Thoughts on Eisenhorn.

Also, a count of every book I've abandoned this year.

I've now tried two Warhammer 40k audiobooks and while I'm generally pleased, I can't lie about the issues I've had with both series.

Back when I reviewed HORUS RISING, I mentioned the sheer depth and breadth of the lore that makes it difficult to assess what's going on. There are memes dedicated to this. 40k is a huge world, based on a huge game, fleshed out with huge books, spread out across dozens of subgames and series. Imagine if Tolkien was a gym bro with sci-fi skills and twenty clones of himself over three decades. The 40k world is that size.

I've had to watch long-form videos to get up to speed. I don't mind that but it is a unique experience compared to other books. I don't have the time or money to play the game--it's less of a hobby and more of a lifestyle, and I can't commit that percentage of myself to one thing. I already have religion and craft.

Rather than continue on with the Horus series, I decided instead to read Eisenhorn, because it only has 4 books and—according to Rekieta—this is the series Cavill is developing. Could be wrong, but it helps me wrap my head around it. Apparently Eisenhorn is an in-world James Bond-type character, or at least I got that feeling from XENOS.

What I didn't get was a clear sense of WTF is happening, other than an inspector or something is on a case and it gets weird.

Now, the prose and the world are part of the obstacle, but the bigger part is the bad audio mixing. This audiobook is so quiet that if I'm working in an above-average-loud area, I can't freaking hear it. Thus, I missed a lot of XENOS.

I only opted not to return it because what I grasped of it was still good. Good enough that I grabbed this bad boy so I can pick through the series at my leisure.

I want to get into this. Audio just isn't the way.

So that's my WH40k update. In other news, the total number of books I've aborted in 2023 is 11. Since I'm going to be very spicy and insulting with this, the rest of this post is after the paywall. I will start crap online with other authors but only for money.