Book rec: I quite enjoyed The Gildar Rift by Sarah Cawkwell. I don’t usually read Space Marines Battle novels because they sound like pretty meh shallow action novels in general, but I wanted to give this one a try because omg there is a woman’s name on a published 40k novel?! By all means, it is a shallow action novel, but a perfectly adequate and enjoyable one.

The pacing is fine, the action is fine without descending into bolter-porn, the stakes are serious enough to be interesting without reaching for ‘the fate of the galaxy lies in your hands’ overextension. The Silver Skulls Chapters’ various traditions and beliefs gives them sufficient character rather than being Generic Space Marine Chapter #76.

I liked the prose–it seemed chattier and more colloquial than a lot of other 40k novels, which try to be serious and formal and old-timey. I don’t have a problem with that inherently, I love some pretentious language full of deep meaning when done well, but a lot of authors can’t pull it off. Having recently been reading some genuinely bad prose, it was refreshing. It wasn’t teenager-speak by any means, but it came across smoother and closer to how I think and talk than lots of other 40k stuff.

The characters were good. Sure they fit general broad stereotypes and weren’t my favorites who I will be remembering perfectly for years to come, but they were solid. Compared to lots of other Space Marine-centric books, it had its head out of its ass less, I can only think to describe it. These two people who work together closely and have for decades and respect each others’ abilities and opinions? Members of the same squad who enjoy each other’s company? They’re friends. Oh no, it used the dread ‘f’ word about Space Marines and implied they had emotions other than anger and righteous hatred. They were still Space Marines, but they didn’t go out of their way to be absolute jackasses to each other and everyone they met–a low bar but one most other books don’t even seem to make an effort to step over. You could see yep, this is why these people have bonds of loyalty with and to each other, it was not just an informed attribute assigned to a character I wouldn’t have spit on if they were on fire. Even characters initially portrayed as being conservative or arrogant or what-not didn’t take these traits to exaggerated extremes by holding the idiot ball to drive the plot–they did things like change their plans based on new information, apologize when they realized they were in the wrong, and work with what they had. I am also deeply amused by the running joke of ‘I have been called upon to solve a teenager’s personal problems and I am deeply unqualified for this situation.’

So yeah, if you’re looking for a good, fun action and explosions novel, try this one out.

Rereading some Ciaphas Cain in concert with Eisenhorn, I’m happy to find myself not pissed off with it. No, it’s not perfectly 100% unproblematic and free of sexism, but it gives the impression it’s trying. I am willing to give Mitchell credit for effort and for being miles ahead of every other 40k book that I’ve read (can’t speak for a couple series like Enforcer or Sisters of Battle that I haven’t). So many others lauded as having “so much homoerotism” or “there is a female character” I’m not willing to give that credit, because they’re actually full of no-homo backtracking and the token woman being treated like utter crap by both the other characters and the narrative. Yes, there are more men than women among the characters, and yes there’s the occasional sexist line, but it still gives a wide variety of women over the course of the series and gives them more traits than being female and lets them do things that advance the plot and makes them no more or less likely to be competent at what they do in Cain’s eyes than the men.

I’m about fifty pages into Brothers of the Snake and I’m struck by how classically Abnett the sexism surrounding the female lead is. I’ve reread a number of his books in the last few months and he sure has some very familiar patterns. People like to insult ADB for writing the same characters over and over, but Abnett is not immune either.

Here’s a woman introduced as being in an unprecedentedly high position for a woman in her culture, and implied to be active in the local feminist and suffragist movements, and this isn’t reflected in her character at all. She gets annoyed occasionally by the male lead treating her like shit–which he does–but never puts it in terms of how he’s a man and she’s a woman, though she must get this shit all the time from other men for exactly that reason. She regularly described as chattering and annoying and argumentative, because that’s just how women are, right, so his male lead has more excuses to tell her to shut up. Especially when they’re in combat, because of course a woman couldn’t be expected to understand such principles as keeping her head down and not distracting a man who’s doing important fighting things. He keeps giving her orders, some of which are sensible, some of which are really stupid but serve to reinforce the idea that he’s in charge and she’s a mere useless woman who must do what he says. She constantly overwhelmed and confused by the situations she’s in and it’s obvious. She seems to have developed no coping mechanisms over the course of a lifetime that has presumably consisted of men talking down to her and watching her every move for signs of “feminine weakness.”

Wow, where have I seen this before–oh, right, every female remembrancer Abnett has ever written, to start with.

I would never had referred to Eisenhorn as feminist fiction, but I remember it as being not bad for a 40k novel. That might be accurate, if only by virtue of how low that bar is, but it’s even worse than I remember it being, reading back through Xenos and Malleus for the first time in a couple years and noticing these things.

So Xenos, Bequin is the only recurring female character. Her youth and inexperience are constantly emphasized (ex. she is always “the girl” rather than “the woman,” despite the fact she’s an adult and not that much younger than most of the other characters). Her physical beauty is constantly brought up. Every once in a while she gets a moment of being cool or successful at something, but most of her contributions involve screaming, fainting, panicking, or fleeing in the face of danger.

Malleus has Medea Betancore, who’s great don’t get me wrong, but who’s also emphasized as being young and inexperienced and hot, and who’s treated as a replacement/legacy character for her father to a large extent. Neve, also a great character who has some good bits, but fairly minor in her screentime and gets immediately pushed aside and talked down to by a man who shows up to cause trouble for Eisenhorn, even when she too should be a high-ranking Inquisitor and this is her jurisdiction.

Both books also have a woman in Eisenhorn’s retinue, Lores Vibben and Arianrhod Esw Sweydyr, who are with him in the opening scene, get talked up as really badass physical fighters, then immediately die to some minor side-threat within the first five pages.

Meanwhile, beyond main/recurring characters, 99% of the side and background characters are men. Other inquisitors who show up briefly or are mentioned in passing, various criminals or other leads Eisenhorn is tracking, the groups of random thugs who attack him every dozen pages or so to keep the body-count up. All just so happen to be men. There are so many opportunities to happen to have some unimportant background character be a woman glossed over, again and again. Of the very few women who do show up as background characters, most of those are sex workers. Sure there are men who are characterized as incompetent or stupid or weak or what-have-you, but the fact is I can count the number of women, named and unnamed, who appear on screen in these books on my fingers.

I worry as I keep going, because I recall feeling like the Ravenor trilogy was even worse/trashier in its treatment of gender and sex than Eisenhorn back when I first read them both.

The Ahriman trilogy has some weird pacing, it seems to me as I reread it all in one go instead of each book years apart. A lot of stuff set up in the first book gets resolved in the second, in ways I found clever and well-constructed, but it feels like more of it should come back in the third to screw over Ahriman at the last minute and it doesn’t.

Astraeos shows back up talking about revenge but that goes some weird, badly explained other direction with Magnus rather than Astraeos himself, and he doesn’t actually accomplish much of anything that I saw. The Space Wolves never reappear. The Inquisition continues to be useless or dancing to Ahriman’s tune. Neither Carmenta nor her absence are relevant again. The major antagonists are Thousand Sons sorcerers introduced in this book, whatever was going on with Magnus introduced in this book, the Thief of Faces introduced in this book, and Ahriman’s eternal ability to punch himself in the face at any moment.

So Unchanged wasn’t terrible, but it felt like the author had already played out his cleverest moments of set-up, then had to quickly resolve everything else that was still in play very quickly, along with make use of or reference to whatever other things involving the Thousand Sons had come up in canon in the intervening years between his own books. Ahriman always loses because he always loses, but not as neatly as he succeeded in Sorcerer. I would have liked more continuity of events, his own previous perceived successes being what screwed him over in the end, rather than this feeling quite a bit had been dropped and replaced and the resolution for the remaining plotlines was somewhat flat.

So medieval-style liturgical plays are canonically a thing in 40k:

“Mystery play: A form of festival entertainment popular on a number of worlds in the Eastern Arm, in which incidents from the lives of the saints or the Emperor are mingled with the crudest kind of knockabout humour. Far from being considered sacrilegious, these are generally regarded with indulgent approval by the Ecclesiarchy, on the grounds that they’re bringing the word of the Emperor to the masses, and a few flatulence jokes is a small price to pay for actually being listened to for once.”–Amberley Vail

Which leaves me with a deep desire to see the reborn Roboute Guilliman happen across one of these; he escaped his minders during some planetary festival or something. Everyone who knows him is expecting this massive freak-out, because if there are two things he hates they are religion and historical inaccuracy.

And he is just so overcome. The actor playing Dorn made a fart joke. (Dorn’s standard personality in these plays is this comedically serious straight-man who keeps solemnly confessing to extremely minor infractions, fyi.) Horus stole forty cakes, and that’s terrible. This is absolutely the best thing that Guilliman has encountered since coming to the future. He laughs until he cries.

kaijuslayer:

ball-jointed-wing:

Honestly..

I’m so bummed out about the rampant homophobia and trabsphobia in the 40k community.

I’ll be listening to an otherwise top shelf video on some HH lore, and outta nowhere they’ll just be like “LOL NOT THAT KINDA TRAP LOL LOL LOL”, or some shit and it’s just so fucking isolating.

I know more queer peoole into 40k irl than cis hets. I know I’m not the only one, but it’s just got me pretty down right now.

Maybe reblog if you’re a Games Workshop fan and are LGBTQA+ or an ally? Make? my day? I’m cute??so make me happy?? Thanks ur a doll.

Hey there. This is a garbage fandom a lot of the time but there are decent folks on tumblr who try to make it more inclusive insofar as we can, with our own models, writing, etc. 

Personally I’m a white-passing mostly-straight cis dude but a LOT of my mutuals into 40k are LGBTQIA+ (often multiply so) and just all-around awesome people who are guaranteed to make you feel more at home. I mean I try to make all my 40k peeps feel welcome and at home, too, but sometimes you need a friendly welcome from people who share important aspects of your identity- I get that. 

So this is both to say ‘Yo, you seem nice and I will be your friend’ and ‘boost’.

me: man i love this series
me: here’s a 40-page annotated essay on everything i hate about it. every misstep i believe the creators have ever made, complete with citations and a signed drawing of me punching the installment i hate the most in the face
me: still love it tho