Reviews and Comments

Start with a cup of near future setting, mix in a generous helping of plausible magic, sprinkle in some heartache and loneliness... and you've just scratched the surface of this excellent showcase of Bear's work. I'll be recommending it to friends and re-reading it from time to time.

The girls didn't find this one to be as memorable as earlier entries, but I enjoyed the story-within-a-story.

I enjoyed the book most when it wasn't trying to tie into existing Trek characters. Having a conversation with Captain Picard or bringing Geordi along on an away mission felt too much like b-grade fan fiction to me. But having an original 24th-century ship with an original crew is fun! My other main complaint was too much 23rd-century (read The Original Series) Trek popping up. Scotty heads up the Starfleet Corps of Engineers?! I liked Scotty in TOS and the movies, but he just seems out of place here (just as I felt he was out of place in the TNG episode "Relics"). And a mission to save a constellation class ship? I know it's bad of me as a Trekkie, but I wish we could forget TOS ever happened instead of drudging it up all the time.

TLDR: Great when it's forging ahead as a post-Dominion-War adventure of its own; less great when it's borrowing from existing Trek franchises.

I liked it. The protagonist's FBI partner was especially interesting and added an important tone to the narrative. I would have liked to see some of the presented upper-level sci-fi ideas explored more deeply, as it felt like we only got a taste of the Angora or what's different about life with a threep. Still, this was a solid start to what could potentially become a great series.

A fitting ending to a rich adventure. While slightly disjointed, the major acts of this book contain some scenes of epic scope. The entire omnibus would make a fantastic movie series, and this final book proves it most resoundingly. And, curse you Abnett, the reintroduction of Inquisitor Ravenor towards the end of Hereticus makes me want to quickly jump into the Ravenor Omnibus as he's profoundly more interesting than the last time we spent with him, and (dare I say) more interesting than Eisenhorn himself. We'll see.

The girls and I tore through this in a week or two of bedtime reading. I'd enjoyed this series as a child myself.

The girls and I tore through this in a week or two of bedtime reading. I'd enjoyed this series as a child myself.

Amidst the occasional cliches and cheese there was a lot of rich texture to be found. The plot itself didn't leave me with many questions, but the introduction to the complex world it's set in sure did. I want to know more about Astropaths! What's the history of the space marines and the Emperor's Children? I know these weren't necessarily inventions of the author (as the book is set in the richly developed Warhammer 40k universe), but he does a great job of introducing the reader to them in such a way that you just have to go out and learn more about them. Our protagonist, Eisenhorn, is the kind of good guy that it's fun to root for. And his close group of comrades flesh out our cast of common characters nicely. This book will probably remain a bit of a guilty-pleasure for me, unless the following installments manage to raise the intellectual bar a bit. This is pulpy genre fiction, where I usually prefer my genre fiction (the only fiction I read) to be a bit more mature. Still, I'm sold, and I'll definitely be reading the rest of the trilogy and more of the Warhammer 40k books.

The girls and I tore through this in a week or two of bedtime reading. I'd enjoyed this series as a child myself.

Instead of reading the Omnibus, I've bought the DRM-free ebooks directly from The Black Library (publisher) that make up the omnibus. I'll come back and review the omnibus as a whole once I finish the parts that make it up.