Soul Hunter review

"Ave Dominus Nox"

Arron Dembski-Bowden is quickly becoming a favorite Black Library writer. It is easy to write 40K stories. They seem to let so many people do it. However, it is hard to write really good 40K stories, unless you are Dan Abnett, Graham Mcneil and Arron Dembski-Bowden.

Soul Hunter is a Night Lord novel and that alone have be excited to read it. Then I saw the author and was sure I would love it. I was not wrong. I am a big fan of the Night Lords in the 40K universe. A chapter that has a Primarch who was basically an evil Batman and uses fear as weapon along with bolter and blade is hard to dislike. There is just so little written about the Night Lords. It is pretty disappointing. Well it was, until now.

Soul Hunter follows the remains on the Night Lord's 10th company through some various 40K trials and tribulations. The major player is Talos an Apothecary turned quasi-leader of the 1^st Claw. See the Night Lords break themselves into Claws, which are basically just squads with a cooler name. The 10^th Company is greatly diminished at this time, barley half strength (when the book starts). They have been in the warp for thousands of years. These guys fought on Terra for Horus. They knew their Primarch. They are original Night Lords. How cool is that?

Anyway, Talos is the main character in this novel (and the two follow ups) and he is haunted by visions, much like his Primarch, Konrad Cruze. These visions start the Night Lords story in motion. This journey leads them home, into the service of the Abbadon and the beginning of his 13^th Black Crusade and beyond. Along the way you get the 40K action you love and it is done very well. The action sequences are paced like a summer action movie, but with better dialogue. Along with this you also get as bunch of Night Lord exposition, which is great! 

The best part of the book is the Night Lord interactions, dialogue and personalities. Yeah they have them. This is the first real Chaos Marine novel where they aren’t all a bunch of backstabbing, angry monosyllabic ass-hats. This is huge since outside of the Heresy novels, the majority of Chaos Marines act and sound like assholes. Just because they are traitors doesn’t mean they have to become horrid comic book stereotypes (See the Word Bearers series for typical bad Chaos Marine writing). These guys all have personalities and they are similar to the rest of the Astartes out there. They banter back and forth like the loyalists do in novels. Yes there are the occasional Chaos Marines, but they are far and few between. There is also a reason behind their anger, growling and yelling. Yes there is tension and aspirations of grandeur within the 10^th Company. However, the characters aren’t stepping over each other’s corpses to get ahead. These characters are traitors, but they are not bad for the sake of being bad. This makes the book so much better.

Major coolness in the novel……

• What happens after M’Shen kills Konrad Cruze is awesome!

• The Talon Master Zso  Shaal is mentioned and we get to see a bit of him before the events in the Lord of Night novel.

• The return to Nostromo

• Pre-13^th Black Crusade events

• There is little love for warp mutations and demons in the Chapter, and that is how it should be. I’m glad this wasn’t ret-coned.

• The same is true of the ruinous powers. The Night Lords are not big fans of them and shouldn’t be.

• There is more Konrad Cruze stuff here than anywhere else (so far). A take on his teachings, tactics, sayings, state of mind and actions is much appreciated.

• Abbadon is here, and he is represented as the major pronger that he usually is.

• The temptation of Talos by the Chaos pantheon is cool. I dug Nurgle’s response to him.

• The fact that they scavenge their equipment from fallen friends and foes is a nice and needed touch. They are a very forward thinking Legion with the whole reuse/recycle bit.

• This is a Company if Marines who fought on Terra and have seen 10,000 years pass (all while only spending 100 years in the warp).

• The taint of the warp is everywhere. Just look at two members of 1^st Claw, one is slipping toward the madness of Khorne and the other is semi-empathic. Cool to see the beginnings of these spirals. Hopefully, they lead somewhere and aren’t just filler.

There are two minor downsides to this book. The first is the ever present “normal” humans. They are always included to give some meaning, depth, understanding or whatever else you want to call it. Yes we need humans to show how bad ass the Astartes are. We need humans to show emotion in the story. We need humans so we can relate to the events. Blah. Blah. Blah. If they aren’t pivotal to the story leave them out. At least they aren’t a huge part, but they still are skulking around the story.

The second downer is the ending. It is fairly blasé. This is book one of three, so I shouldn’t have had my hopes super high. It is an ending and gets you wondering about the following books. The rest of the book is pretty damn spectacular, so I can overlook the boring end.

Arron Dembski-Bowden has delivered another great story, and even better it is about a personal favorite chapter of Space Marines. First it was Helsreach, then The First Heretic and now Soul Hunter. I really enjoy this guy’s writing and will follow him until he lays a few turds. Hopefully, that will not happen.