#ghazghkull

I wanna start off with what I liked about the book:

The characters are genuinely fun and I love the council of Ork warbosses. I have said for a long time I think Ghazghkull's role in lore would be accentuated by giving him a fun cast of consistent lieutenants/allies to interact with. The warbosses are fun. Glinteef (the Badmoon) and Badsmak (the Deathskullz) are my favourite followed by the Goff warboss Rotgard and the Evil Sunz Warboss Urgal. Weirdly I found Slitta, sort of the protagonist, a tad boring and Mirak (the Snakebite) sadly just was given next to no character compared to the others. Tellingly Mirak is the only Warboss with no chapters from his perspective AT ALL. But I liked the Warbosses A LOT. I enjoyed the fact that they were given distinct personas from each other and also enjoyed the range of Orkiness that was expressed, with Glinteef and Badsmak having a standed approach to Warboss dynamics whilst Rotgard was a bit more swept up in hero worship of Ghazghkull (fair enough considering he is a Goff). So honestly the core cast of characters was great and fun and I love the idea of giving Ghazghkull a rogue's gallery of powerful minions and allies whom can do their own plots. A bit strength of Space Marine chapters in lore is that the major ones usually have, by now, an ensemble cast of well-fleshed out secondary characters who can serve supporting roles in each other's solo stories. Giving Ghazghkull a similar situation by giving him a cadre of storied lieutenants with persistent presence in the setting would be, I believe, a very good way to enhance the appeal of the Ork faction.

The Orks do win (which is so rare so I have to be thankful for it) and whenever Ghazghkull really actually gets to mix things up the Black Templars just get absolutely crushed with no real chance of victory. Heck the only reason the fight isn't over instantly, considering how gargantuan Ghazghkull's army is at this stage, is because the entire book (which basically plays out over like two days) is just Ghazghkull taking one ship with his drinking buddies on it to attack a planet. His whole army gets left behind as him and his top Warbosses just take one ship on a joyride to fight. The book is basically the equivalent to Ghazghkull just taking a jaunt with his mates.

What I don't like or am more neutral over:

Connected to the characters, and a reoccuring problem with Ghazghkull, basically every single Warboss is dead by the end of the book. This is also about the fourth time lore has attempted to introduce a 'council' of Warbosses for Ghazghkull only for them to all be wholly irrelevant and all dead, or just never mentioned ever again (looking at you Warbosses from the 10th Edition Codex opening). It's just really fucking sucks that all these fun cool powerful Orks die in basically one day on what isn't even a major battle for them. I'd be fine with 1 dying, Orks do have high mortality rates, but these are depicted as the top Boyz of each Clan in Ghazghkull's horde and Rotgard, Glinteef and Badsmak are dead by the end. Which also annoys me because those were my three fave and the three who were Orkiest. The crux of the book's second half rests on Ghazghkull seemingly dying due to the scheming of Glinteef and Slitta and how the Orks react to it. Rotgard, Glinteef and Badsmak have the Orkiest reactions: Rotgard goes off to face the Black Templars and prove himself successor by emulation of deeds, whilst Glinteef and Badsmak seek to scheme and seize power via usurpation of Ghazghkull's horde. Urgal is by this point just running away from Black Templars and Mirak just immediately goes about trying to 'resurrect' Ghazghkull. I think Glinteef dying makes sense (Nazdreg clearly fills the Bad Moonz spot better and gives Ghazghkull an antagonistic ally) and throughout the book Glinteef is the most obvious one seeking (along with Slitta) to backstab Ghazz. But Badsmak was so GOOD! Like points to Badsmak, even Ghaz says so, when it does finally come down to it Badsmak just straight up shoots his shot and tries to take an injured Ghaz down. Badsmak and Rotgard were so fun! ;-; at least Urgal survives, though since we have Wazdakka now like all Ghaz's previous lieutenants in lore he'll probably cease to exist.

The book is trying to do far too much for its size. It is cramming at least two books' worth of content in one book which results in a LOT of it feeling tangential. The world clearly has an entire expansive backstory connected to a (maybe corrupted?) Blood Angels successor Chapter called the Knights of Gabal who show up in a horror movie-like stinger at the end. They have no connection to anything else happening in the book but a surprising amount of time is devoted to setting up this stinger (even though this book is CLEARLY not part of a series so that cliffhanger will never be resolved). There is a Grot side character who gets 3 chapters to himself which I liked at first and thought was going to set up a fun dynamic with Rotgard but ends up going nowhere and is just used to do the UMPTEENTH Makari resurrection. I think one of the biggest signs of the overstuffed nature is the sheer volume of perspectives we get, so many different characters who the book gets told from (all the Warbosses barring Mirak, the grot who becomes Makari, one of Slitta's henchorks, the human leader of Gabal, his traitorous advisor, the Black Templar Emperor's Champion, the Black Templar Marshal AND a more junior Black Templar) means that it struggles to give any one adequate space and time to land. Rotgard's death against the Marshal is CLEARLY meant to be impactful for both: it ends Rotgard's arc of seeking to not only follow Ghazghkull but BECOME HIM and does so with the ironic twist that as the Marshal kills him the Marshal literally believes he is killing Ghazghkull and avenging his mentor who Ghazghkull killed on Armageddon. But there wasn't enough time for the plot to develop so it doesn't feel as impactful as I think it could have if the story wasn't literally the Orkish equivalent of a one-night pub crawl. I think if the story had been shortened to focus on some of the core points it would have felt stronger as an overall narrative.

A final point, which is very weird coming from me, but I must just say it is...if the lore of this book was consistent, in that Ghazghkull in the Armageddon campaign is now this strong (he won't be) then it'd be fucking broken. Like. He'd be too strong. Ghazghkull, in this book, can take the following without dying: An Emperor's Champion runs him through with the black sword. Then a titan-killer weapon which can level mountains hits him. Then a mountain full of explosions blows up and drops a mountain on him. He gets out of this alive but hurt and armour broken. AFTER THIS he fights and beats Badmsak and tanks a looted T'au Railgun to the chest. After that the same titan-killer weapon which earlier fired at him and blew up a mountain fires at him again and Ghazghkull WITH HIS BASICALLY BARE FIST just punches the energy beam and it blasts it away like eh's a freaking Dragonball Z Character. After all this he also displays Wolverine-style insane rapid regeneration when, after all this (and stomping a Black Templar Marshal to death as well) Slitta tries to beat him, fails, and as Slitta is literally talking to Ghaz in the immediate aftermath of the fight Ghaz's wounds are basically being erased from reality as if they didn't exist in the first place. Look, I get it, it is all psychic, and far from the most insane things Primarchs and the Emperor have done, so if they want to say this is how strong a Beast Ork is, sure. But my problem is...they won't. Armageddon's probably gonna end with some Blood Angels' Captain beating him again and sending him running like he has in every fight against Marines ever. If they are going to make him this strong I'd just like if it was actually consistent.

That last point isn't necessarily bad, or good, like I said if they want to commit to the idea that Ghazghkul has just grown to this point of power fine, fair, we know a Beast Ork can overpower a Primarch, Vulkan died redirecting an entire powerstation energy beam right into a Beast Ork's face and it still didn't kill him, didn't seem to even really injure him severally. But then please, PLEASE, for the love of Gork and Mork if Ghazghkull is this strong now you can't just have Space Marine captain's clowning on him.

Which they will, this hope is in vain, I know, because Ghazghkull is becoming like the Swarmlord now. Because GW is basically saying he can psychically resurrect from any damage due to Ork believe in him they can, like the Swarmlord, like the Avatar of Khaine, like Greater Daemons and Daemon Primarchs, kill him off as much as they want to make Marines look cool, which is what I fear.

Final thing I really liked about the book: stayed consistent with the plot point first promulgated by Nate Crowely, but seemingly now being affirmed by Denny Flowers in all his Ork books too, that Ghazghkull just let Ragnar chop his head off because he had to (stupid but better than Ragnar actually beating him). When utterly trouncing the Black Templar Marshal (after having already trounced the Emperor's Champion) he pointedly mocks the Marshal by saying the only Marine who ever even gave him a challenge was Ragnar and that Ragnar only did as well as he did because Ghazghkull let him. Considering that Ghazghkull before fighting Ragnar had already fought and decisively beat Belial I have no problem with this and see it as at least a correction of an egregious error, even if I still wish that the error hadn't been made at all.