Tag Archives: shira calpurnia

Enforcer – Matthew Farrer

I found Enforcer to be an interesting book. It follows three major points in Shira Calpurnia’s early career as an Arbitor Senioris on Hydraphur. A native of Ultramar, she finds the complex politics of Hydraphur nobility to be a strenuous endeavour she’d rather not have to deal with, but as a faithful daughter of Ultramar, she knows her duty.

As an Arbitrator, she deals with criminals and infractions above the normal call of beat cops, such as heresy, disputes over warrants of trade and assassinations of high-level Imperial officials.

The style of the books is a bit odd compared to other 40k novels, it just seems to flow differently. I quite liked the books, and the stories – Calpurnia’s blunt style juxtapositioning with the flowery and subtle politicking of Hydraphur nobility works quite well, emphasising the difference between the various classes of the 40k universe.

One thing I found jarring was the differences between what Farrer has written as being Adepus Arbites protocols, ranks, etc and what I’d come to know from the Dark Heresy RPG (hardly the most reliable source, right?).

The always-do-the-right-thing vibe can get draining after a while, especially in the third book Blind. Blind is really quite slow to get going, but picks up a lot once it does.

This is definitely a book I should have written something about after I finished it instead of two months later.

I liked the trilogy, and the data fact sheets with extra information after each book was a nice touch. It’s just not as good as the Dan Abnett books. I would happily lend it to anyone interested in it.

For those of you interested in No Rest for the Wicked, the second book Crossfire has an outlook on how one Rogue Trader dynasty operates, focusing on the inheritance of the warrant after the head of the dynasty dies.