Warriors of Ultramar by Graham McNeill
Dec. 4th, 2009 06:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
koilungfish29/11/09 - Art; Black Wizards: The Cauldron
30/11/09 - Blocked
1/12/09 - Ill
2/12/09 - Ill
3/12/09 - 2248 words on various
4/12/09 - Ill
Title - Warriors of Ultramar
Author - Graham McNeill
ISBN - 978-1-84416-262-8
Warriors of Ultramar's plot concerns a world - Tarsis Ultra - under attack by tyranids, and by attack we mean "buried under an avalanche of teeth and claws". Captain Ventris & company, along with some dubious cousins of theirs, show up to try and raise everyones' chance of survival above zero. The plot, in itself, is not the grandest nor most original thing in the universe. There is much that is reminiscent of other stories. The ending in particular reminds me primarily of Aliens and secondarily of several other things. Whether or not this is Mr McNeill's failing is something of a question; the tyranids have always lurked in a rather heavily populated sector of the imagined forms of aliens. Anyone who is familiar with Starcraft or the Alien movies will find them rather familiar, although when it comes to the zerg exactly who ripped off who is a matter that I'm given to understand had to be settled out of court.
However, the reader is not here for the plot. The reader is here for the characters. Mr McNeill's Ultramarines - Captain Uriel Ventris, Sergeant Pasanius, Sergeant Learchus and sundry others - return, with a supporting cast that runs to at least twenty speaking characters. That Mr McNeill can have so many characters, some of whom vanish for halves or quarters of the book only to reappear later, and not have them blur into one another, or leave the reader wondering "Who?" is a credit to his writing.
Of the purely human characters, the one who gets the most screen-time is Snowdog, a petty gang-leader with a highly evolved sense of opportunity. Snowdog is a nasty, murderous piece of work who winds up being stuck in a position of responsibility for others and being provoked to altruism by his girlfriend, Silver [apparently characters in Black Library books can have relationships]. Snowdog's character arc is less about his evolution as a person and more about his resistance to that evolution, his bloodyminded determination to stick to who and what he is.
There are so many normal human characters that it is impractical to list them all. The spectrum is wide - the planetary governor, a nurse, a pilot, a couple of Imperial Guard colonels, an admiral, a farmer, and considerably more - and each is distinct. Each character has a point of change to work through, be it acceptance, denial, resolution or courage. To have so many characters around the plot is a challenge in itself; to have so many and keep them distinct is a triumph.
However, the heart of Warriors of Ultramar is in the chest of Captain Ventris, troubled by two problems - luckily, he has enough hearts to go around. In one heart he has the issue of adherence to the Codex Astartes [the big book of rules for Space Marines]. Ventris is remarkable amongst Ultramarines for his ability to plan and act intuitively, ignoring or going around the rules of the Codex. This leaves him stuck between two points - on the one side, his by-the-book sergeant, Learchus, who can't think outside the box, who Ventris feels represents an unresponsive, dogmatic approach to war, and on the other side the Mortifactors, led by Chaplain Astador, who have gone so far outside the box they can't seem to remember where they left it. Ventris' need to reconcile which of these paths is right, if there is a middle way and if it is suitable for him to walk his company down, are both at the centre of the book and made more complicated by Ventris' other problem. In his other heart, he is suffering from the aftereffects of the climax of the previous book, most especially a tendency to go rather more berserk than he should and have uncontrollable visions of slaughter. Having to deal with both of these matters at once, intertwined in Ventris' mind, is what keeps the reader interested.
Ventris is accompanied by Pasanius, whose main job is to be supportive and do some uncomfortable foreshadowing, and by Learchus, Ventris' ex-rival and probably the most undiluted example of an Ultramarine in Warriors of Ultramar. He spends most of the book apart from Ventris, training people and being very good at it, and again it is a testament to Mr McNeill's skill that this stiff-backed sergeant, so by-the-book that he's got Dewey numbers on his internal organs, who puts his men through the training regime from hell and is bastard enough to do it alongside them when they're normal humans and he's a Space Marine just so they'll hate him all the more, comes across as a sympathetic, likable, respectable and indeed noble character.
The Ultramarines are lined up alongside the human characters very deliberately; Captain Ventris is specifically played off against Pavel Leforto, a local man with a family. The comparison between the humans who have everything to fight for, and the Space Marines who live to fight but have given up their humanity, is another underlying theme, one that Captain Ventris gives some thought and perhaps the most important part of the book. What separates Warriors of Ultramar from other W40K novels is that it has inner life - a musing on humanity and war - that takes the conceits of the W40K universe and actually thinks about what they say about the human condition. That is good writing and good SF.
The other triumph of Warriors of Ultramar is the pacing. The action rises steadily towards crescendo levels of tension and action, at which point the reader discovers they are only half-way through the book, and maintains this height of excitement. Then, as with Nightbringer, the reader enters the final forty pages and Mr McNeill takes a turbo pill. The characters, who have been required to do the dementedly improbable, are now required to do the downright impossible. The task they are set seems beyond their reach, the page count left to do it barely contains room for an epilogue, and the stakes so high they've gone through the roof tiles. Compelling, to say the least.
Mr McNeill also gets points for having an ending that most categorically does not involve either eldar or necrons.
The one major downside of Warriors of Ultramar is Mr McNeill's prose style. It is clear and simple, free from errors and misshapen phrasing, but it lacks grace or elegance. There is no lyricism, no artistry in his arrangement of phrases. Whilst Mr McNeill is a master of deploying information - a simple reference to one point or another can speak volumes about the thoughts and feelings of Captain Ventris - the difference between his skill in executing such deployments and his skill with imagery and fluidity of prose is such that his writing, whilst more than competent, feels poor by comparison. Mr McNeill's writing is also subtle, with linguistic puns and references hidden so far below the surface that one can't be wholly certain that they're there [such as Pasanius' name], and perhaps he is too subtle. One cannot help but detect an air of uncertainty in Mr McNeill's writing, a sense of bets hedged, of risks not run. Nightbringer was his first novel and went straight down the middle of the road; Warriors of Ultramar feels as if Mr McNeill has become aware there are greater realms to explore but has yet to strike out for them. One cannot help but wish for bolder, stronger prose, equal in quality to Warriors of Ultramar's characterization and tension.
That said, this is Mr McNeill's second book. It is better than most writers' fourth or fifth. Perhaps these flaws are less a matter of "can't" and more a matter of "hasn't yet".
This book is:
* - exciting
* - full of strong characters
* - a good read
This book is not:
* - original
* - strongly plotted
* - contained of prose worthy of its characters
30/11/09 - Blocked
1/12/09 - Ill
2/12/09 - Ill
3/12/09 - 2248 words on various
4/12/09 - Ill
Author - Graham McNeill
ISBN - 978-1-84416-262-8
"Uriel watched the tyranid organisms attacking the refinery and felt his lip curl in a sneer of contempt. Aliens were going to die and the thought pleased him. In his mind's eye he could see the black spectre of death floating above the tyranid fleet and felt a surge of heady anticipation at the thought of the vast scale of destruction about to be unleashed. He felt the power that comes of knowing that another being lives only because you have chosen not to kill it yet, and the sensation surged like an electric charge around his body."Warriors of Ultramar is the sequel to Nightbringer and, unusually for a W40K novel, feels like a proper sequel in the sense that, whilst the plots of Warriors of Ultramar and Nightbringer are not connected, the magic reset button has most definitely not been pressed. Damages done have not been wholly repaired. Characters who left the first book carrying baggage still have it with them when they enter the second, and that baggage most definitely includes grand pianos.
Warriors of Ultramar's plot concerns a world - Tarsis Ultra - under attack by tyranids, and by attack we mean "buried under an avalanche of teeth and claws". Captain Ventris & company, along with some dubious cousins of theirs, show up to try and raise everyones' chance of survival above zero. The plot, in itself, is not the grandest nor most original thing in the universe. There is much that is reminiscent of other stories. The ending in particular reminds me primarily of Aliens and secondarily of several other things. Whether or not this is Mr McNeill's failing is something of a question; the tyranids have always lurked in a rather heavily populated sector of the imagined forms of aliens. Anyone who is familiar with Starcraft or the Alien movies will find them rather familiar, although when it comes to the zerg exactly who ripped off who is a matter that I'm given to understand had to be settled out of court.
However, the reader is not here for the plot. The reader is here for the characters. Mr McNeill's Ultramarines - Captain Uriel Ventris, Sergeant Pasanius, Sergeant Learchus and sundry others - return, with a supporting cast that runs to at least twenty speaking characters. That Mr McNeill can have so many characters, some of whom vanish for halves or quarters of the book only to reappear later, and not have them blur into one another, or leave the reader wondering "Who?" is a credit to his writing.
Of the purely human characters, the one who gets the most screen-time is Snowdog, a petty gang-leader with a highly evolved sense of opportunity. Snowdog is a nasty, murderous piece of work who winds up being stuck in a position of responsibility for others and being provoked to altruism by his girlfriend, Silver [apparently characters in Black Library books can have relationships]. Snowdog's character arc is less about his evolution as a person and more about his resistance to that evolution, his bloodyminded determination to stick to who and what he is.
There are so many normal human characters that it is impractical to list them all. The spectrum is wide - the planetary governor, a nurse, a pilot, a couple of Imperial Guard colonels, an admiral, a farmer, and considerably more - and each is distinct. Each character has a point of change to work through, be it acceptance, denial, resolution or courage. To have so many characters around the plot is a challenge in itself; to have so many and keep them distinct is a triumph.
However, the heart of Warriors of Ultramar is in the chest of Captain Ventris, troubled by two problems - luckily, he has enough hearts to go around. In one heart he has the issue of adherence to the Codex Astartes [the big book of rules for Space Marines]. Ventris is remarkable amongst Ultramarines for his ability to plan and act intuitively, ignoring or going around the rules of the Codex. This leaves him stuck between two points - on the one side, his by-the-book sergeant, Learchus, who can't think outside the box, who Ventris feels represents an unresponsive, dogmatic approach to war, and on the other side the Mortifactors, led by Chaplain Astador, who have gone so far outside the box they can't seem to remember where they left it. Ventris' need to reconcile which of these paths is right, if there is a middle way and if it is suitable for him to walk his company down, are both at the centre of the book and made more complicated by Ventris' other problem. In his other heart, he is suffering from the aftereffects of the climax of the previous book, most especially a tendency to go rather more berserk than he should and have uncontrollable visions of slaughter. Having to deal with both of these matters at once, intertwined in Ventris' mind, is what keeps the reader interested.
Ventris is accompanied by Pasanius, whose main job is to be supportive and do some uncomfortable foreshadowing, and by Learchus, Ventris' ex-rival and probably the most undiluted example of an Ultramarine in Warriors of Ultramar. He spends most of the book apart from Ventris, training people and being very good at it, and again it is a testament to Mr McNeill's skill that this stiff-backed sergeant, so by-the-book that he's got Dewey numbers on his internal organs, who puts his men through the training regime from hell and is bastard enough to do it alongside them when they're normal humans and he's a Space Marine just so they'll hate him all the more, comes across as a sympathetic, likable, respectable and indeed noble character.
The Ultramarines are lined up alongside the human characters very deliberately; Captain Ventris is specifically played off against Pavel Leforto, a local man with a family. The comparison between the humans who have everything to fight for, and the Space Marines who live to fight but have given up their humanity, is another underlying theme, one that Captain Ventris gives some thought and perhaps the most important part of the book. What separates Warriors of Ultramar from other W40K novels is that it has inner life - a musing on humanity and war - that takes the conceits of the W40K universe and actually thinks about what they say about the human condition. That is good writing and good SF.
The other triumph of Warriors of Ultramar is the pacing. The action rises steadily towards crescendo levels of tension and action, at which point the reader discovers they are only half-way through the book, and maintains this height of excitement. Then, as with Nightbringer, the reader enters the final forty pages and Mr McNeill takes a turbo pill. The characters, who have been required to do the dementedly improbable, are now required to do the downright impossible. The task they are set seems beyond their reach, the page count left to do it barely contains room for an epilogue, and the stakes so high they've gone through the roof tiles. Compelling, to say the least.
Mr McNeill also gets points for having an ending that most categorically does not involve either eldar or necrons.
The one major downside of Warriors of Ultramar is Mr McNeill's prose style. It is clear and simple, free from errors and misshapen phrasing, but it lacks grace or elegance. There is no lyricism, no artistry in his arrangement of phrases. Whilst Mr McNeill is a master of deploying information - a simple reference to one point or another can speak volumes about the thoughts and feelings of Captain Ventris - the difference between his skill in executing such deployments and his skill with imagery and fluidity of prose is such that his writing, whilst more than competent, feels poor by comparison. Mr McNeill's writing is also subtle, with linguistic puns and references hidden so far below the surface that one can't be wholly certain that they're there [such as Pasanius' name], and perhaps he is too subtle. One cannot help but detect an air of uncertainty in Mr McNeill's writing, a sense of bets hedged, of risks not run. Nightbringer was his first novel and went straight down the middle of the road; Warriors of Ultramar feels as if Mr McNeill has become aware there are greater realms to explore but has yet to strike out for them. One cannot help but wish for bolder, stronger prose, equal in quality to Warriors of Ultramar's characterization and tension.
That said, this is Mr McNeill's second book. It is better than most writers' fourth or fifth. Perhaps these flaws are less a matter of "can't" and more a matter of "hasn't yet".
This book is:
* - exciting
* - full of strong characters
* - a good read
This book is not:
* - original
* - strongly plotted
* - contained of prose worthy of its characters
