Psyched

There is a book on my shelf by the name of Dawnthief and I dunno. Something struck me about the cover of the book when I picked it up the other day. It was pretty simple, no flashy art or exposed tittery. Just a sword blade, nothing more. The back description was alright. Basically it amounts to "mercenaries get involved in a plot to save the world...by destroying it..." Something to that effect. I dunno, it just kind of pulled at me. I literally picked it up and put it down three times I think while Heather was talking to Laura. I didn't even flip through the first couple pages or anything, I just kind of stared at it. I ended up putting down Fahrenheit 451 (which I've always wanted to read but never have) and picked it up instead.

If the reviews I've read are to be believed, I made a good fuck decision.

There are two major themes I like in books and movies: The first is revenge. Any time anyone loses everything they ever cared about (Death Wish, Four Brothers), or is fucked up beyond belief (Payback, Last House on the Left) and not only lives to tell about it, but takes matters into their own hands and extracts justified vengeance from the perpetrators it gets me all retard giggly and happy. The victims don't even have to be good people, they just need to get wronged in some fashion and unleash justifiable...Payback. That's the key element, it needs to be justified. For instance, in Die Hard With a Vengeance when McClane found out that he was singled out for the games "Simon" was playing because he killed "Simon's" brother Hans in the first film, boring. Of course your idiot brother got killed, he fucked with people and one of them fucked him back. It is later revealed that this is a mostly irrelevant plot point, but you get the idea. To continue, I seriously have a hard on for revenge films. Kevin Bacon made a shitty revenge tale called Death Sentence or something of that nature, bad film. Heather thought it was full of plot holes and shitty acting and she was right. I ate that shit up with a spoon. I dunno, I think it has to do with my thoughts on law and order and social chaos and things of that nature. Anyway. The other thing that really gets me is anything about hard/badass mercenaries (The Black Company, The Bridgeburners, Yojimbo/Man With No Name to a certain extent) that get paid to fuck shit up and do so with a rather professional air and with good results.

Mercenaries and vigilante vengeance takers are my cup of tea. I'm not sure why.

There's no vengeance as far as I know in this Dawnthief book, but from what I've read it is more or less akin to The Black Company. A hard-hearted bunch of mercenaries whose only loyalty is to coin and each other. They have no morality, because they don't care about anything other than each other. I've always found it neat (and believable) that members of such companies can watch the world burn to ashes around them unblinking, but will weep at the death of brother in arms.

I guess the genre of the book is called is called Heroic Fantasy, which is basically Sword & Sorcery after authors decided that Sword & Sorcery was too recognizable as "silly" so they changed it. I dunno, I guess it means there are elves and magic and dwarves and shit but its...grittier? Or they die or get injured more or something. Who the fuck knows. I'm psyched to read it and will probably push it to the head of my book queue, which means I'll start it in a day or two since I am halfway through the final story in Heroes of the Space Marines, which is as collection of short stories about space marines (Chaos and Loyalist) and the heroes from both sides.

If I had to rate it I'd give Heroes of the Space Marines three bolter shells, a ceramite boot, and a power sword activation rune. Which means as much as saying I'd give it a 7.342. Its a decent book. Some of the stories are hits, others are misses. The Salamanders one stands out, the Black Templars one is pretty cool. Honsou's one about his interactions with Huron Blackheart is a very strong one. The one about Scaevalla (sp?) is poorly written I think, but it has a concept I like and I can't even put a finger on what exactly puts me off about the writing, so that may be a load of bull. There is definitely some neat stuff in there that makes it worth the read and I would reccomend it to anyone that enjoys power armoured fiction.

Music: I Tamper With The Evidence At The Murder Site Of Odin - Dethklok