Really Great Scifi: Eisenhorn
Eisenhorn (A Warhammer 40,000 Omnibus) is an ominbus of three books -- Xenos (The Eisenhorn Trilogy, Book 1), Malleus (The Eisenhorn Trilogy, Book 2), and Hereticus (The Eisenhorn Trilogy, Book 3) -- from Black Library author Dan Abnett. Dan began his scifi career at Marvel Comics in the early 1990s and is one of the very few comic book writers to make the transition to writing novels successfully. He puts the literary tools he picked up as a comic book author -- in-depth character development, ambiguous morality, tragic heroes, and cliffhangers -- to great use in Eisenhorn.
Eisenhorn takes place in the Warhammer 40,000 (W40k) universe. If you're a scifi fan and you've never paid a visit to W40k-land, it's a trip worth making. W40k is set in the 41st millienium of the Imperium of Man. The Imperium was built by The Immortal God-Emperor of Mankind, who is essentially the second coming of Jesus-cum-psyhic-cum-badass, when he personally led the people of Earth -- called Holy Terra in W40k -- on The Great Crusade through the galaxy, which brought thousands of worlds into the Imperium over the course of thousands of years. The Emperor was nearly killed by his own son Horus -- which merely reduced his bad-assedness -- and now is confined to the Golden Throne, which keeps him alive and amplifies his psychic abilities and allows him to broadcast his will throughout the Imperium. (And kill people with his brain. Really.) With the Emperor unable to lead his subjects, the Adeptus Astartes, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Imperial Guard, and the Ordo Malleus, Ordo Hereticus, and Ordo Xenos of the Inqusition carry out the Empoeror of Mankind's holy will throughout the universe against the Tyranids, the Eldar, the Orks, the forces of Chaos.
Eisenhorn follows the career of Gregor Eisenhorn from the time he joins Ordo Xenos at age 30 until he is nearly 300 years old. Written in the first person, Eisenhorn immerses the reader in the dark, gritty world of Warhammer 40,000 and forces the weight of the universe's wholly totalitarian regime flat onto the reader's back, but through Eisenhorn's words and thoughts the reader quickly reaches the disconcerting conclusion that totalitarianism is totally reasonable in the W40k universe. The main theme of the novels (besides unraveling conspiracies and blowing stuff up, naturally) is Eisenhorn's progression from a "puritan" who believes that the forces of evil can be fought only by remaining wholly above them to a "radical" who knows that the only way to fight evil is to get to know it firsthand. Abnett's depiction of this process is masterfully subtle and Eisenhorn's first-person voice makes the message all the more poignant because Eisenhorn remains the Emperor's paladin in his own eyes throughout the series. Abnett also shows delicious restraint in leaving the decision of whether or not Eisenhorn's transition from puritan to radical represents a moral decline up to the reader, and the stockpile of ammunition in both camps of that debate is a testament to Abnett's skill as a writer.
Xenos chronicles Eisenhorn's pursuit of a Chaos faction on the world of Gudrun that has tracked down a lost copy of the Chaos tome Necroteuch and his efforts to make sure they don't get their grubby little paws on it. The next two books, Malleus and Hereticus follow his pursuit of the rogue Interrogator Quixos and Eisenhorn's interactions with Quixos' daemonhosts through the series' final conflict, the details of which I will not spoil here. (You'll know what to expect by the time you get there, but you won't care.)
If you're interested in W40k, pick up this book. If you're on the fence about W40k and not sure how you feel about it, pick up this book. If you don't like scifi or W40k, pick up this book anyway. Really, it's that good. Eisenhorn is a little pulpy, which is no surprise coming from a former comic book writer, but it's still some of the best scifi I've read since Dune (Dune Chronicles, Book 1).
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