Customer Reviews

Salvation (Necromunda)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a real treat. It is intelligent and tense, twisted and violent, cunning and tragic. It reminds me of Kafka, only in space, with a bit of Logan's Run thrown in! The writing is gripping and the story extremely well paced.
The story takes the main characters all the way through the world of Necromunda, exploring all its different parts and showing just how bizarre the hive city really is. If the rest of the Necromunda titles are going to be this good, I can't wait for them to appear.
Fantastic -- check it out!

This book was a complete shock to the system. I`ve read dozens of BL books in the past, usually ramming them into my eyes on the subway as a deliriously brutal enhancement to the journey across London. There`s not usually much to think about, and there`s always lots of blood to enjoy. That`s the whole point, right? This book, however, this book is actually ... a NOVEL! I had to check the cover a few times to make sure that it was really a BL book. The character development is awesome, the writing is fantastic, and the story works on so many levels that I have been thinking about it for weeks after finishing it. All of this without skimping on the blood, and there are even a bunch of laughs thrown in for good measure. If this is the wave of the future for BL fiction, bring it on! If you haven`t read it, you should ... but you shouldn`t expect it to be like the rest of the BL catalogue.

What is really exciting about this book is the way that Goto makes the lead character into a real person. So many Black Library books just call their characters heroic and leave it at that. We are supposed to imagine giant, storming Space Marines etc. Here, Zefer has REAL character. He's like dozens of people you might meet in the supermarket. What makes the book then, is the way that a normal guy has to struggle through the incredible, bizarre, hilarious, and dangerous world of Necromunda.
If you want mindless violence, this is not the Necromunda title for you. But if you want some characters and an intelligent story, you couldn't do better.

Alfred Hitchcock popularized the old dramatic term MacGuffin. He defined it several times but the most succinct was "[We] have a name in the studio, and we call it the 'MacGuffin.' It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is most always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers."

C. S. Goto plays a trick on us through the use of a MacGuffin. He generates a romp through the Under City and the Underhive by creating a meaningless quest. In this novel it means different things to different groups. To one group it is a search for an archeotech; for another it is the solution of an arcane passage in a book of gibberish; and to a third it is the end of a dream or a prophecy.

No matter, I fear it is all a joke played on the characters and the reader, who takes the novel seriously. And in this sense the book may be a success. I just didn't get the joke until the end.

Up until then I found the characters believable. I enjoyed the fights and the machinations of the various gangs and characters as they descended further into the Underhive. I particularly liked Krelyn and found her a convincing and attractive character. There were portions of the novel that reminded me of Kafka's The Castle and others of Peake's Titus Groan. However, once Zefer's leaves the spire we are in Warhammer (Necromunda) country. People must die and blood must be spilt into gangrenous streams of green ooze, as undefined as the MacGuffin, which propels us.

So what is the problem? Why only three stars? Because at the end of the novel I want to believe in the journey. I want to suspend disbelief and feel for the characters, not laugh at them. I want the red herrings to be so convincing that I chase after them.

That doesn't happen here; instead, I find muddy images, haphazard red herrings, and unexplained motivations.

I've read all four of the new Necromunda books that have come out and this has to be the worst of the four. While I appreciate the point of having multiple plot lines running all at once to play off of one another, it's clumsily done in this book. The larger purpose of why the curator goes into the Underhive doesn't appear until the very end -- and is absolutely at odds with why HE thinks he's going...which smacks of the author not being able to wrap things up neatly. I can appreciate plots that come to a halt abruptly - this is best done in the Mad Donna book 'survival instinct' - but spending all those pages on subplots that are little more than atmospherics detracts from the main storyline. The book is not served by lengthy descriptions of life as an Escher or Goliath ganger...these just muddy the waters. Read this book only if you can buy it used and are hellbent on reading them all.

I thought it was OK. Blood Royal with Kal Jrico had more interesting battles and a pretty good look around the underhive. Survival Instinct was alot faster with better drawn character's and left me eager for Mad' Donna's next foray. The ending here was somewhat disappointing as I wanted and kept expecting something more from the main character, like say a change to a dynamic lead, instead of a static main character. By the end I was rooting for just about everyone but the lead character. IF you haven't tried Necromunda yet, pick up Survival Instinct or Blood Royal first. You still get a look at the different levels of the hive city but the action and characters are much better paced and detailed.

With that said, would I read the sequel to Salvation if there was one, maybe.