Adeptus Ridiculous - Eisenhorn: Xenos Review & Discussion | Warhammer 40k Book Club

Episode Date: November 19, 2023

https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/https://twitter.com/AdRidiculoushttps://orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculousThe Inquisition moves amongst mankind like an avenging shadow, striking down the enemies of humanity with uncompromising ruthlessness. When he finally corners an old foe, Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn is drawn into a sinister conspiracy. As events unfold and he gathers allies - and enemies - Eisenhorn faces a vast interstellar cabal and the dark power of daemons, all racing to recover an arcane text of abominable power: an ancient tome known as the Necroteuch. Support the show

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Oh, yeah, there's some chaos junk in that trunk all right. Yes, sir. All right, D.K. So it's been a bit since we've done a book club, and the only reason for it is because we just were slow. Yeah, yeah. Brain too smooth. Can't read.

We pulled a bit of a dorn and just forgot to read. Yeah, pretty much just, I can't even say we got busy. We just forgot. We're being totally honest. Yeah, we had some stuff going on. You have quite the busy schedule. You have a lot of hats that you have to wear. And, you know, shy and I and slap are doing unidentified signals. So a little bit of it is we kind of got a little busier than we thought we would, but also kind of forgot. I was going to say like, yeah, you guys are pretty busy too, and I did know if you would be like, you'd be like, oh, not me. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Well, you know. You know. You know.

It really didn't add that much to my schedule. I'm sure it added a ton to shy schedule. Me? Nah, just lazy. All right. Fair enough, I guess. I guess. Book Club.

Eisen of Horn. The first book of Eisenhower. the first book of Eisenhorn known as Zenos. You know, not usual for everyone. This is a book club, so we are talking about the whole book, so it's all spoilers. All of it. It's also a lot of opinions. If we don't like it and you loved it, that's okay.

Your opinion is still fine. Or vice versa. If we loved it and you hated it, that's okay too. It's opinions, man. We've all got them. In that case, quick, third. second thoughts on the book. 30 second review.

Okay. I thought it was basically Warhammer 007. I enjoyed it. I feel like it was maybe overhyped a little bit because I didn't I wasn't like, whoa, thrilled with it, but still very

solid, enjoyed it, would recommend 7.5 out of 10. I about agree with you on most of that. I think I think that maybe Eisenhorn as a character is what's hyped and maybe because he also has a lot of books. Ah, he is not, he has a, I don't think it's as many books like Gaunt's Ghost or anything like that, but he kind of has a similar vibe or like, you know, there's a constant joke where Caiaphas Kane, like, who can Caiaphas Kane be in a fight? And it's like, does he have Yergen?

No, the question is always, does he have Yergen? And I'm like, you were gonna was pretty cool in the first book, but like, he wasn't like crazy cool, but I guess he gets really built up in the future. So, but yeah, no, it literally, this was 40K James Bond. We're talking the torture slab and everything. To a T. It was James Bond, yeah. Got the Bond girl, even, which is a blank, which is kind of hilarious. It's true.

Yeah, with Beckwin? Yeah, Elizabeth Beckwin. This is one of the few books I actually really remembered the names of because I was quite invested. Yeah, the amount of times I mixed up Beckwin and Bettencourt was tremendous all the time. It was a lot easier when he said Midas, his first name. Yeah, I was like, oh, please just keep calling him Midas. If you keep saying Betancor and Beckwin, I, oh boy, it's going to be real awkward for that poor pilot. But so yeah, no, I'd say that Eisenhorn was pretty darn good.

I think one of the reasons I liked it as much as I did, I'd probably go a little bit higher than your seven and a half. I'd probably go like an eight or eight and a half. Fair enough. Mainly because how do I describe this without sounding like an asshole? Just do it, man. Just rip it off like a Band-Aid. Let them have it.

Let me have it. I think 40K writers at times will like go into. the I'm writing a 40K book and so I'm always really really happy whenever someone writes a 40K book that's just something else with a 40K paint coat and it's

like why I love bloodlines so much because it's just Blade Runner 40K yeah yeah Assassin Norm King Maker was just Mission Impossible 40K and this is just James Bond yeah you we've all had more than enough space and marine civil war

fighting giant demons of chaos with their giant bolters for the emperor this, for the emperor. It's nice to have sort of a palate cleanser where you can just be something else in the 40K universe. I also, I mean, it's really James Bond, too. Like, all the villains are the usual conniving enemies. But they even had an emperor's children Marine as like the odd job, like the big. muscle guy. Yeah, he technically was, wasn't he? Mandragor or something? Mangregor. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Emperor's children, glad to see you. For the Emperor

again, yeah, sure, sure. They did a good job with describing the Emperor's children. They always talked about like pallid, stretch skin and perfume, and I'm like, yeah, that's right. Uh-huh. That's pretty good. I like how he almost got like, uh, it seemed like he was going to get corrupted just by looking at the runes that were crafted on his armor. And the jewels and he was like, I had to look away. Otherwise, I don't know. I was going to go crazy. And I was like, dang, chaos is wacky.

Just the ruins on the armor will get you. The ruins on the armor got Beckwin. She was, like, freaking out from it. Oh, I thought she was just freaking out because she could, like, feel chaos. Well, I guess it was the ruins, wasn't it? Yeah. And just all unsettled her very greatly. I do wonder, I don't know when this book was released.

But so after reading, well, okay, well, first things first. This was written by Dan Abnett. Dan Abnett, best known for the Gaunt's Ghost books. And arguably one of the more popular 40K writers out there. Him and, like, you know, Aaron Dembsky Bowden and a few others. This was narrated by Toby Longworth, which I've grown to really like. I think his narration is really good, with the exception of some kind of odd, editing. I don't know if you, I don't know if you noticed that, but sometimes his statements would

kind of feel like, like, they would start, and then it would be like dead silence of nothing, and then it would restart again, but he would have, like, his vocals, uh, have a little bit of background sound, and it was like, it was edited a little funky. You know, maybe because, I don't know, with some 40K books, I tend to find the pacing a little weird, um, but like for this one, I actually listened to it on Audible at like 1.2 speed, specifically because I was like, man, some of the pacing seems weird. And like there were some breaks. And I was like, I'm going to listen to this at 1.2. And actually, I didn't lose much. It didn't sound like it was going too fast. It sounded like it was going at like a normal pace. So I do kind of think I picked that up a little

bit. But also in 40K books, they spend a lot of exposition describing stuff and where I'm just like, All right, come on. All right, I get it. Okay. Yeah, I know it is a cold, dank, dark world that reminds you of the cold, dank darkness of an awful winter's night that is so dreary and dark and decrepit. I'm like, all right, come on, come on, come on. Let's move this along.

I don't have all night here. And so, yeah. That is interesting. I guess he is one of the... No, actually, I don't think he's that slow of a reader. I think of, like, Andrew Wincock, who did the Nightlord's trilogy. Like, he is slow, but it's, like, saving. very slow, so I'm kind of okay with it.

Yeah, I feel like for the night lord, you kind of need that because it's like that's sort of like, you know, you want to really savor every cut type deal. Yeah. I actually really started liking Toby Longworth's narration. I think he just does a lot of really good voices.

He struggles a little bit with women, but that seems to be a constant when it comes to characters. With like male VAs. It's just kind of difficult. Normally they go the route of like the soft spoken voice. Yeah. But I actually just read, as soon as I put down Eisenhorn, I was like, damn, that was good.

And I immediately opened up the second Gaunt's ghost book and started listening to it because it was also by Toby Longworth. And I was like, oh yeah, this is where I've heard him from as well. But what I just found out this morning, actually, is that this book has a video game based on it. It's literally called Eisenhorn Zenos, and you can play it, and I guess it's like the book in game form. Really? Yeah, it's on Steam. I was like, what the hell? Because I googled it this morning because I was like, oh, I forget who writes, who wrote Zenos.

What's his name? And so I Googled it's like, oh, of course, it's Dan Abnett. I know that name. And then there was like a Steam page for it, and I was like, what the? There's a Steam page for it. Oh my gosh, you're right. 2016. Yeah, I mean, the screenshots

don't look great, but it exists and you can play it. And I was like, what the hell? A part of me kind of wants to buy it and like see what it's all about. I actually can't find it on Steam. I can't find it on Steam, but the, yeah, you're right. It is.

Wow, that's crazy. That's actually hilarious that you mentioned that. I didn't, I didn't even know that. You're right. It does not look good. No. It doesn't. That's actually a side point. Okay, you saw the cover art for this book, right?

Yeah, it had the Arbides on it, right? It did, right? It's kind of weird. Yeah, I was expecting Fisig to be a huge part of this book when they're like, oh, yeah, Fisich is going to accompany you because he knows all about, I guess it was hubris at first, and then he's just, well, he's just a great comparison. companion to have. I was like, well, he's, that's got to be the Arbides on the cover. So he is going to be, you know, a major player in the character. And it's like, no, he gets injured when the fake

Navy, uh, uh, guardsmen show up. And he has a role here and there, but nothing that deserves a cover spot. Like, it should be Beckwin on the cover with him. I was going to say, I imagine it should have been either Beckwin or Bedincor. Yeah. Um, one of those two should have been on the cover. But yeah, it was a little bit bizarre. But yeah, no, so the book, I actually do think it's pretty good. I like Eisenhorn. I think he's a pretty good character. He's, it's, it's interesting to see how things were written back when. Because, you know, Dan Abnett wrote Gons Ghosts. And that was kind of back in the day when Space Marines were considered to just be more powerful humans and not like demi-gods. Right. Yeah. So you'd have Gons.

ghosts like shooting up space marines table top style um and eisenhorn granted did get his ass pretty heavily kicked by by mandragore um he he won by the classic james bond like uh outwitting him type thing yep he made him uh touch the necro toke and that made him just go blank eyed at all of the possibilities of chaos and then yeah it's cut his head off yep um but But for the most part, I gotta be honest. Eisenhorn gets his ass kicked a lot in this book. He does. For being the titular character of the book, man gets whooped on a whole lot,

especially for being like a pretty good, he's pretty good with his mind. He's pretty good with the force, with his psycher powers. He's a pretty competent, why am I drawing a blank on? Detective. Inquisitor. I could, I was like, it, invest, no, inquisitor. Yeah, Inquisitor. Yeah, for being a pretty adept inquisitor, he gets worked over a lot. He gets, he got tortured pretty horribly. Oh, horribly. He can't smile anymore. He can't make, he can't emote anymore. Which I won't lie is kind of funny. I just, I do like the concept that he just isn't allowed to smile, which just sounds like an inquisitor thing.

in general. That's true. That sounds like a plus for an inquisitor that you can't show emotion. Also, total, total side note, someone made the characters in the book into Darkest Dungeon, and I just think it's super cute. Uh-oh. Oh, I think my Discord just, yep, Discord just crashed. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I haven't stopped my recording shy. You just got to edit this because my Discord crashed. What did I do, DK? What happened? Were you so shocked by the Darkest Dungeon characters that she died? No, my Discord crashed. So we don't have to like redo anything.

My recording was still, but my Discord crashed. So sorry. But man, the darkest dungeon thing looks great. I love that. I know. You know, an unsung hero of this book, Amos. I loved Amos. Oh, Amos, yeah.

He's just an old man who really likes knowledge. It's just knowledge. He's a fun guy. Yeah. Good for him. It really, I think that's one of the reasons I like this book so much is that the, the cast of main crew were all very likable. Oh, definitely, yeah. I do think they maybe undersell Beckwin's blankness.

I think this maybe was in the old days where being a blank just meant you kind of turned off psychic and not made psychers want to shoot themselves. That was something I noticed. I was like, shouldn't more people be really unsettled by Beckwin? because like just sort of being around one makes people like sick and vomit, don't they? Like in current 40K times,

like it makes you like nauseous and very, very get the fuck away from me. Like it would be very hard to be a pleasure girl whilst also being a blank. Like you wouldn't make much money that way. Would you? I mean, I think, well, one, you probably just,

I mean, I don't know how many people go to get a pleasure girl because they're having a great time. Fair enough. But I think it also, I don't have a, I don't have much of a basis for this,

but I feel like Blanks maybe is like a thing that has a certain strength to it. Because I know that wacky skull helmet the assassins use is like amplifies their power, which makes them just like completely sucked life from people. Yeah. So it could just be like, she's not as powerful as a blank as.

But, yeah, they kind of, they kind of mentioned it. She was blocking out. She was blocking out Chaos Space Marine. She was blocking out Inquisitors. She blocked out Pontius. So, like, she's got some, she's got some guff. She's got some girt to her blankness. There's a, her aura wasn't particularly strong.

And people seem to start to like her, which is maybe just go, I don't know. It's not too important. Yeah, it's book stuff. It's fine. even if, you know, whatever. That being said, I think they really glazed past Eisenhorn telling her about her condition. It was like a paragraph. And I was like, holy, this would have been a very, very big character development moment.

But they just went right past it. Yeah, because, I mean, they do spend, yeah, they do spend, like, criminally little time on it. Because suddenly she's like, oh, yeah, the reason my life has been so miserable and nobody wants to really connect and get. close to me is isn't because I'm a terrible person. It's because I'm a blank. Great. There was nothing I could have done. I just got Delta kind of sort of shit hand. Well, not just that, but you're going to live the rest of your life with people hating you for no reason. Yeah, for no reason. Nothing you can do about it. Just, eh. I, we talked about it a little bit after filming yesterday's episode. The book opens pretty dark. That is the understatement of the week. Pretty dark.

I hope you don't have a claustrophobia thing because the entire opening, it's like, yeah, this chaos guy is going to reawaken all of these high nobles stasis pods and not do it properly. And they're all just going to suffocate in their coffins. They're like, oh my God. And they all died. They all died. Couldn't save a single one. Couldn't save a single one as he's running past him. And oh, boy.

Yeah, they, yeah, all of them. We do get ourselves his titular line. Uh-huh. You know, my patience is not limitless unlike my authority. Oh, man. That is one for the ages. That is a quote for the ages. It is an extremely inquisitor quote.

Oh, yeah. I honestly thought I clone was going to last longer. Like, I didn't think he was actually going to get him by the end of like the hubris section. A part of me thought that the whole book was just going after I clone and trying to find I clone, because he killed Vibbon, you bastard. And then he killed all these people, and it was like, oh, it's just going to

be this hunt for I clone, but he gets him. He does. He puts a gun in his mouth and blows his head off. Yep, with Vibbon's gun, or I guess it was the gun that Vibbon specifically made for him. It's like a ganger gun, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which was pretty cool to see. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, most of the book is just that detective story.

It's find this guy, go find this person, get caught by this person. There's a secret thing here. There's a little bit of a mystery here. We're going undercover. Hey, Beckwin, go eat these crackers and cheese. That was one of my favorite parts was her just being like, oh, truffles, please. To show the, yeah, yeah, to really put on the illusion, I'll take this fine dish with the truffles. and the wine and the and and uh,

Eisenhorn gets a good laugh out of it because of how like pious she seems. I, I must say, I really liked a good, I think the book went down a point for me. I think it was a two, it was like an hour too long. I'm actually surprised they, uh, what was the name of the guy who tortured him again? I forget. Uh, Gorgon Locke. Lock. I was actually shocked they got Locke.

I thought, I thought the climax of the book was going. to be the Mandra gore fight and that whole thing on the lava planet and throwing the necrochuk in there and then we were getting into like the falling action with um the inquisitors meeting up I genuinely was like there's an hour and a half left what what are we going to do what what's happening left yeah I I also felt like every time they came upon like a sort of climactic fight where it's like oh yeah we finally found um Oberon or oh we finally found the fight seemed really anticlimactic. Like, when he gets to lock, it's like, oh,

it's this bastard. Oh, he tortured me. Oh, I got to get him. It's like, well, I made my way up to him. He was shooting at us. I got some cover fire, and then I shot him a couple of times, and he died. And it's like, oh. I think a pillar fell on lock, didn't he? Oh, yeah, a pillar did fall

on him. They got shot a couple times, and then a pillar after he gets the translator tool from him. Yeah, the primer, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. little end bits with the demon host too. Yeah. And you know what a demon host is. You play Dark Tide. Oh man. I was like, be silent. Be silent. Don't talk. Don't wake it up. Don't wake it up. Don't wake it up. Don't wake it up. Put a sail away. Be quiet. Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. I hate it.

It was actually, it's a little fascinating too because, you know, that was like set up throughout the entire book was the man with the dead eyes. Yeah. He was, he was. He was, he was. Yeah, and he was just one of the Radical Inquisitors' servants sort of kind of, which is a common thing. Radical Inquisitors sometimes do work with demon hosts. They do. They do.

In fact, you can run a demon host miniature on the tabletop. Oh, crap, that reminds me. Eisenhorn has a mini. Oh, does he? It's actually good, too. Oh, oh, yo, that is really good.

It's relatively recent. Yeah, it's actually solid. Wow, that's a great mini. It's pretty good, right? And that's exactly how I imagine him looking, actually. He looks pretty angry. Yeah, it's like he can't smile or something. I actually, that's a solid segue.

So you can run him on the tabletop. And I will say, he's got a pretty good set of rules for, example, he has a psychic attack, which is called mind assault, which is awesome. But he has an ability called dominate will, which I also really like how they were able to tell us, whether he was using psychic powers or not, by just the phrase, I'm using my will. I'm like, oh, good, okay, now I know. Yep, he's, he's doing the old psych or stuff, yep. But, yeah, it basically makes it so that if people are near him, you can roll a dice and they will, like, shoot worse. or not shoot at all, which is really handy.

I will say he does have this other ability that makes me wonder if there's some shenanigans going on in the future. Okay. Called Malice Codicium, which is while this model is leading a unit, if there is any demon hosts in that unit, double their attacks. So make them better. Oh, you think that maybe in the future,

Eisenhorn is going to get maybe a little radical. Or at least have to work with a demon host something, because I'm surprised that he's making the demon hosts stronger. Yeah, you would think of anything he would want, you would want to give him a power that made them weaker because he's going after, I forget what the demon host name is. He has a name is like Cherubile or something, but yeah, he would think he would want, yeah, something like that.

You'd think he'd want to make them weaker. Yeah, a little interesting. Interesting. Maybe he has to work with the blank eye demon host at some point. He might not want to because yikes, but he might have to. Maybe, maybe. I don't know. The other two books in the, if I'm not mistaken, there is the three in the Eisenhorn

trilogy. And it is, and it's all the names of the orders. There's Xenos, Malius, and Hereticus. That makes sense. Yeah, those are the three. but there's also Oh wow Yeah Zinos came out in 2001

Wow really That's 22 years old Oh my God Okay so Well we could have a drink with this book Oh my friend So it turns out that That is not the original cover of the book

Was the Arbides guy It was this Oh And I love it Oh That is so much more James Bond That is so much more James Bond That is so

2001 as well. That is the most early 2000's book cover I've ever seen and I love it. They should have just kept that one. That is hilarious. That is a much better. I wonder why they chose to put the Arbides

on the cover in the new one. Like why is fishing on there? I don't know. I'm assuming it's fishing anyway. But yeah, so there's the three Eisenhorn books and then there's a few others after that. And then there's the Beckwin stuff. Yeah.

But, yeah, I, you know, it's, there's not a lot to talk about with the book overall besides just, it's just generally well written. Yeah. The characters are likable. The, the story was intriguing and interesting. I was curious. Oh, I will say the, the Zenos race was really cool. Oh, yeah, the Zthiris, Scyth, something, but yeah. Yeah, weird name.

Yeah, they had a really strange name. And they just, they can like, they don't have vision, but they have like super sensory, like hearing and smell to the point where they can distort reality off of it. And it's like, okay, sure. And just looking at their architecture kind of sort of makes you a little crazy because it just shouldn't work, but it does. I will say I was really, really happy with how they moved because they moved in complete asymmetry, which is. It's fascinating because there is actually a story of a Slanesh character called the Mask of Slenesh that's been doomed to dance for all eternity. And so when you think about them being Slenish corrupted, having weird, distorted, never-ending motion of asymmetry is like totally Slanesh. It makes complete sense.

Yeah, they walk around on silver stilts. They're like crab people, like asymmetrical crab people on stilts. They're so weird and strange and just so chaos. It's great. Yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty darn. Pretty darn good. It's pretty nice. It's pretty good.

They're pretty crazy with their little tetrascapes and weird shapes and, and they have weird little slave people, too, that they weren't sure if that was a separate race or if it was just like, I don't know, maybe they enslaved their own people. They're weird. Yeah, that was actually something that I felt like could have been expanded on a little bit more. more. Yeah. Because they play a big part at the end, because once they're sort of freed from it, they literally start eating the Zaruthian, like, ooh, and stabbing them with the stilts. And it's like, oh, I guess they were slaves, air-quired, maybe.

Yeah, I don't know necessarily if that was one of those things that is, it should have been set up more or is better that it wasn't set up more because it would have been kind of, it's nice to kind of do a whole, uh, hey, crazy Zeno's. culture. Don't know anything about them. Just what, like, there's a whole background of them that we don't know about because we don't care because we're inquisitors and we care more about bombing them to hell and back. Yeah. And, and I think they kind of say that, don't they?

Where it's like, yeah, with most Zenos, I think it was one of the radicals. Like, oh, yeah, you know, most of the time, you crazy inquisitor just like, oh, kill the Zenos. And you never give him a chance and they might be good. And with the Zethere, he's just like, nah, there's a third. This time you're right. You probably should kill them all. They're so far gone. You got no chance of saving these assholes.

Okay, that's hilarious. You say that because it wasn't the Inquisitor. It was the guy they interrogated. And the other Radical Inquisitor removed all his skin. Oh, right. That was Malahite. Which I think is so funny because Eisenhorn enters the room with the same gusto of someone who, like, dropped his T-Cat.

kettle and he's like, God damn it. You took his skin off. How am I going to talk to him? Get out. Get out. That's exactly the energy, dude. That is a hilarious. That is exactly.

And it's just like, oh, God, not again. I leave you alone for two seconds and you take all his skin. Damn it. I know, like, I know it's a little bit more than that because he, like, put a gun to his head and everything. But it's just so funny to me the way he spoke like that. It's like, ah. again with this. You damn radicals.

Leave you alone for two seconds. All his skin is gone. Jesus. Oh, this damn the guy's skin. Not again. I mean, they do manage to get some good info out of his skinless husk corpse. Before he blows up into a demon. Bro, when he does that mind stuff, when with the two Inquisitors,

oh, that is, like he turns into a blood cyclone that is just eye. balls and bones and it's like, oh, what the hell, man? What is, what in that? What the, what is that? Turns out, you can actually do a pretty darn good job at, uh, at holding back your of your opponents when you have, when you, without even needing a bomb, your bomb is the warp. Yeah, I was, that was a crazy scene. I, yeah, yeah. And he's like, yeah, that's gonna stay with me, bro. while. It was pretty fun. I like that whole, despite the fact that I think the book is a little overly long.

I did like that ending scene. I actually kind of wish Locke lived. I think he would have been a better, like, late game, so to speak, villain about the next book with his fucked up lip and everything. Oh, yeah. And he was the one that tortured him, so it gives a little more credence to him as a villain, because, you know, they've had that sort of, I don't want to say intimate moment together. I mean, it might have been intimate for Locke, but I'm sure Eisenhorn has a little different description of it.

But yeah, it feels like there's more stakes to finding and getting Locke and paying him back rather than just, oh, you got crushed by a boulder after I shot him a couple times. Like, that just felt, it didn't feel like enough of a payoff for that type of villain. Okay, there's a, there's a leaf blower outside. I was like, is a truck? Is a truck driving by? It's a little close. Yep, I've been there, done that, I got the T-shirt. Yep.

No, you got a T-shirt from it, huh? Yeah, totally. It says, blow yourself. Nice. Thanks. Yeah, though, I mean, I am, if anything, what has done more than anything is making you want to read the other books. Because I think I'm very invested in these characters.

I didn't get, as invested in characters like this since the bloodline, not bloodlines, since Gaunt's ghosts and, you know, the Nightlord's books are over. But it made me both want to read more of the Gaunt's ghost, because I miss that feeling of really being excited to listen to characters. Yeah. But also just generally be happy to see people do well, you know? And it makes me really worried because I know they're not going to survive, at least some of them.

Yeah, it's 40K. One of the gang is probably going to suffer a very tragic, awful death that's going to really spurn on Eisenhorn to just go in and maybe be a little radical to get his endgame goal, you know, because, hey, got to do what you got to do. I got to use all the tools that are available to me. So, yeah. But I also want to hear more from The Gang, you know, because together they're like, they're just really good together. I think that that might be one of the

one of the things that I miss is stakes. There isn't a lot of the novels we read. There is a lot of obvious that no one's going to die. Yeah. You know, especially when it comes to namespace

Marines and all the kind of stuff. You know that any peril is just not going to happen. This is just like an inquisitor and a whole bunch of of his retinue. And there's a darn good chance that he just doesn't make it. And that kind of, I mean, I know he has more books about him and everything, but like,

his group might not. And that is worrying. And you don't know what might happen to Eisenhorn along the way. Like, he could get tortured again. He could lose an arm. He could lose a leg. Any number of horrible things could still happen to him, even though he's the main character. So even he's got certain stakes that, you know.

I know that, for example, I know that the Gantz ghost books, despite them, also, you know, Dan Abdin and everything, despite them all having minis, the big six of them, I know that they're not all alive. And so I'm very much dreading, like the, oh, no, when's it going to happen? Oh, no, yeah. Yeah, so, and that's, that's good. I miss, I miss that, like, emotional feeling of, of fear for characters, which. which I don't get a lot in 40K because they're all demigods or primarks and they'll never die. Yeah, they've got that plot armor. Usually space marines do, but, you know.

So anyway, yeah, I really liked Eisenhorn. I think it is absolutely just James Bondens in 40K, but I am totally okay with that. Yeah, and even if you're like me and you're like, oh, but I like space Marines. And there's still some of that. Like there's still Mandra gore. They get a Death Watch space marine towards the end that has a has a fight with another Emperor's children guy. And you still get that too.

So even if that's your cup of tea, you still got a little bit of that sprinkled in. I would like to hear our comment section's opinions if they have read the other books. I'd like to know if they are like, oh yeah. This is, you know, it's a good starting point, but it gets really like Eisenhorn becomes a real thing later on. Ah, if it only gets better from here, that is high praise, because we both really liked Eisenhorn, so if it gets better... I mean, there's a reason...

Who's the guy who did The Shining Again and forget his name? Stanley Cooper. Oh, yeah, Stanley Cooper did the movie. Yeah, Stephen King is the book, yeah, yeah. Apparently, he once... He either wanted before he passed or, like, was planning on doing an Eisenhorn movie. or something. Oh, really?

It's like, it was like rumored back in the day. I needed to double check that whole thing, but, because, I mean, you know, everyone was going to take the 40K aesthetic. I would, I would trust it to basically two people, him and

Denis Villanueve. What is he done? Dune. Ah, okay, sure. And the new, solid choices. Solid choices. And the new Blade Runner movie. So like, you know, I, I, I,

believe in that one. Fair. But yeah, no, I think I think it's pretty darn good, pretty darn solid, like the book, good characters, might even read the other ones on my own time. Hey, all right. Or maybe we'll do it on a book club. Or maybe we'll do it on

a book club. Speaking of, what's next on our book club docket? Yes. So, I thought perhaps it's time that we got a little more meta. Perhaps it's time that we got a little bit more closer

to what everyone else wants, so to speak. Okay. And so we're going to read Lions Son of the Forest. Oh, we're finally doing it. Let's go. We're finally doing it. All right.

Met of this, meta that. Have you ever met a woman? I was, no. I was considering either doing that or Gene Father, which is the newest Belisarius Call versus Fabius Bile book.

But lion's son of the forest, I think, is maybe a bit more important to the current lore of everything. And, you know, I've been told it's just fantastic. Yeah, I don't think you could have lost either way. Those both sounded like they would have been popular choices. So, yeah, I'm happy. Let's do it. I was also considering just forcing you to read the Nek-Ga-Gon's Ghost book, but I'm just going to do that on my own time. There was a part of me when you were like, oh, yeah, I mean.

started reading next Gons ghost book I was like huh maybe next book club has already been decided uh yeah even nah all right all right all right so lion son of the forest lion son of the forest all right well everyone thank you so much for joining us on the book club we will see you hopefully sooner than we did let this time and uh and go ahead and get lion's son of the forest read apparently it is just fantastic see you and three months.