Day of Ascension

Warhammer 40,000

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Day of Ascension

By: Adrian Tchaikovsky

Narrated by: Harry Myers

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About this listen

A Genestealer Cults Novel

The people of forge world Morod have found a new hope against despair and toil. The long-awaited angels are close, and the cult must prepare for their coming.

Listen to it because: acclaimed science-fiction author Adrian Tchaikovsky's first full-length work for Black Library takes the form of Day of Ascension, in which the populace of the forge world of Morod grow weary of the backbreaking work and injustice of their lives. But how far will they go to achieve change?

The story: on the forge world of Morod, the machines never stop and the work never ends. The population toils in the mines and factoria to protect humanity from the monsters in the void, while the Adeptus Mechanicus enjoy lives of palatial comfort.

Genetor Gammat Triskellian seeks to end this stagnant corruption. When he learns of a twisted congregation operating within the shadows, one that believes that the tech-priests are keeping people from their true salvation - a long-prophesied union with angels - he sees in them an opportunity to bring down Morod's masters and reclaim the world in the name of progress.

But sometimes, the only hope for real change lies in the coming of monsters.

Adrian TchaikovskyHarry MyersBlack Library

Adventure

Fiction

Military

Science Fiction

Space Opera

Thought-Provoking

Adventure Fiction Military Science Fiction Space Opera Thought-Provoking

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There's a number of reasons to recommend this audiobook: For a start the author, Adrian Tchaikovsky has the distinction amongst Black Library writers that he was neither plucked from obscurity or over-promoted from the exposition factory of their games design department. Instead, Tchaikovsky comes fully formed, already a successful science fiction writer who (I learnt from his Wikipedia page) studied zoology and psychology at university.

That's perhaps the perfect author's CV to write a long-overdue story examining the genestealer cults from the perspective of the cultists themselves. That's the other reason I was drawn to this one. I've always been fascinated by the question, 'Do the genestealer cultists have any idea what is actually coming - and what would they make of it if they did?' The nearest we've ever gotten to an insight into this before was a passing remark by Mephiston (in Darkness in The Blood, I think) who addresses a cultist as 'magos'. When they act surprised at his use of their title, he replies, "You are always called magos...you are the product of a template." Ever since then, I've been itching to hear a story that examined this question properly, 'Do they know what they are?' After all, if Nate Crowley (in the excellent Twice Dead King and the not-quite-so-good sequel) can make murderous metal skeletons into sympathetic characters, then I'm certain that there is a human interest story to be found in the life of the murderous parasitical genestealers and their extended families.

Still, it's not an easy job to make such horrific creatures interesting and even likeable. Yet AT (as I'm calling him now) pulls it off neatly. He cleverly uses the more 'human' members of the cult, to show us the normal, day-to-day existence of workers within the great machine of the Imperium (in this case, a forge world). So it's possible to share their disgust and anger at the general treatment of the population by their Adeptus Mechanicus masters. At times, the attitude of the members of the cult and the general working population is in perfect alignment. So it's easy as a listener to get behind them, they genuinely are underdogs and you find yourself wanting to root for them, you wily dog, AT I see what you did there.

Day of Ascension's plot is, in fact, split between two points of view, with the other side showing us a downtrodden but scheming adept of the mechanius. This starts off promisingly also. Initially, it sets the story up a bit like The Day of The Jackal, with the reader finding themselves rooting both for the hunter and the hunted. However, this goes a little off the rails, with our adept quickly descending into cartoon villainry. I guess this is to ensure we place our sympathies squarely with the members of the genestealer brood, but it feels a bit forced and I didn't need it. At just over 5 hours, this is a very short audiobook (no way is the print version the advertised 368 pages) and one feels there was plenty of space to give us interesting and sympathetic character development from both sides. I think AT and Black Library need to credit readers with enough intelligence to have a story where we can see things from more than one perspective. After all, as someone else said already here, there are no good guys in the grimdark universe of W40k, only shades of grey.

Still, look, I'm not complaining. This is a good'un. A word also for Harry Myers, a whole book of Mechanicus characters made me fear having to endure hours of grating 'robot' voices, but Myers sensibly gives them all normal, but distinctive voices. He's a good choice for this kind of 'quieter' more character-driven tale instead of the more bombastic narration we normally get with Black Library's military sci-fi yarns.

All in all, good job lads - and credit where it's due to BL for refreshing their pool of writers and narrators with two quality contributors. Let's hope we see more from Harry and AT in the grimdark future.