Ravenor Returned by Dan Abnett

Gideon Ravenor, having pierced the heart of the Mergent worlds, returns to the world of Eustis Majoris to track down the people who have been selling the warp artifacts known as "Flects" as drugs on the street.

But the flects are mere bagatelles to the sellers' true plans for Eustis Majoris, and it begins with a woman named Maud Plyton, a detective in what passes for Eustis Majoris' Police force. Called to investigate the death of a supervisor who is working on the restoration of a major chapel sacristy in the hive, she discovers that the ceiling collapsed, revealing another ceiling, and another mural long hidden. Apparently, the sight of the ceiling caused the supervisor to go crazy and fall off the scaffolding, get caught in hanging ropes, and die when his neck snapped.

Certainly she can't see why the mural made the man go crazy. To her, it's one of the most beautiful things she's ever seen. Certainly better than the white ceiling that was constructed over it to hide it. But the powers that be higher up in the Hive Hierarchy treat the case strangely- the file is hidden, all the evidence taken and then apparently wiped from all the computers in the office. What is going on?

Meanwhile, Ravenor, presumed dead by the villains on Eustace Majoris, has returned and is hiding out to keep anyone from finding out that he is still alive. But even so, his return is suspected, and the people responsible for the trade in flects hire a fixer named Orfeo Culzean to make sure that the appearance of a warp demon named Slyte comes about. This will involve the killing and/or neutralizing of some people who stand in the way of the plan.

Ravenor himself has heard of Slyte, and is very interested in keeping Slyte from manifesting. But he believes that Slyte may have something to do with Zael, since his last name is properly Slate, from his father. But while Ravenor keeps his eye on Zael, another problem is growing in the form of his own student, Carl Thoenen. Strange and inexplicable things are happening around him, and his personality is slowly changing, from a prissy man who spends far too much attention on his clothing to a hard man who is more of a doer than a thinker. What could be the cause of such a change?

The focus of Ravenor and his crew is Zygmunt Molotch, the one who is behind the entire plot. It seems that he has somehow managed to replace the entire Administratum's computers with those salvaged from the warp, and is running vast quantities of gibberish through them to discover the secrets of Eternium, a long-forgotten language that can literally reshape the universe. But having suborned the Sector Capital, can Molotch be stopped by Ravenor and his team before Molotch's grand plan comes to fruition?

This book was a like a storm. All through the story, you know something bad is coming. It's presaged with plenty of warnings and predictors, and you know it's going to be bad. But unlike the Eisenhorn books, each of which tell a story separated by years of time, the books in this series come one right after the other, separated by a few weeks, or maybe a couple of months of time. So while both book series tell a single story about an inquisitor pursuing a single villain, the Ravenor stories seem more coherent, because it takes place in mostly the same area.

But the storm at the end of this book isn't really the end of the story, even though it seems to be, because the story ends on a clear note that the trouble hasn't ended, and will continue in the next book. And, Molotch isn't dead... plus we get a look at who Slyte really is, and wonder how Ravenor will end up taking him/it down.

An interesting middle story, usually the worst in a trilogy, because it neither has a discrete ending, and merely maintains most of the characters in a status quo while setting up the ending, the true ending, of the trilogy. That may be true, but this book is fascinating nonetheless and delivers quite a lot of bang for your buck. Recommended.