I think I will have break on Eisenhorn binge. This is last book of Eisenhorn trilogy. There is another Eisenhorn book containing short stories and five spin-off books. I think I need a little break from these books. I am starting to think humor of first two books was not intentional after all. Hereticus is more serious than first two books. It could be because it is about ending. Eisenhorn has lost his old colleagues in inquisition. His team is getting old. At least by our age standards. To highlight that book doesn’t open with action. We are long way form first book where I wanted less action.
Book could have tried less to make us understand how boring Eisenhorn’s life had become before adventure begun. Malleus showed boring regular life more interesting. This doesn’t have similar world building. Here it is smaller scale which doesn’t work as well. These books work better when everything is grand and epic. But there is limit to all that before it doesn’t work any more. Hereticus goes over that limit. During these three books Eisenhorn nearly died several times only to return almost like nothing happened. After certain point action start to lose its impact.
Hereticus tells story of Eisenhorn’s old choices coming back to haunt him. It starts like this could be his journey to “dark side”. Most interesting parts of Hereticus are when characters are tempted to do something heretical. I hoped book went deeper to “dark side”. It loses momentum when Eisenhorn is shown to be able to resist “dark side”. Eisenhorn becoming heretic would have made series great. Until about halfway I expected it to happen. It would have been in line with first two books which didn’t do same thing again. After about halfway Hereticus start to feel it does same thing again. Change was so big I thought I missed something. Like original plan was to make Eisenhorn heretic, then plan was discarded and new second part was written almost from scratch.
Ravenor of this book gave hope for his spin-off trilogy. But I am not as excited about these books anymore. It might sound strange but Hereticus doesn’t go far enough. Warhammer 40K is all about going over the top and often too far. In this case it doesn’t go far enough. It could have gone much further into heresy and still have same ending. I expected it to go. Book is named Hereticus after all. Had it done so I would be here praising the trilogy and Warhammer 40K. Now I don’t when or if I return to this series. If I return to Warhammer 40K books it is this series. I enjoyed first two books and first half of this one but second half soured it for me.