Blood Reaver

Blood Reaver is the second novel in the Night Lords trilogy. We follow the Talos and the First Claw in their dealings with Huron Blackheart, the titular Blood Reaver, leader of the Red Corsairs. With the quality of Soul Hunter, I expect this novel to be just as good. Much like the last book, in Blood Reaver, the Night Lords are temporarily bound to a larger group of traitors. In the Soul Hunter, it was Abaddon and the Black Legion, because the Exalted allied them together, and now that the Night Lords betrayed them, they instead seek refuge with the Blood Reaver, Huron Blackheart and his Red Corsairs. Of course, our characters are Night Lords, their loyalty is only to themselves, and as soon as they meet see the Red Corsairs, they see a ship, the Echo of Damnation, a ship that was a Night Lords vessel from the Great Crusade. Upon seeing a Night Lords ship under control of people not born of Nostramo, the Exalted and the First Claw decide that they will take it back. The way the Night Lords only care about themselves, and how something as petty as a ship being owned by someone else is worth risking all of their marines and crews lives over is so good. Speaking of good, once again that characters in this novel are great, despite one glaring issue I will discuss later. All of the space marine characters are great. Talos is still dedicated to how the legion used to be with Curze in command. There is a particular interaction between him and a legionary who abandoned the Night Lords to join the Black Legion, Ruven, who we saw int the last novel, that I think does very well to characterise both of our characters. It gives us a very good reason that any marine would abandon their legion or chapter to join the Black Legion, and while of course Talos disagrees with this, he had abandoned him to die earlier in the novel for being a traitor, he does agree with part of what he says. Something I didn’t expect from this book was how they treated Uzas. In the previous novel he mostly just comes across as a Khornate berserker, and while that is an apt description of him, in Blood Reaver he gets some good characterisation, to the point where his is almost my favourite character. We get to see times where his bloodlust isn’t so present, where he can just talk like a relatively normal marine with Talos. He tries to convince Talos that the legion was never that great, that they were always corrupt, and it just is so nice to see his corrupted, yet arguably accurate perspective. The other marines are still good too, Xarl, Cyrion, and Mercution are both still enjoyable to read, Ruven comes across like a total dick but the conversation with Talos I mentioned before does give some depth to his character. One particular scene that I quite like with the marines is Talos in one of his transes, where we get to see the Siege of Terra, with all of the characters we know 10000 years earlier, before the corruption and loss of any lack of hope they have now. Then there’s the human characters, with Septimus and Octavia, as well as the new introductions of Hound and Maruk. We focus a bit more on Ocativa in this one, where she has here new attendant, Hound. I quite like these characters together, Octavia is around being haunted by a ghost girl, with Hound trying to take care of her, even if she finds him a bit disgusting. Septimus is with the new slave Maruk for most of this one and they’re alright together, Maruk being new is pretty much going alone with everything Septimus is doing and just being grossed out and stuff. There is one scene on Hells Iris, a Red Corsairs/traitor port that we spend some time at, where Septimus and Maruk abduct a pregnant woman, which just feels kinda out of place, and nothing really comes from it. Now is the complaint that I mentioned earlier, its Septimus and Octavias interactions. In Soul Hunter, I liked them together, they Octavia learning about how the ship works with is crew and all was nice to see, and there is still more of that here that I quite like again. However, they’re in love with each other now, and it doesn’t feel right. For a while when they interact Octavia just keeps calling him an idiot, which always just feels like that awful anime trope of “its not like I like you or anything, baka!”, or “heretic!” in this case I suppose. It all just comes across with a man writing woman energy that I didn’t feel was present in Soul Hunter, or Betrayer with Lotara Sarin. Now while I complain about this, their lovey interactions came up a few times. As I said at the start Octavia calls him an idiot a bunch which is annoying, but theres only really 3 scenes, which weren’t that long, of them being in love together. While this was definitely the worst part of the book, there isn’t much of it, so it doesn’t ruin the novel. I thought it could just be a neat little ship that you might get to see fan art of, but unfortunately its canon, and not done particularly well. The only other complaint I have is one that comes up in all of ADB’s books, which is the onomatopoeia which is uses occasionally, which is just a writing technique that I never like. Now even with all of these complaints, I really cant be too negative about this book. I genuinely loved it. All of the marine characters and the journey they go on is such a joy to read. The development we get for characters that came across as relatively one-note in Soul Hunter elevates them, and as I mentioned Uzas is now one of my favourite characters here, honestly right next to Talos at the top. The only thing that really holds this book back is the interactions between Septimus and Octavia. But even then, I loved this book, and can’t wait to read the final book, Void Stalker.