I just finished reading Gav Thorpe's The Wolftime, book 3 in the Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of Fire series, and just because I didn't like it doesn't mean it's not well-written. Gav Thorpe wrote The Grey Raven, one of my favourite stories from Heralds of the Siege, and one of the reasons I liked that story so much was the way the principles of the Raven Guard guided the plot. Likewise, in The Wolftime Gav Thorpe uses the culture of the Space Wolves as the very foundation for the plot, even though the plot necessarily has to fit into the larger Dawn of Fire story arc. It's not Gav Thorpe's fault that I apparently don't like Space Wolves. The story's well written, the important emotional beats work, but this book was not for me.
There are minor spoilers in this review.
In theory, I like the Space Wolves. Vikings and Norse mythology are enjoyable. The colours and livery of the Space Wolves is actually one of my favourite. I feel like the idea of pack tactics among Battle Brothers is a perfect fit for the Astartes. But the actual culture of Fenris unbearably exhausting.
The Wolftime leans really heavily into Fenrisian culture. Our main character, Gaius (later Kjarg) is a Primaris marine who wants nothing more than to grow into his Leman Russ gene seed and become a real live Space Wolf. The problem is, as existing Space Wolves tell him, he can never become Fenrisian.
Culture admiration and cultural appropriation is an interesting aspect to the story. You're likely to see the problem from both sides. The Space Wolves are literally correct. Gaius did not grow up on Fenris, and there's no changing that. Even if he spends hundreds of years on Fenris, he didn't grow up there. Some memories and experiences, he'll just never have.
I think many of us feel that way about something. I wish I'd started playing AD&D at an earlier age instead of obeying my narrow-minded parents and avoiding it for fear of demonic possession. That's not what happened, though, so I don't have the memories of riding my bike to a friend's house for a weekend of D&D. I have different memories, like flipping through the Monster Manual in the back of the classroom with my friend Jason, and spending lunches rolling up characters I'd never play. And I also have that view of the Satanic Panic, the experience that some people can never understand because their parents looked at the world rationally.
On the other hand, Gaius wants to become Fenrisian. He's read the books, he's studied the history, studied the language. He earnestly wants to adopt a culture, and as a son of Russ, he's got a right to be inducted into the traditions, if not the historical culture, of the Space Wolves.
Whether it's the threatened loss of culture or just change in general, I think most of us can identify with the struggle in this book. Maybe it's because it's such an emotional struggle that I found myself hesitant to connect with this book. Logan Grimnar, the so-called Great Wolf and Chapter Master of the Space Wolves, is conservative and insular. We have to spend a lot of time with him, and it feels a little like spending the holidays with your grandparents. Everything Fenris does is perfect, Fenris doesn't need nothing from nobody, what Guilliman did thousands of years ago is unforgivable, back in my day it was the men who wore skirts, and so on and so on. Get over it, Logan, it's not the 313.M41 anymore. I've had to deal with that brand of conservatism my entire life, so confronting it in my fiction isn't entertaining.
It's all superficial (and fictional, it's important to remember), because the other traits of the 40k setting is religious fanaticism, warmongering, and xenophobia, none of which are any more pleasant than social conservatism and probable Fenrisian-supremacy.
It's an uncomfortable setting, but I guess fanaticism and warmongering and xenophobia are things you can leverage in your game.
Once you choose your faction in 40k, that faction becomes the broken clock that happens to be right at the time your game starts.
Your faction isn't fanatical, it's the only faction with the correct view of reality.
Your faction isn't warmongering or xenophobic, it's just defending itself against the evils of the galaxy.
Logan Grimnar's resistance to basically anything different from what he remembers back in 300.M41 is harder to incorporate into a game, I think. Unless your game is Space Wolves against any other Imperial force, which actually could be really fun. Well, there's further proof that this is a good book that I nevertheless didn't enjoy.
In the end, Gaius ends up having to go through one of the stupid Fenrisian trials to prove that he's worthy, and ten goes on to found the Firstwolves chapter. I'm personally averse to this kind of test, the myth that you have to go on a quest to demonstrate your value, but as written it's highly effective. Well, the quest itself is boring, but luckily I was too busy painting miniatures (not Space Wolves, for the record) to be able to skip ahead in the audio book. The way the quest is resolved, however, is supremely satisfying and manages to tie some apparently disparate story threads together at last.
I often complain about the structer of Black Library novels. There's a lot of "cuts" from one plot thread to another, and often it's only to create a superficial cliffhanger. For most of The Wolftime, I was convinced that my phone was playing the audio files out of order. I haven't gone back to audit the storyline because I don't care enough to do it, but I swear Gaius was on Fenris, and then suddenly was going to Fenris in a later chapter. I kept mixing up some of the Historators with the Fenrisian tribes. I'm still not entirely sure where Colquan was in relation to Fenris or Gaius. It's not necessarily that the book isn't clear about these things, it's just that you never have the opportunity to grab onto the information. Just as soon as you form a mental map of the setup, the novel switches to something happening somewhere else entirely, and you have to start all over again.
I guess if you're a fan of Space Wolves, maybe this book has something in it for you. Personally, I feel like it makes the Space Wolves proper feel like a petty doomsday cult, eagerly anticipating the legendary Wolftime rapture when all the good Space Wolves get annointed and everybody else gets exactly what they deserve. I found it tedious, and if I were ever considering playing Space Wolves on the tabletop (I wasn't), this would keep me away from the faction. As a book, the story is made confusing by structure but emotionally it does work pretty well. That said, I won't ever read this one again, and I don't recommend it.
All images in this post copyright Games Workshop.