Blood Reaver by Aaron Dembski-Bowden – review

Let’s be clear:  My mancrush on Dembski-Bowden is well established. I love his writing. His characters tend to have the sort of depth normally associated with the classics, and his action scenes and ability to convey moments of heart-stopping drama give me warm fuzzy feelings in all the right places. Blood Reaver has forced me to add a whole new section to my basement Dembski-Bowden shrine (and what with the massive Dan Abnett shrine, it’s getting quite crowded down there).

Volume two of his Night Lords trilogy, Blood Reaver continues the dark saga begun in the immensely popular Soul Hunter and brings us bang up to date with the fortunes of First Claw as well as introducing us to a raft of excellent new characters. There are a few points in the story that seem to refer to characters and times that I wasn’t familiar with, but even these were largely put into context over the course of the novel.

The Night Lords aboard Captain Vandred’s ship, the Covenant of Blood, are in trouble. Having fought against the forces of the false Emperor for well over a century (from their perspective), they are facing up to the realities of a defeat brought on by slow attrition and decay. Unable to resupply like the loyalist Astartes, they must instead live as brigands, stealing what they need from isolated Imperial outposts and running from any perceptibly superior force. Furthermore, Talos has realised that they must begin to recruit new aspirants if they are to replace their losses and slake their thirst for vengeance in the long term.

Into this picture steps the Blood Reaver himself, the Tyrant of Badab, Huron Blackheart. Planning a daring raid on the fortress monastery of the Marines Errant to steal their heavily guarded supply of geneseed, Huron recruits the Night Lords under the leadership of Talos to assist his Red Corsairs in securing the precious geneseed using their most potent weapon, fear. Promised their fill of the weapons, armour, and other supplies as payment for their assistance, Talos leads his Claw and the remnants of Vandred’s company into battle wary of the possibility of betrayal. However, when Talos discovers a powerful artefact in the hands of his would-be allies, the Night Lords set in motion a plan to take this artefact from under the noses of Blackheart and his Red Corsairs.

In my review of Soul Hunter I used the term ‘deliciously dark’ to describe the overall flavour of the novel. Blood Reaver takes this flavour to a whole new level. In the space of the first few pages, as the Night Lords torture a Blood Angel space marine for information, I quickly got the feeling that the author had discarded even the remnants of moral restraint and delved with utter abandon into the evil festering at the heart of the Night Lords. This atmosphere absolutely pours from each well crafted scene and left me feeling the need to keep the lights on when I slept.

The dark themes explored throughout the novel often war with a sense of martial pride as Talos and his brothers struggle with their base natures and the realities of the world from which they came. I felt that this was reflected in moments of brotherly care juxtaposed with battles between brothers on board the Covenant of Blood. Though they fight together to avenge the death of their primarch, there is always the tension of imminent betrayal between them. Balanced by a paradoxical sense of loyalty, this created the most powerful of subtexts to their every interaction.

Dembski-Bowden’s introduction of a new unit into the Night Lords’ forces was a very welcome one; Lucoryphus and his Raptors added immeasurably to the tale and brought with them a fascinating variation on the inhumanity of the Astartes, renegade or otherwise. Huron and his Red Corsairs also express well the depths to which a renegade Astartes can sink, though somehow Dembski-Bowden seems able to take this unrepentant bastard and make a charismatic character of him! Huron’s…faithful apothecary, Variel, is another fascinating and ruthless personality who plays a surprising role in the story, though his relationship with Talos is one of those points I mentioned earlier that seems to have happened outside of the novel, though I’m not certain where.

Talos’s human servants, Septimus and Octavia, continue their work for their master and begin to develop an interesting relationship of their own. The call of conscience is present in their own very human struggles and once again adds a very compelling depth to their story within the larger theme of loyalty and betrayal. Furthermore, their interactions with the subculture of human slaves aboard the Covenant of Blood is almost a novel unto itself and yet adds to the overall arc of the saga.

This is another Dembski-Bowden masterpiece, and yet, I’m left with a couple of niggles. There was, for me, an inevitability to the Night Lords’ eventual success that robbed the story of a building tension and release. Each of the set-piece scenes are emotive and delightfully dramatic, but there were times when the scenes– though powerful in and of themselves–felt separate from the overall narrative. These are minor points in what is a masterful 40K novel, but considering the standard Dembski-Bowden has set for himself, I felt that, for the sake of completeness, I should mention them.

Those nitpicks aside, this is a must read for any 40K fan. Dembski-Bowden continues to stretch the boundaries of 40K writing in this world class tale of survival and betrayal. Very highly recommended…but sleep with one eye open.

Forget the Sandman, Enter the Soul Hunter. 

Editor’s note:  Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s scratchings about the challenges and delights of writing in the 40k universe can also be found here at Boomtron.com with his monthly column GrimDark!