Inquisitors Galore: A Review of the Eisenhorn and Ravenor Trilogies

My introduction to the body of Warhammer 40k literature was the Ciaphas Cain books, which is a bit odd in retrospect; while a great series of novels, they are hardly representative of the body as a whole. Nonetheless, I quickly read all six books thanks to generous loaning from Max, and after finishing craved more 40k fiction goodness. After doing some research, it seemed that Dan Abnett was considered the premier 40k author, and that many people recommended the Gaunt's Ghosts series as an excellent starting place.

The series itself is fantastic--I tore through all 13 of the novels in short order, leaving it not only my favorite 40k series, but one of my favorite novel series overall, right up there with Discworld and the X-Wing series. Perhaps even someday I'll get around to writing a review of them.

Anyway, after exhausting that trove, I once again felt the craving for more, and taking advantage of a gift card sitting long un-used, purchased more of Dan Abnett's 40k books, most notably the two Inquisitorial
trilogies of Eisenhorn and Ravenor.
Before I go on, however, I feel it important to note something I discovered upon while researching this review, namely how amazing Dan Abnett is. Yes, that's right, in addition to creating excellent books, he has kept up a prodigious amount of work, about 40 novels in roughly 11 years. I am extremely impressed.

And as I'm given to understand, Eisenhorn is pretty much responsible for what is the 40k Inquisition by modern standards. Apparently back in 2001 Games Workshop wanted to try out an RPG system and came up with the backstory of an Imperial Inquisition, which they felt would make an excellent setting for an RPG system. Abnett had recently had great success with the first two Gaunt's Ghosts novels, so he was approached to not only help write the background material for the RPG system, but also write a companion novel of sorts. Thus both the RPG Inquisitor and the first Eisenhorn book were born.

It's quite interesting, really. As some of you know, I ran a game of Inquisitor--it went decently well, but the system itself was fairly flawed. Luckily it gave birth to Dark Heresy, which is a great system, and a complete spiritual successor to Inquisitor. However, having now read the books, when I go back to the Inquisitor rulebook I notice things like Eisenhorn and Cherubael both being statted example characters. Likewise, when I was initially reading through the Eisenhorn books, I thought Abnett was being oddly specific about certain things about how the Inquisition worked, and almost shoehorning in things like the various factions. However, looking back with the history of the series in mind, I realize he was actually creating the lore of the Inquisition, not shoehorning it in. Quite interesting.

Perhaps though I should get on to the main review. Eisenhorn, as you can surmise, is a trilogy of books centered around an Inquisitor and his experiences and adventures, of a sort. Ravenor was a spin-off trilogy due to the success of Eisenhorn, and is a former student of Eisenhorn's. The two are fairly similar, although the two Inquisitor's characters and decisions are quite different from one another.

I went in expecting something like Gaunt's Ghosts, but got quite another thing instead. For starters, the Eisenhorn books are all in first person--something that quite threw me off guard at first. In fact, in the introduction to the omnibus, Abnett states it's his biggest regret of the series. I can agree with that--while quite interesting in certain points, the first person forces some parts to come across a bit off, and give a slightly odd feeling to the entire series. Abnett made a wiser choice with the Ravenor series; the majority is from the traditional third person, with only certain sections being directly from Ravenor's viewpoint, and being only the first-person narration.

Another big difference you get is a whole different view of the Imperium. Most novels, and pretty much all the codexes, deal with the Imperium at war-- you get battles, heroes, wars, etc. These books however give you a great glimpse into everyday life in the Imperium, the various planets, government necessities, and so on and so forth. You get slums, factories, orphanages, Administratum offices, merchants, trader ships, and a huge variety of locales and people. Both Inquisitors hop across sectors and subsectors, tracking down heresy in all its forms, and their adventures span decades (the hop between the second and third Eisenhorn book is something like 80 years).

With all this said, though, the strange thing I noticed is that somehow, the Inquisitor books felt, well, less epic than the Gaunt's Ghosts novels. It seems counterintuitive--where the Guardsmen are fighting a war, often one battlefield at a time, with their overall contribution sometimes being minimal, you always got an epic sense of scale. With the Inquisition books, although they're often dealing with the fate of an entire sector or possibly the Imperium at large, it simply feels less grand. I can't exactly pin down why, but it's just the feeing I get.

Besides these facts though, they're quite solid books. The characters are memorable, the action scenes great, the story-lines interesting. Seing the interplay between them and the now-established lore regarding the Inquisition is also quite interesting, as well as the occasional interweaving Abnett does between these books and his other works (both of the Inquisitors who appear in the Gaunt's Ghosts novels make brief appearances in the Inquisition novels). You even get the first mention of the Callixes sector, long before it was expanded upon for Dark Heresy.

Overall, I would still recommend the Gaunt's Ghosts novels as a better starting point to 40k literature, the Inquisition books are still a great read, especially if you're interested more in intrigue and heresy and whatnot more than just pure warfare. Ravenor is also a spin-off in a true sense--although you gain a fair bit from having read Eisenhorn, they'd be easy enough to pick up as a stand-alone series. If you're itching for any 40k literature, you can go far worse than the two Inquisitors who started it all.

-HTMC