Thorn Wishes Talon (A Ravenor Short Story)
Hello, all. Thank you all for joining me this Sunday.
With the review of Ravenor Returned, the second book of the Ravenor Trilogy, scheduled for this Friday, the time has come for us to review the second the second of the short stories form Ravenor - The Omnibus. This one was short and sweet, so let’s get into it.
STATS
Title: “Thorn Wishes Talon”
Series: Ravenor
Author(s): Dan Abnett
Genre: Science Fiction (Space Opera)
First Printing: November 2016
Publisher: Black Library (Games Workshop Publishing)
SPOILERS
Both minor and heavy spoilers for “Thorn Wishes Talon” will be provided throughout this review. I will try to keep the first paragraph of each section as spoiler-free as possible. Heavy spoilers will also be confined to clearly labeled sections.
Spoilers for the Eisenhorn novels & Ravenor will be provided during this review. These will not be marked. Please see my reviews for those prior works if you’d like a little more context, though this won't be necessary to understand this review.
TIMELINE
“Thorn Wishes Talon” is set sometime between Ravenor (401.M41 to 402.M41) and Ravenor Returned (403.M41), serving as a detour that Ravenor and his entourage take while traveling back to Eustis Majoris (the world where the flect investigation began in Ravenor). The timeline in the back of Eisenhorn - The Omnibus states that the year is still 402.M41 when this story takes place.
STORY
This is effectively one long action sequence. Ravenor brings his entourage to “the waste-world called Malinter”, responding to a mysterious summons, and they engage with a shootout with a Chaos cult who wants to stop Ravenor from meeting whomever sent the summons. The identity of this individual is kept secret until the last third of the story, at which point Ravenor receives a cryptic warning regarding the threat he’ll face in Ravenor Returned.
RATING: 8/10
This is a very simple story that delivers a jolt of fun and escapism. It’s well worth the read if you are a fan of Warhammer 40K or just grimdark Science Fiction in general. The action is decent and makes good use of the talents of every member of the entourage, with even Thonius getting a chance to shine in combat. As for the mystery of whom summoned Ravenor, the reveal is the strongest twist out of any we’ve reviewed thus far in a WH40K short story.
PLOT (Heavy Spoilers)
This isn’t a story with particularly high stakes or tension. We also know Ravenor is not going to die or suffer serious injury in a short story that serves as a prequel to the second novel in his trilogy. It’s also safe to assume that no one in his entourage will suffer death or even serious injury - Eisenhorn novels got away with that because of the titanic time skips between books, but here, killing a member of the core cast between books would almost certainly feel cheap. The thing is, Abnett doesn’t pretend like the stakes here are life or death. The question is whether Ravenor will reach this mystery contact and how his entourage will overcome various challenges.
For example, during the climax of the story, as Ravenor is speaking with the contact, the action locks in on Thonius, Nayl, and Mathuin taking on a Dreadnought. (How a minor Chaos cult got the support of a Dreadnought, but no other Chaos Space Marines, is a question that is not answered.) Obviously, three men armed for a shootout with other men aren’t carrying guns that can crack a Dreadnought. There’s a tense sequence where each of the three is armed with a single grenade and makes his own attempt to use that grenade to breach the Dreadnought’s armor. It’s a great sequence, both because of the mounting tension from successive failures and because of how Thonius gets a chance to show that he’s more than just a well-dressed hacker.
The other highlight of this story, though, is the reveal of Ravenor’s contact: Gregor Eisenhorn. (This answers my question from the Ravenor review about Nayl learning Eisenhorn is still alive, as Nayl does get to see and greet Eisenhorn during this story.) This is a reveal that makes perfect sense for a couple of reasons.
The title of the story, “Thorn Wishes Talon,” is a phrase that Eisenhorn taught to all of his operatives, part of a broader code language that was established in the Eisenhorn novels and used throughout those books.
Throughout the story, the narrative alternates between a 1st Person POV describing the Chaos cult that appears in this story and 3rd Person POV for the present-day scenes. At first, it seems like these 1st Person scenes are Ravenor reflecting on the cult to himself. However, by the time of the Eisenhorn reveal, it becomes clear that his contact is the one providing these asides. As a man well-versed in Chaos lore, Eisenhorn would be well-suited to understand the nuances of such a cult.
Throughout the action scene, there’s this spooky display of ghostlike entities flashing about above the battle. It is revealed that this is a battle between Cherubael (who is still in Eisenhorn’s thrall) and entities summoned by the cult. The visual descriptions are similar to what was described for Cherubael using his powers in the Eisenhorn novels.
The warning that Eisenhorn delivers isn’t anything spectacular. It boils down to Eisenhorn insisting that whatever happens in the rest of Ravenor’s trilogy will be very, very important. Still, by that point in the narrative, the content of the warning isn’t all that important. The payoff was in the reunion between Eisenhorn, his former student, and the people who used to work with him.
CHARACTER
Not a lot to discuss here. The reveal of the contact (I will remain spoiler-free here) plays out in manner that makes perfect sense for all parties involved.
I really like how Thonius is portrayed throughout this scene and how the rest of the entourage heckles him. Thonius is a character who, despite technically being Ravenor’s second-in-command (and, thus, outranking everyone else), is very hard for either the rest of the entourage or the audience to take seriously in a fight, especially since he wastes time during this very fight to complain about damage to his expensive clothes. It feels natural for the group to discount him as an asset when they are discussing how many people they have to deal with a certain number of enemies. However, when the grenade plan comes into play, Thonius gets to show off the ingenuity that justifies his rank. It’s a nice redemptive moment for him. (I’m sure that this will make his inevitable corruption by Chaos, which is being set up by his flect use and was implied by a throwaway line in “Playing Patience”, all the more tragic.)
WORLDBUILDING
The only point of note here is the Divine Fratery, the Chaos cult whose people are shooting at Ravenor and his entourage. Through the 1st Person POV segments and the warning relayed by Ravenor’s contact, we learn that the Fratery is obsessed with peering into the future, using reflections cast by silver mirrors in a specific site as a means to peer into the Warp. They not only seek to map the future but to bring about the most destructive and anarchic path by identifying a potential crisis and doing everything in their power to make things worse. As WH40K goes, this is pretty standard fare, but I do like the detail Abnett goes into about their rituals. It makes them feel like a real group of people existing within this mad galaxy.
END TRANSMISSION
“Thorn Wishes Talon” is a fun story to read through if you’ve got half an hour to burn. I’d honestly recommend it as an introduction to Warhammer 40K, if you want just a taste of this setting without needing to understand the deeper nuances of it. Even with it costing $3.99 to purchase as a stand-alone e-book on Amazon, I do believe it’s worth every penny (though, since the entirety of Ravenor - The Omnibus is only $21.99 as an e-book, maybe that would be the wiser investment overall). In any case, it’s a great story that cleansed the palate, just in time for us to dive into Ravenor Returned.
Thank you all for stopping by. Please remember to subscribe and share if you enjoyed what you read here. Take care, everyone, and have a good week.
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?
Chapter 3, Parts 1 and 2, is now available! I hope you’ll join me on this new adventure.
