"Mechanicum" by Graham McNeill

It’s weird to think that this book is six years old already, appearing a year after prequel ‘The Kaban Project’ showed up in a Games Day chapbook. I re-read that story as a palate-cleanser before leaping into ‘Mechanicum’, and I’m still not really sold on it… but my memory of ‘Mechanicum’ is mostly positive, perhaps even "the point at which Graham got good". Let’s see how my second read-through of this book (first read-through in a few years), leaves me feeling.

"Hah! Now I'll never lose my assault cannon again... Oh, fuck. I've only gone and glued my hand to my chest!"

The Mechanicum, then. A very different organisation to the Adeptus Mechanicus of ‘modern’ times. Early on in the book, it's described as “competitive, uncooperative, suspicious and insular”. It’s a bit of a mystery, and as you might have gathered from the title, this book features the organisation heavily. So how does it do at presenting this force (in some ways as significant in the Heresy as the Legiones Astartes)? Wellllllll…

I’d forgotten that the ostensible main character is a woman, Dalia Cythera. Considering how female characters have tended to fare in Graham’s HH novels, this might be a bad sign. Right off the bat, we learn that she’s a teenage prodigy with a photographic memory. Awful visions of a Graham-penned Lisbeth Salander occurred me, but that’s not something that happens here luckily (though she does have the Repressed Psyker trait, long before it became a ridiculously common plot device in HH). However, we do start with a bit of a howler: Mistress Zeth, our heroine’s apparent benefactor, is based in a forge complex built on a lake of magma. I mean, even in the frequently nonsensical universe of 40K, this seems like a stupid thing to do. Graham can try to cover that one with pseudo-science but amongst all the robots built using human corpses and spaceships that look like city-sized cathedrals, this really stands out as a bad idea. I’m sure it won’t be used as a convenient plot device in the shocking finale.

Simultaneous to the introduction of Dalia, a group of three patrolling Knight Paladins encounter the Kaban Machine as it attacks a facility they are defending. This section reminds me that Graham is great at writing mechanised combat sequences and also gives us some background: political and ideological tensions have been growing on Mars, but not to the point that armed conflict between two elements of the Mechanicum isn’t a huge shock to these Knights. In the aftermath of the Kaban Machine conflict, we see a council of Titan Legio commanders assemble in the hopes of averting a disaster. This is another great scene that gives us further insight into the culture of the rival Titan factions, particularly the arrogant, sinister Legio Mortis. I know I often complain when a HH character is unambiguously villainous from the beginning, sapping their betrayal of any dramatic weight, but goddamn, Graham has made a satisfyingly evil antagonist here.

With that, Graham’s set up the two narratives he’s going to flick between for the rest of the book. The growing hostility between the Martian factions, and Dalia’s quest to DO A THING with the help of her plucky team of misfits. Dalia’s colleagues are nowhere near as engaging as I’d remembered, and they’re all fairly shallow and archetypal. For example, Zouche is an example of the fantasy Dwarf, going beyond his diminutive height; bellicose, bluff, tactless. I chose him as an example because he’s the only one whose backstory and motivations are interesting (actually, it provides a really useful insight to pre-Unity Terra). The rest of them are just pretty boring. Dalia herself quickly becomes a bit of a damsel. For example, when she’s motivated by empathy to save a psyker caught in an experiment gone wrong, she just makes the situation worse. Her intent is admirable but her actions are truly fucking stupid and all the screaming and crying just makes me think of that dreadful character in ‘Honour to the Dead’. That dumb incident, though, does set the narrative lurching forward. Given a terrifying glimpse of forbidden knowledge, Dalia now develops her own agenda.

Scrapcode plays an important part in ‘Mechanicum’, though the way it shows Kelbor-Hal’s corruption through AN EVUL CHAOS COMPUTAR VIRAS is pretty dumb. But the spread of devastation across Mars caused by the code is nicely done. There’s a great, tense scene showing a Titan confrontation with the first combat use of the corrupted scrapcode. Abnett did write this better in ‘Know No Fear’ – but still, the High Noon-style standoff between Legio Tempestus and Legio Mortis is a great moment.

I’ve used the ‘d’ word earlier in the review. Let me just take an overly long detour to elaborate on this ‘damsel’ thing. Like many of Graham’s female characters, Dalia just wants a big strong man to hold her and tell her it’s all OK. Am I exaggerating? A little bit, but not much. On reading Dalia’s sections of the book, my main feeling was “I really don’t remember it being this bad”. (Then again, I also remember the techno-friends’ dragonquest road trip being most of the book, while it actually doesn’t even start until over halfway through, so my memory is clearly unreliable.) She’s mostly capable and useful in a support capacity… but when there IS a combat situation, Dalia loses her shit. I’m torn on whether to condemn this or not. On the one hand, a standard human non-combatant without any kind of combat training would probably be utterly terrified if huge evil robots were trying to kill them. So maybe I should applaud Graham for realistic character actions. But from another perspective, this focuses so much on a female character’s weeping hysterics that it comes close to being a defining trait. 

I’m not saying a conscious decision has been made to show that women are weaker or more cowardly than men… but that’s the message I get, especially when her male companions’ response (also fear) is barely focused on. Compare to, say, Abnett in the Gaunt’s Ghosts series, where he is excellent at showing the bowel-destroying fear troopers both male and female encounter in combat: the portrayal is a lot more subtle and even-handed and, to my recollection, never falls back to simplistic pantomime overreactions. Yeah, yeah, not every writer can be Dan, and not every reader gives a fuck about this aspect of 40K; in fact from what I can tell, a lot of Black Library fans are deeply resentful of any ‘agenda’ they suspect of being pushed regarding gender equality in the grim darkness on the future. But this goes beyond my flag-waving political correctness, it’s just lazy character writing. I think Graham’s come a long way with this stuff for sure, but that doesn’t make this, ‘Fulgrim’ or ‘False Gods’ any less tough to read. I absolutely do give him credit for Adept Zeth though: she illustrates that Graham makes no distinction between the men and women of the Mechanicum. It's a shame, then, that she's barely developed as a character, only having time for a few interesting hints of something more to her than there first appears before her premature end.

That’s just a little lecture about the evils of gender role stereotyping comin’ to you from a guy who listens mostly to misogynistic rap music and is scared to even talk to women. Fuck this blog, right?

In the last part of the novel, we see the long-promised civil war finally erupt on Mars. The rise of Kelbor-Hal’s ‘Dark Mechanicum’, while lacking any subtlety, gives us some great scenes. The repercussions are felt even on Terra, where Malcador and Dorn worry about Mars even as they resolve to first squash Horus at Isstvan V. (Dorn and the Sigillite’s portrayal as close confidants here is certainly at odds with what’s come since – but that’s something which understandably happens a fair bit in these early books.) I loved that brief mention of Sor Talgron's creepy machinations; it feels like ‘The Purge’ was in the pipeline for years, perhaps ADB’s Word Bearer domination delayed it a bit?

After a spectacular Titan battle, the book ends, quite suddenly. My feeling is that Dalia’s fate is a setup for some 40K novel or event (possibly even Graham’s ‘Mars’ series, which I’ve not started yet) since it certainly doesn’t look like it’ll have any future relevance for the Horus Heresy. When thinking back on that section of the book, then, it’s hard to restrain the feeling of “who gives a fuck?” Like ‘Nemesis’, that’d be fine if the story was original or interesting to act as a ‘standalone’, but to be brutally honest, I just don’t think it’s strong enough. Meanwhile, the Civil War thread spends most of its time building agendas and characters embroiled in this power struggle, only to ultimately murder most of them in a riot of Forge-destroying violence. Graham has a tendency to do this with his characters; see the III Legion officers in ‘Angel Exterminatus’. I applaud him for killing almost indiscriminately – this is WAR, after all – but couldn’t he leave some room for series-spanning character arcs? With the Loyalist forces near-annihilated, I don’t know this ‘war’ will continue, but keep in mind this was only a snapshot of the conflict focusing on a ‘small’ but significant part of Mars. Ultimately, we leave ‘Mechanicum’ with a fairly limited context for how the planet-wide struggle is going.

Through this book, Graham’s dialogue is sometimes a little shaky. For someone who’s keen on characters making some big, portentous speeches, there are a few too many “fair enough”s and “I suppose”s here; the casual nature of it seems forced, and context-inappropriate. But that’s a minor issue. The structure of ‘Mechanicum’ is not dissimilar to ‘Deliverance Lost’, in that full-blown action only occurs near the end of the book. Possibly encouraged by ‘Legion’, this book skirts a cautious acceptance that BL readers don’t need a battle every fifty pages to maintain their interest.

There is dumbness galore here, not on ‘Battle For The Abyss’ levels, but sometimes close. Kelbor-Hal’s rather literal manifestation of ‘corrupted data’ calls for Michael Biehn to blast him with a shotgun and rasp “needs a reboot” or “reformat THIS, sucker!” or similar. Something about Graham’s books, especially during this era, screams “80s action movie”. Often really dumb and fun to read, but sometimes you find yourself thinking “That’s some fucking stupid shit.” The ancient Adept our heroes meet on their quest for the Dragon of Mars is dripping with ‘Writing for Nutsos 101’ clichés to the extent that I’m surprised he doesn’t shriek “Mad! They called me mad! Blind fools!” Mind you, sometimes the craziness is a boon. For example, the bizarre story of how the Dragon of Mars was imprisoned by the Emperor and how it’s linked to the origins of the Imperium… it’s so bonkers I’ve actually got to love it. Oh, apparently, most readers more au fait with the current 40K fluff than me concluded from hints in the book that the Dragon was actually a C’Tan. I don’t really know what that means or give that much of a fuck, I just thought I’d mention it.

As usual for a Graham book early in the Heresy series, criticism can be made of the lack of character ambiguity. Kelbor-Hal and his cronies are never less than loathsome; Adept Zeth, while occasionally heartless, is pure as snow when it comes to loyalty to the Imperium. Consider Deltrian, the Adept in the Night Lords series by ADB – that was a character whose portrayal showed clearly the Mechanicum was about as subject to black and white notions of “good” and “evil” as the shadowy upper echelons of the Imperium were. To show either side as cackling monsters or stern-faced saints seems to cheapen the schism a bit.

You might be able to tell how this is going from all this complaining. Sadly, re-reading ‘Mechanicum’ was less enjoyable than I had hoped. Perhaps the first time I read it I was relieved at the slight uptick in quality compared to ‘Fulgrim’ and ‘False Gods’ – after all, this time Graham wasn’t shitting all over characters Dan had written brilliantly. Yet at a second glance, his characterisation and dialogue hadn’t got any less shallow. The book also takes a great deal longer to get started than I remember; while I do like the intrigue of the Martian power moves, I don’t think Dalia and co. turn out to be worth the time spent on them. Only Zouche is interesting and the weird blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hint that he might have a deeper, more sinister agenda makes me hope we’ll see him again.

And speaking of that...

I’m still very interested in the Mechanicum storyline in HH and it’s a real shame it’s been dormant this long. Like most early HH Graham books, I can’t help but wish Graham had put the good bits (notably the Titan and Knight combat) in a novella and someone else had tackled the bits which called for more subtlety, like the actual culture of the Martian priests, or the behind-the-curtain political manoeuvres of Horus’ emissaries, or the motivations of Kelbor-Hal for revolt (beyond a couple sloppy pages which are the equivalent of some asshole saying "WE'LL GIVE YOU GOLD!"). I’m ‘bout to throw out some dream roster shit. David Annandale would have been great to write about the Dragon of Mars stuff, John French could have been excellent for Mechanicum Machiavellian plotting, Chris Wraight could have shown the actual day-to-day logistics of Mars’ government and how it interacts with the Munitorum, Aaron could have shown the claustrophobic desperation of the Imperial Fists’ scramble to secure supplies… OK, the involvement of all of those authors with the Heresy series was some way off. But I’d also nominate Matthew Farrer, with his excellent ability to write about the 40K Mechanicus (or the Heresy Mechanicum, as ‘Vorax’ showed), as a person who could have made this book the visceral, disturbing novel it should have been. Of course, Dan would be my first choice for rewriting any of the first 10 HH books, but Dan was cooking up some marvellous shit about Prospero during this time, I think… I realise I seem to trash McNeill quite a bit on this blog, but with his “PurpleHeresy’s Most Improved” medal for ‘Angel Exterminatus’ and ‘Vengeful Spirit’, Graham himself would be a nice choice for a sequel.

Anyway, all this wishlisting is a waste of time, since Rob Sanders is apparently in line to come in with the sequel for this in novella form sometime next year. Here’s hoping that he will at least be able to match the original.

Well, I went in with a positive attitude, no one can deny that... but this falls short of the greatness it deserves – like too many of the early Heresy books. Y’all haters who shit on ‘Deliverance Lost’ and ‘Angel Exterminatus’ might need to re-read the late-2000s novels and check whether it really was all better back in the day. 6/10

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