Xenos (Novel)
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Xenos is the first novel in a series by Dan Abnett featuring Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn.
The novel was selected by David Annandale in May 2014 as part of Black Library's "Author's Choice" marathon.[1]
Contents
Cover Description[1]
The Inquisition moves amongst mankind like an avenging shadow, striking down the enemies of humanity with uncompromising ruthlessness. When he finally corners an old foe, Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn is drawn into a sinister conspiracy. As events unfold and he gathers allies - and enemies - Eisenhorn faces a vast interstellar cabal and the dark power of daemons, all racing to recover an arcane text of abominable power: an ancient tome known as the Necroteuch.
Synopsis
Part One: Hubris
240.M41: After years of pursuit, Gregor Eisenhorn has finally run Murdin Eyclone to ground on Hubris, inside the enormous cryonic vaults where the majority of the planet's elites spend the nine-month winter season. Eyclone manages to kill Eisenhorn's retainer, Lores Vibben, but Eisenhorn corners him in one of the vaults and shoots him dead with Vibben's pistol, though not before Eyclone has triggered a systemic failure of several hundred stasis cells, killing their inhabitants.
Eisenhorn is placed under arrest by the planet's regency government, accusing him of driving Eyclone to Hubris, but he archly informs them that Eyclone arrived on Hubris well ahead of Eisenhorn, and his sabotage of the cryonic cells was no spur-of-the-moment act of spite, but planned in advance. Both pieces of evidence clearly indicate that Eyclone had some higher purpose in coming to Hubris, and it is essential that Eisenhorn discover what that was. The acting governor relents, but insists on Arbites Chastener Fischig accompanying Eisenhorn.
Eyclone's trail takes them to a local tenement block, where they find the last of his hired thugs amusing themselves with a "pleasure girl", who grabs a dropped gun and shoots one of them with it in the ensuing firefight, fancying herself to have saved Eisenhorn's life. Eisenhorn is surprised to realize that the girl, Alizebeth Bequin, is a pariah, an incredibly rare variant of humans that have no psychic imprint, and nullify psychic attacks. Eisenhorn asks her to join his retinue.
Eyclone's communications logs reveal that he was planning on stowing away on a ship bound for Gudrun, the sector capital, and contain cryptic references to "the Pontius." Eisenhorn's savant, Uber Aemos, rattles off a list of people and places with that name, but one seems too much of a coincidence: Pontius Glaw, one of the sector's most infamous heretics, though he has been dead for centuries, and his family, House Glaw, is still one of the most prominent aristocratic houses on Gudrun.
Part Two: Gudrun
Part Three: The Necroteuch
Characters
The Inquisition
- Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn, Ordo Xenos
- Inquisitor Commodus Voke
- Inquisitor Titus Endor
- Inquisitor Konrad Molitor
- Inquisitor Lord Plebas Alessandro Rorken
Hubris
Gudrun
Other
Images
2015 edition cover
Cover art
Trivia
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Conflicting sources
- In Chapter Seventeen, while discussing the lack of symmetry displayed by the saruthi species, Aemos makes reference to the tyranids, stating "All species - even the most obscene kinds like the tyranid - have some order of it."[2] However, although tyranids had been encountered by the Imperium over the millennia, they were not formally classified under the name "tyranid" until after the destruction of the planet Tyran in 745.M41[3], well after the events of this novel take place.
See also
Sources
- 1: Black Library (last accessed December 20 2018)
- 2: Xenos (Novel), Chapter Seventeen
- 3: Codex: Tyranids (5th Edition), pg. 8
