Now here's one that I never expected to see, but I am very glad we got it. Steve Parker is one of those authors who made quite a splash in Black Library only to disappear after a short time. Despite producing several excellent novels and a few great short stories, he disappeared from the grim darkness of the far future, leaving quite the cliffhanger behind. Now, he's back to continue that saga.
The Synopsis
Set some time after the events of the original Deathwatch novel, Talon Squad has been recalled by Sigma once more to carry out their duty. However, unlike their trial by fire, this isn't simply a combat insertion against a feral opponent. An Inquisitor has disappeared on a world recently conquered by the T'au Empire and has promptly refused all efforts to contact her. No one fully knows if she has been abducted or has willingly defected to the xenos race, but her secrets cannot be allowed to fall into their hands. Operating alongside a group of anti-T'au specialists and insurgents, Talon Squad must breach a heavily fortified city and reclaim the Inquisitor at all costs. Yet the Inquisition's manipulations extend far further than any might reckon, as both Librarian Karras and those he commands will suffer in their shadow games.
The Good
For starters, Parker most certainly did not rest on his laurels with this one. Both the first Deathwatch novel and the two short-stories surrounding it were simple, direct and straightforward operations. In each case, the group was dropped into a location already overrun by the enemy, with hostile combatants around every corner and told to steal or kill someone. These were extremely well-written outings which embraced the Dredd mentality of making the everyday efforts of someone exceptional exciting over a defining moment in their lives. Parker could have happily stuck with this and it would have still been celebrated as a great story, but by taking a notable risk with this one he ended up with something far stronger.
The very nature of the Talon Squad's mission this time is the antithesis of the hard and fast strikes of previous tales. They are dropped onto the planet well ahead of time, and a great deal of the story goes into the preparation of their strike and just getting onto the world itself. This takes up a similar amount of space as the previous novel's outline of how the Deathwatch operates and trains their individuals, and it certainly benefits the book. It helps to show how the Astartes of the Ordo Xenos' chamber militant differ from their typical counterparts in operations, methodology and the expectations placed upon them by the Inquisition. It's still the general special forces take on the space marines, but it's a very different kind of one which offers both world building and an excellent new kind of tale.
The secondary characters are also notably stronger here, as is Karras' journey in the wake of the previous book's revelations. Both the insurgents and supporting humans have far stronger personalities than anything offered in Parker's other tales, save perhaps for Rynn's World. Archangel, in particular, is a fascinating take on an Imperial character type due to how she operates and contrasts with the likes of Sigma. Not to mention that she's an excellent contrast to the usual human characters we see working with Astartes and opposing xenos incursions. Equally, the insurgents and those with them are a great take on the usual tribal cultures seen in these books, but with a good mix of self-awareness and decently progressive takes on a few backward ideas. That's true of most of this book, and sadly delving into the two best examples would lead to massive spoilers.
The novel overall could be considered a far more intrusive and questioning take on the usual Imperial-T'au dynamic we see in these works. Usually novels will either adamantly side with one and demonize the other, or twist key details to make sure that you are more clearly on one side. That and they tend to favour one-sided steamrolls of fights to make their favourite group look great. This manages to ditch the majority of that through a few very welcome storytelling devices. The first and foremost among these is that, when we see the T'au Empire and its member species defined, it is through the eyes of extremists on both sides. While you certainly see that they might have points, even offering up few surprisingly nuanced takes on the T'au Empire's more ambitious efforts, it's always coloured by their opinions.
One resistance fighter complains of the T'au overwhelming and corrupting human culture, and that their terraforming efforts are destroying their way of life. There is a degree of truth in this, but we later see direct contradictions to this fact. Notably with references to T'au culture actively trying to avoid giving the Imperials reasons to support resistance efforts by keeping much of their culture intact and even allowing for a less xenophobic Imperial creed to still be preached. Yes, someone finally remembered that was something the T'au did.
On the opposite side, the T'au Commander Coldstar is borderline xenophobic, holds humans in contempt and even performs some very questionable experiments on dissenting voices among his own people. All seemingly with the approval of elements within the Ethereal Caste. However, he's rarely framed as anything besides an extremist who feels that his placement is unworthy of his role, and he mentally justifies these acts in the face of a greater threat. He's an outright villain and someone who believes that the end justifies the means, but it's without the same cartoonish "by the way, I'm actually a villain!" storytelling which has previously plagued the T'au. If we need more stories with them as the antagonists, this will likely become a measuring stick for how to tell it from here on.
So, what of the writing style and combat? To answer the latter first, the combat is as typically blunt and direct as usual. It avoids many of the more descriptive or dramatic choices of outlining scenes than other authors like Aaron Dembski-Bowden or Josh Reynolds typically use, but Parker makes it work. It fits in with his tone of storytelling, stepping away from some of the more mystical or vague qualities of the galaxy to describe something which is bizarrely more down to earth. The fights are extremely brief moments of violence or brawls which rapidly end in favour of one side or another, but this perfectly fits the spec ops style of story. It also helps to separate the story from those which more frequently utilise Chaos as a narrative element, and make its few otherworldly moments far more alien within the tale.
Finally, as an extension of this, describing the combat itself is only part of how the story works. A lot more time is put into the preparation and outline of operations, and an emphasis on how such a small force might be able to maintain its advantage over a superior one. While the natural abilities of the Adeptus Astartes are never downplayed, they aren't quite the unstoppable juggernauts of other works, and they do have to more actively work to overcome their foes. It's one of the better examples of how to balance their superiority with foreign threats in Black Library along with the likes of the Charcarodon novels and Brothers of the Snake.
The Bad
You likely noted that for all the talk of positive qualities in the above section, little time was spent on the main characters. Sadly, there's a good reason for that. Karras gets most of the development here, as outside of one or two moments to better flesh out Chyron and display more of Zeed's flaws, there's little to say of the others. They are certainly described extremely well and have memorable characterisation, but they are stuck firmly in the background most of the time. As a result, their role and presence is very situational to the story, and they gain little development from the story's progression.
Karras himself does well, but his part in this tale is hindered by the story's greatest weakness: It's terrible at re-introducing readers to the series. There's no real moment where it properly expresses something along the lines of "Here is Karras, he's a Librarian of the Death Spectres, and here's his story so far..." in an easy and understandable manner. The one we get is very well told, but unless you have recently read the book directly preceding this one, you will struggle to get to grips with it. This on its own would be a mark against the story, but it's only further exacerbated by Parker's choice to emulate his previous novel.
One of Deathwatch's best qualities was how it took its time to build up the world and characters, showing the development and preparation for their strike. The actual operation only came into play at the very end, and everything up to that point consisted of various secondary elements to help flesh things out. This was repeated again here, but the problem is that there are few to no space marines showing up for a good portion of the story. In fact, there's little to even properly indicate that this is a Deathwatch story at all outside of a few allusions to the Inquisition being involved, and that simply doesn't work here. It holds off on the book's main attraction, and even once it is introduced it isn't in some moment of action or glory as a pay-off for the wait.
The book also opts to suddenly follow up on previous story elements which were alluded to in the finale of the past book but with little in the way of recapping them or fully introducing them. One or two were certainly notable enough to remember, but others take a surprising left turn or have an abrupt addition tacked onto them. More irritatingly, a fair few others are simply treated as ongoing narrative plots rather than something hinted at which is now being built upon. That kind of flaw is jarring and can make even a reader familiar with the books feel as if they have missed something at first.
Honestly, these flaws in of themselves hardly overshadow the strengths of the novel, but the very fact that they dominate the opening chapters only exaggerates many of their issues. Because of this, it becomes a situation where the book is almost encouraging you to put it down or skip over them to reach the actual start. It's a real shame, as a few basic additions could have helped to offset all of this and bump its final score up by a full point.
The Verdict
Ultimately, your enjoyment of Deathwatch: Shadowbreaker is heavily dependant upon how familiar you are with this series. It's an excellent book, and it does more or less everything that a great sequel should in terms of story, character dynamics, and narrative. The new direction, more ambitious plot and the use of its enemies mark it as a modern classic. The very fact that this is the first novel in a long time from an Imperial perspective which did not fall back on Chaos as the hidden villain is an extremely welcome quality, and the use of the T'au is some of the best seen in years. Yet, the fact that it expects readers to be already familiar with these characters and provides no real recap moment to cover prior events means that it can be difficult to get to grips with this one.
Overall, this is highly recommended, but it is strongly suggested that you read some of this author's other Deathwatch stories first. The original novel, or at the very least the short story Headhunted, will cover everything that you need and quickly outline the basics this book skips at first. Even with that said though, I would mark this one down as an essential purchase for this month.
Verdict: 7.5 out of 10
I found the take on the Tau a little more nuanced, sure, but still pretty blatantly on the 'they are evil, we must kill them' side. I mean it was kinda hard to swallow since we literally in story get shown that Tau will take prisoners and try to preserve civilian life, while our Space Marine heroes murder surrendering soldiers and never hesitate to gun down and butcher construction crews and Earth Caste engineers, but by now I'm kinda used to the Space marine fandoms inability to get that Space Marines are awful, mass-murdering monsters and to basically assume things are only bad if Tau do them.
ReplyDeleteDon't quite get the fighting part though. I mean other than Coldwave's Riptide (which I think still manages to kill a whopping 0 Space Marines in the end) literally the Tau throw like, it feels, a thousand Fire Warriors, multiple dozens of Hammerheads, squadrons of Razorsharks and manage to kill almost no Space Marines at all, like...I'm honestly trying to think which Space Marines get killed by Tau in the book and I'm blanking. Even when the Riptide gets hits in it basically never does anything.
Honestly makes you wonder how in the Damocles campaign and Agrellan Campaign the Tau could fight forces of 100 or so Marines when in this it looks like 12 Marines could basically destroy several thousand Tau alone.
Personally Marines being mass-murdering monsters and heroes in revisionist history is part of the fun of the setting for me, since nearly every side has a "they are evil and must die" stance towards everyone else. There are exceptions though, the Salamanders come to mind as far as having Space Marines who genuinely care about the populace, and they're not alone. The Lamenters, aka the Chapter that the Dreadnought was a part of, even have this sentiment as their warcry: "For those we cherish, we die in glory!"
DeleteAs far as the fighting goes, the Tau aren't supposed to have massed infantry everywhere. They have numerous small bases spread out throughout their planets, and if any one of them are attacked the others will immediately come to their support. That's the key factor in the Tau's way of warfare: mobility, this is also why they do not build static defences. The Deathwatch in the book take advantage of this knowing that the bases they attack will initially have relatively small numbers of soldiers and armour, with the operation meant to be over before the Tau can fully mobilize. They also engage the Tau with other teams at other bases before starting their main operation because it would draw Tau teams from the bases nearest their actual target, displacing them and causing them to take even longer to provide backup, essentially turning the Tau's way of war against them. This drastically limits the amount of Tau they needed to fight and prevents the easy deployment of heavier armaments.
As far as the Marines go, Marines are meant to be really hard to kill, and I mean really hard to kill. This is helped by them being really quick, smart and having very tough armour with very tough bodies inside of those, with redundant systems in play and an advanced clotting factor. This is why the book mentions how it takes precise strikes to actually kill a Marine who's without power armour. There's a lot of novels and campaign books that have Marines dropping like flies, but if that were the norm entire chapters would get wiped out in an afternoon and you'd find the Imperium nearly (if not completely) out of Marines in only a few decades. It's especially jarring seeing as how it can take decades just to train aspirants until they're given power armour. I didn't think there were "multiple dozens" of Hammerheads, I only remember a few since most of the ones they destroy weren't even manned, and the air support kept the Razorsharks off the Marines for quite a time, until they were destroyed and even then the Razorsharks were taken out by a new element before they could do many more runs. I do agree that it feels strange the Tau didn't get at least a few Marines when they caught them by surprise, like when the Riptide first appeared, though with the way the fight scene was written it's not one of my main complaints. The book did a good job at illustrating how much of a threat the Riptide was and the Marines fighting it fought it smartly and took appropriate countermeasures to make sure they didn't die to it.
DeleteAs far as the Damocles campaigns went, before it was retconned the Tau were actually losing that before the Imperium arrived at a Sept World, and had lost several planets in the process. They would have lost that Sept World too had the Tyranids not shown up since after the Tau were able to fight the ground forces to a stalemate, the commanders in charge began debating what kind of exterminatus they should perform on the planet. The retcon makes it so that the Tau are fighting a much more even fight by having the Imperium lose most of their manpower in the warp on the way to fight the Tau, then giving the Tau the ability to teleport, respawn and select whichever weapons they want right before they start firing them (and if you're reading the Phil Kelly version, he made a special Chapter of Marines who hate wearing helmets just so that the Tau could kill them easier, then mock them afterwards). The Agrellan Campaign books on the other hand are just shitty writing, Mont'ka especially. That's the one where nearly every battle scene sucked; as an example at one point 200 Assault Marines get behind the Tau battle line and ambush them, fighting them in melee combat. This has no effect on the Tau battle line, the Marines lose the fight and the next time we see them the Marines are struggling to survive. It also turned the Tau from the Tau, into Dark Eldar lite. Whoever wrote that thought it would be a good idea to have the Tau literally enslave the planets they took, sending their victims off to worker camps or mining colonies for some nice slave labour, because to hell with the Greater Good. It also forgot to include a Mont'ka, despite it being called Mont'ka, because whoever wrote it forgot what a Mont'ka was and confused it with Kauyon.
Yeah but the Tay DON'T have an 'they are evil they must die' view, they actively accept surrendering prisoners and spare lives where they can. Not to mention the book doesn't even in its meta-commentary try to make note of the fact that the Space Marines massacre civilians and surrendering soldiers while the Tau don't.
DeleteExcept every place the Marines attack in this we are told there are multiple whole squads of Tau fighting back and usually managing to achieve nothing. They wipe out 4 Hammerheads too which also achieve nothing.
Your entire argument here seems to just be that Tau must always lose and suck compared to Marines which, I guess, explains why you like this story since that's what happens in it.
You realize Riptides fight Imperial Knights? But in this the Riptide doesn't manage to even kill a single Marine. This is just the normal Marine wank in which the Xenos faction is, again, made pathetic so that Space Marines can be the best at everything and win.
Not to mention you literally just list every campaign the Tau win in, Agrellan, Mont'ka, and then say they suck. Kinda sensing a pattern where as soon as the Tau are beating Space Marines you instantly think it's bad.
I didn't say the Tau had that stance, I said "nearly" everyone has that stance.
DeleteThe squads of Tau aren't exactly huge, they're not the Imperial Guard and like I pointed out, most of the Hammerheads they destroy are unmanned. Them being unable to match Marines isn't a surprise.
My argument isn't that the Tau need to lose, it's that each side should be written in character performing to the best of their abilities (broadly anyway). If the Marines study the Tau and know exactly how to hamstring their initial response, then I shouldn't be surprised that they end up with an initial advantage. The book also makes it very clear that if the Eldar didn't appear the Marines would've all died. If that happened instead of the Eldar showing up, I also would've been fine with it.
You realize that Riptides aren't exactly meant for close quarters combat or for fighting against psykers right? Because that's how it loses, they engage it in a way that gives them an advantage and for the most part, prevent it from unleashing its weapons on them. How it finally gets taken out also makes sense, because there was genuinely nothing Coldwave could've done there. If you want to say they fight Knights, then find me a single example of a Riptide engaging a Knight who is armed for melee in a melee fight, and winning.
I didn't say those campaigns suck because the Tau win, I said the retconned version of Damocles sucked because the Tau suddenly have the ability to teleport and the entire campaign was rewritten to be done in a way that favours them (not to mention they make decisions based on info they couldn't have known without reading the script) While Kauyon and Montka are terrible for so many reasons, I'd run out of room to list them here. See the review for Montka on this site for my thoughts on it, but rest assured I hated what it did to the Tau as well. You seem to think I hate the Tau when I don't, I just hate bad writing, and it's not my fault a lot of Tau books suck. Here's two examples of good writing though: the original Damocles campaign and the original Aun'Shi lore. Both of those are pretty great, Aun'Shi especially because he comes off as a true badass while the Orcs he's fighting are still a major threat, and that ends similarly to how this book does.
Yeah, no, I'm sorry grdaat I read the book, this can't just be dismissed as 'the Space Marines had the right prep' anymore than that excuse could technically be used for anything. Any situation can be rationalized away by the logic of 'they were just prepared' that doesn't make it valid. This story has the Space Marines virtually never even seem to be in danger in their fights until the Eldar Ex Machina at the end.
DeleteFurthermore I'd have to seriously disagree with your characterization of the Damocles lore. I found the Tau successes in it, even the knew lore, no more stretching of credulity than any of the plethora of Space Marine campaigns which dominate the narrative. There is nothing specific of the Damocles fluff I would argue is particularly subpar compared to anything from Damnos to Devastation of Baal other than that, for a change, the Imperium aren't the victorious protagonists.
So, no, the book does seriously suffer from a reading perspective in terms of tension because it largely casts the antagonists as practically impotent and pathetic with the protagonist's superiority and virtual invulnerability to harm being hammered in and honed in repeatedly.
Again; it's canon that this is a wargame in which the Tau do have to contend with entire armies of Space Marines. If a planetary Garrison of Tau cannot fight off barely a few squadrons of Marines it calls into stark question the consistency of power in this setting and, personally, I think anyone who's read 40k lore widely would be aware by now that Space Marine capabilities and powerlevels are, on the average, consistently overblown compared to all other characters and factions in this game, so I find an effort to argue that Space Marines are generally 'underpowered' to be frankly baffling and at odds with the vast majority of objective data on this matter.
If the book was meant to be about the successes of a special forces unit then they should not have entered into a combined arms conflict with mini-titans, multiple battle tanks, an air force and several hundred ground troops.
Except the book shows the Space Marines struggle to take down a single Crisis suit, and many times it makes it clear that they need to get in and get out before the Tau have been fully mobilized or else they'd die. We also do see them in danger, anything capable of taking out the aircraft the Tau take out in this book is more than capable of taking out Marines, and the Riptide very nearly kills several of them.
DeleteWhen I say the Tau have the ability to teleport and magically have the correct gear at hand, it's because that's how it's written. They need an entirely new gun or squad? They're always right behind. They need new reinforcements? They're always right there. They are hit with a surprise attack? They've got the perfect counter lined up before they even needed it. That's why it feels like they've read the script, they've got every possible solution already lined up before they could possibly know they needed them. The Tau are particularly bad with this too, and you'd better believe that if Storm Shields or Lascannons suddenly appeared on every Marine who needed them that I'd call bullshit on that too. I'm also going to assume you're not talking about the second Damocles campaign, aka Kauyon and especially Mont'ka, because I don't believe anyone can defend the vast majority of fights in Mont'ka.
"it largely casts the antagonists as practically impotent-"
Except for the parts where it doesn't, as you mentioned earlier. The book makes it very clear that as soon as the Tau mobilized and brought out anything capable of cutting through their armour, the Marines were in serious danger.
"Again; it's canon that this is a wargame in which the Tau do have to contend with entire armies of Space Marines-"
Hold up, you realize how rare it is that the Imperium's enemies will need to deal with entire armies of Marines right? The vast majority of the time (we're talking about 99%) they will only be fighting a few squads because that's a simple question of logistics. Each Chapter is only a thousand, rarely do those thousand all fight at once, and even if they were all gathered together on a single planet and fighting there they'd still be a few squads fighting a larger force because of how many individual fronts there are on that planet. It's one of the reasons why there are Chapters of only a thousand in the first place, and why the Space Marine companies can and will go to different areas of the galaxy from one another.
"personally, I think anyone who's read 40k lore widely would be aware by now that Space Marine capabilities and powerlevels-"
So you admit that they're supposed to be much stronger and tougher than the people they fight, on average (I'm sure we can agree there are exceptions like Tyranids and Orks) yet you also don't seem to be aware of what their powerlevels are because you seem to think Marines should be way weaker than they're supposed to be. As I said before, if Marines really were as weak as you and others seem to think they are, they would've gone extinct a long time ago.
Finally, Riptides aren't mini-titans anymore than Dreadnoughts are. They're 5.6 meters tall whereas the type of Dreadnought in the story is about 3.7 meters tall, while Contemptors are over 4.5. They're in relatively the same weight class (albeit opposite ends of it) and Dreadnoughts are far from being mini-titans. Even the Custodes Dreadnoughts which go even larger are far from mini-titans, and the Astartes only fought one Riptide, don't pretend it was more than that. They also only really fought one battle tank, which they beat by hiding from it (wow, they're so invincible they needed to hide), they lost the fight with the air force, and several hundred Tau vs several squads of Space Marines should not be a fight in the Tau's favour at all.
I really enjoyed this book, while it takes a while to get going and I felt the dream-like sequences very frustrating (that's a personal thing, I feel like that sort of thing kills the pacing and to me it dragged on) it overall felt like it was written by somebody who actually had quite a bit of critical thought. What I mean by that is there's a lot of shitty writing out there where the writer makes their characters win or look better by turning their opponents into idiots, a good example of this is in the book War of Secrets. In that one a Kroot beats the hell out of a Primaris Space Marine because according to the book, the Kroot are much stronger and faster, while also having a single Tau take on and nearly destroy an entire fortress monastery (only being stopped by being directly hit with an orbital bombardment, which the Tau survives despite the suit they were using having holes bored all the way to the cockpit). If you're wondering why that happened it's because he wrote the Dark Angels making a deal with the Tau to destroy the Angels of Absolution, one of their successor chapters.
ReplyDeleteShitty writing and bad writers aside, this book at least had both sides act intelligently and it remembered all the wargear the Marines are supposed to have access to, as well as the fact that they're supposed to be strong and durable, both with their armour and without. After a lot of the recent books and campaigns, that was very refreshing to see. I also liked how their operation came to a close, I was going to be really annoyed if it was another case of "we finished our mission- oh whoops, nevermind" but it avoided that, which left me pleasantly surprised.
It almost felt like a return to form, as if it was an older novel that was just republished, rather than a newer one since suddenly the Deathwatch is a part of the Ordo Xenos again and needs its spy network (rather than being completely detached and somehow having their own). The only thing that kinda broke that was the reminder that the Black Templars are now loyalist Word Bearers. I also loved how they used the Inquisitorial Operatives as supplements to the Marines themselves, a lot of stories completely forget they have those or just use them to shore up the body count without making them effective. Using the lesser-known chapters like the Sons of Antaeus and the Carcharodons was also a nice touch, especially with the references in regards to the Sons of Antaeus in that character's last fight in the book, which was a neat reference towards Greek Mythology.
I didn't like the epilogue for the planet though, that came across as being bullshit. I'm not going to accept that character surviving what they did, if they were capable of surviving then the Tau would have either used an even more powerful weapon, or they would have checked the site thoroughly right afterwards to make sure it couldn't have survived. Even in the book they mention the Tau would be checking for survivors soon, and there'd be no way they would have missed it with how careful they were being. The other stuff that I didn't like you've gone over in "the bad" section.
Something that is odd is the flubs in the audiobook version, which is what I listened to. There are times when the narrator stops to repeat himself, either because he coughed or just got a part off/wrong. I bring that up because for the price they're charging these mistakes shouldn't be in there. The story was still enjoyable and they didn't happen that often though, but I would not recommend it for that price. For what they're asking it would need to be a Mortarion's Heart style audiobook where the characters had unique voices and there was background effects to help sell the scenes you're in. If anyone still wants to listen to that version, I'd recommend to just use the trial on audible to get it.
I'm glad you had fun with it, as Parker is one of those writers who seriously needed to be given more time for this stuff. I'm seriously hoping that it will get a finale to cap off a trilogy, as it's been a solid one from the start.
DeleteThough, there are two things I would add to your points - The first is that I kind of shrugged my shoulders at the epilogue as it's sort of a running theme within his series. Stories often end with a twist of the knife as a reminder of how much worse the universe can get, no matter how hard the astartes fight. It's something which I feel helps to somewhat offset the more "movie marine" moments which crop up in places. The other is things like the aircraft holding off multiple enemy gunships, and Scimitar's survival were things that I wanted to go into more, but decided not to due to spoilers. It's well hidden thanks to how it tries to more intelligently set up the Deathwatch to weigh things in their benefit and better use of their equipment, but character shields to push realism a little too often in the finale. It's more the second half where I really wish that the T'au had done a bit more damage, but the loss of most of the human troops and almost all their transports, along with the need to be saved by the eldar, at least helped mitigate that element.
Though, I am sorry to hear about the audiobook issues. That is a surprise given their usually high quality, and I honestly would have thought that such a thing would be edited out. I might download this for myself just to check if this has been quietly corrected in the weeks since its release if I get the chance (and the money).
I'm not against the idea of the epilogue, I'm just against the inciting incident for it. If the world happened to be in the path of the Tyranids already then I would've liked it a lot better because it would have gotten the same outcome and had the same message, but without a really dumb bit about a Genestealer surviving something it most definitely shouldn't.
DeleteThe aircraft I'm with you on, since it seemed odd to me too that they were able to hold off twice their number, but even then it made it look like they were mainly disrupting the Tau formations rather than doing damage, and the Tau still took down one of the best vehicles the Marines have so I let it slide. Perhaps if there was a bit more description on the Marine's armours and the damage they took it would have felt like there wasn't as much shielding for the characters.
I could probably try pulling some clips from the audiobook version, but it's really long so it would take a while to find them. Hopefully they fix those bits, all that's needed is a little editing.
Something I forgot to add in my first comment is your take on Coldwave, which I disagree with. When we first see him I didn't take him for a xenophobe who holds humanity in contempt, he seemed more like another Tau who thought humanity was misguided and could be uplifted. This opinion changes the longer the story goes on however, motivated mostly by the experiments that are going on, and by the end of it he has contempt for the Marines and humans he's fighting. I don't think that would be his mindset if things settled back into being stable however, as I think stress was a major factor. I think if he was allowed time to meditate and meet with his Aun again he'd come back to the opinion that humans are misguided and need to be uplifted.
ReplyDeleteThat might be my liking for the Third Edition Tau Empire showing through to be honest. I just felt that they were pushing the brute angle a bit too hard, and trying to depict him as ruthless beyond all measure. The Imperium's own willingness to kill everything in sight I get due to how it is written from their viewpoint, and how their twisted ideologies will excuse it. But some of his comments just kept pushing things a bit too far for my liking here. Plus, however the book might have executed it, the bit with the tau prisoner is one that I still have very mixed feelings about here and now.
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DeleteI'm reposting this just to correct some embarrassing spelling mistakes that I blame on autocorrect (he had an Aun, not Aunt), sorry for bothering you with it.
DeleteI didn't think he was being overly ruthless, with exception to the prisoner you mentioned. That was going pretty far, but even then we rarely see how the Tau deal with these sort of underground resistance fighters, and it was mentioned that they gradually got more and more extreme. It's not like they just immediately jumped to torturing his family. I also feel it's fine to have him be harsher than other commanders when he's repeatedly pressed, since if he didn't he'd just be Tau #30097643. That would've just been a different problem and even before Farsight was badly written/retconned we knew some Tau could have higher tempers. I kind of wish we could've seen him interact more with his Aun though, if that happened we could've seen how even a more hot-headed Tau can be brought into a more reasonable mindset by their presence, and it would help show what happens in the absence of their presence