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Warhammer 40,000
Salvation
In the far future towering hive of Necromunda talk and lives are both cheap. Rival factions vie for political control of the hive city's upper reaches whereas further down they just struggle to survive. It's analogous to the movies Gormenghast meets Brazil meets Life of Brian when an unsuspecting administrator becomes a pawn of rival factions vying for an artifact that could radically alter the course of Necromundan history.
- GenresScience Fiction40k
256 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 7, 2005
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83 people want to read
About the author
C.S. Goto
25 books14 followersCassern Sebastian Goto (born 1970) is an author primarily notable for his novels and short stories set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. He got his start with several short stories published in Inferno! magazine and his first novel, a novelation of Dawn of War, appeared in 2004. Born in Ireland, he now lives on the Pacific coast of California.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
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November 22, 2021Had trouble getting into the storyline. Was not flowing well for me and I ended up putting it down after short periods. Not to my liking
December 16, 2023
Honestly, more of a 2.5, even though I did wind up liking a lot of the characters.
Unlike the other Necromunda novels I've read, this one wasn't nearly as great. Now, when I first got into Warhammer 40,000, I picked up some of the original books many years ago and I was excited to read a Tyranid novel, which was also written by C.S. Goto and I didn't like that one very much either... so I stopped reading those books. I regret this, because I have deprived myself of some awesome novels. So, in conclusion, I think I just don't really like C.S. Goto's books very much, purely as a matter of taste. I'm sure there are people that enjoy these immensely. I think part of my issue is that the chapters are just too long. A lot of chapters are 30 pages long and the book is organized in a very fragmented manner. So it tells a little bit of what this characters is doing, then what another character far away is doing and I have no problem with this, but my gosh... end a chapter.
Salvation is kind of a strange book in that for something based on a skirmish game, it's not very action packed. I do applaud Goto for daring to be different and I think the premise is a good one, but like I said, the way he goes about telling the tale just doesn't work for me. This story centers of a librarian curator named Zefer Tyranus who works in the librarium of the Ko'iron family. As many other reviewers have pointed out, this is a bit of a slow book that picks up later in the story. This is all very true, because the entire first major portion of the book is rather dedicated to bureaucratic dysfunction. So, as our character suffers from the insane hoops he needs to jump through, so does the reader. Sometimes this can be a wild journey with an awesome payoff, but I really didn't feel like that by the end. I haven't read many books in the 40k universe, but a book that did this well was a recent book I read called Outgunned.
In the end the whole initial portion of the book suffers from being extremely slow as we journey with Zefer from office to office getting permission to do anything. He finally meets with a member of Ko'iron royalty, but she is just a child... but not really. First, I rarely complain about typos, but this book had a rather overwhelming amount of them, even compared to other Black Library books I've read. Secondly, when Zefer meets with this "child" I think there might be a typo... the book says she is 14, but honestly, I think she was supposed to be 11 or maybe younger. 14 year olds just don't act this way and later in the novel when we run into her again it says she has trouble reaching across a desk to reach something her older brother can. To me this implies she might be even younger... 14 year olds aren't tiny humans that can't reach across a desk... or demand to be played with to "make echoes" with visitors as Zefer was asked to do. Plus, in the initial meeting it had to be cut short, because she needed to be put down for her nap... so was she supposed to be 4??? She definitely acted like a 4 year old and that would make more sense. The real kicker is they actually typed out "fourteen"... so it makes me think C.S. Goto does not remember being fourteen nor does he know anyone that is fourteen...
Anyway, once Zefer gets his stuff together its time to go on his quest to find out some historical thing about the House Ko'iron. This is where Goto makes another weird mistake in the stories logic. Zefer is given an envelope in the Underhive that came from the Upper level offices, and he never reads it! It just makes no sense, throughout the entire story and some of the points of him having down time, he never opens the envelope until the very end to make some weird point that also made no sense. I understand this being a Grim Dark Future genre and things not ending nicely, but this whole ending was bad and didn't make a lot of sense to me, so it doesn't even end on that much of a satisfying finish.
I think Goto tried to include too many things in the book too. Like, he tried to show almost all the different gangs and factions interacting and I felt like it was just too much at once. He sacrificed character development for extra content, so that the main gang leaders we did encounter were just caricatures. Elria the leader of an Escher gang was a "man hating feminist," which is exactly what I assume Goto was pulling from. Triar of the Cawdor's was a firebrand redemptionist that wanted to burn all the wytches and thus fought with Elria. Then there was Uglar of the Goliaths who was a stupid roided out guy, but his gang wound up being quite the strongest in battle. Then there was Orthios of Orlocks who didn't do much of anything except die... I guess Goto doesn't play that faction. The only Delaque we really interact with is Krelyn who is a venator for the Ko'irons. I actually really liked Krelyn and I wish more time was spent on fleshing out her character. As they go deeper into the Underhive they run into the Ratskins, so now that gang is brought in.
See what I mean? It's just too much for a 250 page story. In order to fit in all the painful bureaucratic dysfunction at the beginning, it means rushing through all the end parts where the action is with almost no development behind much of it.
In the end, while I liked some of the characters and world building, the overall story was just tedious. I didn't really like it all that much and I felt the end wasn't very satisfying. I mean, it's not supposed to be satisfying, but the way in which it is unsatisfying is also unsatisfying... yeah, I think that makes sense. Anyway, unless your a die hard Necromunda fan that must read all the books, give this one a skip.
Unlike the other Necromunda novels I've read, this one wasn't nearly as great. Now, when I first got into Warhammer 40,000, I picked up some of the original books many years ago and I was excited to read a Tyranid novel, which was also written by C.S. Goto and I didn't like that one very much either... so I stopped reading those books. I regret this, because I have deprived myself of some awesome novels. So, in conclusion, I think I just don't really like C.S. Goto's books very much, purely as a matter of taste. I'm sure there are people that enjoy these immensely. I think part of my issue is that the chapters are just too long. A lot of chapters are 30 pages long and the book is organized in a very fragmented manner. So it tells a little bit of what this characters is doing, then what another character far away is doing and I have no problem with this, but my gosh... end a chapter.
Salvation is kind of a strange book in that for something based on a skirmish game, it's not very action packed. I do applaud Goto for daring to be different and I think the premise is a good one, but like I said, the way he goes about telling the tale just doesn't work for me. This story centers of a librarian curator named Zefer Tyranus who works in the librarium of the Ko'iron family. As many other reviewers have pointed out, this is a bit of a slow book that picks up later in the story. This is all very true, because the entire first major portion of the book is rather dedicated to bureaucratic dysfunction. So, as our character suffers from the insane hoops he needs to jump through, so does the reader. Sometimes this can be a wild journey with an awesome payoff, but I really didn't feel like that by the end. I haven't read many books in the 40k universe, but a book that did this well was a recent book I read called Outgunned.
In the end the whole initial portion of the book suffers from being extremely slow as we journey with Zefer from office to office getting permission to do anything. He finally meets with a member of Ko'iron royalty, but she is just a child... but not really. First, I rarely complain about typos, but this book had a rather overwhelming amount of them, even compared to other Black Library books I've read. Secondly, when Zefer meets with this "child" I think there might be a typo... the book says she is 14, but honestly, I think she was supposed to be 11 or maybe younger. 14 year olds just don't act this way and later in the novel when we run into her again it says she has trouble reaching across a desk to reach something her older brother can. To me this implies she might be even younger... 14 year olds aren't tiny humans that can't reach across a desk... or demand to be played with to "make echoes" with visitors as Zefer was asked to do. Plus, in the initial meeting it had to be cut short, because she needed to be put down for her nap... so was she supposed to be 4??? She definitely acted like a 4 year old and that would make more sense. The real kicker is they actually typed out "fourteen"... so it makes me think C.S. Goto does not remember being fourteen nor does he know anyone that is fourteen...
Anyway, once Zefer gets his stuff together its time to go on his quest to find out some historical thing about the House Ko'iron. This is where Goto makes another weird mistake in the stories logic. Zefer is given an envelope in the Underhive that came from the Upper level offices, and he never reads it! It just makes no sense, throughout the entire story and some of the points of him having down time, he never opens the envelope until the very end to make some weird point that also made no sense. I understand this being a Grim Dark Future genre and things not ending nicely, but this whole ending was bad and didn't make a lot of sense to me, so it doesn't even end on that much of a satisfying finish.
I think Goto tried to include too many things in the book too. Like, he tried to show almost all the different gangs and factions interacting and I felt like it was just too much at once. He sacrificed character development for extra content, so that the main gang leaders we did encounter were just caricatures. Elria the leader of an Escher gang was a "man hating feminist," which is exactly what I assume Goto was pulling from. Triar of the Cawdor's was a firebrand redemptionist that wanted to burn all the wytches and thus fought with Elria. Then there was Uglar of the Goliaths who was a stupid roided out guy, but his gang wound up being quite the strongest in battle. Then there was Orthios of Orlocks who didn't do much of anything except die... I guess Goto doesn't play that faction. The only Delaque we really interact with is Krelyn who is a venator for the Ko'irons. I actually really liked Krelyn and I wish more time was spent on fleshing out her character. As they go deeper into the Underhive they run into the Ratskins, so now that gang is brought in.
See what I mean? It's just too much for a 250 page story. In order to fit in all the painful bureaucratic dysfunction at the beginning, it means rushing through all the end parts where the action is with almost no development behind much of it.
In the end, while I liked some of the characters and world building, the overall story was just tedious. I didn't really like it all that much and I felt the end wasn't very satisfying. I mean, it's not supposed to be satisfying, but the way in which it is unsatisfying is also unsatisfying... yeah, I think that makes sense. Anyway, unless your a die hard Necromunda fan that must read all the books, give this one a skip.
February 8, 2018
A great jump on book to get to know the world of necromunda, salvation follows the path of a curator of a noble house of necromunda from his desk at the librarum all the way to the bottom of the underhive.
The main character is so oblivious of the dangers of the hive that it makes him instantly relatable. We would not know what to do in the insane world of necromunda and we would more or less be the same prey he is. The book also has a strong Kafka feel to it for the first part that is by far the most enjoyable part of the book as well as the gang members introduced in the book that bring a lot to the party.
However, the ending of the book nearly spoiled my fun, it makes little to no sense and the main character goes trough such a dramatic radical change in the last part that to me it was no longer the same person. It felt as if the author did not know or did not feel like figuring out how his kind harmless bumbling naive main character was supposed to stay alive any longer; so the author said f*ck it he develops mental powers and he becomes the chosen one in some convenient prophecy; that ought to do the trick.
So fun to read but disappointing final part.
The main character is so oblivious of the dangers of the hive that it makes him instantly relatable. We would not know what to do in the insane world of necromunda and we would more or less be the same prey he is. The book also has a strong Kafka feel to it for the first part that is by far the most enjoyable part of the book as well as the gang members introduced in the book that bring a lot to the party.
However, the ending of the book nearly spoiled my fun, it makes little to no sense and the main character goes trough such a dramatic radical change in the last part that to me it was no longer the same person. It felt as if the author did not know or did not feel like figuring out how his kind harmless bumbling naive main character was supposed to stay alive any longer; so the author said f*ck it he develops mental powers and he becomes the chosen one in some convenient prophecy; that ought to do the trick.
So fun to read but disappointing final part.
January 6, 2024
This book is more difficult to read than the standard pulp fiction style Necromunda series.
The book lost me a few times. I'm left with a feeling there are too many sentences on each page. Needed a second run.
It offers an interesting perspective on life in the upper hive, depicting the inefficiency of bureaucracy and the meaningless tasks of the protagonists. The story becomes more exciting when we delve into the underhive. We encounter all the expected gangs, although they behave somewhat stereotypically, but bear in mind this book is written a time before the relaunch of the game and the lore got mapped out in countless rulebooks. It reveals one of the great mysteries about House Delaque. One of the book's strengths is its entertaining dialogue, particularly the characteristics of the two gang leaders, Triar and Uglar, which made me smile frequently. However, I find the action scenes to be cartoonish and the author's obsession with heavy weapons to be tiresome.
The tension builds up as the story progresses, but the ending feels somewhat anticlimactic.
The book lost me a few times. I'm left with a feeling there are too many sentences on each page. Needed a second run.
It offers an interesting perspective on life in the upper hive, depicting the inefficiency of bureaucracy and the meaningless tasks of the protagonists. The story becomes more exciting when we delve into the underhive. We encounter all the expected gangs, although they behave somewhat stereotypically, but bear in mind this book is written a time before the relaunch of the game and the lore got mapped out in countless rulebooks. It reveals one of the great mysteries about House Delaque. One of the book's strengths is its entertaining dialogue, particularly the characteristics of the two gang leaders, Triar and Uglar, which made me smile frequently. However, I find the action scenes to be cartoonish and the author's obsession with heavy weapons to be tiresome.
The tension builds up as the story progresses, but the ending feels somewhat anticlimactic.
February 24, 2018
This book has pretty much everything Necromunda in it. It has members from all houses except Van Saar, and they all play prominent roles. It even has Ratskins. There are even glimpses of the Spire and how nobility live as well as displays of Wyrd powers, unfortunately, they aren't from any rule-set I have seen. The only real flaw I found with the book is the Delaque catspaw was overly elaborate and didn't seem well laid out for the reader. This made it harder to believe. Still a very good read and very good introduction to Necromunda.
January 3, 2024
Slow plot, lame ending
The book seemed really promising at first, but the plot doesn't really pick up until halfway through, and I felt the ending barely made any sense at all.
Still had some good writing in it though.
The book seemed really promising at first, but the plot doesn't really pick up until halfway through, and I felt the ending barely made any sense at all.
Still had some good writing in it though.
August 22, 2024
A classic tale of subterfuge, bureaucracy, double, triple and even quadruple crossing along with a healthy dose of gang rivalry and warfare through the twists and turns as the story unfolded.
That’s necromunda for you! Great stuff.
That’s necromunda for you! Great stuff.
January 5, 2018
Slow start, and not the best understanding of the setting. Action picks up and writing picks up towards the ends.
March 21, 2020
Never really grabbed me. I just couldn't get into the story.
August 31, 2024
I like it a lot!
July 23, 2015
As far as Necromunda novels go, this one is interesting. Goto presents a number of different gangs locked in a long playing plan that sees a number of interesting situations occur. Various gangs are represented, which will make any Necromunda player happy. There is also enough of a mystery to keep the reader engaged throughout the novel, though this will also leave them disappointed at the end.
Goto presents a number of characters, delving into each of their lives within their gangs. As mentioned, this allows for the representation of a number of gangs and their differences. Enough of a difference between characters keeps each person's viewpoint just unique enough that the reader won't lose interest. Coupled with a character from the Spire who provides a lovely juxtaposition between the Underhive and the Spire, this creates an exciting environment ripe with conflict.
Now, the center of this novel lays a mystery, one that has each character in conflict with the others for the resulting prize. This mystery is presented first thing in the novel, though I found as the story progressed, the mystery no longer was the main driving force. So much so, that when the mystery is finally revealed in the last ten or so pages of the novel, it feels very much like a deus ex machina ending on Goto's part. The end would have been far more believable if so much of what had happened wasn't a bunch of chance events. I'm willing to suspend disbelief for a lot of things, but in this case there is no way events could have worked out in the way that Goto wants the reader to believe they did.
In the end, this wasn't a bad novel, but it wasn't a great one either. A half-hearted attempt at a mystery, Goto would have been better off actually trying to make everything work towards a believable ending rather than pulling one out of his... well, you know. Still, Necromunda fans will enjoy this novel for Goto's ability to represent Necromunda as a setting and some of the characters within it. If you are just wanting to see what Necromunda is all about, I recommend one of the other, better, novels first.
Goto presents a number of characters, delving into each of their lives within their gangs. As mentioned, this allows for the representation of a number of gangs and their differences. Enough of a difference between characters keeps each person's viewpoint just unique enough that the reader won't lose interest. Coupled with a character from the Spire who provides a lovely juxtaposition between the Underhive and the Spire, this creates an exciting environment ripe with conflict.
Now, the center of this novel lays a mystery, one that has each character in conflict with the others for the resulting prize. This mystery is presented first thing in the novel, though I found as the story progressed, the mystery no longer was the main driving force. So much so, that when the mystery is finally revealed in the last ten or so pages of the novel, it feels very much like a deus ex machina ending on Goto's part. The end would have been far more believable if so much of what had happened wasn't a bunch of chance events. I'm willing to suspend disbelief for a lot of things, but in this case there is no way events could have worked out in the way that Goto wants the reader to believe they did.
In the end, this wasn't a bad novel, but it wasn't a great one either. A half-hearted attempt at a mystery, Goto would have been better off actually trying to make everything work towards a believable ending rather than pulling one out of his... well, you know. Still, Necromunda fans will enjoy this novel for Goto's ability to represent Necromunda as a setting and some of the characters within it. If you are just wanting to see what Necromunda is all about, I recommend one of the other, better, novels first.
August 5, 2012
This book had a good starts you got a feel of fith element movie but with the gritter Necromunda touch.
For a short 250 pages book it got the job done, Action packed you have a good feeling of the Necromunda universe.
Sure not really depth and all characters are simple archetypes but still really fun for a short story.
Got only three stars when the curator got special power and new personnality from a green liquid and didn't add to the story other than linking him poorly with the ratskins people.
So a good short novel but you need to like the genre already if not you won't appreciate this book.
For a short 250 pages book it got the job done, Action packed you have a good feeling of the Necromunda universe.
Sure not really depth and all characters are simple archetypes but still really fun for a short story.
Got only three stars when the curator got special power and new personnality from a green liquid and didn't add to the story other than linking him poorly with the ratskins people.
So a good short novel but you need to like the genre already if not you won't appreciate this book.
October 24, 2014
This book has pretty much everything Necromunda in it. It has members from all houses except Van Saar, and they all play prominent roles. It even has Ratskins. There are even glimpses of the Spire and how nobility live as well as displays of Wyrd powers, unfortunately, they aren't from any rule-set I have seen. The only real flaw I found with the book is the Delaque catspaw was overly elaborate and didn't seem well laid out for the reader. This made it harder to believe. Still a very good read and very good introduction to Necromounda.
February 28, 2014
Another great story set in the hive city of Necromunda.
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