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This is the second Warhammer 40,000 novel that the group has read and they share the same hyper gothic aesthetic and distressingly fascistic (or at least Nietszchean) worldview. The universe is harsh; only great men can save humanity. The best of lesser men recognise this and devote their lives to their betters, literally in the case of Dante's servant Arafeo. A token warrior nun aside, women don't feature. Bound up with this absence of femininity is the asexuality of all involved; everything is sublimated into violence, some of it overtly erotic, like Arafeo's surrendering himself to Dante. Indeed, given that Dante runs away from home when his father suggests marriage, that he joins an exclusively male society of beautiful vampire aesthetes, and the aforementioned tortured but climactic ravaging of Arafeo, it's hard not to read a parody of coming out into Dante's character arc. I'm not sure where all this gets us, somewhere in the region of being an angsty teenage boy, which was bad enough the first time around.

It's hard to get too excited by a book when you know it's just one book in about a million dealing with a tiny part of a tiny part of a universe so unrelentingly horrible that nobody's actions really have any meaning. It had it's moments but sadly didn't really manage to improve on the opening chapter which was the best section of the book in my opinion. I don't think you're supposed to take the 40K universe entirely seriously and I think the author managed to get the balance reasonably OK but there's just not very much to recommend about this, especially to people who don't know any of the rest of the lore. It was way to gruesomely bloody at points too.

That said I read it, and finished it, and didn't find it hard to do so. The overarching feeling at the end though was "What's the point?".

For me, this is a good story ruined by very bad taste. The author is evidently proud of the alternative physics that he has worked out, so proud that he insists on showing it off in excruciating detail to every reader hapless enough to stray into his novel. Is he anxious we will doubt he properly researched his made up physics? And compensating by arrogantly insisting that his book is only for those willing to achieve the required level of study? Because while the rest of the novel was good, it wasn't that good.

Far too “hard sf” for me, though I found the author quite capable with characterisation. As an intellectual exercise it’s interesting, but as a novel it just doesn’t work.

I admire what I think the author was trying to do in this novel. I think he wanted to create a story that was driven from the ground up by the alien physics and biology of the setting. He wanted this science, and its discovery by the Einstein-like main character, to be an integral part of the plot. The author could have relied on hand-wavy explanations and concentrated on the characters and plot like almost every other author would ... and probably should. Instead we're given dialogs between scientists puzzling the ultimate nature of the universe with vector diagrams! His characters grapple with 'real' science and it's clear he thinks the reader should, too. I bought into that and although it was frustrating at times, it did enrich the setting for me.

This is essentially a heist caper on the moon and at points is as much fun as one would hope from such a premise. The author attempts to integrate that narrative with a more sober one about the struggle to establish a thriving, independent lunar colony. Unfortunately the tension between these two strands is not well resolved, so that each detracts from the other. This conflict is reflected and equally unresolved in the character of the protagonist: alternating between explaning the precariousness of her lunar home and endangering it with reckless abandon, so that she never quite seems to be a coherent person. There are a couple of decent books here but neither manages to get out from under the other.

Hopefully the eventual film adaptation will also star Matt Damon as the main character so he can engineer the shit out of moon stuff!

I wish I could give it less than 1 star.

One of the five worst things I've ever read, and I can only remember a couple of the others, unlike this unfortunately!

The more I've thought about this book, the more I've liked it. It's pretty light and scrappy - but in sort of the way a likeable DIY punk album can be. I think it's shortness is a definite benefit. I'm wondering whether it's basically like some comforting-but-ultimately-generic fantasy, but I think there is a bit more to it than that. The ideas involved are a bit in advance of the actual writing - though not excessively so, I would add. I just wish the dungeons had been more interesting - I could come up with something better in 5 mins on a beermat, I have no doubt.

One more thought is - if it's this easy to write something passable, then that's good encouragement for people, I think!