Ravenor Returned (The Ravenor Trilogy, Book 2) (Part 2)
Hello, all. I hope you're enjoying your Sunday.
This post concludes the Ravenor Returned review by discussion the prose, character writing, and worldbuilding. Please see Part 1 if you’d like the big-picture elements and the plot analysis. With all that said, let’s dive right in.
STATS
Title: Ravenor Returned
Series: The Ravenor Trilogy, Book 2
Author(s): Dan Abnett
Genre: Science Fiction (Space Opera)
First Printing: January 2006
Publisher: Black Library (Games Workshop Publishing)
Rating: 8.5/10
SPOILER WARNING
Both minor and heavy spoilers for Ravenor Returned will be provided throughout this review. I will try to keep the first paragraph of each section as spoiler-free as possible and will confine heavy spoilers to clearly labeled sections.
Heavy, unmarked spoilers will be provided for all of the Ravenor content we’ve covered thus far (Ravenor, “Playing Patience”, and “Thorn Wishes Talon”). There will also be mild spoilers for the Eisenhorn stories.
PROSE
I gotta do this first before I can properly dissect the characters.
Much like the last book, Ravenor Returned utilizies a hybrid POV, with Ravenor referring to himself in the first person and everyone else being in the 3rd Person. Also like the last book, this is handled very inconsistently. At this point, Abnett isn’t even pretending that the 3rd Person POV scenes are memories Ravenor could have extracted using his psyker powers.
In a way, I think that makes the issue less severe. The last book set an expectation with the POV and then subverted that expectation in the third act for no meaningful gain. Here, the 1st Person sections merely come across as a slightly annoying flourish, one of those things that should have been cut if the author wasn’t going to commit but that also isn’t harming anything.
There’s also a more tangible perk to this. By stepping back from Ravenor, Abnett can explore the antagonists. He can show us their machinations throughout the story and contrast what they know / believe against what Ravenor knows / believes. This enhances the three-way conflict. As an added bonus, it also makes it a lot more convincing that POV characters might die before they cross paths with Ravenor.
So, yeah. While I like the mixed POV and wish Abnett would commit to it in the same way he has for short stories we've covered, I think this change was a net positive for this particular story. I just wish he’d fully committed to the change. Maybe he could have made Ravenor’s 1st Person segments into insert passages, much like he did for Eisenhorn in “Thorn Wishes Talon”.
CHARACTER
Ravenor
Our titular character continues to be the surprisingly approachable leader of this Inquisitorial team. While he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty or to order his team to do so, he's also willing to give people a chance. For example, when clues begin to point to the psyker boy Zael either being Slyte or being the one who helps Slyte manifest in the world, Ravenor holds off on ordering the boy’s execution, merely ordering his team’s blank to supervise Zael until they know for certain what his connection to slight might be.
The Team
The rest of the team continue to also be an engaging, at least as a collective. I admittedly had trouble telling between Kara and Patience when they weren’t actively using their skills, and the team’s new Uber driver (a fellow named Sholto Unwerth, whom I’m about 90% sure is a Squat) is only distinguisable from the last one because of how comically verbose he is, but these are minor gripes. This is still an enjoyable cast who keeps the investigation lovely through their interactions.
One detail I particularly like is the relationship between Kara and the team’s new medicae, Patrik Belknap. A plot thread in this book is that Kara now has terminal cancer, thanks to her getting bathed in radiation from a spacecraft’s engines during the events of the last book. Belknap sees that there’s nothing he can do to help her except keep her comfortable (or, per her preference, operational). Being a man of faith, he recommends prayer as her only recourse. Kara is doubtful - she is a servant of the God-Emperor, same as everyone else in the Inquisition, but she’s never being the pious type - but after she and Belknap discuss the matter, she decides to go to church for once. I like this dynamic. I would hardly call it a thematic discussion, but it's a nice exchange of perspectives between two people who share the same beliefs but very different approaches to their beliefs. (Plus, Kara going to church for this character-based reason then advances the plot.)
The Things He Knows (Heavy Spoilers)
In the Ravenor review, I criticized the handling of Carl Thonius pretty heavily. His arc was so messy. He needed to end the book as a flect addict, but it was hard to read his progression in that arc, because he simultaneously seemed to already be a flect addict and to only be discovering this drug for the first time.
But let’s accept the ending of Ravenor as a fixed point. Carl is now an addict to the very same Chaos-tainted drug that this investigation was supposed to combat. There's a lot that can be done with this.
I wouldn't say Abnett does a lot with it in terms of character development, but oh boy, does he make Carl's choices plot-relevant.
The moment Carl’s resolve breaks and he uses a flect, he becomes possessed by a dæmon. He is Slyte. He still acts like Carl, with noticeable yet excusably minor deviations from his original personality, and believes that he is controlling the dæmon whenever he uses its eldritch powers to aid Ravenor in the fight against the Cognitae. He even cures Kara's cancer (before using Warp sorcery to scramble her brain so that she can't reveal his dæmonic nature to Ravenor). However, anyone familiar with Warhammer 40K lore can tell that Carl had crossed a line that he can’t go back on.
I like what was done with Carl in this book. It’s … well, frankly, it’s grimdark. This makes perfect sense as a trajectory for his character, and it sets up a lot of potential conflict for Ravenor Rogue.
Antagonists (Heavy Spoilers)
The main antagonists for this book are Jader Trice, the mastermind behind the Cognitae operation on Eustis Majoris, and Orfeo Culzean, an associate of the Fratery who helps them fulfill their prophecies. Trice is fairly straight-laced for a Chaos cultist, having planned his operation down to the last letter, while Culzean is a schemer who is always improvising new solutions to problems. They spend more time fighting each other than dealing with Ravenor, but it's still enjoyable to watch them clash before realizing that Ravenor is breathing down their necks.
As for the Big Bad of the book - and, evidently, this series - Molotch is a bit of a non-entity. We know from past books that Ravenor has an axe to grind with him. Given what happened in the first prologue of Ravenor, I also understand why he hates Ravenor. It's just that he’s a pretty bland, moustache-twirling, slightly unhinged villain outside of that. I’m a bit worried about Ravenor Rogue, as I’m not sure he can shoulder the weight of being a main antagonist, especially for the finale of a series.
WORLDBUILDING
I don't have a lot to say for this one. Everything we see within this book is consistent with elements established either in this series, in Eisenhorn, or in the wider WH40K mythos. Abnett continues to paint vivid pictures of both the general unpleasantness of this grimdark future and of how ordinary people soldier onward despite these conditions.
GOING ROGUE
Ravenor Returned is an exciting and engaging work of Science Fiction that I would recommend even to people who aren’t fans of Warhammer 40K. I am looking forward to reading and reviewing the final installment of the trilogy, Ravenor Rogue. You can look forward to that 3-part review on March 20th and March 27. (We’ll then review the last omnibus short story, “Perihelion”, on April 1st).
Thank you all for stopping by. Please remember to subscribe and share if you enjoy what you read here. Take care, everyone, and have a good weekend.
Volume I of my first serialized Romantasy novel, A Chime for These Hallowed Bones, is now premiering over in Tales of the Five Worlds!
Kabarāhira is a city of necromancers, and among these necromancers, none are more honorable or respected than Master Japjot Baig. Yadleen has worked under him since she was a girl, learning how commune with bhūtas and how to bind these ancient spirits into wights. Her orderly world is disrupted, however, when a stranger appears with the skeleton of a dishonored woman, demanding that her master fabricate a wight for him.
To protect her master from scandal, Yadleen must take it upon herself to meet this stranger’s demands. Manipulating the dead is within her power, but can honor survive in the face of a man who has none?
Chapters 4 and 5 are now available! I hope you’ll join me on this new adventure.