Penitent: Bequin: Warhammer 40,000, Book 2

Abnet writes fantastic characters, and the setting and plot of this book go hand in hand with his deep, interesting characters for a superb book. It’s the lore and adventure of a 40k book, with the mystery and uncanny spookiness of a mythic detective novel. Just excellent.

Voice. Dan Abnett's voice in this is so very different; maybe it was similar to Pariah (should have reread that instead of Eisenhorn) but it fits Beta wonderfully. It was a bit of a slow start, a few things happened that I took small issue with, mistakes that seemed too sloppy for the characters to make. But given the length of time its been between Inquisitor books I can expect a bit of rustiness and he makes up for it with even more skill and learned experience.Abnett does good stories but his true talent has always in the ability to show how (in)human these lowly creatures are in the grand scope of 40k. He does it better than anyone else on the BL Staff imo and Pentient is more of what you've come to expect from him. The details and how he describes xenos technology, the warp, everything that much of the genre takes for granted is really refreshing, injects some real life and feeling into his work.Now for specific stuff, I had notes but goodreads ate them so this will be rough. The bit about the numbers is truly impressive as well, the 1800s esotericism is completely my wheelhouse and I'm embarrassed to say I would have ended up one of the characters at the bar but the level of detail and effort involved with the numbers themselves is insane. I didn't even bother trying to fact check it as I tend to do, you'll know it when you get to it. If you have any interest at all this one book just get it, trust me its refreshing, different but still very much Abnett's 40k.

I found this book exciting. I like how it builds on the story and characters from the last book. I impatiently await the next one.

Not a lot of the two inquisitors, Ravenor and Eisenhorn, in.this one. However, great book and continuation of the.newer Bequin's story.

This was billed as the final chapter in the sagas of Eisenhorn, Ravenor, and Beta, book 2 of 2. We find out at the very, very end that this is now book 2 of 3, but given the existential threat they face it could be book 2 of "N." (More on this in the spoilers section at the very end of the review.)Dan Abnett is a prolific writer for the Black Library, and I thoroughly enjoy his works. He had his start in tabletop gaming like many of us did, and his earlier novels reflected the feel of dice in sweaty palms and the fickled effects of chance and fate on the outcome of characters and stories. (I would have loved to have played with Dan in one of his early campaigns.)His Space Marine novels have a gritty feel like the measuring of distance on a terrain board and the split second decisions that mean the difference between a fiery death by particle beam or mere scorches in your armor.This book is far closer to the Dark Heresy role-playing game in feel. There is darkness and shadow, and everything has a duality that was not as front and center in Dan's early novels. There are no easy choices, and Dan makes the ambiguity clear without bogging down the forward movement of the novel.Dan's characters are always central to his novels. He does an exceptional job at describing the characters' motivations, habits, and nuances. He makes them come alive, and they grow - not always in ways that you would approve of, but they learn, they stretch, and they grow.Dan tells the story through Beta's voice. She is not Ravenor. She is not Eisenhorn. Their novels were told through the lens of transhuman beings who bear the full burden of the future of mankind in the unkind stars, and they met their challenges toe to toe.Beta is both physically and emotionally more fragile. Don't get me wrong. She does some pretty amazing martial arts type fighting and cleverly uses the environment to win fights where the odds are against her in the novel.At times she is tenuous. Through it all, Beta is resolute. She is a true servant of the Golden Throne.Here are a few tidbits to get you started.The King in Yellow is almost ready to execute his master plan, millennia in the planning and preparing. As he approaches this ultimate goal, he starts shedding those organizations that have worked with him.Who is participating? Every Imperial and Traitor elements you can imagine and have seen in previous books by Dan.The ultimate goal is control of the entire galaxy. The stakes could not be higher. (Though the actual stakes are not revealed until the last few pages.)Beta starts with Eisenhorn and then transitions over to Ravenor's team. I will not go into detail, but the transition is completely logical and feels inevitable from the story's perspective.How does it end? If you really want to, see the spoiler below.This book might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoyed it. That said, I probably will not continue with the next book(s) in the series.** Beware Good Reader, Spoilers Follow **I am going to be completely transparent. Some of you have kept with me through hundreds of reviews, and I appreciate it.Sometimes, if I am interested in a book, but just cannot make up my mind, I read the last couple of chapters to decide if the ending is a good one. (Please forgive my heresy.)I pre-ordered this book. So, that was not an option. If I had been able to read the ending, I probably would not have read the book. The book was a good read, but the ending completely left the rails.Don't look any further if you want to read the book.After thinking hard and long, I decided to add this spoilers section. After I wrote the spoilers section, I went back and changed the rating from 5 to 4 stars. It was still a fun read, but after venting I realized that in my heart of hearts this is not a five star book.OK, the big reveal is that now we know what happened to Valdor.Yes, he is the King in Yellow. All those millennia ago when he left the Emperor's service as a disgruntled employee, well, he had a plan to become the greatest Chaos sorcerer of all time. Muh-hu-ha-ha! Muh-hu-ha-ha!Am I kidding?No, no, that is exactly what we find out.Additionally, Ravenor and Eisenhorn team back up, and we find out that the King in Yellow has been cloning Betas as part of his huge army to take over the galaxy from both the forces of Chaos and the Emperor. Oh, and the King in Yellow knows the Emperor's true name (it is millions of characters long that was encoded in that hex book Beta found in the last book).Valdor does not work for me as the uber-villain. Sorry. It just does not work for me. It is not because Valdor is incorruptible. The primarchs were corrupted. It is because in the three previous books involving Valdor that I read from the Black Library, he seems utterly unimaginative and incapable of something so grandiose. Valdor was simply a useful tool of the Emperor, devoid of anything special whatsoever.This plays into a complaint I have about the WH40K books in general.Let's be honest. The books started as backstory to the burgeoning miniatures market for Games Workshop.Is that an inherently bad thing? No, it's brilliant actually. Well done.That said, it does almost inevitably lead to some challenges for world building. If the world changes based on what happens with the newest additions to the miniatures rules then you will have to change canon.Once canon becomes fluid enough then it becomes impossible to suspend disbelief enough to "get into" the stories.The Emperor started off as an uber good guy, behind everything, but invisible to the average gamer.Then, we started having stories about the Emperor. Then, people started liking the Chaos legions and the foul, soul eating forces of the sea of souls.So, we had to make the Emperor into more of a gray character. He went from being the embodiment of the goodness of man and desire to survive and prosper, created through a mystic ritual in prehistory to a loathsome, misguided guy who happened to be an "eternal."Now, the Emperor has dropped even another notch down and is someone to be betrayed by his own creation.If you have read many of the WH40K books then this final twist might have seemed inevitable in retrospect, but I like my fictional heroes to be heroic. Dark forces that want to steal your soul and enslave people are bad. Alas, no longer in WH40K.WH40K and our two Inquisitors have become too gray for me to read at this point. There is no one to root for.You lost me.

Abnett shows again why his books are so beloved by fans of the franchise. beware once you start to read you won't stop untill the last page.

40k is a gothic scifi franchise. This particular book is 99% gothic, 1% scifi. They shoved a vanishing amount of bolter-porn in there for principle's sake but the main core of both bequin books is gothic.What's that mean?- Grand mysterious imagination of Wonders The Mind Was Not Meant To Know- Medievalism focused upon strongly, as opposed to other, more sci-fi castings of 40k. Obviously 40k is inherently both.- Aesthetic is 100% morbid. Pronounced focus on those skulls and graves and stuff.- Theosophy and philsophical-theosophical ideas just shoved in thereThe gothic novel is a strict predecessor to sci-fi, which is kind of unintuitive. The first modern sci-fi work, Frankenstein, is undoubtably both gothic and scifi, so they are much more compatible than you would expect. B. Stableford has a scholarly essay on this you can look up.So the characters acting the weird ways they do is a genre convention of the gothic novel. It's an excellent example of the gothic novel and a poor one of the sci-fi novel so if you take it as it is and meet it where it is it's a good book. But don't expect a sci-fi novel.

You will need to read the first book of the trilogy to even begin to follow along with this. But there are huge reveals and a giant cliffhanger at the end. It can be convoluted at times, but that is part of the story. Abnett does his usual thing and ties it together. Now I am just annoyed I have to wait while he works on a million other projects before we see pandemonium released. I especially like the objective perspective exploring the grey area of the wh40k universe, and how neither eisenhorn nor ravenor are saints and in the right.