This phrase is used to describe most of the novels published by Black Library, Games Workshop's literary division. It indicates that a book possesses little to no intellectual reading value, instead consisting primarily of lurid descriptions of large-scale mayhem and carnage as carried out, typically, by the setting's iconic Space Marines and their spiky-armored opponents, the unironically-named Chaos Space Marines, as well as other colorful factions that occupy the planet-wide battlefields of the 41st millennium.
Space Marines, also known as the Adeptus Astartes, are cloistered chapters of towering, genetically-convoluted super-soldiers that thematically resemble medieval knightly orders, ascetic monk brotherhoods, mythical figures such as the Norse einherjar, and other classical warrior archetypes.
A "bolter" is the Space Marine's standard-issue weapon: A .75-caliber fully-automatic cinderblock-sized machine gun that fires self-propelled explosive ammunition.
The total ubiquity of this insanely destructive weapon, as well as other standard Space Marine affects such as chainswords (as in, swords that are chainsaws), says a lot about the tone of Warhammer 40,000, or simply "40k", a sci-fantasy tabletop miniatures game that has spawned a multitude of novels and other spinoffs, it's tagline: "In the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, there is Only War."
A lot of bolter porn is kind of awful.
Christian Z. Dunn's novel Pandorax, which was released in the UK in 2013 and North America in 2014, is bolter porn. But, it's not awful at all.
In fact, it's pretty great.
Grab a drink (I recommend the blood of heretics or tears of the damned), hit the jump, and I'll tell you all about it.
A holy city of the Imperium of Man.
A bit about the setting, for those who require an introduction.
Warhammer 40,000 is fantasy masquerading as science fiction, in the same vein of Star Wars, but dominated by total moral ambiguity (veering heavily dark) as opposed to idealized good and evil. Faster-than-light travel throughout the war-torn galaxy is facilitated by very careful movement through an alternate dimension called the Warp: a parallel existence defined not by physical laws but cast-off emotions and psychic detritus, where uniquely-evolved humans with a very rare psychic talent, the Navigators, can maneuver spacecraft at the speed of thought, albeit with drawbacks. It is the source of magic in this setting, or as it is termed here, "Chaos."
The Warp is a galaxy unto itself; an ever-shifting Boschian hellscape home to innumerable "daemons" borne of emotions, ranging in scale from tiny whispering spirits to full-fledged deities of all-consuming human conditions such as violence, passion, disease, and the very concept of change.
The premise of the meta-plot is that, as the galaxy-spanning Imperium of Man was establishing itself in the 31st millennium, fully half of it's own armies turned against it upon learning of the Warp's true nature despite the efforts of the "Emperor of Mankind", an immortal conqueror who obscured the hellish truth by uniting humanity under a purely atheistic doctrine (despite being a nigh-godlike psychic being himself). The traitors fell victim to the temptations of the hungry gods that dwelt within, and declared themselves the true inheritors of the empire, rather than the ruler that they felt had so cruelly manipulated and deceived them.
The civil war was bloody and violent beyond anything humanity had ever experienced, with entire star systems utterly obliterated or consumed by daemonic hordes from beyond reality. At it's height, the Emperor confronted his own son, Warmaster Horus Lupercal, one of the trans-human progenitors of the Space Marine legions and the instigator of the rebellion that would become known to history as the Horus Heresy. Horus was slain, but the Emperor himself was wounded far beyond the ability of his subjects to heal.
The rigidly agnostic Imperium was thrown into turmoil, and over the course of the ensuing centuries, it turned viciously theocratic and totalitarian, characterizing the Emperor as a god who demanded unswerving loyalty, desperately throwing trillions upon trillions of soldiers conscripted from countless planets into war against the traitorous forces of Chaos that continue to assault it well into the present, in addition to numerous "xenos" threats, which include ancient robotic revenants with unfathomable technology, mecha-piloting alien expansionists, giant insect-dinosaur-monster swarms that eat everything, and of course, space elves and space orcs.
In the 41st millennium, the actual person that was Emperor, now dubbed the God-Emperor of Mankind, persists as a shriveled, cadaverous husk on soul-fueled life support on his throne on the holy planet Earth; a psychic beacon still blazing in the Warp for the Navigators to guide ships by, but otherwise silent, helpless as the technology and progress he sought the pursuit of for their own sake have utterly stagnated, all efforts going towards feeding the self-perpetuating war machine.
It's not a happy setting. But, the titanic scale of it, the colorful characters that fight its battles, the mythic melodrama of their victories, betrayals, and defeats, and occasional tongue-in-cheek tone at the sheer absurdity of it all makes it frequently a fun one to read.
40k's most iconic tableau: The Emperor of Mankind (right) confronts the traitorous Warmaster Horus Lupercal (left). Did I mention 40k is big on religious motifs?
Pythos has been targeted by the Black Legion, the most powerful Chaos faction, because it contains a precious, dangerous rarity: a stable, physical rift between real space and the Warp that could potentially allow vast armies of daemons through, bolstering Chaos' forces significantly.
It's up to a regiment of the Astra Militarum (otherwise known as the Imperial Guard; the countless billions of ordinary human soldiers on the frontlines), the Catachan Jungle Fighters, who themselves are strangers to the planet, to hold them off. But, they've got a fighting chance, not only because of the fact that they're experienced with conditions similar to Pythos' deadly jungles, but that they have help from not one but two chapters of Space Marines: The Dark Angels, and the Grey Knights.
A Space Marine of the Dark Angels, with requisite sword and bolter.
Until recently, Black Library's writers have tended to shy away from using the iconic characters that form a core part of the tabletop game, instead using their own characters, who tend not to have the impregnable plot-armor of the franchise icons that protects them from such things as, say, actual character development.
C.Z. Dunn is under no such inhibitions. Not far in, the leader of the Imperial Guard forces, Colonel 'Death' Strike (yes, that is his name; yes, there are jokes about it) of the Catachan 183rd, is introduced into the story. He's joined by Lord Azrael, Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels, who are heavily inspired by the Knights Templar, complete with shady conspiracies at the core of their backstory, and Kaldor Draigo, Supreme Grand Master of the Grey Knights, a mystically-endowed chapter of dedicated daemon-slayers that are thought of as only a myth, as they go to great lengths to keep their existence and the nature of their duty a secret to the common Imperial citizen.
Opposing them is none other than Abaddon the Despoiler, archetypical spiky-black-armored evil overlord, Warmaster of Chaos for ten thousand years and counting as he prepares for the thirteenth of his dreaded "Black Crusades" against the Imperium, and his uncertain ally, Huron Blackheart, leader of the Red Corsairs, a chapter of Space Marines who forswore their loyalty to the Imperium to become full-blown space pirates -- Huron, ever the pirate captain, comes complete with inventively-replaced missing limbs and eye and a sinister daemon-parrot-thing that spontaneously materialized after he became a pirate, because that's how Chaos works.
With these big names stomping around in their excessively-pauldron'd powered armor, you'd expect plenty of mayhem but not much of actual consequence to occur, seeing as how they're part of the core franchise identity; it's hard to create tension when you know the big players will get through it relatively unscathed, even in a setting that veers as dark as 40k -- maybe even harder, because catastrophe and disaster are so ubiquitous to this setting that devastation is a perfectly normal occurrence.
But there is tension, and there are consequences, and that's not only because Dunn makes a careful effort to capture individual elements of human pathos and heroism, but because those larger-than-life players aren't even the real protagonists of the story.
That honor instead goes to some highly unexpected characters.
Every fashionable Inquisitor has at least one servo-skull companion. Fire optional, but encouraged.
The first is an agent of the Emperor's Holy Inquisition: A murky, intrigue-laden institution that's part black-ops and part shadow government; frequently depicted as the only group within the setting that comes close to being truly aware of the dire situation of the galaxy, at frequent odds with one another as to what to do about it, and who'll go to monstrously extreme lengths to get it done once they do decide. The Inquisitorial agent is a level-headed, charismatic leader that serves, alongside Colonel Strike, as the reader's main perspective on events as they play out on the surface of Pythos, and who controls the MacGuffin that brings the predicament full-circle.
The second is a fighter pilot in the Imperial Navy, the Astra Militarum's space-based forces, and the primary viewpoint of events occurring beyond the skies of Pythos and the movement of warships as they arrive within the star system. The pilot is the polar opposite of the Inquisitor: A brash, foolhardy daredevil more concerned with scoring the most kills and, in a particularly entertaining arc, settling a rivalry with a Heldrake (basically a giant flying metal daemon-dragon) than with the grand picture.
The third is another Space Marine that serves under none of the aforementioned leaders, and whose identity beyond that is tied too much into major plot reveals to elaborate on here, but serves as a stoic presence with an unusual perspective on affairs.
These three characters' respective journeys meet at about the halfway point of the book, and it is through them that the outcome of the story -- thrilling, heartbreaking, and viscerally satisfying -- is decided.
The Emperor's Finest: A trans-human Gray Knight and Dark Angel, and a human soldier of the Catachan Jungle Fighters (who's prosthetics are only slightly more extensive than those of the average trooper of the Imperium)
Something remarkable about the Inquisitor and the pilot, at least in comparison to many other major characters in Warhammer 40k novels, is this: Both of them are women, and women of color. Not only women of color, but women of color with pivotal, central, heroic roles in a loud, violent, testosterone-laden story.
And they aren't even slightly out of place.
Not much attention is called to their gender within the story, other than some appropriately juvenile banter between the pilot and her squadmates, or their race, aside from the narrative plainly stating them as non-white (the Inquisitor is described with dark skin and cornrows, the pilot with pale skin, dark hair, and an Asian-sounding name.) They are not overwrought "Strong Female Characters" with overcompensated, melodramatic backstories, nor are they at any point depicted as helpless and in need of rescue, save for situations in which comrades would naturally come to the aid of one another.
Furthermore, they aren't even "token" female characters, as there are plenty of other instances of women in this book shown as part of both Imperial and Chaos forces. The Bechdel-Wallace Test is passed, frequently and with ease.
I never thought I'd write that last sentence about a 40k novel, but here we are.
They are simply protagonists. They get to make decisions: To be brave, to be foolish, to do the things any hero or anti-hero might do, to face consequences for their actions, and to deal with those consequences in turn. And it is fantastic.
The reason why this merits a call-out is this: The fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000 is overwhelmingly dominated by male characters. One well-trodden excuse for this is that, per an in-universe explanation regarding the "science" of their genetic creation: Space Marines can only be male. Space Marines are the face of the franchise. Ergo, most 40k characters of note are men.
Games Workshop, the IP owner, could ostensibly change this. "No female Space Marines" was an unfortunate creative call made during a time where it might have seemed harmless -- the 80s, catering to an extremely niche audience of white male tabletop gamers, with no consideration the potential expansion of their audience in a franchise that would see decades of success.
But, they're sticking with it, and they regrettably do not seem intent on remedying the imbalance through other perfectly viable means. Though Space Marines are the only army in the tabletop lineup with an actual in-story restriction, the other armies available in the game have few visible female characters despite most being described in the literature as evenly mixed -- it's even implied in some stories that Chaos could potentially have women packed among their own Space Marine troops, because they don't play by the same rules (being, effectively, space wizards.)
There is one all-female army, a highly entertaining and flavorful "warrior-nun" concept that plays up the Imperium's fanatical religious motifs to a nigh-comical degree (as in, missile-launching pipe organs mounted on tanks, yes, really), but it hasn't seen updates to it's rules or miniatures in many years.
Unless they snuck female Space Marines in without us noticing -- because we would never have guessed just by looking at them.
In recent times, though, Black Library's writers have been stepping up to fill the gap, and female characters are getting more prominent roles even in stories which heavily involve Space Marines. Pandorax is a prime example.
C.Z. Dunn is to be commended for this, and it's not the only thing. In terms of representation of marginalized people, this story also features two characters with clearly-stated social and mental disabilities in supporting but highly decisive roles, acting under their own agency.
One would think Dunn saw fit to include them on purpose, seeing as how the presence of female protagonists also feels so deliberate. If so, that was a good call. It's an easy thing to overlook, and it's heartening to see that kind of care being taken in what one might pass off as cheap genre fiction. It seems like a little thing, but it isn't. And it's good.
And let it of course be said: Just because the characters of Azrael and Draigo are well known and not Dunn's original creations, does not mean that they don't get to shine either. These champions of the tabletop game are, in this novel, played off one another magnificently: They're uneasy allies who scarely miss an opportunity to needle one another, especially over the fact that both of their Chapters are infamous for their secretive nature.
Fans of the Dark Angels or Grey Knights who give this book a read will find great enjoyment in these characters' chemistry as well as their requisite battlefield heroics -- and heroics, there are. Suffice it to say, these champions come off as unique personalities unto themselves, and stand in perfect compliment and contrast to their mortal human allies, taking to the conflict with all the spectacular, exuberantly violent, high-energy impact that make the Adeptus Astartes such richly entertaining figures; the reason why "bolter porn" sells as well as it does.
The Rogue's Gallery of Pandorax: Huron Blackheart, Abaddon the Despoiler, a gruesome Plague Marine, and a Heldrake. To forfeit one's soul to the Ruinous Powers means you'll always have a great time.
If there is one major complaint I have regarding Pandorax, it's the lack of screen-time that the Chaos characters receive. While they get a few scenes depicting their scheming and communication amongst one another, it's more for the sake of dramatic tension than to fully depict another side of the story. A serious missed opportunity in a setting which emphasizes that no one is truly the good guy.
So, as it often does, Chaos comes across as exaggeratedly, almost cartoonishly villainous. While they match that profile and certainly aren't good people -- you don't put spikes and skulls on your armor and include human sacrifice as part of your remote communications protocol (yes, really) and get to call yourself a "hero" -- an opportunity is missed in drawing comparisons to them, who live in a sort of anarchic freedom in a dimension where the laws of physics are mere suggestions, with the Imperium, in all it's oppressive totalitarianism and fanatical militarism.
The lack of depth on the part of Chaos is especially egregious in light of novels by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, one of Black Library's newer and most superlatively talented writers whom Dunn has worked with as an editor, and whose works have focused primarily on Chaos Space Marines, managing to give them tremendous personality and even paint them sympathetically while never taking away their theatrical malevolence.
It would have been nice to get into the head of Warmaster Abaddon just a bit more here, or to depict a conversation or two between the disease-ridden, unsettlingly jovial Plague Marine commander and a particular Chaos operative that he'd been coordinating plans with (who is, incidentally, another significant female character.)
Still, we do at least get to watch Huron Blackheart have a one-on-one duel with someone, complete with loquacious banter as expected of a pirate captain.
And I suppose there's that report-to-mission-control-by-way-of-human-sacrifice thing, which was just preciously grotesque. You'll have to read it to understand.
Supreme Grand Masters Azrael and Draigo confront Warmaster Abaddon's forces beneath the skies of Pythos.
To a fan of the tabletop game who has yet to dive into the novels, Pandorax could not be a more perfect entry point.
To a fan of the Grey Knights, the Dark Angels, or the Catachan Imperial Guardsmen, this is practically mandatory reading.
To a newcomer to the series, it could serve quite well as one's first venture into the compelling, bloody spectacle of the 41st millennium, though a number of references, particularly to key Dark Angels character cameos that occur in droves during the second half of the book, might be missed.
Pandorax is bolter porn. But it's good bolter porn. The all-star lineup of iconic characters delivers spectacularly, the protagonists are marvelously entertaining, the cast is magnificently varied, the action is intense, the violence catastrophic, and every victory is pyrrhic. All is as it should be. It is grim, and it is dark, and it is fun.
It is quintessentially Warhammer 40,000.
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