Sons of Dorn by Chris Roberson Review

Written by matthew | 06 February 2010

As my new-ish style of writing my reviews warrents I'm going to start with a quick "about the author" part. Chris Roberson wrote Dawn of War II, and a prologue for his own book. His prologue was featured in "Heroes of the Space Marines" and was coined as "the worst short story in the book". At least thats what most forums think. I have yet to read Dawn of War II and don't plan on it because theres currently a whole stack of things to review. Chris Roberson's writing is actually very eloquent, despite the fact that the context seems to be taken out of fan-fiction and wiki information, truthfully as I'm trying to write an unbiased review, I'd have to say if it werent for the fact that he did poorly writing the Imperial Fists fluff I would tell you he was a great author. 40k stuff...he needs more experiance. now onto the meat and potatoes:

Like all Blacklibrary books Sons of Dorn has a fairly badass plotline, three scouts taken from a culture battle on their homeworld fighting through just to try and kill each other (calm down thats not a spoiler) all while trying to defeat the traitor guard formerly known as the Righteous Blades and an Emperors Children warband seems pretty good. Its got all the familiar faces (which is why it seems too fan-fictionesq) along with some author created ones, and truth be told the author created ones are so much better than the factual ones that were provided. The most main* characters (Zatori Zan, Jean du Queste and Taloc s'Tonan) were very wellpresented and you could somewhat connect on a higher level to them than other characters in the book, so at least you know who you are rooting for right? ehh not so much

Despite a great plotline for the Imperial Fists, there was a lot wrong with the book too. Shoving all the fan-fiction nonsense to the side telling the story from 2 perspectives for a short portion of the book is difficult in and of itself, let alone the whole book; which is also a problem because it was told from 3-4. I could honestly not say which Scout i disliked or liked more, du Queste was hands down my least favorite but more often than not I found it was being told from HIS perspective. To authors characters are like children, but that doesnt mean you should tell the story from every single vantage point in the book. I found the supporting characters (Lysander, Pugh, Taelos, Lo Chang, and everyone else on a wiki) were more stiff than cardboard, and there was no connection level with those characters what-so-ever.The main characters aside, I also often found myself re-reading the same phrases and metaphors, which is no big deal but just a pet peave. 

Despite doing a lot of things very wrong, Chris kept my interest in the book by being the 2nd best narrator I've ever read (after James Swallow). I kept reading and reading because I understood it so well and because of that I've finished it in less than 2 days, breaking my record with Galaxy in Flames. Truthfully, it seems Chris just needs a little more experiance and he'll be well off. Now, if I had to rate this book it hands down deserves a 7. not a failure but not entirely a success. I reccomend it to brand new readers as their first book, but not the veterans of BL works, its simplistic and fun, and the most redeaming quality is the first part of the book (its broken down in 4ths) because it will definetely hook you into reading it.