Writers Reading is back this friday with Stephanie Burgis which comes out in the UK this weekend! (1st August) and in the US spring 2011. You can find out more about the book and read a short extract here, personally I think it sounds great fun and can't wait to get my hands on it.
Here are two snapshots from my childhood:
One: I’m nine years old, walking back to my cabin at summer camp. As usual, I’m reading as I walk…and this time, I end up completely tangled in a vollebyall net I hadn’t even noticed, because I was so absorbed in The Count of Monte Cristo.
Cue lots of (friendly) laughter from my cabinmates…but absolutely no change in my habits. In the future, I’ll end up walking into poles and collecting bruises for exactly the same reason. I just can’t stop reading no matter what the danger.
Two: I’m eleven years old and spending two weeks at music camp, supposedly focusing on nothing but the piano. I have to spend two hours a day locked in a practice cabin, actively practicing the entire time - and yes, I really do have to do it because there are adults standing guard, listening out for kids who’ve either stopped making music or tried to sneak out. (There are more similarities than you might expect between music camp and prison…)
I love music, I really do…but I love reading even more. I prop The Prisoner of Zenda on the piano and noodle carelessly around on the keyboard, making the requisite amount of musical noise, while I devour swordfights and adventure. When I hear the scuffling sound of an adult’s footsteps on the leaves outside, I hastily shove a book of Bach inventions on top of my paperback and gaze at the music with an air of deep artistic intensity. Then, as soon as the footsteps move away, I dive straight back into the world of identical twins, doomed romance, and really, really great fight scenes.
In my life, a lot of things have changed. I’ve moved from one country to another, been a musician, an academic, a student, a full-time writer and a mom…but one thing has never changed. Everywhere I go, I always bring a book with me, just in case I get a chance to read. And I’ve never once regretted it.
Good morning, Ravenous Wednesday Regulars and any new guests we have amongst us today! If you're new, belly up to the bar and ask for your favorite beverage (if you're a regular, you know the drill and where I hide all the alcohol). In honor of our guest today, we also have a full range of dim sum (hot pork bun, anyone?).
Today is one of our special guests in that she is not a Ravenous Romance author. However she is a staunch supporter of RR and a frequent visitor on RR Wednesdays.
I have known Lisa for many years; she is, in fact, largely responsible for my love of reading and for introducing me to Classic Star Trek via the Trouble With Tribbles episode. So it's a pleasure to host her here today and I'm hoping her post on gender expectation and dynamics will provoke some interesting conversation! Lisa's debut novel, Rock Paper Tiger, has been favorably reviewed in Publisher's Weekly (Starred review!), the New York Times, and the Boston Herald, just to name a few. Most recently RPT received a little blurb in (wait for it) the July 30th issue of Entertainment Weekly. Can we give a WOOT for Ms. Brackmann? A SQUEEE will do nicely too.
And, as you can see, her cat Ghost likes it too! Yes. I really did have to include this picture. :-)
Here's a brief blurb on the book:
Iraq vet Ellie McEnroe is down and out in China, trying to lose herself in the alien worlds of performance artists and online gamers. When a chance encounter with a Uighur fugitive drops her down a rabbit hole of conspiracies, Ellie must decide who to trust among the artists, dealers, collectors and operatives claiming to be on her side – in particular, a mysterious organization operating within a popular online game.
And now on with the post! Please welcome Lisa Brackmann!
I know I shouldn’t start a post with a disclaimer, but I think I have to start this one with two.
Here I am, your guest on Ravenous Wednesday, and my book is not romance, erotic or otherwise. ROCK PAPER TIGER is a quirky thriller, character-driven suspense.
Second disclaimer: I don’t intend this post as any kind of reviewer bash. I’ve gotten a lot of positive and insightful reviews ((rather than flogging them here, if you’re interested, check out my website). It’s been one of the most gratifying things about the publication process—feeling that my work has connected with others, both those who read professionally and those who read for enjoyment.
Okay, I hope that’s sufficient disclaiming. Because among the reviews I’ve gotten for the book, there were a few lines from reviewers that had me scratching my head, and that I think might point to some larger issues in gender dynamics that would be interesting to discuss.
My main character, Ellie, is a twenty-something woman, lost in Beijing. She’s an Iraq war vet, recovering from traumatic injuries, physical and mental, and coping not very well with getting dumped by her husband, whom she followed to China and who has left her for a Chinese woman (who presumably lacks Ellie’s considerable baggage). Ellie is unhappy, unstable and barely hanging on to a fragile new life she’s trying to create out of the ruins of her old one. Her sort-of boyfriend, the artist, Lao Zhang, is more of a “Friend with Benefits” than a real lover, and that’s as much as Ellie wants, or at least as much as she can cope with. A chance encounter with a dissident Uighur fugitive crashing at Lao Zhang’s place drops her down a rabbit hole of conspiracies, and Ellie finds herself on the run, chased by Chinese and American agents whose motives and loyalties she can only begin to guess. Her only clues come from a secret society operating within a popular online game—and she doesn’t know who the players are, or what game it is that they’re really playing.
So that’s the background.
I’d be lying if I said that I don’t mind negative reviews—you know, we all want to be perfect and our every sentence loved, right? But I don’t expect that everyone is going to love my book or even like it. Heck, I doubt if anyone could beat me up about deficiencies in my work as much as I can beat up myself.
Where I do get confused is when a reviewer misinterprets my intentions—when I’m being misread, in the literal sense of the word.
I wonder, is it me? Did I not write that clearly? Am I letting something out of my head that I didn’t mean to? Where did we go wrong here?
One of the reviews that had me the most perplexed was one that stated I had portrayed Ellie as “sexy” and yet the book is “curiously chaste” and that, well, most of the men in it aren’t very nice, or are at best, “idealized.”
I’m guessing “idealized” refers to the artist, Lao Zhang. I can’t really discuss this without giving away too much of the plot, but, yes, he’s idealized. He’s hardly in the book; he’s “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” and that’s the only way an idealized partner can exist, in the fantasy space of your own head. We’re free to create whatever version of him we want to, like an avatar in an online game.
Let me state what my actual intentions were. I didn’t intend for Ellie to be a “sexy” character at all. I described her as being cute, in a standard, all-American kind of way. She goes off to war as a 19 year old, and in her own words, she fucks around (and the language here is intentional—more on that later). She finds a regular partner in the man who will become her husband, Trey, but their relationship begins in a dangerous, poisonous atmosphere, where violence and abuse are embedded in the environment.
It’s a war zone. On top of that, think Abu Ghraib.
By the time Ellie gets to China, she is injured in body and soul, fearful of intimacy both sexual and otherwise, trying to find a place in the world at the same time that she pushes away any kind of real connections. She spends a lot of the book questioning her relationship with Lao Zhang, what it actually means, whether he really cares about her and how much she should risk for their friendship.
She’s a mess. And I’m trying to understand how this translates to “sexy.”
Is it because she’s able to find sexual partners in a war zone? I mean, you’re in a situation where the ratio of men to women is something like six to one (at best), you’re young, you’re reasonably cute—not so hard, right?
Is it because she talks about sex in terms of “fucking”? Is that sexy talk?
Or is it simply because she’s described as being physically attractive (if not a knockout beauty)?
Is being interested in sex on certain terms “sexy”? Is not being interested in sex when you’re running for your life through Bumfuck China “chaste”?
To me, “sexy” implies not just physical attractiveness (if at all), but a certain confidence in the expression of one’s sexuality, plus, an intention of engaging with others in a sexual way.
I wonder if with this I’ve hit one of those weird, gendered walls that I sometimes encounter and that still surprise me. Though I’ve had really awesome, insightful reviews written by men, the few that have had me shaking my head, going, “huh?” were written by men, and the “huh?” aspects always seemed to deal with the main character and with gendered notions of femininity, sexuality and appropriate behavior.
One of my favorite mixed reviews went something like this: “She (Ellie) exists in a drunken, drugged haze, constantly drops the F-bomb and uses all manner of gutter language, and she doesn’t care who she sleeps with.”
Well, okay, then! Now that we’ve hit for the whole “Madonna/Whore” cycle, let’s move on to the “gutter language” discussion.
A few reviewers mentioned Ellie’s R-rated language, and I’m pretty sure not a single one of them was a woman.
I found some support in this notion I had that the reaction to Ellie’s profanity might be a gendered response when I came across this review of Chevy Steven’s debut,STILL MISSING, which is a big hit for her and St. Martin’s Press.
I’m not going to review her book (no book reviews for this debut author), but I’ve read it, and I’ll tell you a little about it.
STILL MISSING deals with a 30ish realtor, Annie, who is kidnapped by a sexual predator and held captive in a mountain cabin for a year. We know all this and we know that she escapes on the first page, because she’s telling the story to her shrink. We find out that her during her year in captivity, she was horrifically abused, beaten and raped. Much of the story is about her life afterwards, how the trauma affects her, how she is and is not able to heal.
What I found admirable about this book is that it in no way eroticizes her ordeal—there’s nothing prurient about it. The story is brutal and unpleasant, and it doesn’t hide the unpleasantness under a veneer of “Happily Ever After.” Annie will never be the same, and the central question of the book is, how does one mend after an experience like that? Is recovery even possible?
You can definitely argue the plusses and minuses in STILL MISSING—what works and what doesn’t, is it misogynistic or isn’t it, lurid or no? I am not going to get into any of that. But I will mention a few statements the (male) reviewer made that had me flabbergasted.
First: “Early in the novel, I wondered if its intended audience was mostly men, because, let's face it, men are more likely to rush out and buy a rape fantasy than women.”
Um.
I don’t even know what to do with this statement.
But I will try to unpack it.
First, I’ll go out on a limb and say that rape fantasies—emphasis on fantasy here, people—are popular among some women as well as some men. Not not NOT actual rape, but fantasies of dominance and submission.
And, did I mention the “not erotic” aspect of the storytelling in this book? I mean, we all have our kinks, and it’s possible that I just don’t have this particular one, but, at no time during my reading of STILL MISSING did I go, “Oh! This is a rape fantasy that I’m sure many men would enjoy!”
Please, men, read the book and tell me if you got off on it. I know I didn’t. And I really don’t want to think that men rushed out and bought the book because it’s, you know, “sexy.” You could make the case that it’s an examination of a certain kind of sexual kink, but STILL MISSING goes out of its way to make that kink the opposite of “sexy.” Even if you bought the book with an expectation that it’s going to be good, kinky fun, I can’t believe you’d feel that way after reading it.
And if you did, I’m calling the cops.
The next thing that flabbergasted me:the main character, Annie, is described as having “a potty mouth.” The reviewer concludes that his main objection to the book was, in fact, its “gratuitous profanity,” and, I quote:“I am far from a prude (ask anyone), but even in this world of dirty talk I think there are words we'd rather not have to wallow in when we're curled up at home with a book…Is this deluge supposed to make us think Annie is hip or cool or sophisticated? Do Stevens and her editors think this stuff (a synonym they should have considered) sells books? Not to me.”
Oooh-kay. We have a main character who was abducted, imprisoned, raped, beaten, starved, otherwise abused, and finally escapes to find that her entire life is in ruins. She’s, you know, just a tad pissed off about all of this. What is she supposed to say?
“Oh, phooey! My life is really stuffy.”
Yeah, that works.
I ask myself, if this were a male character, would his use of profanity be called into question? Would it be considered inappropriate expression? Or is it somehow worse if women are the ones dropping the F-bomb?
I should mention here that a prominent female reviewer objected to Annie’s profanity as well. I will also say that I totally didn’t notice the profanity, or if I did, it seemed completely appropriate to me. Again, your mileage may vary.
So, UnBound, Ravenous Wednesday Peeps…here are the questions I pose to you:
What is “sexy”? Does it imply agency over one’s own desire, or is it all in the eyes of the beholder? “Gutter language,” more okay for men than for women? Is female anger less acceptable than male, and is the expression of it therefore somewhat confusing to certain readers?
Discuss!
Lisa Brackmann has worked as an executive at a major motion picture studio, an issues researcher in a presidential campaign, and was the singer/songwriter/bassist in an LA rock band. She still takes pride in her karaoke-ready repertoire of bad pop hits and an embarrassing number of show tunes. A southern California native, she lives in VeniceCA and spends a lot of time in Beijing, China. Her three cats wish she’d stay put.
Well, as fearless leader, or whatever i may be today, i thought it was about time I checked in and stopped neglecting you all. I am still not home after harrogate. Tomorrow i will have to deal with the real world but right now i am lurking for a while longer in the slightly north (there's another half a country past Leeds y'know). I am returning home this afternoon.
MangaCat and i arrived in Leeds just in time to join Vince and Sarah Pinborough and co for lunch, which was really good fun. We then basically spent the entire weekend in the various bars of the Crown and wandering off for food, just enjoying the superb company of fellow unbounders (although Keith actually did stuff) and some lovely people from the crime writing world. Steve Mosby, John Rickards and Jeremy Duns were all kind enough to give up their time to be interviewed Which will be coming out over the next week or so here.
I apologise that the alt.fiction podcast is going to be a day or so late this week but in spite of doing very little really except for laughing and talking, i managed 3hrs sleep between 6am Friday and midnight Sunday so whilst now feeling somewhat restored the complexities of pod bean are still beyond me.
There will be more about the actual event from the lovely Keith but he may also need a few days to recover since he did everything while we lounged and chatted.
Thanks to everyone for making us feel so welcome a little outside our usual genre and Harrogate will be one of my priorities next year so see you then if not before.
Enforcer Omnibus Crossfire, Legacy, Blind By Matthew Farrer Pub: Black Library.
I’m going to state right away I really like the cover. Although the pistol is a little odd. Glad to say the cover is not the only thing to like. Enforcer collects the three books of the Shira Calpurnia omnibus; Crossfire, Legacy and Blind as well as some bonus material for each. Set in the 40K universe each book centres around a case investigated or judged over by Calpurnia. She is an Adeptus Arbiter, one of the police of the Imperium. Tasked wityh upholding the Imperial Law and the will of the Emperor, the books centre around human corruption, desires and failing, rather than the more exotic threats of alien or chaos. I’m going to go thought each book separately, and then do some sort of conclusion.
Crossfire
Crossfire opens with Arbitrator Shira Calpurnia’s first few days on the planet of Hydraphur. Newly appointed as an arbiter senioris, Shira is the victim of a botched assassination attempt, and is tasked with hunting down whomever ordered the hit, as well as safeguarding the Mass of Balronas, a planet wide event, and the centre of much political wrangling amongst the noble classes. The investigation is persistently stymied by both the interference and non cooperation of both agents of the Imperial Church and the noble houses.
I’ll leave it there and try not to give to much more away. Crossfire wraps the action around the central mystery very well. The key players are not obvious until they reveal themselves and the plot holds together well. The chapters alternate between a brief page to two page description of what the correct religious abeyances for the day are to be and the continuing investigation. The story is brim full of nuggets of background information and little touches that not only ground the piece in the 40K universe but also make it a book centred far more on the daily life of the Emperor’s servants than more action packed blades and bullets affair. Crossfire is the largest book of the collection, but maintains pace thought before reaching a satisfying conclusion.
Calpurnia herself is a very well drawn character. Driven by an overriding sense of duty she maintains the Emperor’s Law with iron resolve. Wrong footed by the unfamiliar surrounding she is on edge and wary, and on the catch up, but does not let that stop her.
Bonus Material
Going to mention this once and once only. The additional material is not particularly stunning. While providing insight into the world of the Imperium, it does not always have direct bearing on the story and feels superfluous at times. It’s not that it isn’t a well written and presented it is just oddly placed.
Legacy
I have a confession to make. Legacy threw me, and I never quite settled into the book as I did with Crossfire. I was expecting the story to follow Crossfires template of action violence and a mystery. Legacy changes pace and order, in a good way, but one that makes you stumble jumping from one book straight to another. It also focuses much less around Calpurnia than the first book does.
Legacy revolves around the inheritance of a Rouge Traders charter. In the early days of the Imperium these were granted to allow ships to fly into the uncharted galaxy beyond the expansion of the Great Crusade (Everyone read my background piece yesterday? Keeping up? Good) and have been passed down through families ever since. Ungoverned by Imperial rule the Rouge Traders believe themselves to be a law unto themselves and look down upon the Imperium. The charters are not only legal documents but also significant relics from the dawn of the Imperium.
When the Rouge Trader Hoyyon Phrax dies his fleet must return to Hydraphur for the charter to be passed on to the Phrax heir. Matters are not quite so simple however. The masters of the fleet are not willing to accept the leadership of Phrax’s true heir, whom had left the fleet as a child and been brought up on a distant planet by his mother. The masters hatch a plan to create an heir of their own and inherit through false means.
The inheritance of the charter has brought factions circling around the true Phrax heir, determined to take some share in the power he is soon to hold. Even the Imperial Church believe themselves to have a claim on the charter, seeing it as a holy relic, the ownership of which would increase the standing of the cathedral of Hydraphur. These to factions wage a subtle was of information and manipulation in order to further their own ends.
Trapped in the middle of all this is Calpurnia, working in the unfamiliar role as judge over the inheritance, wrestling with both millennia of legal procedure as well as the separate factions.
Legacy starts with a fantastic opening scene, which wrong foots the reader for what is coming next. The major plot is dealt with well but as mentioned it takes a little while for the reader to get into the swing of it. Knowing what to expect means it probably won’t be such a leap, and certainly don’t hold it against the book. The book moves between the preparations of the two Phrax heirs, and Calpurina, coming two a head when Calpurnia passed judgement over the case.
The book continues the immersive feel of Crossfire and is very well written, and the plot and subplots holding the attention throughout. While I’ve given the book a bashing for the sudden lack of action the scenes that are in there are amazing. I’ve already mentioned the opening, and there is a truly grisly battle on a starship. The finale is suitable explosive as well, coming a little bit out of no where in terms of it’s scope.
Blind
Blind returns to a format similar to Crossfire, with Calpurnia at the centre of an investigation. There is a huge swing of pace and perspective in the piece and it is a welcome change.
Blind is set almost exclusively on an Astropaths space station. These psychers transmit and receive messages through the horror of warp space. When the Master Astropath is murderd the Arbiters launch an investigation, headed by Calpurnia.
Calpurnia has been left a changed character from the events of Legacy, and has been stripped of her rank following the events of that book. On her way to her own trial she is temporarily restores to arbiter senioris, to conduct the investigation. Beset by doubts, as well as the strange influence of the witch tower, Calpurnia needs to not only find the killer, but also contend with the factions vying for the position of Master.
Much like Crossfire, Blind combines mystery and action in a fantastic pairing. The killer remains hidden until the very final pages, and the action is kept refreshingly constant after Legacy.
The station is beautifully realised and is a haunting setting, and the home of some disturbing characters. The Astropaths themselves and their psychic abilities are well presented, as is the increasingly conflicted character of Calpurnia herself.
I enjoyed Enforcer quite a lot, and will certainly be rereading it soon. I also have my fingers crossed that we’ll get to read more about Calpurnia in the future. Once you’ve read the book take a step back though and look at Calpurnia and the world she is in. It remains a horrific place, and Calpurnia would struggle to be even an anti hero in any other setting.
In the 40th millennium the realm of man stretches across the unimaginably vast distance of galactic space, stretching form rim to rim, and riddled throughout the spiral arms of the Milky Way. And just about now you can let go of everything nice in traditional sci-fi. Even without outside influences humanity as presented in the 40k universe would be a severely twisted group, and humanity is anything but alone amongst the stars. Across the depth of space many enemies wait; Brutal Orks, literally bred to fight, travel from world to world in search of constant conflict and war. Eldar, the last scions of a dying race ply the space ways in giant ships of living bones, manipulating events over a timescale other races can not even encompass, while running from a God birthed out of their own hedonistic desires. The Dark Eldar who hunt other races, dragging whole planetary populations to their shadowy realm as slaves and torture them to death. Chaos reaches out it’s corrupting grasp, and twists the very fabric of space and time. The mechanical Necrons, dormant for eons, the last remnants of a race that almost destroyed the galaxy have awoken, determined to scour all life. Tyranids, bio engineered creatures from outside the galaxy, whose only goal is to devour, stripping planets bare of life in their wake. And finally Tau, a race only emerging recently into the galactic stage that may or may not be controlled via pheromone manipulation, and who are creating their own empire, absorbing other races, willingly or not. Trumpeting a creed of “the greater good” they subject non compliant races to sterilisation and concentration camps. And these are but the prominent races. Many, many, more have been hinted at or mentioned in passing.
Once again 40K fiction tends to centre around the struggles faced by humanity, so it’s time for a detailed look at the Imperium of Man. Prepare for future history. Where we’re going we don’t need roads, but you will need whatever weapon comes to hand.
Millennium18-M23 Humanity began it’s climb to the stars during the Dark Age of Technology. With the discovery of the Warp, a space parallel to our own that allowed faster than light travel and communication, the human race spread across the galaxy. Aliens were brought to heel where encountered and humanity lived in a time of plenty, and marvel. Warp space was not empty however, it was a realm of demons, and monsters. As humanity evolved into a fledgling psychic race the dark powers of chaos were drawn to the human race.
M23-M30 Storms wracked the realm of the Warp severing contact and travel between human worlds. Humanity regresses, and is assaulted on all sides by it’s enemies.
M31 The Emperor of Man, a warrior and psycher without peer, emerges amongst the tribes of Terra, and creates the first Space Marines, genetically modified supper human warriors, before conquering the warring factions on Terra and expanding his conquest to the skies. The initial stages of the Space Marine program led to the creation of 20 Primarches, who shared some of the Emperor’s genetic material. Created from his own flesh the Primarches were snatched from the Emperor by the powers of the warp and flung across the galaxy. As the great crusade expanded the newly founded Imperium of Man the Emperor was to rediscover his children. Where the Primarches had fallen to earth they had risen as great leaders and warriors, reaching maturity at an accelerated rate, and becoming towering pinnacles of men. Some, most notably Mangus the Red and Sanguinus showed changes that marked them out even further from their fellow man. The first of these lost sons was Horus. Even as more of his brothers were discovered Horus remained the closest to the Emperor. Each Primarch took his place at the head of a Space Marine Legion, created from his genetic template. While a pale shadow of their progenitors these warriors still stood high amongst humanity, both less and more than the people of the Imperium.
The Great Crusade spread across the galaxy. A secular mission glorying in the majesty of humanity, the crusade negotiated with the newly discovered planets, but was prepared to conquer by force where resistance was met. The galaxy became a warzone as Space Marine Legions led the charge against non compliant worlds.
As the Great Crusade progressed the Emperor retired from the leadership of the advance and returned to Terra. In his stead Horus was declared Warmaster. The events that followed were to change the course of the Imperium forever.
Horus turned his back of the light of the Emperor and declared himself rebel and traitor, siding with the powers of Choas, the inhabitants of the Warp. Horus did not fall alone and he bought half of his brothers and their Legions with him.
The Warmater, now champion of the Chaos Gods made his way to Terra, and bought warfare and siege down upon the continent spanning edifice of the Emperor’s Palace. The fighting was unimaginable fierce and brutal as brother fought former brother. As his Legions breached the walls of the Palace and held victory in their grasp Horus, commanding the battle from his spaceship, lowered the shields around his command barge. This was the opportunity the Emperor had been waiting for and he teleported aboard, accompanied by loyal Primarches and Space Marines.
In the confusion of the teleport, and the twisted maze of Horus’s ship the assault force was split. It was the Primarch Sanguinus that found his traitor brother first. The two fought a bitter battle but Horus overcame his brother, killing him. It was then that the Emperor discovered the pair. Father and son fought in a titanic duel, that resulted in Horus’s death. The loss of their leader broke the forces arrayed against the loyalist ground forces and they fled. The Imperium had won, but the victory was hollow. The traitor Horus has dealt the Emperor an almost mortal wound. The Emperor’s servants interned the barely living body of their master into the Golden Throne. And it is there he has stayed kept alive through arcane technologies, unmoving, and unspeaking.
M31-M41 In the wake of the Emperor’s sacrifice the Imperium changed. The Emperor became deified, worshiped as God and ruler of mankind, a defender against the darkness of the warp and the horrors of the xenos, heretic, and daemon.
The Twelve Lords of Terra rule of the domain of man in the Emperor’s name. Trillions of souls spread across the unimaginable vastness of the galaxy pray to Him on Earth, and make the sign of the Aquila.
M41.
Welcome to what much 40K set fiction treats as the present. The following is taken from the first page of any 40K ‘verse Black Library books, and does far more than I can to encapsulate the Imperium and the surrounding universe in all it’s strange, gothic, glory.
“It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the human Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the Gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that mankind may never die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battle fleets cross the daemon infested miasma of the warp. The only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defense forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of countless battles, death, and honor among fighting brothers. “
And that’s where I’ll think I’ll leave the background section. Even more than it’s fantasy counterpart the 40K background is intricate and deep. The above is the barest skim over a huge amount of information.
The background created for 40k is immersive, and it’s quirks and grimness are only noticed when a step back is taken. As the above text suggest the Imperium is not a very nice place. At all. And remember, these are the good guys and the heroes, the shining beacons of light in the dark. If anyone wants to check on the levels of horror go and search for 40k on TV tropes. Interesting reading, but not for all ages.
Books
The books concerning the 40K universe can be split into two categories.
Firstly there is the relatively recent Horus Heresy series (the first book was released in 2006) which concerns itself with Horus’s rebellion. This series delves into the past of the universe and is continually shedding more and more light on what a previously been a hazy page or two of material. The overarching tale is one of epic proportions, but the “smaller” stories shine no less brightly. Even with the series due to stand at fifteen novels long by the start of next year the story is a long way from ending.
Secondly there is the “present” universe. Dealing with everything from the Imperial Guard (Dan Abnett’s fantastic Gaunt’s Ghosts series) the shadowy workings of the Inquisition (Mr Abnett once again) to the different chapters of Space Marines (Graham McNeill amongst many others) and other diverse races and characters the stories are more wide ranging than those covered in the Heresy series, and shows a much different Imperium.
The world of Warhammer 40,000 is a dark and terrible place and one that I recommend because of the fantastic books produced within it’s framework. All being well I will put up the long promised Enforcer review tomorrow and give a full example. Hopefully the last few posts have been useful and insightful to some degree.
solutely no change in my habits. In the future, I’ll end up walking into poles and collecting bruises for exactly the same reason. I just can’t stop reading no matter what the danger.
