Wot I Read Once Again Edition

It…wasn't bad. It had a good narrative voice - it's just that the narrative voice wasn't necessarily totally engaging. The language is clipped and short which is fine - Eisenhorn is a man of few words (humorously lampshaded by literally being physically unable to smile). The plot just covers a lot of territory, moves very quickly between settings and scenes, and there doesn't seem to be an effort to really settle down and soak in the scenery. Granted, I know that this is a setting that people reading the books are probably familiar with and the author was probably relying on people to fill in the blanks for him in those regards but still.

That said, I did enjoy it, and there were a lot of moments that really touching in a subtle kind of way. There's a scene where Eisenhorn is forced to reveal to a character that she's a psychic blank – she's basically someone who repulses anyone around her (look, it makes sense in the context of the universe, okay?) and he is particularly weak to that effect being a psychic himself but he still sits down and helps her work through her grief. So there's a kind of subtle kindness to the character and the sort of tragedy is that he can't ever release that kindness because of the grimdark nature of the universe.

I just wish we got more of those moments. At the end of the novel, when Eisenhorn is recovering from his injuries after saving the day, there's some really adorable scenes as his crew – the characters he's been fighting with this entire time – come to visit and talk with him and they're really heartwarming and charming but we never see any of the buildup to that, which is a real shame. There are multiple multi-week periods where the characters are traveling through the cold reaches of space to get to the next planet that are just mostly skipped over. I imagine that's where the majority of this bonding occurred - I just wish we got to see more than a few words of it.

Look, I'm a sucker for the Found Family trope okay and if the book is telling me that a family can be an Imperial Inquisitor, his Pilot, his Walking Encyclopedia, his Psychic White Noise Generator Girlfriend, his Conduit to Hell, and Judge Dredd From Wish.com then I want to see them actually bonding.

It's short so that's probably a big part of why I enjoyed it too. I finished it in about four hours.