I started reading Gate of Bones, and it wasn't until I'd finished it that I realised it was book 2 in the Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of Fire series. I'm sure the first book is very good, but I have to admit I got through all 384 pages of Gate of Bones book without any confusion, so I probably won't bother going back to read Avenging Son. It's all a subset of the Indomitus story arc anyway, so I'm wagering that I already basically know the setup: Roboute Guilliman is back, he's restructuring the Empire the best he can while dodging internal blockades and external threats. Got it. As for Gate of Bones by Andy Clark, it's a thoroughly entertaining story with heroic superhuman characters alongside fragile but brave humans. I highly recommend it to anyone, with or without reading the first book of the series. There are major spoilers for the book in this review.
Gate of Bones is the kind of Warhammer story that really brings you into the world of the 41st millennium. In a way, it's basically a daytime soap opera (I say that loosely, so if you're a connoisseur of daytime soaps, temper your expectations). In Imperium chapters, you read about humans and superhumans, and their goals and their relationships. And these are powerful relationships. There's real drama and turmoil here, and most of it's ideological or psychological.
General Luthor Dvorgin has been on deployment for who-knows-how-long (decades, probably) and hasn't seen his wife in as long. He regrets that when his wife asked him, on the eve of his deployment, to leave her with child, he refused. Then, he saw it as an act of grace, because he couldn't imagine bringing a child into the world. Now, he sees it as a lack of faith. What a powerful backstory, and a relevant topic for any adult human. I wish it were fiction that people with a certain brand of religious faith view procreation as an obligation and matter of devotion, but it can be, bizarrely, a real social stigma to choose to not have children. Luthor Dvorgin is a man of the Imperial faith today, and I can only imagine that the more he kills and sees his troops die in the name of their god, he essentially has no choice but to become more fanatical. Fanaticism is protection against psychological trauma, whether it's about the death of your comrades or the ways you've disappointed those you love.
In Warhammer 40,000, war is a metaphor. I mean, it's also war, because war is something worthy of commentary. And also war is an easy and exciting game mechanic. But it's also a metaphor in the 40k setting, and you can swap it with any number of modern day habits and traditions we've all fallen into. Setting aside death and atrocity, there are systems in the real world that developed long before any of us existed, and we perpetuate most of them, whether they're the best systems or not. In the 40k universe, should you question the systems of the Imperium, you're branded a heretic. Not to be overly dramatic, the same is more or less true today.
Just like in the 40k universe, the origin point of your moral outlook affects how you interpret the Great Crusade. To some people, "questioning the status quo" means asking why workers don't have votes in how their workplace operates, but to others it's asking why CEOs have to pay income tax on their millions, and to still others it means inventing conspiracy theories about a flat earth. Whatever the Crusade is, we were each born into it, and each of our individual and personal life stories is largely about what we do in relation to it.
There are lots of relationships and conflicts in Gate of Bones, and we follow them as they revolve around the books central "crusade" of Kar-Gatharr, a marine of the Word Bearers and a dark apostle of Kor Phaeron. He's searching for the remains of a heretic saint on the world of Gathalamor, but he's reluctantly beholden to Tenebrus, servant of Abaddon. Kar-Gatharr is a cool character, not at all the typical Big Bad Evil Guy. He's jealous of Tenebrus and fears being overshadowed by him. He goes out of his way to have the achievements of his minion, the (human) cult leader Tharador Yheng, and also to protect her from, well, being literally eaten by Tenebrus.
Kar-Gatharr's relationship to Tharador Yheng somewhat parallels the relationship between General Luthor Dvorgin and young sniper Magda Kesh. Both are comfortingly wholesome (I mean, as wholesome as war or the worship of dark chaos gods can be). There's a power imbalance, so the potential for abuse is there but it never surfaces.
Kar-Gatharr treats Tharador Yheng as a pupil and a subordinate. He's a good manager. He helps her succeed in subjugating her cultist followers, and ultimately in locating the ancient relic of power they seek. And when she finds the relic, he protects her from its power, and ensures that she receives official recognition from their superiour. It's a refreshingly normal relationship in a horrible setting.
Likewise, General Luthor Dvorgin helps Magda Kesh further her career and her skills. He knows, deep down, that he shows her favouritism, and it's because she's the age that his child would have been, had he agreed to a child with his wife before he left. Kesh is Dvorgin's surrogate daughter, although she doesn't know it. He sends her on a few important missions, sometimes fighting his own compulsion to try to protect her from the inevitable threats of 41st millennium warfare. But he always does the right thing and sends her to the certain death that awaits all soldiers, and the more she survives out there on the battlefield, the more she learns, the stronger she gets.
There's more than just those stories in this book, of course. There's the Imperial Knights on Gathalamor, the Adeput Custodes, suspicions about Guilliman, disdain for the humans' faith in the Emperor, and more. And the Adepta Sororitas are forever in the background of this one. There are so many great Battle Sisters in this story, perfectly fitting into that niche between standard human warrior and the all-powerful Astartes. I wouldn't say this was a book about the Adepta Sororitas, but it's definitely a book set in their world. You get a lot of insight into their fanaticism, and their effectiveness.
As with many Warhammer novels, it's often difficult to pin down an actual main character in Gate of Bones. You're lucky if you can keep track of the names, to be honest, but assuming you latch onto a few favourite characters, there's plenty of story to go around. I was on the edge of my seat for the whole book. It felt simultaneously inconsequential and wholly threatening, like the book wants to trick you into thinking that this is really just a book about Dvorgin's and Yheng's differing faiths, but then reveals a face-melting Ark of the Covenant when you least suspect it.
A very good book, is Gate of Bones. Next up is the third in the series, The Wolftime.
All images in this post copyright Games Workshop.