‘Longshot’ – Rob Young (Black Library)

Page Count: 351 Pages.

Well… This wasn’t the post that I had planned on writing, a couple of days ago, when I was all ‘oh no, I can’t get into anything especially ‘Longshot’ but somehow, here we are ;o) It turns out that a little bit of Clark Ashton Smith was all that was needed in terms of a reset, ‘Longshot’ came to work with me, yesterday, and I polished off the final pages last night. Job done? Not quite… I still need to tell you about it ;o) Here goes…

Transplant. Cadian. Sniper. Legend.

Sergeant Darya Nevic is all of these and more… but behind the stories stands a soldier haunted by the unwelcome fame her successes have brought.

During the Cadian 217th’s assault on the manufactorum world of Attruso, Darya finds herself out of her depth, in a war that is fought with words as much as with weapons. As a fearsome winter closes in and her men begin to die around her, she will be forced to confront her doubts and make an impossible choice – to become the figurehead her soldiers need, or to believe the unimaginable promises of the mysterious t’au.

With the fate of her regiment in her hands, which path will she choose?

So… ‘Longshot’ joins a very small number of books that I actually stayed awake to finish on the way home from work (and if you know me, you’ll know that’s a big deal) but that almost wasn’t the case… Like I said the other day, this was more on me than the book but… While I get that urban warfare can be long and drawn out for the poor soldier fighting house to house, I think you need to be really careful that doesn’t bleed into the actual book too much, especially at the beginning when you need your reader to be on board with you. Your mileage will vary but but I found that as the Cadian advance got bogged down, so did the plot and I had to put the book down for a bit. You could say that Young perhaps does his job a little too well here, at least that’s how it looked from where I was sat.

But I came back to it, read a few pages and all of a sudden it was like I was reading a completely different book.

All of a sudden there’s a bit of back and forth, between the Guard and the T’au, that kicks the pacing of the book into top gear and the plot just purrs along after that. It’s so easy to get caught up in the flow and just keep reading. And I’m not just talking about the set pieces either, although they’re all spectacular :o) ‘Longshot’ is a book where you can’t help but keep coming across rich veins of narrative. You’ve got all the politicking that runs alongside the action, arising from the perilous position of the Cadian Guard, forced to take on non-Cadian recruits or see whole regiments die out entirely. Everyone has an ulterior motive and that’s just the humans, it’s a wonder that the Guard get anything done at all (with all the intrigue) but the important thing is that it all helps to make the plot, as a whole, utterly compelling.

You’ve also got the whole narrative around the humble soldier on the ground, which is always good anyway but becomes so much more in Young’s hands. There’s the silent conflict between ‘pure Cadians’ and ‘Transplants’, stretching camaraderie to breaking point (always a handy plot device) but where ‘Longshot’ really comes into it’s own is when Young shows us that while generals can affect the lives of thousands of their men, just one of those soldiers can turn the tide through their own decisions. Watching Darya Nevic struggle with this, especially when the T’au are being so persuasive, adds another compelling note to the proceedings but the ramifications of this cast the whole setting in a more hopeful light. If one Guardsman can make a difference, maybe things aren’t so grimdark after all.

I’m going to stop here as I’m starting to ramble a little. If you enjoy 40K fiction, or just like military sci-fi in general, though, definitely give serious thought to checking out ‘Longshot’. I really hope that we see more of Sergeant Darya Nevic going forwards (she does appear in the short story ‘Transplants’); I’d say that she’s more than worthy of her own series.