Goonhammer Reviews: The Remnant Blade, by Mike Vincent

Credit: Games Workshop

Okay, let's go ahead and just address the elephant in the room- The Remnant Blade had big shoes to fill.

It’s not just that Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s Night Lords trilogy is widely acclaimed as one of the best bodies of work the Black Library has ever produced- though that’s certainly a large part of it. Dembski-Bowden's trio of titles (Soul Hunter, Blood Reaver, and Void Stalker) in 2010-12 set a very high bar for the portrayal of heretic Astartes in a thoughtful and almost sympathetic way, blending gripping action with poignant and rich character development. While Night Lords have certainly played their part as a story’s antagonists very well (q.v. Carcharodons: Red Tithe, Morvenn Vahl: Spear of Faith), it's much less often that they’ve gotten a chance to take center stage.

It’s also the fact that the Night Lords are having a bit of a moment right now. Sure there are probably meta and manufacturing reasons which helped account for the recent Nemesis Claw run of scarcity, but they were also one of the most badass sets in Kill Team₁. There's been no small measure of buzz over Owlcat Games' centering the Legion as the villains of their upcoming CRPG Dark Heresy. And while I'd like a word with whatever marketing genius decided to include a Kroot statue instead of a Night Lord in the Collector's Edition of the game, it does include Dark Heresy: The Night Lords Story₂, a new novella (from Dembski-Bowden, no less!)

So I have to image that there might have been a little bit more pressure than usual for Mike Vincent to deliver a book worthy of the Legion. Indeed, one Black Library author mentioned to me in passing recently that following ADB with the Night Lords was “intimidating… a tall order.” Not hard to see why!

The first taste we had of Dalchian Rassaq the Skin-Taker, lord of the Blades of Atrocity warband, was in the eponymous short story released earlier this year as part of the Heretic Astartes eShorts Week (reviewed here). It took place before the events of the novel and provided a preview of what the Blades might be about. In my review I was pleased that Vincent "played to the Legion’s character with stealth tactics and sabotage rather than just slapping a midnight blue coat of paint on a generic Space Marine story."

Was their debut debut novel a worthy successor? Well, mostly yes.

Image credit: Games Workshop

Escaping the Shadow

One of the smart things Vincent did here was to make something entirely his own. There wasn’t any attempt to replicate the ‘beautifully damned’ creatures of the earlier trilogy, no efforts to craft 'heretics with hearts of gold.' Dalchian Rassaq, the Skin-Taker, is every bit the villain his name suggests. There are no portentous visions here, no recollections (fond or otherwise) of Nostramo or the Primarch of the 8^th, Konrad Curze and the romantic tragedy of his death. No ties to the Long War at all, really.

That means Rassaq's hatred for the Emperor is less familial and personal, based more in the present than any shared past. There's no mistaking his depth of feeling, however, with frequent use of some terrific slurs like Golden Liar for the Emperor, the Throne of Terra the liar's chair, and my personal favorite, referring to Imperials as thronescum.

While Curze in his last moments declared that "death is nothing compared to vindication," the only vindication Rassaq is after is simple, cold, murderous revenge. As The Remnant Blade begins we find Rassaq as a man much reduced. His band of killers and murderers were never the mightiest in the assembled horde of Thelissicus the Gorelord, leader of the Khorne-worshippers of the Crimson Slaughter and supreme commander of their fractious alliance, but they were stronger and more numerous- until they were sacrificed as a pawn in the conquest of the forge world Uzurmandius, leaving them a remnant shell of their former might.

Now just an echo of what they once were, Rassaq dreams of restoring their former glory and avenging himself and his brethren.

Rassaq is almost obsessive with this driving hunger, and all of his scheming and maneuvering are in service to that aim. With the splinter factions of the World Eaters and Thousand Sons in ascendance in the Gorelord's service, Rassaq must use every bit of his cunning and guile to carve out a place for himself and get his revenge on the Thelissicus- even as he faces perfidy from within.

That opportunity comes during an engagement with the Imperial Navy, when Rassaq notices one of the enemy stealthily dropping from sight. Finding that ship- and taking it- could be just the ticket to reverse his ill-fortune. The only problem is, he won't be able to do it alone.

Everything Is Political

I'm not giving a thing away by saying that The Remnant Blade is a story of brotherhood and betrayal. Just because our protagonists are villains doesn't mean they aren’t people, and people do form bonds and friendships even (perhaps especially) during wartime.

Vincent mines this element admirably throughout the book as Rassaq develops a friends-and-rivals relationship with Leil Jathok, the leader of the Thousand Sons splinter-band Abyssal Kindred. Both men hunt the same quarry so you know that the knife must eventually turn, but the moments of genuine fraternity between them leave you regretting what you know is inevitable.

This made the amity-versus-enmity dynamic between Rassaq and Jathok intriguing in the same manner of watching a chess match, but elevated by the genuine moments of warmth between them- inasmuch as heretic Astartes can afford the luxuries of vulnerability. The warrior's clasping of arms. The hand on the pauldron. There are a great number of tragedies that give the heretics their romantic depth, but one of the greatest is surely the difficulty in forming genuine bonds of simple friendship with one another.

A similar dynamic played out with the Blades' renegade Tech Priest Theta-Ibriel-7-4 and the Abyssal Kindred Warpsmith, Gyren Naritsa. Both start on opposite sides of the divide but manage to bridge it by tackling the technical challenges that comes their way.

Beyond that, though, the characterization starts to thin. It's a theme I've touched on in previous Black Library reviews: time spent developing your secondary characters can pay off handsomely in terms of a book's emotional impact.

Jude Reid's Emperor's Children warband in Fulgrim, the Perfect Son was largely anonymous, keeping the spotlight trained almost entirely on its main character (review here). Rob Young gave a bit more space for his supporting cast in Leontus: Lord Solar (review here), but in that shorter-length book they were always going to be fighting an uphill battle for screen time. And in Eidolon: The Auric Hammer by Marc Collins I found myself feeling like I got too much Eidolon, and not enough of his delightfully wicked but ultimately underutilized lieutenants.

I'd have liked to have seen a little bit more from the supporting cast.

Image credit: Games Workshop

Running Gunfights

The book's other highlight is in its combat sequences. Vincent leans heavily into voidship battles and boarding actions here, with terrific pacing and momentum to keep the pages turning. Vincent deftly weaves these high-octane sequences together with the intrigue and character scenes, giving The Remnant Blade an easy readability I really enjoyed.

It’s always possible to have too much of a good thing, though, and the final third of the book is almost one protracted combat action. All of the other elements that made the book click are relegated to the backseat, and as a result it starts to flirt with bolter porn territory. That's a shame, because the setting for the ending act was a very novel one. Minor spoiler alert: the ship they've been hunting is one of the Black Ships, so Vincent leans into the odd, unsettling, and unusual in order to convey the strange techno-wizardry afforded these most esoteric servants of the Emperor.

Here, too, though it feels at times like the top fell off the salt shaker mid-sprinkle. I'm hesitant to be too critical here because everyone has gaps in the lore they're not too familiar with, and Black Ships fall neatly into mine, but the trap-filled super-labyrinth felt like it strained credulity a little too far. In fairness, I was always one of those people who would look at the maps in old D&D dungeons and wonder how (and if) they made logical sense, but it overall felt a little too fantastical, almost like fantasy techo-wizardry or xenotech rather than something I'd expect to find in the Imperium.

For a recent example of a trap-filled labyrinth that felt a lot more realistic, by the way, there's a terrific sequence in R. S. Wilt's Final Deployment (reviewed here).

Image credit: Owlcat Games

Final Thoughts

Although a little uneven, this was a solid debut Black Library novel for Mike Vincent. The mix of intrigue, voidship combat, and character-building for the first two-thirds of the book is more than enough to make up for a bit of a falter in the last third. Dalchian Rassaq and the remnants of his Blades are characters I enjoyed getting to know, and look forward to seeing more of.

Of course it's probably fair to say that it was always destined to suffer in the shadow of the Dembski-Bowden's trilogy, but that would likely have held true for just about anything that centered on the Night Lords.

I think one thing that gets overlooked in the recollections of ADB’s work is that it was, indeed, a trilogy. Even as the story beats changed from book to book, he still had three novels across which to develop the characters we’ve come to regard so fondly. When we think of the ‘reveal’ about Uzas, for instance, it lands so well because it had so much time and space to build up to it.

The fairer comparison might be The Remnant Blade versus just Soul Hunter, but I’d argue that unless you’ve only ever read Soul Hunter (and not the subsequent two) then that’s not really possible- your affinities for the characters have already been shaped by the continuing stories, and that’s not toothpaste you can put back in the tube.

But doesn’t this all just obscure a larger point? What’s to be gained by these comparisons to begin with? While it’s fair to be critically-minded when we consume any media content, we’re only diminishing our own potential enjoyment by keeping one eye firmly on the rearview instead of the page in front of us.

So while ultimately The Remnant Blade isn’t the Night Lords trilogy, it doesn't matter. Vincent has showed promise with the Blades of Atrocity warband- and I’d love to see him continue their story.

Footnotes

Objective fact, not personal opinion₃.
This is a bland enough title to suggest it might be a placeholder, but it's what is showing on the cover in the Collector's Edition over on Owlcat's site.
Ave Dominus Nox, baby.

Tags: night lords | 40k | black library | mike vincent | the remnant blade