A Confusion of Reviews

Hey,

So...I stayed up way too late to finish A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix. Just demolished the thing which probably means I really liked it.

Basically, this is a kinder, gentler Warhammer 40K novel with the serial numbers filed off. The Empire of Man is still basically a totalitarian regime, but it has science and technology that is improving and alien species are incorporated into it (though Humans First! as always) and they ditched the skull motif in favor of tasteful decoration.

You've got an Emperor, but hier gets replaced every 20 years by a prince. A prince is basically a Space Marine Primarch -- a human being enhanced with biological/mechanical/psychic tools so they become supermen. They carry out the executive orders of the Emperor and are assisted by a household retinue of "priests" (a.k.a. scientists/technicians).

So...40K, but the whole thing is put together really well. There's also a dash of Amber in here. Princes are fiercely competitive and while it's difficult it's not impossible to engineer the death of a rival prince.

So in this story we follow Khemri, a new prince just out of candidacy school. As a newly-made prince he is assigned his first household staffer -- his Master of Assassins. Said Master of Assassins promptly thwarts an attempt of Khemri's life and the prince realizes that his job may not be as cushy as he was lead to believe.

So then it's a race to get him signed up into Imperial Service and then off on his career. Eventually he gets sent beyond the frontiers on a special training mission and makes an important discovery.

There is not an original idea in the book, but these tropes have been spun out really, really well. I would totally adapt a Dark Heresy game for this. I'd even be up for reading sequels and while the book clearly ends and is quite stand-alone, there are some obvious loose ends that might mean follow-up books are coming. Those loose ends are the only downsides of the book. It's not that there are major, outstanding plot issues left unresolved, but rather some obvious consequences to the choices Khemri makes that shouldn't let him think he's off the hook by book's end.

But, minor quibbles, the book pretty much had me at page one and I couldn't put it down. Fails the Bechdel Test utterly -- I'm pretty sure none of the female characters ever speak to each other. Khemri is described as a POC, but gets a white-guy cover so I don't know how that scores. The Emperor is referred to as Hier and all Princes are Princes male or female so that was interesting. But really, it's just good popcorn reading.

later
Tom


Still

The Iron Brotherhood

Hey,

So at HAVOC this year, I picked up some old RAFM boxed sets of fantasy figures. I painted up the first batch.

( photos of ye olde tyme leetle dudes )

So that's it. The whole sorry lot. The names are classic D&D though and I need to remember to be a bit more loopy when naming my PCs in the future. These were a fun bunch of guys to paint up and a fair bit more colorful than the usual modern-day guys I've been doing. I've got another box set from the series, a group headed up by a wizard. Hasn't been promoted to "old guy at the tavern who gives you a mission", he's still got to go into the field. But he's got an oddball group of misfits to help him out. Photos when they're finished.

later
Tom