#robert rath

[titanomancy]

POV: you're just a little hater.

Anyway, new Infinite and Divine sequel for the Necron girlies. Have fun.

[lastpositivist]

Vindication

[overlord-ajax]

I have finished Assassinorum Kingmaker. Holy shit that ending was amazing.

I really want Robert Rath to write more books. He is such a great writer.

[draconicperditionaltar]

For the past few years I have been listening to many many audio books from titles that my Dad read years ago and recommended on his audible account, mainly 40k and Discworld books and out of all of them that I have currently listened to these are the ones that I wished would never end or left a great impression on me, for years he would tell me to read them and say how great they are and thanks to audio books I was able to experience them and he was most certainly right to praise them.

As it currently stands I have finished all current Ciaphas Cain books, All Eisenhorn and Ravenor Books, Up to book 15 of Discworld and Up to book 12 of the Gaunt's Ghost series, I am currently listening to Salvation's Reach.

[yarrowterrie]

One reason I love Robert Rath’s The Fall of Cadia is the ensemble cast. So many factions, favourite characters, and elements of the universe get screen time, as well as a huge number of classic one-shot characters who drive the story forward.

And everyone is doing the things we love them for; the chaos warriors are horrifying, abaddon is depressed, the sisters of battle are faith incarnate, the black templars are assholes, the militarum are endlessly, heroically doomed, indomitable even in defeat. Cawl almost saves the day, and trazyn weaves his way in and out of the narrative, happy as a nerd in a hobby store. Even the Legion of the Damned get a moment in the sun, but - quite rightly - we learn nothing whatsoever about them.

The book displays all the classic elements of the best black library fiction, too - multiple narrative strands, battles seen from both a vast and an intimate perspective, totally over the top fight scenes, and morally repellent characters who somehow become relatable and very fun to read, and most of whom come to a bad end. All this is delivered with just the right tone. The book does not take itself too seriously; there are enough winks to the reader to keep us from forgetting that this is warhammer, it is quite silly, and that we are here to have fun. Yet it manages to give us these reminders while keeping a mostly straight face, allowing us to become immersed in what is an immensely dark story, really doing justice to the grandeur and importance of this moment in the history of the setting we love.

And the book is long - much longer than the usual black library novel, a real sprawling story, lush with detail, unhurried but never stalling, building intensity steadily throughout until its inevitable, devastating finish.

I have a lot of time for black library novels, but this is one I probably enjoyed the most.

[drbigsadbabymd-blog]

I don't know why, but that one part in the Trazyn the Infinite short story "War in the Museum" by Robert Rath where the Tyranid Lictor attacks Trazyn from behind and his immediate reaction is to state "Don't touch me" is so funny to me.

This horrific alien monster has just tackled him to the ground with the intention of killing him and he's like "Stop that. I do not like this >:("

[cursed-40k-thoughts]

Btw, y'all should buy The Fall of Cadia by Robert Rath, if you haven't already. Another straight up winner from the man. Provoking & enjoyable portrayals of Creed, Cawl and Trazyn (among others). Many beautifully depicted death scenes that are picturesque in their tragedy. It is, to me, one of the rare books where you actually have a true sense of the Imperium losing, and the ground-level impact contained therein. If any of you have played Halo: Reach, it evokes that same sort of feeling.

[gcu-sovereign]

Murderbot Diaries: System Collapse

A more conventional review...

Because I felt like this story took a while to get going. Thus the lack of liveblogging compared to other things I've read in the last year, even objectively worse things like Axiom's End. Picking up where the double feature Network Effect left off is a tall order as hype and stakes go, and I can't say that Martha Wells entirely succeeded.

Right off the bat, the prior book [chronologically speaking] has a Body Count. Dead Murderbot progeny [2.0, rip], dead infected colonists [acceptable Targets], dead Culturnik-like Minds [Perihelion, who was only mostly dead in a way any Culture citizen would approve of as a show of resilience!] The only dead robot or body is really an agricultural unit that got infected with Alien Goop, who Murderbot dispatches early in the book.

A lot of the action in this novel takes place at the polar, separatist colonial settlement, but our usually-media-poisoned narrator absolutely lacks the interest in Stuff to firmly characterize most of the underground base. I was thinking about this a lot in comparison to Assassinorum: Kingmaker a few weeks ago. When there is something Happening in a location, you can forgive a lot of missing detail or richness you get from scene-setting in the color of the hazard stripes, the patina on a pushed door, the smell of old papers and incense. So the Murderbot Underground Railroad book got away with a LOT by being fixated on procedure and technical communication and surveillance. But our protagonist mostly experiences their journey to far-flung destination as a very anxious Walking simulator for someone too easily overstimulated to play Half Life 1 on godmode.

The crowning achievement of the novel is the adventure party putting together a documentary to convince the planet's inhabitants to discard the rival corpo's offer. This is a neat, peaceable way of resolving what would normally be a much louder conflict! For this, I think this book is easily better than the 3rd novella, the one with the companion/sexbot.

Will post some more thoughts after I return this to the library...