrection of the God-Emperor and follows more puritanical philosophies, the Horusians are radicals working towards harnessing Chaos to create an unholy avatar for the Emperor's soul. Resurrection tries to play off these two sides of the resurrectionist coin, and doesn't do a bad job at it when it takes center stage, but I felt that it could've used more time in the oven.
In fact, the whole Thorian angle didn't get put into the open until almost halfway through the book, and the Horusians only got declared as such, and their methods elaborated on, until later still.
Contrasting this with Eisenhorn again, where we saw various philosophies at play even in the first book, all feeling distinct and somewhat at odds with one another, all with their own methods, Resurrection felt relatively light on the matter. While it opens up with a great assembly of the Inquisition, telling us how everybody has his own perspectives, it fails to really show those ideas to the reader. It pays lip service to the concept, but doesn't spend the time to really drive the point home. Said assembly quickly devolves into rampant action due to a Horusian plot, forcing Covenant and co to make an emergency exit. Covenant also adopts his colleague Idris's acolyte Enna Gyrid in the process, as his old friend is lost in the radicals' plot.
This presents another problem to me, because we didn't get to spend much time with Idris and Enna at all, while the novel itself is overshadowed by Covenant's past alongside Idris. Again we learn very little about it all until absolutely necessary, which meant that I really didn't care as much about any of it as I should have.
While yes, I can see how fitting the lack of information would be in the wider shadow war theme within the Inquisition, it made for a bit of a frustrating read.
It didn't help that the initial action-heavy escape from traitor traps gets roughly repeated two more times throughout, one being at the very end. Every time we get close to some answers, some hints, some evidence, some revelations, things are cast in doubt again and force the protagonists to fight and run for their lives. In many ways, the book felt very reactive.
I don't mean to hold up Eisenhorn as the gold standard again, but both Resurrection and Xenos have their respective Inquisitors follow leads to uncover a great conspiracy. Both hunt their prey in their own ways, make alliances on the way, adopt new specialists to their retinues and have old friends and allies. Both end up in tough spots, but for some reason Covenant himself never really felt at risk to me. Gregor Eisenhorn got tortured in Xenos, while Covenant always seemed more or less aloof, in control, when I was hoping for more emotion even if he is a stoic bastard. Likewise, Eisenhorn hounded his quarry and got in its way on multiple occasions, figuring things out along the way. Covenant's findings seemed rather limited and most hints occured out of the blue, at the end of it all. He always felt just three steps behind his target until the climax. As a result, the Horusian antagonist felt even less substantial to me as the reader.
During the final chapters, there was also a big event taking place that, in the end, holds more implications for the setting as a whole than for the novel itself, and I am not entirely sure yet why it was in here to begin with. I assume it will be tied more closely into the resurrectionism theme in Incarnation, but right here, it felt like a jump from A to D rather than a more natural progression of events and character growth. It was one of the things that felt like they happened for some greater reason, rather than that the plot of this particular novel required it to be this way.
What I did like was how French managed to depict the inherent suspicion between colleagues within the Inquisition. Even Enna Gyrid isn't trusted into the inner circle, mind-probed by psyker Mylasa, kept at arm's length. Covenant's alliances with Lord Inquisitor Vult likewise are strained to the limit and riven by doubts. "Trust no one" really is the tagline here, and something that, thematically, Resurrection does better than Eisenhorn, where Gregor seems to have friends all around (outside of the more radical characters like Molitor). Resurrection showcases just how dysfunctional the Inquisition has become as an institution, how at odds with its own goals, how arrogant its members and associates. It presents us with the problems of giving a large group of individual agents nigh-unlimited authority while lacking a central, unifying purpose and code of conduct. In that regard, it is as grimdark as it gets.
I must also praise the use of "silver coins" throughout the book. Their symbolism wasn't lost on me, and gets only more important in hindsight. It is small details like these that add a lot of atmosphere to the book and underline the mystery without getting in the way of it.
But in the end, this is part one of what looks like it is going to be at least a trilogy, hopefully more. Many aspects here serve as setup for plotpoints down the line, and while that may prove to be a great strength as the series progresses, it hamstrings this particular novel as a one-off experience. I seriously enjoy the overall approach to the series that John has taken by spreading it out through various character-focused short stories, a mostly separate audio drama series in Agent of the Throne, and a core novel series. I just felt that the short stories did the nebulous mystery angle a good deal better than Resurrection, where I was hoping for a tighter, more insightful story.
Looking back once the series is over, it might turn out that my assessment isn't really fair anymore, in the broader scheme, but on its own, right now, I feel disappointed and disillusioned.
I sincerely hope that Incarnation proceeds to show us more, rather than handing us cliffnotes on the characters. I want to understand them on a greater level, get into their heads more thoroughly and anticipate plot developments a little better, rather than running up against twist A, B and C with little pretext. I wouldn't mind the sequel dialing back on action sequences either, as fun as they can be. Inquisition stories are most compelling to me when they focus on the investigations, the hunts, the philosophical dilemmas and individual conflicts between characters, be their friends or bitter foes.
Resurrection has a deal of all of this, but in my opinion needed to be tighter, more focused on making the cast feel real and well-rounded. It needed Covenant to stand up for himself more and dominate the pages rather than isolating himself in his office and remaining quiet and aloof. I have faith that John French will be hitting it out of the park with the sequel, now that the basics are mostly established, however. Growing pains, and all that. I'm sure that I will come to appreciate Resurrection more as John expands on his Horusian Wars in the coming years, and pieces fall into place. After all is said and done, it is undeniable that The Horusian Wars are going up against incredibly strong competition in its own niche of Black Library fiction, and doesn't do too badly in comparison either.
