A ‘Did Not Finish’… ‘Scourge The Heretic’ – Sandy Mitchell (Black Library)

 

Page Count: 413 Pages (of which I made it through 153 Pages before saying to myself, ‘just because I’m unemployed now, doesn’t mean the time to stick with a book that isn’t working for me…)

I hate to start September with a ‘Did Not Finish’ but I ended August on a ‘Did Not Finish’ so… Here we are :o)

We all know how it goes here... Not every book is a winner and of these, there are books that I will finish out of a morbid fascination. Not so much these days though… Due to (resignedly gestures at everything…), my reading time is precious so I am much more inclined to drop a book, that isn’t working, and move on to something that I’ll enjoy.

Which brings me round to ‘Scourge The Heretic’ and another lovely cover from the Black Library. It was a shame that the book itself didn’t work out…

First up, lets have some blurb…

While Space Marines and the Imperial Guard battle aliens among the stars, it is the job of the Inquisition to hunt down the heretics who corrupt society from within. When an Ordo Hereticus warband is sent to investigate an interplanetary people-trafficking operation, they soon find something much more sinister than people being smuggled. Suddenly, they are up against some very dangerous enemies indeed.

With all the constant warfare happening across the Imperium (and reading about it in various books), it is very easy to forget that at heart, all ‘Inquisition Books’ are basically detective novels in space. I mean, they are aren’t they? There’s a mystery to be solved and while the stakes are inevitably much higher, it’s still the same old gumshoe walking down some mean streets, shaking down informants and trying to manage a drinking problem. Sorry, it’s the 41st Millennium, trying to manage a strange fascination with chaos artefacts etc ;o)

Anyway… I enjoy some Raymond Chandler, every now and then, so I’m cool with this approach playing out in any ‘Inquisition’ book. What I’m not so cool with (okay, ‘not cool at all with’) is any detective novel that takes far too long to get going. A mystery is all well and good but stuff has to be happening at the same time, to move the plot along and just give the Inquisitor/Private Eye a little impetus in general. What I found in ‘Scourge The Heretic’ was an intriguing mystery that was swiftly parked so that another mystery could be established and links made. And that second mystery took far too long to establish with the ‘Inquisitorial Warband’ essentially having lots of team meetings to try and work out what was going on. Now some of this is on me and my loathing of team meetings, in general, but I needed things to be moving, not just being discussed (and characters introduced). Okay, there was a prison break but even that dragged out at all the wrong moments. 
Anyway :o)

I got to page 153 and thought I’d skip ahead and see what happened, you can imagine my ‘surprise’ when I landed bang in the middle of another meeting… That was it for me, I put the book down and told myself, in no uncertain terms, that if there is a sequel to ‘Scourge the Heretic’ (I think there is), I won’t look too hard for it.

You win some, you lose some… Back to the TBR Pile for another read :o)