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| Boxtree paperback. |
+++++SPOILERS AHEAD++++++
When we left them back in Harlequin, Jaq and his companions had just secured the Eldar holy tome the Book of Rhana Dandra from the Black Library despite some herculean challenges and obstacles, but at a cost: Meh'lindi, the assassin paramour of Draco, was slain by Jain Zar. Nearly mad from grief, Draco is determined to use the Rana Dandra to get Meh'lindi back via temporal shenanigans.
Skimming through these misadventures in Shandibar they essentially culminate in the capture of a Harlequin Death Jester (seriously) whom they keep prisoner in their mansion basement (no really, they do). They are trying to learn where the webway portal is that the Harlequins arrived to Sabulorb from. They get this info eventually but a small ship full of Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marines stealthily lands next to their mansion and, well, shit hits the fan. They attack the mansion and although Draco's team managed to kill one, the Chaos marines capture Lexandro d'Arquebus the Imperial Fists captain and attempt to turn him to Chaos. To see how well their work has succeeded they send Lex back to the mansion to kill everyone and retrieve the book. Draco has the bright idea to put on the dead Chaos Marine's armor which changes color and shape to conform to... Draco's personality? Not sure exactly how (tzeentchian warpy stuff) but he now looks like the cover image for the first time in the whole trilogy (sans dreams and visions). There's a fight which leads to Draco removing the daemonic possession fron Lex and taking it on himself. They purge this as soon as possible. This full-fills a goal of his to make him qualify for becoming a member of the Illuminati.
From an interview with Ian Watson: "I did have a further Inquisition War novel in mind, because by the end of Chaos Child one of my characters was insane, another was hopelessly lost, and a third was dead, and I had come to care for the characters, so I thought I should get them out of these particular scrapes, even though in the world of 40K there aren’t exactly going to be happy endings in the usual sense, and all will remain whelmed in darkness. If I were ever to write such a book, for the sake of consistency it would really need to use the tech and organizational structures of the Inquisition, Harlequin, and Chaos Child, which mightn’t delight the games designers too much since almost 20 years has gone by in the evolution of the games." -Ian Watson
They leave the world that the webway deposited them out on, and using gemstones popped off of the cover of this sacred book as currency, they seek passage to a neighboring systemm. They end up on a world called Sabulorb. In particular they decide to hold up in Shandibar, a city which has a spaceport. To quickly sum up, Watson does quite a bit of world building in this place, even going so far as to come up with a dialect that the locals speak. We get to see some customs with the locals as well as how the local Arbites function and of particular interest how the customs of two rival churches of the Ecclesiarchy (Oriens and Occidens Temples) function. This last bit is particularly important as the trio arrives here just as a mass pilgrimage to see a public viewing of a holy artifact is occurring. It's a well written observation of the religious fanaticism of the 41st millennium that ends in a riot with a rather unfortunate death toll. And Jaq and his companions narrowly escape having a run-in with the local Arbites.
I am going to summarize most of this as quickly as I can: A thief, a woman named Rakel, makes the unfortunate mistake of breaking into the mansion that Jaq’s team has made their base of operations, and is caught by them. They are somewhat impressed by her, and Jaq is particularly impressed by how much she kind of resembles Meh'lindi. This turns into the most extreme example of Stockholm Syndrome to be found in the 41st millennium, they force her to join their outfit. They do this by manipulating her into receiving an injection of Polymorphine and telling her that she'll go into flux if she doesn't receive regular Psychic reinforcement from Jaq. To Rakel's credit she does a fairly decent job fitting into the group and her first few assignments are quite amusing reads. But she is indeed bound to them.
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| Boxtree HC edition |
Before they can deal with the Thousands Sons, the Arbites attack, and are woefully surprised to find the Chaos vessel. A battle breaks out which only gets worse when the Eldar show up. With the Arbites taking serious casualties they called in an Imperial Guard regiment that was at the space port and the fighting got even more intense. Taking the only page from the Rhana Dandra that Draco continues to care about, the party makes it's escape into the desert via a land train to find the webway gate. But in an added twist, the city is wiped out in a firestorm! A heatwave hits the planet due to the oddly inconvenient timing of the sun heating the planet up.
They race across the desert, fighting the heat, switching transport modes to camelepard. Narrowly escaping a genestealer cult, the party makes it's way to the webway. After hoping through a few more worlds, the first one is a planet being harvested by Tyranids (this was before the 2nd edition Codex: Tyranids before the process in which the hivefleets devoured worlds was properly codified, so this seemed oddly tame), and another world, Genost, in the middle of a massive civil war. A war that was apparently started by a renegade claiming to be the offspring of the Emperor. Clearly this was set up to be a subplot that would lead to a bigger story, but Draco is driven to complete his quest.
Arriving at the place in the webway that they needed to go, Draco conducts the ritual. The idea was for it to go like this:
Rakel's imitation of Meh'lindi would become sacred when Meh'lindi was reincarnated within Rakel -and when the Chaos Child stirred in the womb of the warp, sanctifying Rakel's sacrifice of herself and Jaq’s baptism of the new soul within her!
Yeah, it doesn't quite work out. The ritual works, but the sudden shock of being ripped from whatever afterlife existence she was experiencing was too much for Meh'lindi. Remember, she is a trained killing machine and despite being in an unfamiliar body she still puts up a hell of an attack. She kicks the crap out of the guys, whom she assumes are Eldar Phoenix Lords (that is what killed her after all) and while Jaq is trying to calm her down she incinerates his hand with a digital flamer leaving him in a very painful and distressed state. She flees into the webway, going to... who knows?
It's all too much for Draco who was already running off the rails. He snaps and the demon he thought he purged takes over his mind and he starts spouting out curses in Tzeentch's name. Hearing all that he needs to hear Lexandro blows Dracos brains out with his bolter. As a disembodied spirit Draco is also stuck in the webway and he watches his surviving companions, Grim and Lexandro, make their way back to the route that would return them to Genost.
- Did I like it? I did, but the ending was sour. Like some sort of odd grind house movie that stops with a shocking jolt. And the worst part is, the so-called "Inquisiton War" is not resolved in any way. Other than that Draco's part in it has come to an apparantly abrupt and violent halt. The calamity befallen the Eldar and the Harlequin Man in the opening of this book isn't resolved either. But I did like reading this book. It wasn't as dense as Harlequin was and was a fairly straight forward read. Watson seemed to have pulled back from the overt sexual themes but he still managed to work in a chapter called 'Orgy'. And yes, it takes place at an orgy.
- Was it hard to put down? Part of it, yes. It did drag in some places but it was a smoother read compared to Harlequin.
- Could I care about the characters? Yes. This story does a good job further developing Grim and Lexandro, and Jaq Draco also. The character I felt was the most interesting was Rakel. A largely 2-D character but one with a hopeless fate yet with so much potential. Ultimately she accepts the inevitably of her situation and agrees to sacrifice herself. Hers is a twisted story.
- Did the writer truly grasp how the 'world' of the 41st millennium works? Ian Watson was a master of the setting, as it existed in the early 1990s. Many of the concepts he explores in these books are still canon, while others not so much. It was a bit of a nostalgic trip to revist the 40k universe of the early '90s. For example seeing Tzeenchian Space Marines before the Rubric Marines replaced them in canon. And with the return of the 'Squats' to 40k, can we maybe get them reprinted without the Grill edits?
- Was I being talked down to? Compared to the previous books, no.
- How predictable is this story? Not hardly. It's an odd-ball of a novel series and this installment was not an exception. Sure, Draco was a damned character from the start, but I didn't imagine him dying in vain like he did. His story is indeed a tragic one, yet, even though his body is dead, his soul was saved from Damnation in the end. Granted, as a formless consciousness destined to haunt the webway, but hey I doubt he'll be bored...
- Do I recommend this book? Oh. Tough one. The first book, Inquisitor, can pretty much be read as a stand-a-lone book. The two sequels can not. But if you make it through Harlequin you're pretty much obligated to read this. It's a fun read, and the last 1/3 of the book is a pretty crazy ride. But, I would say only read this if you truly want to experience the original 40k Grim-dark. Because this is definitely it. Twists within twists, goals achieved but only at great sacrifice, etc. Tbese characters, Lexandro D'Arquebus, Grim, Rakel, Meh'lindi and Jaq Draco have literally put themselves through hell and... for what? -And that is the 40k Grim-Dark! And it's a tone a lot of the early Black Library material tried to copy. Especially the short stories that appeared in Inferno! Magazine. And yet, the Black Library has treated this trilogy (quadrilogy when you count Space Marine) as something they should shun or censor.. Sure, the canon has evolved from this era, but so what? Leave this work as an artifact of It's time. Weird, dark, sometimes humorous, but wildly unpredictable. Just like Rogue Trader was!
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| Black Library edition. |
From another interview:
"I found a piece of paper handwritten by me titled “INQ 4” which must be notes for a possible sequel to Chaos Child. “M’L pregnant”, says the paper first of all. That’s Meh’Lindi, my Assassin heroine. Was I affected by Ripley of Alien? No, no, now I remember! Meh-Lindi would be pregnant by Inquisitor Jaq, from the time when they copulated devoutly on board Tormentum Malorum. Next, Yes! “Jaq’s baby kidnapped by Tyranids; Jaq contacts the Hive-Mind.”And next: “Grimm rescues” and “Lex and Imperial Fists again.” Oh I see the way this is going. And finally: “Genost = Gnostic + Genes” (what does this imply?).
Omigosh, a complete story-line! Including a heroic rescue by Grimm the Squat—whom editorial idiot vandals turned into banal ‘Grill the Tech Priest’ for a reprint of my 40K short story “Warped Stars”, just because Tyranids ate all of the Squats subsequent to my novels.
No, no, I must not even think about writing this sequel. The games designer tech priests would ruin everything." -Ian Watson
