Im in a 40k book mood and just finished sons of dorn by Chris Roberson
It was good. A fine starter novel for anybody not too knowledgeable about the franchise. It follows a trio of fist scout recruits and their trainer all the way till their first major battle against some EC forces. I really dug how it cleared up some questions and misconceptions I had about the recruitment process, in addition to making the fists kinda cool. (I didn't realize The hypo conditioning every recruit undergoes is more like a universal translator for imperial language, customs and terminology with some loyalty enhancements that doesn't wipe personality or free will.) The three main characters maintain a bitter rivalry started when they entered a triple revenge triangle by killing each other's human mentors right before the fists arrived. With an entire cool segment showing off a sort of Italian renaissance world in the middle of a three way sword war between space Indians, Spanish and Italians.
As for the fists themselves, I really liked how it established a religious rationality to them. Like they put DORNNNN up right there as the messiah and constantly talk about how awesome he is, but when it comes to actually fighting they assess things from a tactical angle and dont act too stupid. Was glad to see they put a decent amount of focus on protecting civilians and got a big kick out of them and their fixation on the pain glove.
If they ever got their hands on an agony booth they'd use it for therapy.
Another thing that amused was how they openly talked about the the Horus Heresy to recruits. "Dorn was so fucking awesome before the Heresy Perturabo couldn't handle it guys. He was jealous of his undefeatable beaming yellow glow!"
This book made me realize how infantile a lot of the marines are when it comes to human interaction. I mean they are all highly trained aged up killing machines, but master chief has more social graces then they do. At best they vaguely remember what it was like as a child or young teenager to interact with adults and that doesn't translate very well to transformed Astartes that only learned how to respect and follow fellow space marines.
The captain of the scouts at one point meets with obviously evil imperial leaders and is so uncomfortable with the act of merely talking to them and hearing their concerns that he completely misses obvious body language. I liked that scene a lot and it actually effected how I see the marines in general now
If anybody's an EC fan dont bother, Nobody has any lines, and the scout's are mostly fighting traitor guard. It's pretty formulaic, and the revenge angle kinda just ends without resolution but I dug how it made me care a bit more about the fists as a faction and played up the space marine origin angle. The dumbest thing in it was seeing Fist scout's go into battle with just bolt pistols and swords. Im so used to seeing Scouts with sniper rifles it sounds retarded. Hell at one point the Italian guy wishes he had a fucking helmet on because that would have prevented... dam near every casualty in the book.
