Emperor's Mercy

Bastion Wars #1

by Henry Zou

No-holds-barred science fiction novel set on the battlefields of the far future, by debut author Henry Zou.

Genres: 40k, Science Fiction, Fiction, Novels, Fantasy, War, Military Fiction

416 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 30, 2009

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty lackluster start to an 'inquisitor' trilogy in the Warhammer universe, staring one Obodiah Roth. Maybe I am comparing it to the fun Abnett inquisitor series to arrive at my evaluation, but Emperor's Mercy simply lacks the nuance and plot of Abnett's work in general.

The novel centers on a marginal Imperial sub-system, deemed the Medina corridor, containing several planets and billions of people. The forces of Chaos invaded the system in masse, and the Imperial forces just do not have the means to do much about it. This situation sets up a clash between the leading military figure in the system about his flagship and the Inquisition, who has a few agents and their entourages on missions in the corridor. The question is 'why'? Why do the forces of Chaos want such an insignificant set of worlds? Legend has it that 6000 years ago some ancient Xeno weapon found it way to the system; is that what Chaos is after? The Inquisition thinks yes, but the military in charge just want to retreat...

Lots of action here, and I mean lots! At times, it feels like Zou just gave a series of action sequences rather than develop a plot. Zou does give some interesting world building here, but well along the established lines of the Warhammer universe. Overall, kinda fun, but pretty forgettable. 2.5 blazing stars, rounding up.

[Taddow · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a good book with great description of fight scenes but with a plot that seemed a little too standard.

[Patrick Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a lot of complex feelings about this one. Rare warhammer samidzat that will never be reprinted since Zou got done for directly plagiarising the memoir of an Iraqui War vet in one of his books.

'Mercy' has an incredible sense of presence, specificity and reality which becomes all the more complex once you realise that many of its 'scenes' and its strong sense of incident is likely nearly mosaiced together from fragments of novels, after action reports, history books etc, like a scrap-book of rejigged combat stories. This might also explain, at least in part, why the performance of the Inquisitors is so variable, sometimes forgetting they have psychic powers, at other times, characters later revealed to be double agents act in incoherent ways.

I am certain Abnett and others draw heavily from other fictions and from military history in creating their own works. Zou ended up on the wrong side of the border. Instead of synthesis he was 'copying'. This does make me dwell a lot on the hard-to-define but know-it-when-you-see-it boundary between Plagaria and Orignalia.

The tragedy is that Zou is (probably) actually good. His wars feel like the scale and weight of real wars. He is maybe the only warhammer author to have ever understood scale. Armies of multi millions needed to conquer worlds.

As a side-show to the main moral autopsy of the trilogy, the plot of 'Mercy' is pretty repetitive; Inquisitor goes to warzone, has to fight a battle to keep investigating, finds secret which leads to different warzone, goes there, fights a battle to keep investigating, gets another secret which takes him to different warzone with the last big secret, but he has to fight a battle to dig it up.

I'm pretty sure the main characters should have died in the final scene. I did enjoy large parts of the book though. Three stars for my ambivalence about the whole thing.

[Dan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite what fellow author Dan Abnett says, this is not a well written book. In fact, there were several cases where the author flat out used the wrong word. I don't mean that the word was a poor choice for what he wanted to express, I mean that the author clearly thought the word meant something completely different from what the word actually means.

The only reason I give it two stars is that the story was at least somewhat interesting. This book needed an editor.

[Станислав · Rating 4 out of 5]

Тем временем я дочитал Генри Зу. Voidsong было , прочитал Emperor's Mercy (2009) и Blood Gorgons (2011). Flesh and Iron (2010) - кажется не было в раздаче или не переведена, может быть добью потом.
В переводе цикл должен был называться "Бастионные войны", поскольку там суб-сектор "Звёзды Бастиона", а не война каких-то "бастионов"
Итак, к моему удивлению, Зу пишет вполне неплохо. Звёзд не хватает, но держится вполне достойно. Видно, что пишет под-"Абнетта". Конечно у Абнетта побольше таланта. Не звезда "Black Library", такой годничок "второго ряда".

Не сложилось у него быть писателем Вархаммера, впрочем....
Ага! Это интересно! В интернетах пишут, что в "Flesh and Iron" американский ветеран, увешанный медалями, David Bellavia усмотрел плагиат своих мемуаров о кампании на планете Ирак, где он карал ксеносов, мутантов и еретиков , и выкатил GW иск с неплохими перспективами и суммами. Честно говоря, Белл Авия мог просто вызвать Зу на суд офицерской чести - Зу же тоже военный и застрелить "как бешенную собаку". От иска GW отбились, а Зу объявили Excommunicate Traitoris, вывели на австралийский мороз, расстреляли из болт-пистолета и сделали Damnatio Memoriae, соскоблив его имя со стен Чорной Библиотеки. Как мило.

Emperor's Mercy
Такой кроссовер между "Призраками Гаунта" и "Инквизитор Эйзенхорн", то есть без Призраков (хотя есть один) или Эйзенхорна, но сам сеттинг: инквизитор должен действовать в суб-секторе Бастиона на передовой прямо во время вторжения Хаоса, разоблачая (как всегда) заговор в тылу. Система "Медина" сдобрена всякими пан-азиатскими штуками и смотрится вполне аутентично. Инквизитор ещё довольно зелёный (не-орк), его снайпер неплохо аугментирован. Мединские гвардосы бодры и придурковаты - как и положено быть гвардосу. Любят скакать на лошадках и кидать гранаты. Хаосюни тоже вполне гаунтовские: просто крепкий-здоровый хаос-культ "Броненосцы". Что приятно: обычно хаосня это либо легионы-предатели, либо орущая ватага слюнявых психопатов с дубьём. Не припомню мест где бы я откровенно скучал или кривился, были забавные места.
Хотя сама история дальше обрывается, вроде как "это только один эпизод из "Бастионных войн", а что было дальше ничто не упомнит".

[Michael T Bradley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first third or so of this book. It must be incredibly different to write a book (a series, even!) about an inquisitor in the somewhat-already-crowded 40K universe. I thought Zou did a good job separating Obadiah Roth out from anyone else: he's got swagger, but not a jackass; he's loyal, but not afraid to stand up to his betters.

The baddies are fairly interesting, and the maguffin mystery is at least intriguing. I think my problem came when, at a certain point, the battles took over from the plot - not that unusual in a 40K novel, but Zou's fights didn't really stand out to me, and I'd often find myself skimming. Then the REAL frustration came when the traitor was revealed. It was the most obvious, least interesting choice. I say least interesting, but what I mean is it took a character with SO MUCH potential & just put them in the "enemy" bucket. I rolled my eyes at that reveal, and skimmed quite a bit after that.

Still, a lot of promise overall, and I'm curious to keep reading the series.

[Ty Arthur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Been reading quite a few Warhammer 40K novels lately and like the radically different tones you can find in the series: straight action, horror, investigation, large-scale conflict over huge areas, and so on. Sometimes its hard to get the style and atmosphere right, but Emperor's Mercy nails it when it comes to both the crunch -- the military specifics that half the audience wants badly and the other probably doesn't want at all -- and the pulp action. Haven't read many other books that make those two opposing ideas work so well together. You feel like you are part of a military chain of command, but everything moves at a very quick clip so you never get bored. Really my only complaints here are that two characters in particular had plot armour thicker than ceramite in the last chapter, and the "big bad" behind it all only gets a handful of pages to strut his stuff before the finale, but there's been so much devastating warfare up to that point that I suppose another 20 pages of battle might have dragged a bit.

[Eric Gallagher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the worst book I've ever read, but not a great story by far. It could be a whole lot shorter. Never really connect with the characters, not much development, doesn't really feel like a 40k story.
If you really want to know the story, here's a short summary to save you some time.

1: Chaos warband attacks system with poor defences.
2: Guard commander wants to abandon system.
3: Inquisitors want to investigate system.
4: Commander tries to have Inquisitor assassinated.
5: Female Inquisitor betrays Male inquisitor for "reasons", is found out and killed.
5: Commander is found out and killed.
6: There's a magic artifact in the system.
7: Chaos Lord fights Inquisitor and dies.
8: Artifact is a Sun in a jar.
9: Inquisitor let's the sun out of the jar and it burns up the system.
10: Inquisitor is unsure he did the right thing. Ends.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent novel for the WH40K universe, centering around an inquisitor searching for a horrifying weapon in the middle of the Bastion Wars. It's a good read for both fans of inquisition tales and military science fiction. As a note, this books is no longer in print due to plagiarized material the second book (Flesh and Iron) was found to have from the war memoir House to House. However, I haven't seen any information claiming Emperor's Mercy also consisted of plagiarized material and is completely original within the confines of Black Library's contract with the author.

[Arthur B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the best of Henry Zou's series, though marred by the fact that it's largely setting stuff up for a series which never got around to satisfyingly resolving it, partially due to Zou being dropped by the Black Library when in his next novel he flagrantly plagiarised an Iraq war veteran's autobiography. Full review, from before it became apparent this wasn't going anywhere: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/200...

[Florus Ries · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read if you understand that this is a very Warhammer book. War is burial and this book depicts it as so. The mystery of the Old kings and adventure of facing the forces of chaos stands front and center. Both have fantastic moments. I consider it a solid 4/5, I might read it again sometime in the future.

[Tepintzin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I abandoned ship about 100 pages from the end. The characters are the flattest I've encountered in the 40k-verse. The book is exposition-heavy, including events that should have been "shown" and not "told". Twists come out of nowhere and then don't change the plot. Into the freecycle this goes.

[Adrian Dumitru · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the book - intrested in the next one --- i did not quite belive the spy/traitor reason but apart from that i like it!

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first book in The Bastion War series, and I believe one of the first that Zou has written for The Black Library, someone correct me if I'm wrong. I always try to read at least 100 pages of a book before giving up on it, and I'm glad I did in this case because it does get better. Early within those first hundred pages it is apparent that Zou is still working out his writing style and is less experienced than the veterans of The Black Library. His characters while interesting seem forced, like he just picked a template on how they should act and forced that on everything, instead of developing them. Also, at times transitions and descriptions of hectic action can become disjointed leaving the reader slightly confused as to what the locations are really like and how they connect to the larger picture.
That being said, there are some things Zou does well that make it a worthwhile read for fans of 40K that are a little more forgiving of a writer's faults. First, the story is very interesting--a big one that makes up for the problem with the character's personalities. There are some twists and turns and while they could have been less telegraphed, are still enjoyable additions to the story. The Bastion Worlds and the locations therein are also very well thought out and interesting. While suffering from the disjointed transitions mentioned before, the action of war is still described very well. The best parts of this book were hands down the straight narrative in the macro. While Zou seems to get bogged down and intimidated by the minutia of character details and dialogue, he excels at describing histories and large movements and the overarching view of the campaign.

All in all I found that the parts and writing styles I enjoyed made up for the negatives and in the end I enjoyed the book. It's not necessary to read this one before his next in The Bastion War novels, though there are some tie ins, if you want to skip it. Flesh and Iron is the second one and while some of the problems in this book are still present, they are much less noticeable. I have yet to read Blood Gorgons (Warhammer 40,000), the third book, but it is my personal opinion that if Henry Zou continues to grow and mature in his writing, as it seems he is doing, then he will become one of the better authors in The Black Library's stable.

[Nathan Trachta · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m opening by letting readers know that I’m a little familiar Warhammer 40000 universe and Games Workshop. While I haven’t been a fan of either, I’ve been fascinated with the Black Library Publications presentation of the Warhammer 40000’verse and decided to take up the offer the Amazon Vine Program provided to review Emperor’s Mercy.

Emperor’s Mercy is a book based on the Warhammer 40000 game system and deals with the war between the forces of Chaos and those of the Emperor. However rather than reading about the Imperial Space Marines coming to the rescue of citizens, this one deals with the forces of Chaos going after artifacts and an Emperor’s Inquisitor attempting to prevent Chaos from attaining the artifacts.

Ahhh, I entered into this book looking for a good science fiction book; wish it could have been true. While I’m not a fan of Warhammer 40000’s configuration (a very dark look at the ‘world’, both the technology and civilization) I was really hoping a fan would breath some live into things with a nice plot a good story; instead we get a weak plot with action that’s almost off the gaming table (a nice plus for those who play Warhammer 40000 is you can get some decent scenarios to play from the book). Mr. Zou’s writing style was weak for me. He bounces from action point to action point without showing us much in the way of human happenings or interactions. The interactions that are here are weak and mechanical providing little drive for the book. Instead of dealing with people, Mr. Zou focuses on describing weapon systems and equipment that are probably very common for the Warhammer 40000 fan but with insufficient information for someone who’s not a fan.

I can honestly say I was never really sucked into this one. If Mr. Zou would have provided more of a plot or human interactions, I see a possibility for here. However since this was lacking I’ll rate this one 2 stars (my first cut was 1.5 but I'm rounding up) due to the strengths of action scenes and the lack of human factors. Warhammer fans may rate this one higher (there are some good scenarios for gamers here), I suspect they’re into it for it’s application to the game rather than the quality of the story.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first book to read within the Warhammer 40k universe. I have been admiring the universe from afar for years, if not decades but never got into the game, nor got into the books. Recently I bought a video game that was set in the universe and it was enough to tip me both into the game and want to read some of the stories to pass the time.

Since these were available on iBookstore on iTunes, I decided to give it a go. I checked the wiki of the titles and this was the first on the list.

So I picked it up, and started reading.

I have no idea when this is in chronology with other books in the universe, but I must say from the get go that not knowing a lot in the universe I believe the story line did an excellent job in not assuming you know everything that might have happened, or more appropriately it didn't throw lots of references at you to things without any explanation. When it did throw something that hadn't been mentioned it slightly highlighted that role so you knew what was going on.

The action was well paced, the characters were well written, and the fighting sequences were easy to imagine and not over burdened with 'he pivoted on left foot put weight on right and leaned forward' over descriptive fighting references.

I thoroughly enjoyed this and I am looking forward to getting the next one and the one after that and continue to immerse myself in this universe.

[Akira Watts · Rating 1 out of 5]

Warhammer 40k books will never be classified as great literature. But they can still be quite entertaining, and have one key element going for them: one of the grimmest and most compelling settings in sci-fi. Even a halfway competent author can take that and put together a text that is at least mildly entertaining.

Henry Zou is not, alas, a halfway competent author. He badly bungles the overall tone (there's room for lightness in the setting - see Ciaphas Cain) and manages to construct characters who feel out of place in the Warhammer 40k world, as well as feeling out of place as, you know, characters.

It all has the feel of a generic story that got a layer of Warhammer 40k paint and vocabulary slapped on top of it. I suppose all that would be excusable of Zou managed to tell a slightly entertaining story. He does not. His prose is very much of the and then this happened, and then that happened variety. It was a chore to read, endlessly tedious, and I only finished out of pure stubbornness.

Terrible all around.

[Anna From Gustine · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to review this book knowing that Henry Zhou got into trouble for plagiarism. Word is that he's no longer a writer. It's unfortunate because I found this book entertaining. The Warhammer world is dark and not for the faint-hearted. It has an unrelenting grimness and an unrelenting series of battle scenes. Sometimes they go on forever, but they are usually exciting. Battle scenes do take skill. Not everyone can write them. These definitely have a Desert Storm/Iraq War feel to them.

Overall, I liked the characters and I always enjoy the different factional infighting in these books. This is the first Warhammer book I've read that actually had female characters with agency. I also enjoyed the mystery of what mass weapon of destruction would serve as that day's McGuffin. It's not great sci-fi, but better than average. I just don't know if I can trust the originality of the story as I can't get the author's past out of my head. :/

[Trevor Vallender · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book comes adorned with a quote giving the Dan Abnett seal of approval, and indeed Zou's writing style is similar to Abnett's. Impressively, it's almost on par with regard to quality.

Military SF often suffers from focusing too much on, well, the military side of things, and not enough on individual characters or overall plot development. Zou avoids the common pitfalls, the novel falling somewhere between Abnett's Inquisitor books and the Gaunt's Ghosts series in style. That is, gritty military prose interwoven with a more personal story.

Though some plot points are excruciatingly predictable, and the copy I had was plagued with an unimpressive number of typos, Zou weaves a solid, original story and uses the 40K setting to wonderfully grim effect.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Emperor's Mercy was quite an entertaining book, though I didn't enjoy it as much as the James Swallow Blood Angel's books I read recently. In some ways it had a lot more emotional impact, as we walked around with the regular imperial guard during a chaos invasion, rather than with the superhuman space marines, and Zou didn't pull any punches describing the horrors that Chaos brought to the area.


Besides all this, and some excellent inquisitorial characters, It's probably one of the first science fiction books I've read that involves the destruction of an entire solar system/star cluster (planets and all). Which was interesting in and of itself.


I'll certainly go back to have a look at the erstwhile inquisitor's next adventure.

[John Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I read Flesh & Iron by the same author before this one (and got caught up in all the furour surrounding the book's literary origins). But i was determined to read this book as it came out before the other, despite the new one being a prequel, plus the cover was all nice and shiny. I was actually quite pleased with it! It was dark, dangerous, gritty, and nasty; everything you should expect from a tale of the Inquisition.

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a re-read for me, but it had been long enough for me to have forgotten more than I thought I had.

Emperor's Mercy is rough in spots, particularly in the beginning, but spins an exciting race against the clock tale with ancient artifacts and a strong focus on the Imperial Guard and their role in the Medina Campaign featured in the book.

I enjoyed Emperor's Mercy as much as I did the first go around and am eager to revisit Blood Gorgons and read Flesh and Iron for the first time.

[Matthew Dame-Brusie · Rating 5 out of 5]

SHeer wonderfulness!
this is what theme based scifi needs!
someone who takes the world a it is and works within it, not constrained by it but adding real life practicality to it that brings the story more alive. Damn fine job Mr. Zhou!

oh and WIll, read this book. I would be very surprised if you did not like it.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

good inspiration if you want to write up an rpg campaign

[Jacob Stiver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some space opera type gaffs (interchanging astronomical terms here and there) but a solid action story with plenty of intrigue thrown in for good measure.

[Marc Chong · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dark... I emjoy a story where nothing is really fixed and the characters really have to work to stay alive.

[Ian]

In my opinion, this is the best (and my favorite) interpretation of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It also introduced Henry Zou as a Black Library author.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

The language is sometimes to 21st century, and the ending doesn't make much sense. But the description of the action was pretty good, though at times perhaps at the expense of the story.

[Nicholas Mastrodicasa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Same campaign as Flesh and Iron. I liked the idea of the weapon and armour you can see on the cover.

[Chris Eriksen]

I loved it.