Adam
I continue my trek down the rabbit hole of Necromunda novels, luckily there aren't as many as Warhammer 40k. I've made it to Junktion and all I can say is I feel very neutral about this book. It's not a bad book, but it's also not a great book. It is merely an okay little adventure.Part of the problem I had with the book is that it was from a perspective I don't really enjoy reading very much, first person. I've read some books that worked well enough because the story was good like Outgunned (Lucille von Shard #1) by Denny Flowers, but most of the books fall pretty flat for me nad Junktion is a bit of a classic case of what doesn't work for me.Junktion follows around a character named Sinder Kass. He has a job in the town of Junktion that he is extremely dedicated to, lamp lighting. Basically he and several others have the job of maintaining the lighting and electrical systems for the settlement. It's a cool flavorful idea for the Necromunda setting. And I do like the idea that we get to see some life outside of the gangs to be honest. I think the setup and story concept were a very cool idea. From the start we get the feeling that not all things are right in the land of Junktion and there are political machinations at work behind the scenes.So, while I quite like the idea of Kass being a commoner, we never really get to be privy to what's going on behind the scenes very much. Instead of just Kass reacting to everything that goes wrong while still trying to “do his job”, which is all he wants to do. The problem with Kass' job is that it is a tad boring to read about, so when a good amount of time is devoted to explaining how Kass is fixing something, it's extremely dry explanatory text... which you'd expect. But we don't need to go through it that often as readers, once is really enough, after that you can just say “he worked on this thing and moved on”. At one point in the story he gets sent on a long journey to fix lines on a trade route and this goes haywire to the point where he encounters giant rats and scavvies. This felt a bit like an excuse to include giant rats because the models are cool. But in escaping the rats he wound up captured by scavvies, but the scavvies were weird and didn't just kill him and steal his stuff, no, that would end the story. So, instead they kidnap him? I dunno, just seemed out of character for them. At one point he is brought with them to engage a caravan of water being brought to Junktion by The Curse, an escher gang. So, this entire lead up was an excuse for Kass to cross paths with The Curse gang. The thing about this escher gang is that they were really a nice group and they healed Kass' wounds and brought him back to Junktion. Sure, they were going to ransom him back, because even they knew lamp lighters were important, but that's just business and Safine (the leader) was an honorable leader in that regard.Kass, unfortunately returns to Junktion that is now being held by two very frightening gangs. A gang of Goliaths called the Steelheads and a gang of Cawdor. The problem with the Cawdor gang is that they're redemptionists, the most frustrating of the lot to deal with due to their religious zeal and tendency to set everything they don't agree with on fire. The Goliaths are abusive towards Kass, but since they see him as a runt they don't really mess with him much. One of the Cawdor, Hetch, takes a special liking and torments Kass and his friends trying to convert Kass to the redemptionist way. Anyway, things have come to a head really, the town fathers, who originally conspired with the gangs eventually get overthrown kind of, and Kass hatches a plan to call in two other gangs to help, one of which is The Curse. This being a novel with a semi-happy ending, they overthrow the really horrible gangs, but now have the Escher and Berzerkers to deal with. This is less bad though, because at least those two gangs care more about working out trade deals and making money, trust me, it's better than burning everyone.At one point we do get a bit of explanation of the political machinations as told by Guilder Tai to Kass. It's a frustratingly fragmented conversation in the book, meaning some parts of the conversation are laid out, then a bunch of stuff happens to Kass and his friends, then more of the conversation is revealed. Based on the things that happened, it didn't seem like this was necessary. The missing piece of the convo wasn't suspenseful and to be honest, I had no idea it was fragmented until more was revealed later. So there was no feeling, as a reader, that there was any big reveal to be had. A lot of the writing and sub-plots feel this way. They don't feel like they're going anywhere, it never feels like there is much of a greater goal in mind, other than to find a way for Kass to do his job. And I think that's why this novel falls a bit flat for me.In the end, I don't feel this is a must read Necromunda novel. The town of Junktion and the people in it are well constructed. Junktion seems like a cool map to play a game on or even an extended campaign, but as a story of the people? It just doesn't seem well crafted and comes out very dry at times. I think this is only worth reading if you're obsessed with Necromunda and have nothing left to read in the setting.
I continue my trek down the rabbit hole of Necromunda novels, luckily there aren't as many as Warhammer 40k. I've made it to Junktion and all I can say is I feel very neutral about this book. It's not a bad book, but it's also not a great book. It is merely an okay little adventure.Part of the problem I had with the book is that it was from a perspective I don't really enjoy reading very much, first person. I've read some books that worked well enough because the story was good like Outgunned (Lucille von Shard #1) by Denny Flowers, but most of the books fall pretty flat for me nad Junktion is a bit of a classic case of what doesn't work for me.Junktion follows around a character named Sinder Kass. He has a job in the town of Junktion that he is extremely dedicated to, lamp lighting. Basically he and several others have the job of maintaining the lighting and electrical systems for the settlement. It's a cool flavorful idea for the Necromunda setting. And I do like the idea that we get to see some life outside of the gangs to be honest. I think the setup and story concept were a very cool idea. From the start we get the feeling that not all things are right in the land of Junktion and there are political machinations at work behind the scenes.So, while I quite like the idea of Kass being a commoner, we never really get to be privy to what's going on behind the scenes very much. Instead of just Kass reacting to everything that goes wrong while still trying to “do his job”, which is all he wants to do. The problem with Kass' job is that it is a tad boring to read about, so when a good amount of time is devoted to explaining how Kass is fixing something, it's extremely dry explanatory text... which you'd expect. But we don't need to go through it that often as readers, once is really enough, after that you can just say “he worked on this thing and moved on”. At one point in the story he gets sent on a long journey to fix lines on a trade route and this goes haywire to the point where he encounters giant rats and scavvies. This felt a bit like an excuse to include giant rats because the models are cool. But in escaping the rats he wound up captured by scavvies, but the scavvies were weird and didn't just kill him and steal his stuff, no, that would end the story. So, instead they kidnap him? I dunno, just seemed out of character for them. At one point he is brought with them to engage a caravan of water being brought to Junktion by The Curse, an escher gang. So, this entire lead up was an excuse for Kass to cross paths with The Curse gang. The thing about this escher gang is that they were really a nice group and they healed Kass' wounds and brought him back to Junktion. Sure, they were going to ransom him back, because even they knew lamp lighters were important, but that's just business and Safine (the leader) was an honorable leader in that regard.Kass, unfortunately returns to Junktion that is now being held by two very frightening gangs. A gang of Goliaths called the Steelheads and a gang of Cawdor. The problem with the Cawdor gang is that they're redemptionists, the most frustrating of the lot to deal with due to their religious zeal and tendency to set everything they don't agree with on fire. The Goliaths are abusive towards Kass, but since they see him as a runt they don't really mess with him much. One of the Cawdor, Hetch, takes a special liking and torments Kass and his friends trying to convert Kass to the redemptionist way. Anyway, things have come to a head really, the town fathers, who originally conspired with the gangs eventually get overthrown kind of, and Kass hatches a plan to call in two other gangs to help, one of which is The Curse. This being a novel with a semi-happy ending, they overthrow the really horrible gangs, but now have the Escher and Berzerkers to deal with. This is less bad though, because at least those two gangs care more about working out trade deals and making money, trust me, it's better than burning everyone.At one point we do get a bit of explanation of the political machinations as told by Guilder Tai to Kass. It's a frustratingly fragmented conversation in the book, meaning some parts of the conversation are laid out, then a bunch of stuff happens to Kass and his friends, then more of the conversation is revealed. Based on the things that happened, it didn't seem like this was necessary. The missing piece of the convo wasn't suspenseful and to be honest, I had no idea it was fragmented until more was revealed later. So there was no feeling, as a reader, that there was any big reveal to be had. A lot of the writing and sub-plots feel this way. They don't feel like they're going anywhere, it never feels like there is much of a greater goal in mind, other than to find a way for Kass to do his job. And I think that's why this novel falls a bit flat for me.In the end, I don't feel this is a must read Necromunda novel. The town of Junktion and the people in it are well constructed. Junktion seems like a cool map to play a game on or even an extended campaign, but as a story of the people? It just doesn't seem well crafted and comes out very dry at times. I think this is only worth reading if you're obsessed with Necromunda and have nothing left to read in the setting.