#Blood Reaver

A Live Blogging of my reading of Blood Reaver

CYRION YOU DICK, YOU ARE A CHAOS SPACE MARINE, YOU HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO THEN INTERRUPT TOUCHING MOMENTS. GO KILL UZAS OR SOMETHING USEFUL.

My Night Lords Omnibus Review in absolutely no order whatsoever Uzas, you didn’t deserve that. You poor stupid boy. I wish you had died without being mentally clear. Cyrion: you’re an asshole but somehow I forgive you. Somehow. Malcharion: YOU BETTER STILL BE ALIVE YOU FUCKING NERDBOX. You saved a human. This is why I <3 Dreadnoughts. Deltrian: You silly dweeb, the only thing more autistic than the average Night Lord is…Deltrian. Speaking of: Yes, the quote about Night Lords staring autistically IS canon. Don’t @ me. Xarl: oof. the best worst brother. I will not make the ‘that’s using your head!’ joke. Lucoryphus: You’re creepy and like Variel I wanna know wtf is up with you. And your face. Talos: I get it. Sometimes there’s such a thing as being too self-aware and your whole fucking saga is why that’s a problem. Also as a migraine sufferer I now appreciate that mine don’t come with horrific visions. Vandred: you got to die with a little void war (your favorite) and with some badass last words. Respect. Variel: I mean the NIGHT LORDS find you creepy? Nuff said. Can’t imagine what it was like for Decimus growing up with Luco and this guy as connections to his father. Hey it’s Uncle Creepy and Uncle Other Creepy. Rambling about themes below In all seriousness the whole thing bends to masculinity’s shadow side, the side of masculinity that uses pain, fear and violence as tools. These are not nice people and I kind of resented the times they tried to do the 'but Talos isn’t a super bad guy’ as much as I appreciated them? Oh he killed all those guys in the prison because they kidnapped Eurydice. YEAH he skins babies. He’s not a knight in shining armor STAAAAAHP. (And to be honest, they didn’t kidnap her bc she was a navigator they kidnapped her because she was a woman and the idea that they were clearly taking her to rape her is like…heavily implied to draw this line that the Night Lords are Baddies but they DOn’t Do That, like…yay? That doesn’t make them good guys. That makes them Astartes eunuchs. ) (and I also kinda side eye how it’s like…never mentioned again by Octavia–whether or not anything actually happened that’s some trauma which we might see in her lack of personal hygiene afterwards but that’s about it?) He, like Cyrion, is most decent and human right before he dies. We’re expected to read into him a kindness of releasing Septimus and Octavia from his service, but his original plan was for them to go back to the Eye of Terror–sure that’s a great place. And sure he probably hopes Variel won’t find them but does that redeem him? he could have, you know, MADE SURE Variel wasn’t doing a goddam thing. I think in the end it’s interesting that both he and Malcharion connect with random humans rather than their own kind. Like…more than Malcharion (obvi) the only people he can even kinda sorta talk to are Septimus and Octavia. That’s kinda sad. Does it redeem him? Jury’s still out. He’s a man trying to find some purpose but with such limited tools (and there are so many quotes to support this) he can’t seem to see beyond, his only meaning is to try and be noticed–to try to get the Imperials pissed off, basically. He cannot create, he can only destroy. Even moreso than Deltrian, his only actions, his only creations are exploiting the suffering of others. But he doesn’t want to be too noticeable aka the Ulthwe prophecy. No one really wants to be the Chosen One because destiny sucks. And his whole story and even death is almost a shadow of Curze’s–foreseen, at the hands of an Eldar female killer, and in the end, almost welcomed. Like Cyrion, he’s done with the war. It’s all about what meaning you take from life–others found it great to be able to die in battle, to make a final stand, to for once stop running and fight (I’m not sure that worked out for them, they seemed to die in misery) and we see how much Talos a) resents that b) uses that. Something interesting was the Eldar making Talos feel fear–not like…fear of death but the actual physiological fear response and he has this moment like 'is that what I’ve been doing all this time to others’? Yes. Yes and more. It’s this really fascinating moment where the subject so used to being the subject becomes an object, acted upon by others against his will (this happens a lot in canon, like Vandred/the Exalted, various Warp corruptions, etc). In the end he thinks something about how much he hates not the Legion but what the Legion made him become and I was like DUDE you’re so close! Because it’s not what the Legion made you become –that turns you into an object helplessly shaped by an outside force. You CHOSE this. Especially in Void Stalker–everything is his choice and his direction. He’s a shitty person because he chose to be. Sure, we get glimpses of Non Shitty Talos, but they are just like Uzas’s sanity–small, brief bubbles. I don’t think he was a good man. I think he wanted to be and I don’t think he knew how, but he still made the choices that led only one way. It’s always interesting how many masculinist books end in catastrophe. I keep thinking for some reason of Moby Dick and Ahab–one guy’s twisted obsession destroys the entire crew, the ship, everything. Is it hubris? Is it hamartia? Or is it someone unable to see that they’re letting someone else decide what choices they can make, instead of making their own? Men never just destroy themselves. They have to take down everyone around them. As if their life is more meaningful when surrounded by all the life they took with them. I thought it interesting that in the Foreword ADB brags about how many prior service members have reached out to tell him how much they connected to the brotherhood of the Night Lords (not the violence, but the 'I kinda hate you but also we’ll fight together’ thing) and I’m like…so none of you realize this is a gendered worldview? INTERESTING. Ironically, Cyrion dies in clarity, Vandred dies in clarity, Mercutian dies with clarity, Uzas dies…in terrible clarity, and only Talos dies still unclear at the weight of his choices being HIS choices. Anyway it was a good read, though it took me forever to get started. I don’t think it was a planned out trilogy, but he did a great job building on his earlier decisions to craft the end of the trilogy.