Penitent – Dan Abnett

2 stars

So. Here we are again.

The same problems that I had with Pariah are back in Penitent. While I enjoy Dan Abnett’s ability to build a scene and vividly put the reader in it, it’s gotten extremely tedious. There’s pages upon pages of exposition that really gum up the pacing of the story and made it such a slog to get through.

I’m having an extremely hard time liking Bequin’s character. She seems overly arrogant and self-assured at times, and appears to stumble her way into important things with no idea how she got there and zero work to find answers. She’s a very convenient type of character, and one I’m not enjoying as a main character.

There are a lot of new things introduced in this book that really threw me for a loop. The Inquisitor series as a whole was recommended to me as a great starting point for Warhammer 40k but all of these things being thrown at me that I have no concept for made it more frustrating to read. All these legions and things from what I understand to be Heresy era are cool and really make me want to explore that, but I have no idea what any of them are since I’ve only read this series so far and nothing else. It also made the big revelation at the end very flat for me as I missed all of the nuance and context that I needed to completely understand it.

The Inquisitor series as a whole was great at the start, but as I’ve gone on, I’ve grown less enamoured with it. I think I’m thoroughly sick of Dan Abnett for awhile….