Hi,

the topic says it all. I already marke "Scourge the Heretic" on my "need to buy next month" list, but I stumbled across the titel "Enforcer".

My questions: Did anyone read the book? If so, does it provide some inside/inspiration on the daily life of an Enforcer?

I know, "each Enforcer is different and it all DEPENDS ON" (course you, phrase! CURSE OVER YOU! *shaking fist*), but I am always happy to get some example to spark my own mind.

Thanks!

I recently finished Crossfire (the first in the omnibus), and I personally think it was great.

Though it says Enforce it is about the Adeptus Arbites. It is a great story with lots of in-depth descriptions of how the Arbites work on a day to day basis. Not only that, but the information stretches out to both the Imperial Navy and the Ecclesiarchy. There are many details on how the Adeptus works together as an organisation and how it works together with the elements outside of the Adeptus such as the nobility and merchants corporations.

I highly recommend Enforcer.

To be perfectly honest, the plots never grabbed me all that much.

That may be because the main character is really, really one dimensional. Essentially imagine 3 books about Judge Dredd...and not the comic book Judge Dredd but the Stallone one. Yep. 900 or so pages of beefcake "I AM THE LAW" Judge Dredd. Except of course replace Judge Dredd with a female WH40K arbitor. Ok, so its a bad example...but not sure how else to really put it without spoilers.

Essentially the main character never surprises, in my opinion.

That said, Rex Tauron is right. The series is quite in depth about some aspects of the WH40K that we don't see very often. Its similar to the Abnett Inquisitor books in that way, and for that alone is worth a read. Just don't go expecting Abnett's characters or plots...

I highly recommend that anyone GMing DH or RT should read the Shira Calpurnia trilogy. I know that Scourge the Heretic was intended as a DH tie-in but Enforcer does it better

Thanks to all of you!

So, this comes on my list

Enforcer is an omnibus of the three Shira Calpurnia novels. It gives great insight into the workings and hierarchies of the Adeptus Arbites and their different foci/expertises (Versipex, Judge, Arbitrator, Chastener, Espionist etc.). It furthermore gives good insight about some workings of the Adeptus Ministorum (1st novel), Mechanicus (2nd novel), Astra Telepathica (3rd novel) (as well as Imperial Navy) on a local/planetary level and how jurisdication can overlap as well as about an important world like Hydraphur and an Rogue Trader fleet (2nd novel). The novels (imo especially the second one) have some lengthes sometimes and are often not of the high-end style like Eisenhorn and Ravenor. For a 40K nerd like me it is a jewel though...

Bladehate said:

In my opinion she is not that one-dimensional (at least not at much as Stallone...). It surely does not have Abnett's characters or plots (at least not those from Eisenhorn and Ravenor), but most of the time Matthew Farrer also does not take as much liberty with the background as Abnett does. He catches just the right feel of 40K and sticks to (sometimes dry) details without going over the top. These details he pays attention to are sometimes brillant in my view. The 3rd novel alone gives more information and description about the Adeptus Astra Telepathica as all other 40K fluff combined and I much prefer it compared to Eisenhorn's Astropathic mailboxes...

The Shira Calpurnia trilogy is genuinely excellent. I love Matthew Farrer's work; in my view he's the only rival to Dan Abnett as the best novelist in 40k at the moment. His work is characterised by a slower pace than Abnett, but by a greater attention to detail and huge respect for the 40k background and mood, something which Abnett is willing to sacrifice to tell his own stories.

One always gets the impression that Farrer writes very slowly and that Abnett writes very fast; I suppose Abnett gives the impression that he's making it up as he goes along (in a good, rather breathless way) whereas Farrer seems to suggest he's working his way slowly towards a carefully planned finale. (Plus there's the fact that Abnett writes 2-3 books a year and Farrer hasn't written anything for 40k other than a couple of (excellent) short stories recently!)

I love 40k, but I do think that quality of writing within the setting varies tremendously. I'm very keen to get a feel for all the nuances in 40k, but sadly this means reading a lot of books that make that process something of a chore. Abnett and Farrer are the authors I genuinely look forward to reading. And it has to be said that Abnett can misfire (albeit always entertainingly) whereas Farrer hasn't done so yet.

I recently bought the Enforcer omnibus, and I'm half-way through the first novel. So far, I'm finding it extremely dry (also my reaction to Scourge The Heretic, by the way). I've heard good things about Blind, the third book in the Shira Calpurnia series, so I'll keep slogging through it...

So far, though, I haven't found any Black Library writers to rival Dan Abnett- the Eisenhorn trilogy remains the high point, in my opinion...

Adeptus-B said:

Personally, I rate Aaron Demski-Bowden above Dan Abnett in Black Library's current stable of writers, and the most recent works of both Graham McNeill and Gav Thorpe have consistently impressed me.

Abnett's works, except for the three novels he's done for the Horus Heresy, seldom feel like the other works within the same setting (and that has more to do with the extremely close collaboration of all the writers working on the Heresy series). Abnett's 40k novels always seem to be part of some distinct setting based on the 40k universe that is uniquely his, while Demski-Bowden, McNeill and Thorpe (and Anthony Reynolds to an extent; I really love his Word Bearers trilogy) all seem far more able to take what already exists in 40k and expand upon it.

In short, Dan Abnett's works never quite feel "40k" enough for me...

Well, I did say that it was a bad example, plus a bit of exaggeration. Without going into spoilers, even in the third book none of Calpurnia's actions were surprising in the least. From the start of the first book to the end of the third, the character changed very little. While that's appropriate to a paragon of the Arbites, its not terribly compelling to read about. Which means the real action has to come from the plot and the fluff...which is quite thorough but never really pulled it off for me. I do think the writing is good, but that didn't make the pages go by any faster for me.

With that said, it may be that when I pick up a WH40K novel I rather expect something loud, cheap and in-your-face. They're basically dime romance novels for males. So when I stumble across that exception to the rule, it does throw me for a curve ball a bit.

Abnett is probably one of the better authors in WH40K, but I can only agree with you N0-1. He even talks about it in one of his forewords how his books are jokingly referred to as the Daniverse by the rest of the WH40K writers/editors/whatevers. He's pretty entertaining though, and you can tell he's done time writing for comics. That said, there are a few things that I found entertaining (Quixos 3 kilometer pylon for example) and which definitely felt like WH40K to me. But he does play very fast and loose with details in the setting and expects the reader to swallow it. So yeah, you do have to click off your eye for details and just enjoy the ride.

Abnett is great for general entertainment.

Farrer is great for setting information.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Seconded. Abnett's novels are usually an entertaining read, don't get me wrong. But I do feel he's terribly overhyped as an author and gets away with murder sometimes (I'm thinking of the Ravenor trilogy in particular). I prefer Graham McNeill, despite his bad habit of making blatantly inappropriate references to literature (Without spoilers, there's a looong moment in Fulgrim that wound me up)

Bladehate hit the nail on the head for me.

I found the Enforcer books dry beyond tolerance, because I was expecting more action and character depth, and was profoundly disappointed in these regards. They are excellent for setting information, going into (as has been stated) the minutest (driest) detail. However, for me, they did not capture the dynamism and excitement of Arbite work as they could have. When there was action, I felt Farrer was keen to get past it as quickly as possible to return to world-building and political machinations.

Since the topic asks whether they offer insight into the universe, I must say yes, absolutely. However I believe it is a matter of taste as to whether or not you will enjoy this particular slice of 40k.

Of the Calpurnia books, I though Blind was the worst and found my self being forced to plow through to the end. The first two were adequate if dry. But all three have their moments.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I haven't read any of his work- what title(s) of his would you recommend starting with (preferably non-Horus Heresy- that series can get pretty repetitive after a while, so I'm taking a temporary break from it right now)?

I enjoyed these books. And I play an Arbiter character in a DH campaign, so reading them greatly helped me play my character much better in line with the fluff. As a GM I have drawn inspiration from the astropath settings and the rogue trader settings.

Adeptus-B said:

Well, I personally regard his addition to the Heresy series - The First Heretic, dealing with the Word Bearers' fall from grace - to be my favourite so far, but I'll put that recommendation to one side for the moment.

He's only done a few things thus far, having only been writing for Black Library for a relatively short time. His first novel, Cadian Blood, was decent enough and showed plenty of promise in the fairly appealing setting of Cadian Shock Troops fighting for their lives against Chaos-tainted zombies during the 13th Black Crusade. His second novel, Helsreach, demonstrated his particular skill at turning a novel from the Space Marine Battles series and turning it into a fairly deep character piece about Reclusiarch Grimaldus of the Black Templars rather than falling back on reliable-old mindless warfare (a trick he consistently achieves when writing about Space Marines - he writes action scenes only to push the plot forwards and concerns himself as much or more with the characters' motives and natures as anything else). However, I'd most strongly recommend - particularly with Black Crusade on the horizon - his Night Lords novels, the first of which is called Soul Hunter, and the second of which, out soon, is called Blood Reaver and which I've seen nothing but glowing reviews for.

From purely literary perspective Enforcer series isn't that great. Crossfire has a decent plot but its interrupted by someones idea of throwing totally unneeded and plotwise unnecessary 10-page descriptions of firefights between every 20 pages. It would have been a LOT better had it been written as a pure detective story. Second novels plot is simple as hell and it really just plays around with intorducing new characters and viewpoints once every 20 pages.

However, if you want to have very good insight in how normal people (nor spesh mahreens) live and work, how conspiracy inside an imperia Adeptus can form and what Arbites REALLY are and do (no, they are NOT normal police in any way) then you definitely need to read Crossfire.