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A review by ratgrrrl
Dark Compliance by John French
2.0
My brain is absolute mush today and could have impacted my enjoyment.
My two favourite things about this audio drama is that Horus sounds like Ian McShane and I can't stop thinking about him saying all Al's lines from Deadwood. Imagine Horus just bellowing, 'cocksucker!' and the fact that in the cover art he looks like a beholder. Lupercal serving Greyhawk (1975) realness: https://media.wizards.com/2014/images/dnd/newtodnd/Beholder_0E.jpg
Horus' new emissary is sent off to secure a compliance, but the Planetary Governor is resistant, so he tell him the story of the time the Sons of Horus went hogwild on a while system because a governor said no with the might of the Legion and the Warp. While the story is used to persuade Planetary Governors, the events within were a teaching moment for the emissary.
Again, it might be the no brain thing, but I kinda found this audio drama rather dry and boring. I might even say tedious. I think it's the length of an hour that makes it drag. If it was one of the 25-30 minutes ones, you'd be forced to trim the fat and make it more punchy or if it was a larger story, novella, etc. there would be space for stakes, tension, characters with their own internal lives and plot lines. Whereas, this is essentially just one long description of the pressing the 'absolutely fuck all of their shit up' button without anything else really going on.
Like, I'm interested in all the weird and wacky procedures, politics, and machinations, from the Administrstum to the Mournival, but there has to be more of a hook and story. The story of this is Horus obliterated a system and has all sorts of Chaos elements he can now draw on, including infernal ordinance and Daemons. While obviously this is written more competently, it's giving a little Phantom Menace Trade Federation in terms of being boring due to the way it's handled, the context of the galaxy and story, and not being meaningfully related to anything important, beyond rather surface level things. Speaking of completely unfair comparisons that occurr in my brain and I'm very sorry if they make people angry, the destruction of the system is not not akin to the Hosnian Prime System getting the Starkiller base treatment.
It's John French, so the prose and everything is great. This just wasn't for me and I'm in the least best frame of mind to have enjoyed it.
I love me some action and colossal devastation in this fictional universe, but I need it to mean a little more than look how powerful we are and we got chaos stuff now baybee. Not a lot, but something.
My two favourite things about this audio drama is that Horus sounds like Ian McShane and I can't stop thinking about him saying all Al's lines from Deadwood. Imagine Horus just bellowing, 'cocksucker!' and the fact that in the cover art he looks like a beholder. Lupercal serving Greyhawk (1975) realness: https://media.wizards.com/2014/images/dnd/newtodnd/Beholder_0E.jpg
Horus' new emissary is sent off to secure a compliance, but the Planetary Governor is resistant, so he tell him the story of the time the Sons of Horus went hogwild on a while system because a governor said no with the might of the Legion and the Warp. While the story is used to persuade Planetary Governors, the events within were a teaching moment for the emissary.
Again, it might be the no brain thing, but I kinda found this audio drama rather dry and boring. I might even say tedious. I think it's the length of an hour that makes it drag. If it was one of the 25-30 minutes ones, you'd be forced to trim the fat and make it more punchy or if it was a larger story, novella, etc. there would be space for stakes, tension, characters with their own internal lives and plot lines. Whereas, this is essentially just one long description of the pressing the 'absolutely fuck all of their shit up' button without anything else really going on.
Like, I'm interested in all the weird and wacky procedures, politics, and machinations, from the Administrstum to the Mournival, but there has to be more of a hook and story. The story of this is Horus obliterated a system and has all sorts of Chaos elements he can now draw on, including infernal ordinance and Daemons. While obviously this is written more competently, it's giving a little Phantom Menace Trade Federation in terms of being boring due to the way it's handled, the context of the galaxy and story, and not being meaningfully related to anything important, beyond rather surface level things. Speaking of completely unfair comparisons that occurr in my brain and I'm very sorry if they make people angry, the destruction of the system is not not akin to the Hosnian Prime System getting the Starkiller base treatment.
It's John French, so the prose and everything is great. This just wasn't for me and I'm in the least best frame of mind to have enjoyed it.
I love me some action and colossal devastation in this fictional universe, but I need it to mean a little more than look how powerful we are and we got chaos stuff now baybee. Not a lot, but something.