The Carnac Campaign - Eldargal Reviews Nightspear, Sky Hunter & Spirit War

[eldargal]

I'll try to keep this fairly concise and avoid spoilers. The Carnac Campaign is a trilogy of three e-books portraying the defense of an exodite world by the Alaitoc craftworld against the Necrons. In order:

Nightspear by Joe Parrino
Sky Hunter by Graeme Lyon
Spirit War by Rob Sanders

The main overarching negative done away with first: The Carnac Campaign opens with the eldar being ambushed by the Necrons and ends with their defeat. This isn't a spoiler by the way, it says so right on the Spirit War blurb. In other words this is another tale of the eldar being outdone by their enemies and getting the crap kicked out of them and that really is getting tedious.

Nightspear: My least favourite. It is by no means bad, though the prose may not be to the taste of everyone. The main problem with it is that it is hampered by the aforementioned overarching negative. Illic Nightspear and his elite cadre of Pathfinders are comprehensively outmatched by the Necrons and slowly slaughtered. It is well written, the tension builds up quite well and if it weren't for it being yet another 'beat up the eldar story' it would be really quite good. But everyone comes out if looking like a moron, Illic, the Pathfinders and the craftworlds seers. Unlike the other two books it doesn't really add to our knowledge of the eldar either. 2 out of 5 Pathfinder corpses.

Sky Hunter: The first two thirds of the book are excellent giving some real depth to the Crimson Hunter which I will go into below. The final third basically amounts to the Crimson Hunter shrine the story focuses on and a Spirit Seer and her Wraithfighters throwing themselves at the enemy and mostly dying in an attempt to assassinate the Necron leadership which they had already tried and failed doing in Nightspear. 2.5 out of 5 smoking, burnt out Nightshade interceptor hulks. There is also one tremendous negative for me: Elarique Swiftblade, autarch of Alaitoc introduced in the Medusa V campaign is retconned into a male. Because obviosuly there were far too many prominent female eldar characters already (Jain Zar, Iyanna Arienal, Thirianna). I'm actually going to write to Black Library and hope they amend the e-books and change her back.

Spirit War: The best of three by far in my opinion. A Spirit Seer of Alaitoc is sent to wake a legion of wraith constructs and take them to Carnac as the last line of defense while the craftworlds and exodites evacuates. The outcome is a foregone conclusion but the insight into how eldar experience death in the Infinity Circuit, how the Spirit Seers interact with them in the circuit and the views of the eldar of their necromancy are all very interesting. The battle itself is well written and introduces some of the broader eldar themes such as hubris into it without beating you over the head with them. 3.5 out of 5 Wraith Knights

Overall I'm giving the trilogy a 2.5 out of 5. Not bad writing but let down by another 'bash the eldar' plot and some other annoyances here and there. I don't regret buying them but if BL want to sell more eldar stories then they could at least let the eldar win, I don't have a problem with heroic defeats and whatnot but it gets old when that is all you get and sometimes not that heroic.

Insights into eldar gleaned from the trilogy:
-Crimson Hunters have ejector seats
-Crimson Hunter exarchs are the only exarch who is not a gestalt consciousnesses as the destruction of the Nightshade hunter invariably destroys the spirit stone of the eldar, damning them to be et by Slaanesh.
-Spirit Seers can enter the soulstones of other eldar and touch their minds, it also allows them to survive the destruction of their own body under certain circumstances
-Each eldar spirit shapes its own experience of the infinity circuit after death, in the case presented an ancient autarch is doomed by his own pride and fear of failure into reliving his last battle though he is unaware he is dead.
-The eldar have an interesting view of Spirit Seers and wraith constructs. They abhor the necromancy involved and don't seem to care for Spirit Seers much but they reverse the wraith constructs for their actions

[troglodytesrus]

Fair point about Eldar always being beaten. I'd like to see that change but tbh I am just thankful for some more Eldar anything, its slim pickings normally!
I am hardly surprised you say Spirit War is the best, the author Rob Sanders has had some Eldar experience through Atlas Infernal and is overall a slightly more experienced author than the other two.
For short stories I think the scores are ok, I don't expect a lot from a smaller tale, though I'd prob be disappointed if this was the quality for a longer book.
I don't think we could have expected greatness anyway, these are the tie-in novels of BL, the ones brought out to push new GW products and advertise the shiny new toys.

[YorkNecromancer]

They're not much of a doomed race if they can win stuff. I always thought the fact they lose is kind of their schtick; they know it too - I thought that was why they manipulated everyone else: "Good at battles, bad at wars."

[Cap'nSmurfs]

Their doom is an inexorable dwindling, though, not a case of never being able to win anything. They can't do brute force very often, it's true. But they've lasted ten thousand years; they must've won at least some of those major engagements, or else they'd all be long dead.

[imperialpower]

Yea a race that is supposed to have the power of forsight been beaten so offten is a tad stupid also they are supposed to value Eldar lives over anything else so why would they pick an engagement they were not sure of at least a high chance of been successfull or at least see the need to fight so nessassery that they are willing to lay down there lives. For a doomed race they seem moronic enough to treat their kin more like the vast numberes of guard rather than a dieing race in need of preservation.

Unfortunatly I have to agree with the not bad but not great rating of the books I have read as well.

[Nabterayl]

I don't think we could have expected greatness anyway, these are the tie-in novels of BL, the ones brought out to push new GW products and advertise the shiny new toys.
I don't buy the idea that simply being a tie-in novel is a negative factor for a novel's quality. If the editorial department at the Black Library is actually sabotaging the quality of their books (and maybe they are; I don't know), that's one thing; otherwise ... don't buy it.

[eldargal]

They're not much of a doomed race if they can win stuff. I always thought the fact they lose is kind of their schtick; they know it too - I thought that was why they manipulated everyone else: "Good at battles, bad at wars."
They are doomed to a slow decline, not continually getting slaughtered though absolute stupidity. Apart from the new eldar codex nearly every detailed engagement we've had written for the eldar in 14 years has ended with them being defeated in some way. Or if they win, something else gets taken away from them (Eldrad ulthran & Elarique Swiftblade in their respective campaigns).

[eldargal]

I just received a very nice email from Graeme Lyon (the author of Sky Hunter if you weren't paying attention) acknowledging my concerns about Elarique Swiftblade, which was lovely of him.:)

[Nabterayl]

They are doomed to a slow decline, not continually getting slaughtered though absolute stupidity. Apart from the new eldar codex nearly every detailed engagement we've had written for the eldar in 14 years has ended with them being defeated in some way. Or if they win, something else gets taken away from them (Eldrad ulthran & Elarique Swiftblade in their respective campaigns).
I too always thought that the slow decline basically boils down to the options for the future all being bad. There are times when the eldar are able to avoid conflict entirely (e.g., Armageddon), but most of the time the options boil down to, "We could do this, in which case X eldar will probably die, or we could do that, in which case Y eldar will die." To be in decline, they only need to be engaged in a perpetual state of war without the societal resources to sustain that state. They don't actually have to lose any battles, or even any wars.

[eldargal]

Exactly, whereas for the past 13 years or so they lose more than they win, usually to make other armies look tough. In fact their few victories (Alaitoc and Mymeara) were both extremely costly victories.

[Nabterayl]

Which I think are fine, in principle - the eldar need (and narratively speaking, deserve) to have some cases where they follow the farseers' best guess, and things still turn out unexpectedly disastrous for them because eldar divination doesn't actually let you see how things will turn out. It's just when those costly victories are in the context of no victories that you start to say, "Hey ... wait a minute ..."

[troglodytesrus]

I don't buy the idea that simply being a tie-in novel is a negative factor for a novel's quality. If the editorial department at the Black Library is actually sabotaging the quality of their books (and maybe they are; I don't know), that's one thing; otherwise ... don't buy it.
There is no benefit of self-sabotaging ofcourse but its simply a matter of not assigning their best and brightest to tie-in works. Generally the authors tend to be those with less experience with 40k novels. I don't see Abnett or McNeil being rolled out to write a short novella to sell the new Riptide or Wraithknight or whatever pretty new kit it is this month.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

So, I read these, and I think I agree with EG's review. The biggest problem, from the offset, I think, is this. It's not the Eldar's story. I have absolutely no idea why they decided to set these three short stories, promoting the new Eldar miniatures (which, let's face it, they are) in an event which is taken from the Necron codex to show how awesome the Necrons are. The take-home message from these shorts is: wow, aren't the Necrons awesome? Look, they've even tricked Illic Nightspear! But not only is it not Illic's story, but we have no reason to think that Illic is remotely good at his job, if this is all you've read.

It would've been a much better decision, I think, to pick, or invent, a much better background scenario to use as the basis for a short story series. One taken from the Eldar book, or a past Eldar book, but at least one which lets us see how the Eldar like to fight. Not how they die in droves when the Necron Assemblage of Pure Awesome confounds all their plans and abilities.

With that said, the results themselves are a mixed bag. Starbane comes across like a prize moron. Maybe Alaitoc's farseer council feels like giving him the boot? Thirianna'd be a better bet. I disliked the writing style of the first story; maybe he'll mature, as I get that he's a young/starting writer. It seemed mostly about how great Deathmarks are. The second was alright, but the action is mostly pointless. Elarique isn't a dude. I quite enjoyed the Spiritseer character, but - why are Hemlocks being deployed? They don't do anything here. Not only that, but again, Starbane is initially extremely loath to use them, but then turns around and is all, yeah, sure, bring 'em out. The job of most of the Eldar characters, again, is to get dead in droves.

The third story is the best, I liked the characters and their dynamic, the Wraithseer is very cool, and it encapsulated perfectly something of the Eldar's plight: they're a race on the brink, forced to ever more desperate measures, calling upon fallen champions of ancient days to save them. And here, those ancient champions do well in a doomed fight. The Prince Ecliptic is great fun, noble, honourable, but arrogant to a fault. The Wraithknight is completely wasted (and then it gets wasted).

Overall: meh. I love the Eldar, and there's some stuff in here worth reading, but it's not an Eldar story. It's a Necron story from the Eldar perspective. Inconsistently written, too. Not worth more than £6 in total.