I'm being really horrible at blogging and posting about my finished audio-books. Sorry! My Book Club posts are not suffering though, so that's a bonus.
My husband and I finished the third book in the Eisenhorn trilogy Hereticus sometime in the Spring - I want to say May. In my previous post for Malleus I noted that I had many predictions and assumptions about what would happen in the third and final book and let me tell you: I was wrong! And, more wrong! Nothing prepared me for what happened in Hereticus.
Hereticus takes place about 40-ish years after Malleus and although it does not involve the death of a bad ass female character right at the beginning, I was horrifically unprepared for the amount of death involved with the third book. Like... I can't even begin to count, or list, or summarize my thoughts on the amount of destruction that rains down upon Eisenhorn and his retinue. And of course my husband wasn't much help because he didn't quite remember what happened in the book either, even though he had read it before. I was speechless at so many points.
The third novel takes place in kind of two parts. The first part involves some revenge for Madea's father that ends horribly for everyone. There is a battle with a heretic and a giant Warlord-Pattern Titan called Cruor Vult. If you don't know what a Warhammer 40K titan is, Google that shit because it puts things into context, let me tell ya! The disastrous outcome of the ill-fated revenge attempt carried out by Eisenhorn sours the rest of the events in Hereticus because things DO NOT GET BETTER. I do not want to write more because SPOILERS, but I... was just so mad by the end of the book because I always hope Eisenhorn comes out on top, but there was just SO much stacked against him in Hereticus. He ends up going against his Puritan ways when it comes to the resources he uses despite him still fighting the good fight against Chaos and the real heretics.
So many people Eisenhorn called friends or colleagues turn against him in this book due to another tragic event immediately following the Titan-battle-disaster and he goes into hiding for a while to try and sort some stuff out before continuing on his quest to find answers and who was responsible. His protégé Gideon Ravenor makes an appearance to help as well. We haven't seen him since the atrocity on Thracian Primaris in Malleus. (This guest-spot sets the stage for his own set of novels which we have now started on audio book too!) Something also happens to Alizebeth Bequin but I can't say anything because that is some major SPOILERS.
It is very hard for me to write about this book because of all the disaster that happens in it. Like I said, I was speechless for parts of it. Dan Abnett, you're a great writer but also so so mean to one of your most defining characters. *shakes fist*
Now I need to talk about the ending. Just when the story is hitting the triumphant conclusion and I'm thinking, "Yeah! Eisenhorn is going to come out on top again!" the book sort of just ends. Like what is that?! There is a brief epilogue of about 2 minutes (on audio book, not sure how many pages) that gives a brief summary of what happened to everyone and it is so UNSATISFYING! There was no real wrap up and the question of where Eisenhorn went after that last battle at the end of the Pontius Glaw Affair or whether he was alive or dead was so frustrating. The ending was no fun!
Guess it is on the Ravenor trilogy now because I will get no closure about Eisenhorn. Thank goodness there is some character overlap between the two set of stories otherwise I might have been super pissed off.
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