Henry Zou

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Henry Zou is an Australian Black Library author, apparently of Chinese descent. Intuitively, we can assume this makes him one of the space communists, though the only one with a bad accent. Also note that he is certainly not Chris Wraight.

Zou had a short career at Black Library, having wrote a single short story and the Bastion Wars series, which was actually a trilogy. While his books had a fair amount of weak characterization and some stereotypical antagonists, he wrote decent books with some pretty brutally kick-ass combat scenes. We should know, Dan Abnett commented on those battles, and who the hell are you to contradict Dan Abnett?

His fans had ask what happened to him after that, and the answer: fuck if we know! He may have tried to shave his head in a desperate bid to improve his writing skills, and went into hiding when a mishap with a set of hairclippers made him look like C.S. Goto. The point is, when do we get some more delicious fycelene and bloodsplatter?

The Books

Emperor's Mercy is about an inquisitor running around the sector, followed by his two henchman and a sexy French inqisitrix, trying to keep a step ahead of Chaos-worshiping space pirates trying to seek out a mythical superweapon that turns out not to be as mythical as it was first thought. Also, a general of the Imperial Guard with a Napolean complex tries to upstage and outdick an Inqiusitor Lord. Rather than handling the way any inquisitor in any other novel would have, the =][= guy tries to play it cool (we're saying the outcome you guessed at is drawn out rather than done immediately). The Blood Gorgons Chaos Space Marines also make a small appearance.

Flesh and Iron has an Imperial force trying to put down a Chaos insurgency on a backwater swamp world. The force is composed of a regiment of space cajuns, a combined heavy armor/mechanized infantry regiment, a ye olde maritime naval force; and it's all headed by an evil Ecclesiarchal cardinal, backed by his personal force of Sisters of Battle. Through the book, the space cajuns roam through the jungles heroically getting shot to death by both sides, the mechanized infantry and cavalry sat around doing fuck-all, the navy managed to get a few ships just close enough to the shore to get blown to shit, all under the cardinal's trollfaced orders. The evil cardinal spends time abusing his minions, and presumably looking in the mirror to twirl his mustache and work on his evil laugh when he's offscreen; while his SoB are probably having orgies, because he told them that not doing so is heresy. In the end the evil cardinal turns out (SPOILERS) to be evil, and then the Blood Gorgons show up again and wreck shit. Not as planned.

Blood Gorgons is about the Blood Gorgons. Go figure. Also, there are Dark Eldar poking around, too. The books goes to lengths to show that Chaos Space Marines, badassitude aside, can come surprisingly close to bro-tier with how well they don't mistreat their slaves and a value things like camaraderie and honor. Despite that, their chief sorceror (who is a dirty double-non-heretic) betrays the Chapter Master in the book's prologue as the start of the wider scheme to betray the Blood Gorgons for his own gain. (Yet another piece of evidence that psykers shouldn't be allowed to be chapter masters.) The story then goes takes them to one of the Blood Gorgons' recruiting worlds, which is under attack, it then follows around a chaos marine with his Dark Eldar on a leash, which turns out to be disappointingly devoid of homoerotic tension. Then the thing that happens to the Cardinal in Flesh and Iron, happens to the sorceror and his buddies.