Chaos Child

The Inquisition War #3

by Ian Watson

Devastated by the death of a close ally, renegade Inquisitor Jaq Draco prepares to surrender his very soul to the gods of Chaos, so he may discover the mythical place where time is reversed and the dead may rise again. Only by renouncing his fanatical faith in the God- Emperor can he hope to achieve his ultimate goal - and an eternity of damnation!

Read it because
It's the epic conclusion to the mind-bending trilogy that looks back at the Warhammer 40,000 universe as it was twenty years ago. It may not quite fit into the Imperium we know and love, but it's a great tale from a master storyteller, and well worth a look...

Genres: Science Fiction, 40k, Fiction, Fantasy

265 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Győző · Rating 1 out of 5]

A bad dream, you can't wake up from. And a long one too

[Justin Partridge · Rating 2 out of 5]

“Many were the places in the Imperium where piety and insanity were indistinguishable. Insanity could often be contagious and persuasive. Pilgrims who had visited the holy city of Shandabar over the years, and been inspired with fervour, may well have been attracted subsequently to this desert hermitage. How many hermits there were, up on their pillars! The extent of the hermitage only became apparent as Jaq’s group rode deeper. All of the hermits were leathery corpses, desiccated by the heat or by the recent dust-storm – mummified into gargoyles in their positions of prayer.”

Whoo boy am I happy to see the back of this one. It’s like this guy was so deeply invested in US being deeply invested in these characters that not much else really gets any room or stage time to actually breathe.

And then in the wings he just continually commits to DOING THE MOST (like, for example, I hope you want to know everything there is to know about 40k camels, up to and including what their flesh and blood tastes like) so you can’t ever really get purchase on ANYTHING, even the stuff it’s doing well, it’s extremely frustrating.

Overblown, overwritten, and needlessly over-detailed. And when that’s usually the stuff I LIKE FROM WH, you know you’ve fucked up big time. This seriously just reads like someone telling you a third hand account of a “really sick” Rogue Trader game but getting basically all the rules wrong and overloading it with baddies and support units that don’t even make sense to be there in the already established scenario.

Next time, I’m reading a Chaos book because I’m sure as shit it will make a whole lot more sense than this trilogy did.

[Pinkerton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Questo libro preso di per sé non è poi così malvagio, però paga lo scotto di essere il terzo ed ultimo della trilogia della guerra dell’Inquisizione, quello in cui (in teoria) tutti i nodi vengono al pettine… non è stato così. Intanto è sempre la solita solfa del gruppetto che salta di palo in frasca, da un posto all’altro, affrontando nemici un po’ a caso: Eldar, Chaos, persino fedeli sudditi dell’Imperatore, Genoraptor (almeno questi ultimi si sono comportati bene). Ribadisco poi quanto già espresso nei volumi precedenti, quest’universo narrativo è complesso, piazzarci sottotrame random non giova alla storia. Comunque, il “finale” è proprio brutto, e su questo ci passerei anche sopra, il fatto è che sostanzialmente niente viene risolto… 3 libri interi di ingarbugliamenti vari, spesso abbandonati a sé stessi e mai ripresi, e in conclusione: il nulla cosmico! Aggiungo che Jaq Draco, l’Inquisitore, il protagonista, l’Illuminato, è stato una delusione. Poche sono le volte in cui è riuscito a distinguersi nonostante il ruolo che ricopriva, e l’ho mal sopportato in quest’ultimo tomo dove ha fatto poco più che pensare trasognato alla sua bella; gli ho preferito di gran lunga il Maglio Imperiale Lex, pur essendo entrato in partita solo sul finire del secondo volume.
Trilogia bocciata, se ne volete una analoga ma valida leggetevi quella sull’Inquisitore Eisenhorn ;)

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The third book started the strongest of the three. Here people were dealing with the ramifications of the death of one of their members. They tried to come to terms with that and figure out what to do. The focus seemed to shift from the epic quest of conspiracy to a personal quest of redemption. It definitely made for the most interesting reading of the three but was ultimately the most disatisfying, as I realised 20 pages before the end nothing was going to be resolved. There was no follow through on any of the conspiracies. There was no answer or even addressing of the problems that had been found so far. It just kinda stopped.

I think the biggest problem with the series, like Star Trek Insurrection, was that it was terribly misnamed. There actually was no inquisition war! There was one inquisitor, who was only a secret inquisitor, who went rogue very early on and the only time the inquisition were really brought into it were in the 2nd book when one, also kinda rouge, inquisitor was looking for the main character. I would have loved to have seen an actual war within the inquistion, even if it was just a political one. There was such a huge scope for intrigue, politics, death and betrayal on a truly grand scale and yet Watson seemed intent on re-itterating his idea that too much self indulegence will lead to S&M which will lead to demon posession. An idea you'd expect to get in a fanatical Christian novel, not a novel set in the dim, dark and twisted future of 40K. I wanted powerful cabals fighting with each other, each having plots to save or destroy humanity. I think the biggest problem with this series was that despite trying to be quite extreme with lots of torture and S&M there really was no shades of gray here. The good guys were (to coin a phrase) lawfull evil and the bad guys were Chaotic evil. The evil was totally and utterly evil to the point where there was no interest in it. People were not seduced into demon infested cults because they could get power and priviledge or any of the reasons why people in stories in the Renaissance conjure demons and devils. But it was all accidental, and when they'd become possessed it was too late for them to do anything as they'd lost all free will. It made for a rather dull and simplistic view. I would have much preferred a more rounded enemy for them to face.

Still I wanted to read these novels to get ideas for a Warhammer 40k roleplaying adventure. They gave me a good overview of the world and the different things that can be done there, and lots of ideas for things that could be improved on. At least there was less poo than in the space marine novel...

[CleverMird · Rating 1 out of 5]

Spoiler alert: this might be the worst book I’ve read since I started tracking ratings and reviews.

When last we left him, Inquisitor Jaq Draco had just stolen an invaluable artifact from the secret troves of the alien Eldar, a book that supposedly will given him insight into how to save the Imperium of Mankind. However, this victory came at great cost: during the theft attempt, Meh’lindi, Draco’s assassin and lover, was killed and they were forced to leave her body in extra-dimensional space.

As Chaos Child opens, Draco and his two remaining companions stumble back into realspace and try to figure out their next steps. His infatuation with Meh’lindi having turned into obsession, Draco is convinced that their Eldar book holds the key to bringing her back to life, but his flirtations with the dark powers of the Chaos Gods and the intrusion of a young thief who looks suspiciously like his lost lady will draw him and his companions ever closer to damnation.

The only real positive thing I have to say about this book is that Watson has finally embraced Draco as villain protagonist. Many Warhammer 40k main characters straddle this line, with black-and-gray morality a staple of the setting, but Draco in particular always seemed particularly callous and selfish to me. In Chaos Child, Watson seems to have abandoned any attempts to make him sympathetic. He forcibly projects his obsession with Meh’lindi onto a young woman who catches his attention, he robs, tortures, murders, and abandons to die hundreds of innocent bystanders, and even risks the corruption of an entire planet. And unlike in previous installments, there isn’t even an attempt to justify this as great sacrifices for a worthy goal, only the fulfillment of Draco’s own selfish lusts and unresolved grief.

The problem, of course, arises, in the fact that Watson isn’t a skilled enough writer to write an engaging villain protagonist and that Draco isn’t charismatic or intelligent enough to be fun to watch in this role. Rather than a guy we love, or even a guy we love to hate, he’s just kind of unpleasant.

Not helping this is the plot itself. Follow-through and connective tissue have always been an issues in the Inquisition War series, leading to a lot of the material feeling like a series of disconnected scenes instead of a coherent plot, but somehow the problem is both amplified and eliminated here. Chaos Child just doesn’t really have much of a plot, but what plot does exist is ill-explained and vague. The result is interminable scenes of Draco and his companions going on side-quests that ultimately do little for the story or speculating on their next move, followed by sudden bursts of action and development that happen for unclear reasons and somehow move the characters to the next location and course of action.

The book’s pacing was so sluggish that at points I found myself missing some of his earlier works' absurd moments of sexualization and excrement fascination – at least that would have been quotable. Both are still present here, of course, particularly early on (there is, for example, multiple dream sequences featuring Slaanesh cultists raping harem girls), but at some point they peter out, leaving us to trudge along to the finale without even many meme-able moments.

I really don’t have much else to say about Chaos Child. Stupid and unlikable characters wander around committing atrocities without much goal or direction in service of a plot that keeps forgetting its own goals until a disappointing and abrupt conclusion ends the series with a whimper. Save your time and read something else.

Warnings: This book has pretty much all the content warnings of the previous installments - torture, graphic violence, light body horror, slavery references, and sexual assault. Except this time we have our protagonist being strongly implied to rape a woman he's keeping prisoner! Fun times! The xenophobic attitudes of the Imperium are still on full display (albeit slightly toned down from the last book), anything to do with sex or sexuality is still leering and gross, and we've thrown a ton of descriptions of innocent people dying of thirst and exposure + some animal cruelty in there, too.

None of this is out-of-pocket for a Warhammer book (perhaps minus the sexual angle) and many things I would actually have enjoyed in a better-written novel, but when it was already an unpleasant reading experience, having a bunch of gross, violent, and off-putting imagery added makes the whole thing worse.

[Conrad Kinch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ian Watson offers my favourite interpretation of the 40k universe, though Dan Abnett is a close second. Chaos Child, the conclusion to the Inquisition War trilogy, is a curates egg - good in parts. Watson's command of description and character is as good as ever, but sadly he doesn't stick the landing.

Plot is not Watson's strong point and he is far better at describing the dream like absurdity of the setting than he is at paying off the story points he's laid down for himself. The book as a whole undergoes a significant tonal shift half way through as the over arching plot he has been playing with for the previous two books is sidelined in the pursuit of what seems like a far more personal quest.

The characters are all still interesting and writing is as good as ever, but ultimately, nothing really changes as a result of the events of the book and that is a shame. If you are a fan of the setting and would like to take a tourist trip through some of its weirder locales, this is a book well worth reading, but if you just want to enjoy a story - there are better uses of your time.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fitting capstone to a baroque and visceral trilogy. This volume manages to escape the burden of communicating Warhammer IP given the groundwork from the other two, which is to its benefit. The result is a claustrophobic closeup of a pious priest collapsing into chaos and sin. The centring of his obsession with Meh’Lindi, quickly eclipsing his supposed quest to save humanity is an excellent pivot from the trilogy’s setup. Bonus points for the search for meaning taking place through the ruins of ancient lost civilisations that are simultaneously building their future. It’s heady and indulgent, and maybe only works because it’s Warhammer, but it works.

[Tepintzin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This initial Warhammer 40k trilogy…is not good. It also just sort of ends, in a way that makes me think a fourth book was envisioned. Read for the first ideas of what the universe might be, with squats, a lustful Inquisitor in denial of his own motives, literal children of the Emperor and more.

[Àkos Györkei · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ez nemtom ezigy most igy ez most ez mivolt. Nem igazan tortenik semmi, az elso ketto epic cselekmenye teljesen besikkad. A vege felhaborito, nem zarja le a trilogiat semennyire sem.

[James Zanghi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't really like it. Very strange ending.

[Jakurt Guthorst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Das Ende ist etwas rasch, aber ansonsten hat es mir wirklich sehr gefallen. Für 40K Verhältnisse schon eine Liebesgeschichte.

[Arthur B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Messy but amusing conclusion to the infamously silly series. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/201...

[Ulzeta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite boring.

[Michael T Bradley · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't think I understood a goddamn thing about this book. As I recall, there are chapters in which Jaq remembers his birth ... just a lot of weird imagery that seems unrelated to the first two books. It felt like Watson started having a stroke halfway through writing this book but kept on valiantly typing, as if it might accomplish something.

Whatever the goal here was, it failed, but I applaud him for trying.

[Jaime Mozo Dutton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed it because I took me back to a time in my youth when I used to play the table top miniature war game it's based on but let's be honest it is what it is, pulp fiction at its pulpiest.