I will try not to include any spoilers, but be warned. If you are interested, there are three other, excellent reviews of this book posted online, by DrLove42 and CrusherJoe at BoLS, and Jeff Preston at Emperyan.
http://drlove42.blogspot.com/2011/08/path-of-seer-black-libriary-review.html
http://emperyan.blogspot.com/2011/08/review-path-of-seer-by-gav-thorpe.html
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2011/09/review-path-of-seer-by-gav-thorpe.html
I have been looking forward to Seer since reading Path of the Warrior when it was first released. I want to learn more about the Eldar, both DE and CWE, because those are the primary armies of myself and my son and I am trying to learn more about the 40K ‘world’, but I really am of two minds about this book.
I am generally not a big fan of 40K fiction. I have never really read much Sci-Fi at all, so maybe I just don’t ‘get’ this genre (and I am a librarian by profession). From that 40K material which I have read, the older fluff was almost always great stuff, but I have found all of the newer fiction that I have tried nowhere near as good. I think a big part of that is that I am used to reading first-rate thrillers and mysteries from around the world. So I personally tend to find the pace and style of 40K novels nothing at all like that of, say, Matt Hilton’s recent Blood and Ashes, or John Sandford’s latest, Buried Prey.
Path of the Seer is a great story and mostly very well written. As part of a trilogy, it contains elements of the first title in the series, Warrior, and it also contains numerous hints of the yet-to-be-released third, Path of the Outcast. It is a story separated from Warrior’s but they do weave back and forth and intersect at times. The first quarter of the book is the weakest, re-hashing parts of the Warrior that we are already familiar with. I found the conversations often stilted and there was too much introspection.
OK, becoming a Seer might involve a fair bit of introspection anyway, but it slowed the pace of the book for me. And life on the Craftworld seemed just too idyllic and fake.
Like Warrior, Seer contains much information about the Eldar culture, their thought processes and their activities. Creating Wraithguard and Wraithlords, connecting with the infinity circuit, battling with psychic powers, even Bonesingers, all are included. But overall, I found that there was often too much detail in simple actions and events, and again the reading didn’t flow easily.
The third title in this series, Outcast, and the forthcoming DE trilogy lead by Renegade in March 2012 are really what I want to read, as Outcast appeals more to my personal interests and they both obviously relate to the background of my DE army. However, for Outcast I am already backing off on my enthusiasm a bit. For a book about Rangers, I would like to see something with the flavour of, say, Stephen Hunter’s sniper protagonist Bob Lee Swagger. But I already have a good idea of what I’m going to get from the Warrior and Seer books, and that’s not even close at this point.
A bit harsh? Perhaps, but on a personal level I would give Seer 6.5/10.
Subject: REVIEW - BL: Path of the Seer 
Thu Aug 04 2011, 07:59
