Back!

There was not a lot cool about this last week. Most of my time was spent studying-putting in over 22 hours in five days. Then Saturday came and it was all the "suck" I had expected. I will not know how well I did on the test I took until October 19th, but I hope to God, Yahweh, Allah or whomever is gonna listen, that I score well enough to not have to take it again.

One good thing to come out of last week was the fleeting hours before bed or between sessions where I got to read Emperor's Mercy (Cover shown above)in an attempt to prevent total 40k deprivation. I read a lot, so light reading is like a break for me in much the same way that I assume reality television allows the average watcher to halt their senses, turn their minds off, and just have shit flashed at them for a time. Realizing that I would need such an endeavor for mental rest, and not a fan of TV reality or no, I hit up my local Hastings for the latest Warhammer 40k novel.

It is a rocky past, the one between myself and Warhammer 40k novels. While there is certainly some that are quality, most of them seem to be turgid attempts to make whatever army is selling at the time cool. Reminding me all too often of the world's longest magazine ad or something. Admittedly, because I read so much, I think I can be hyper-critical of books, but that also allows me to be very forgiving as well. Sometimes I am not looking for a literary master piece so much as I just want to read about people blowing shit up.

Emperor's Mercy delivers in the "blowing shit up" genre. There were times when the descriptions made me feel like I was listening in when a couple of my prior service friends were talking. A feeling of kinda knowing what they were talking about, but capable of missing easily drawn conclusions or being not quite "in" on the jokes. Over all though the book is really just a bad ass Inquisitor, and a whole bunch of bad ass guardsmen, fighting an even bigger "whole bunch" of Chaos.

There is not a lot within the scope of the book that calls you to question your beliefs, nor are their any stunning dissertations on the human condition. What the book does have is a guy beating ass with a power fist and shooting people with a plasma pistol. It has guardsmen embodying every exciting and invoking stereo type from every war documentary you have ever seen. The book provides crazy cultists guys with metal faces, and Chaos lords. And most importantly, a tactility rich and gritty description of planets under siege mixed with an almost palpable sense of dread. A reader's imagination does not have to work very hard to be immersed in the grim dark dark grimness of the 40k world with this book as a road map.

Check me out tomorrow as we had our fist Planetary Empires campaign meeting and I will rap about that as well as post my house rules.

Thanks for reading,
T