Review: Harlequin

Original mass market edition.

 This is a review of the 1st edition of Ian Watson's Harlequin.  The first edition was published by Boxtree in 1994. It was republished by Black Library around 2000-2001, but with editorial changes that were not approved by the author.  I am reviewing here the original edition. This is a sequel to the more renowned Inquisitor and Space Marine novels. 

This is the book that is probably the most notorious of Ian Watson's Warhammer 40,000 novels. I will elucidate more fully in the spoilers section, but first let me sum up what this story is about. 

This picks up 100 years after the end of the previous book. It starts off with a scene showing us that the internal secret civil war between Inquisitors is indeed taking place. We see the Inquisitor Firenze is still alive and well, but remembering nothing of his previous life having been mindscrubbed to the extent that he had to be retrained to be an Inquisitor. All this was after which he was implicated for his role in the purging of Stalinvast for which Jaq Draco has been branded a renegade. 

We then discover that Jaq Draco, Meh'lindi and Google are waking up after a self imposed stasis sleep aboard their vessel which they left a drift in the middle of nowhere space. There is a brief flashback that tells us that their Squat companion Grim was separated from them as they escaped from the Imperial Palace on Holy Terra. They decided to go into stasis for awhile in the hopes that everything would blow over. 

Silly Draco, in the 41st millennium nothing just "blows over"...

SPOILERS AHEAD! 

Draco, Meh'lindi and Google are woken up in their ship, the Tormentum Malorum, and go to the first place his Emperor's Tarot directs him to go, Luxus Prime.  It's a planet that is going through a civil war with the anti-establishment side being Slaaneshi cultists. (You know, because Ian Watson). Googol Vitali,  the Navigator, during his 100 year stasis sleep apparently dreamt about Slishy the Daemonette whom they encountered in part of a ragtag renegade warband in the Eye Of Terror (in the first book) and he is not in a good place. He has become ultra-creepy. Clearly he is compromised and Jaq is eager to replace him and acquire an Astropath. He does what he does best, and that's to approach the local Governor,  a debauched creep called Lagnost,  and use his Inquisitor station to try to get one of the Governor's Astropaths and a Navigator. It turns out that the Slaaneshi Cultist have made a point of killing any Navigator and Astropath they could find so as to keep word of their uprising from reaching anyone off world.

Agreeing to assist the Governor in eliminating the Slaaneshi Cultists Draco, Meh'lindi and Googol head back out into the warzone. Googol has really lost his marbles by this point, so much so that his yearning to find Slishy resulted in the materializatuon of a Daemonette that killed Googol by ramming her tail up and into his bowels. Eew. Also consider that this a Rogue Trader-era Daemonette too, the kind usually depicted with the feathery tails. It was a unique demise. Jaq wasn't fast enough in banishing the daemon back to the warp and Googol died in apparent bliss. 

Pretty much the next thing that happens is that a group of Squats showed up led by Grim the Squat. Jaq joins the reader in expressing his disbelief at the coincidence and convenience of this happening. They're in the middle of warzone, he and the rest of his entourage have been in stasis sleep for a hundred years, they were directed there by their tarot, and the galaxy is a seriously big place. How the heck did Grim find himself here?  Apparently Grim was hoping to reconnect with his old boss and choose the planet closest to the area of space he knew Draco was hiding out in. Crazy odds, yes?

Grim's recanting of the past one hundred years was actually fairly entertaining, particularly that he was married and had a whole life time to live before he knew he had to find Draco. Grim knows where there is a Navigator and they go and retrieve Azul Petrov before heading back to the Governor's palace. 

The Governor is now being very unfriendly at this point and Jaq sees no alternative but to kill him. It's an interesting scene, which results in Jaq taking the Governor's Astropath, Fenix, and leaving Luxus Prime to it's fate.  Fenix spends the next few weeks listening and deciphering the astropathic traffic and learns about the Inquisition's civil war between the Ordo Malleus and another unknown group whom we can surmise is the Ordo Hydra. Of particular note is that Inquisitor Firenze, Draco's old Proctor, is leading a force to stop a ritual that the Eldar are attempting to perform over the ruined world of Stalinvast.  Fenix also intercepts chatter of a renegade master of assassins,  Tarik Ziz, performing bizarre experiments on the planet Darvash. It was Tarik Ziz that performed the procedure that made it so the Meh'lindi could only turn into a Genestealer Hybrid when using polymorphine. She would very much like to kill him.

After discovering that their supply of truth serum has been disposed of, Meh'lindi and Jaq decide to interrogate Grim, because they just can't help but be suspicious of him. Turns out he has been in contact with The Harlequin Man Zephro Carnelian, who was their nemesis in the previous book. Grim goes on to inform them about the Illuminati (Inquisitors who have survived demonic possession) the divide between them and the Ordo Hydra and the crazy plot to gather up the Sensei who are the immortal sons of the Emperor in a plot to reawaken the Emperor into the Nu-Man* Grim points out the Illuminati are being assisted by the Eldar in the hopes that they can work together to defeat Chaos. Somehow Jaq buys all this and they free Grim.

They come up with a crazy plot to kill Tarik Ziz, and by the time they do reach him they discover that he is encased in a suit of Dreadnought armor. It turns out that he is more than willing to reverse Meh'lindi's augmentation, and after he does so (yeah, he performs surgery on her while in the Dreadnought suit. Honestly, I think this is the character I most want to see GW make a model of! The 30th Anniversary of this novel is a few years away, let's do it Black Library/GW!). They part on good terms, and Meh'lindi can now disguise herself as an Eldar. 

Black Library edition.

We get to see the origin of Harlequin Man, which was more interesting than I expected and, bonus, it features an appearance by Eldrad Ulthran. It's interesting to see him manipulating events as far back as this. We also see a ship to ship battle featuring Space Fleet era ships. It's a cool read and I got a big kick out of this stuff. This leads to us being introduced to Captain Lexandro d'Arquebus and the Imperial Fists who are there to back up Inquisitor Firenze** on his mad and zealous quest to kill Eldar, storm the webway, and raid The Black Library. 

The Eldar have an orbital community, sort of like a smaller version of a Craftworld, orbiting the now dead world of Stalinvast. This is what Firenze and the Imperial Fists are in the middle of sacking when Draco and his crew infiltrate the place and attempt to find the web way themselves. They are captured by the Harlequin Man and his Eldar companions. He reveals that he intends to have Jaq  possessed and then cleansed so that Jaq too can become an Illuminati, however this is all interupted by Lexandro and his Imperial Fists arriving upon the situation.  There is a very intense scene where Firenze and Draco encounter each other which results ultimately in Captain Lexandro seeing that Draco is less of a ravening madman than Firenze and he agrees to accompany Draco and his gang into the web way. 

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD

Ok, I just had to emphasize that the next part of this summary gets nuts. Crazy nuts. Before they entered the webway Fenix was killed by an Eldar Shurikan. Upon entering the webway, Azul Petrov has a vision of Fenix who leaves a vision of a map which some how Lexandro carves onto his third eye so that the group can find the Black Library. They are harassed and hounded by Harlequins, Howling Banshees and the Howling Banshee Phoenix Lord Jain Zar. All of Lex's men are picked off and his armor is rendered useless by the time they get to the Black Library. But not before Meh'lindi is brutally slain by Jain Zar. 

Utterly distraught, Draco's quest for the book, the Rana Dandra, gains additional urgency. Initially it was so that he could undo the plot of the Ordo Hydra but now he sees how he can use it to save Meh'lindi. They obtain the book, and it's just Draco, Grim and Lexandro left alive by the story's, somewhat abrupt, end. 

• Did I like it? Yes, more so than I feared I wouldn't. It's still plagued by Watson's weird penchant to compare things in a sexual sense, but I found it less sophomoric than the previous books. Weird I felt that way considering that a supporting character was basically anal-raped to death...
• Was it hard to put down? Although the story was compelling the constant questions were a bit grating. Also the continuing use of sexual organs by Watson as description devices gets a few eye-rolls, but all-in-all it was a compelling tale. 
• Could I care about the characters? Yes, but really I only cared about Meh'lindi, Grim and Lexandro. As stated in the beginning of the first book, Draco is supposed to be writing these stories, and having 1/6 of all the  sentences in this story ending with a question mark makes me want to break his fingers...
• Did the writer truly grasp how the 'world' of the 41st millennium works in the sense that it doesn't betray or retcon previously established (as I know it) lore? Watson has stated in interviews that Games-Workshop hooked him up with all the relevant game books, notes and White Dwarf magazines he needed for reference (and that he still has it all in storage). It's clear that he drew on this material heavily as I can pin-point precise issues of White Dwarf that he drew inspiration from (WDs 139-140 were heavily drawn upon for the Space Fleet material, WDs 105-106 for the Harlequins, WD 127 was probably dog-eared to death for the Eldar material in it (it's the best resource for Eldar material besides the 2nd edition era Codex: Eldar, which was more-or-less a port of WD 127 with additional material, so it's well understood why it would be dog-eared to death.). He definitely embraced the world of Warhammer 40,000 as presented to him and did a good, and pioneering, job melding it together. Maybe a bit less adult content, and far less questions, and this stuff would be more highly regarded. His understanding of the game rules and it's special abilities seem to sometimes falter. For example: the Howling Banshees tend to be able to warp in and out of the Webway just like the Warpspider aspect warriors can. If they were that good in the game they would be an auto-include in every Eldar army list!
• Was I being talked down too? No, but I was asked a lot of questions. Seriously, I think there are more sentences ending with question marks than there are sentences ending in periods. I found it a bit... ugh. I have to say, I got used to it but what a weird way to write a book. 
• How predictable is this story? Not very. It's a bit more straight forward than Inquisitor was. And I got to say,, it's actually refreshing to read a book this cavalier about killing supporting cast so brutally.*** 
• Do I recommend this book? Well, not to everybody. If you read Inquisitor, yes, definitely continue on. I enjoyed this one a bit more than the first one despite the loss of some characters I enjoyed ...and all the questions.  

*(Que Seinfeld's voice: "Newman!") 

**It didn't hit me until I read this novel to read his name as "Frenzy".

***I think the record is still being held by Dan Abnett for his book Fell Cargo. That was a blood fest of a book! 

All images in this post are (c) Games-Workshop and are used here without permission and for review purposes and should not be regarded as challenges to the copyright.