Those familiar with the way the Warhammer 40K universe works will know that a human living a hundred years or more is completely possible, through things like “juvenat treatments” and cybernetic implants (or the wholesale replacement of one’s organic parts with mechanical ones), but for those who find this information surprising, a quick look at any of the two available online wikis will provide enough information on the matter.

I say “almost” because the events of Malleus occur almost a hundred years after the events of Xenos. Malleus moves almost directly from the events of the first book, Xenos.

Choices are made and paths are taken in this book that alter the course of the characters forever, thus foreshadowing what I predict will be the very dark events of the penultimate book. In both cases, the two proverbs refer to committing oneself entirely to a course of action from which one cannot turn back, for better or for worse, for victory or defeat.Īnd there is no better way to describe the events in Malleus the second book in the Eisenhorn Trilogy written by Dan Abnett for the Warhammer 40,000 shared universe. More popular would be the concept of “crossing the Rubicon”: a reference to the historical event of Julius Caesar’s troops crossing the Rubicon from Gaul into Italy – an event which indicated Caesar was willing to fight, to the death if necessary, to gain control of the Roman Republic. The title of this review comes from a Chinese proverb, which in its turn was based on an actual historical event.

Such events do not happen solely in fiction – history is rife with such events. In Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, that moment is, in my opinion, when the Fellowship breaks up after being attacked on the banks of the Bruinen in The Fellowship of the Ring: from that point, the surviving members of the Fellowship have no choice but to strike out on their own – for better or for worse. Oftentimes, when one is reading a novel or a series of novels, something will happen that will indicate that there is no turning back: a decision is made, a course of action taken, or a death occurs that forever changes the course of the plot and, for better or worse, and nothing is the same ever again.

Eisenhorn malleus