Xenos- Dan Abnett

The Inquisition moves amongst mankind like an avenging shadow, striking down the enemies of humanity with uncompromising ruthlessness. When he finally corners an old foe, Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn is drawn into a sinister conspiracy. As events unfold and he gathers allies – and enemies – Eisenhorn faces a vast interstellar cabal and the dark power of daemons, all racing to recover an arcane text of abominable power: an ancient tome known as the Necroteuch.

My quest has finaly begun into finding out who this Eisenhorn fellow is… When I first met him, he was on on his way to a planet called Hubris, a cold semi dead palnet. He was hunting a known heretic I cannot recall the name of sadly. Said heretic was quickly despached of, but what was supposed to be “job well done and over”, turned out to be “oh shit, we realy stepped into it this time did we not”? I decided to follow Eisenhorn and his somewhat ragety tagety crew into space and what not. It has been quite a journey ( I will be including some nifty hand drawn pictograms I made along the way aswell, hope they are to your liking). I have decided to join the crew on their next mission, aptly called Malleus, seeing as we did not catch all the pesky Heretics, Emperor forgive my mistakes…

(Part of me crew, from left to right, Midas Betancore, Eisenhorn, Godwyn Fischig)

(Aemos was busy taking notes somewhere else…)

I will be reporting back as soon as we happen to find a new astropath for our comunique, seems our previous one died due to warp induced truama.

( A cryogenerator)

Signed:
Davidius

Xenos by Dan Abnett is the first installment in his Eisenhorn trilogy. It is written in the first person perspective throughout the whole novel. I have become used to his way of writing by now so it did not put me of too much. It has been said that if you would like to get into the 40K setting this will be a good starting point. I unfortunatly started my 40K journey with one of his pupil’s omnibuses: Ravenor. I was thrown in quite deep, but I can swim just fine luckily… Xenos had a straight forward plot, get the bady, kill the traitor, the xenos, the heretic! The plot thickens once the supposed bady is caught.

I like my Iquisitor novels a lot. This might not have been my favorite of them so far. Abnett, I have realized, is so good at what he does that he can leave you thinking:

Although the story is easy to follow, it always feels like I am missing something crucial. In Xenos I knew who was going to turn out to be a traitor. I did not care too much about that, what I did want to find out was who the main bad ass is. The intro starts with hearing his name for the first time and then you dont see or hear it again untill the last two pages of the novel… This is also what I have come to expect from reading an Abnett. You get complex explanations of what who was wearing what, how good some are at dealing out headshots or other bodily wounds, but before that you have to sit through some sort of culture class and go through the motions. Again, this does not put me off, it helps me get immersed into the 40K world more.

(The Sundome…)

(Damask, Hubris)

Abnett also introduced me to some new creatures I have never had the pleasure (thank the Emperor for that) of reading about before. I had to google the name because I struggled seeing it in my minds eye.

(Enter the Saruthi, one of the only pictures I felt fit their description. The way they were described made me think that they would be M.C Escher’s worst nightmare…)

We also met up with some of The Emperor’s Children, a traitor Space Marines Chapter, led by:

(Mandragore, nasty piece of work but not too important in the story…)

As I have stated before, throughout the whole novel I was waiting for this guy to make his appearance:

(Cherubael, who the fuck are you?! You have been taunting me since I have read Ravenor…)

All In all Xenos was a pretty good read. I my not be the best judge of books and my reviews might suck from time to time. I did enjoy and I am glad I got the follow up books to try to find out what happens next. What I did like is that “our Hero” did not miraculously step away from this novel unscathed, everyone suffered from some sort of affliction, I am exited to see how it all pans out in the coming novels.

I gave Xenos a 4 out of 5 on GR and would recommend it to those that have not heard about Inquisitors yet, that would like to see how they function more or less. This was first published back in 2001 and the faction has evolved quite a bit. This was book 69 in my Warhammer Legends Collection by Hatchet Partworks. If you would like to read some more about Xenos I would suggest checking out Michael over at Track of Words
how or why he so few followers is beyond my understanding.

Hope you all have a great day.

(Disclaimer, the pictures shown here are from google, all rights are reserved to the original artists, with respect. Some images are what you get in the middle of Xenos if you have the Partworks collection.)