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
New to PurpleHeresy? Head on over to the index page to see a more chronological list of the Horus Heresy reviews on this blog.
New to PurpleHeresy? Head on over to the index page to see a more chronological list of the Horus Heresy reviews on this blog.
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