My thoughts on "The High Kahl's Oath" - discussion thread

So I finished the book, and aside from my other post about the easter egg, I had some further thoughts I wanted to share. I'll try to refrain from spoilers in the post but I'll be pretty transparent in comments if anyone has any questions so be aware.

TLDR: I'd rate it an 8 or 8.5 out of 10. If you want to buy it, even if just to ensure that it does well so we get more Votann content, then I encourage you to do so. But I bought it for the story and am happy with that purchase. (In fact I bought it twice; I read the ebook while waiting for my LE to arrive).

So "Dwarf" is like 85% of my identity, so I'm probably right in the crosshairs of the "target demographic" for this book. I imagine most of you reading this are as well. So I admit that I might be a little biased, but that doesn't make me wrong.

Story:
I've only read a couple of other 40k books, so I can't do a broad comparison, but I can say that this felt a little less grimdark than, say, Eisenhorn. That didn't bother me in the least, but I know some folks really want that nihilistic, oppressive atmosphere.
I won't say that the story was groundbreaking or incredibly shocking, but formulas work for a reason and I enjoyed the ride, even when I had a pretty good idea what was coming.

Characters:
The characters all seem pretty stereotypically dwarfy, which frankly delights me. There is also plenty of *variety* in the characters. The ones we get to know well enough to see a personality, all have pretty distinct personalities, with their own motivations and priorities, and this becomes evident when they interact with each other. Some characters did seem a *bit* one-note but I think that was a factory of 1) the length of the book (it's on the shorter side for me, at around 330 pages, so less room to flesh some things out) and 2) sometimes there's a *reason* that a character is one-note. For example, if someone were to be very recently traumatized, that *might* be all the think about for a while and influence everything they think and do.

Lore: I didn't really see anything that struck me as "this is a new unit" or "this is a new subfaction" or anything like that. A couple of Kindreds were mentioned by name, and in addition to the book's focus on the Trans-Hyperian Alliance, the Urani-Surtr Regulates were also mentioned in passing. However, I think it did do a good job fleshing out what we knew from the codex and such. Some things may have been a bit name-droppy, just to get the unit mentioned, but at the same time, I'm a fan of things being mentioned naturally without having to explain their presence all the time, because I can reason out why it might be there. I *do* wish that some things, like a lander vehicle or a frigate, had been given more specificity since they're models we don't know yet, but I also understand that that was probably outside of Gav's control. I don't know where he was in the writing process at that time, when that happened, or where any future models might have been in development when he was writing it, so he probably didn't have the freedom to call something a "Leadfoot-class atmospheric transport" or anything.

If you like Dwarves (and I know you do) then I imagine you'll enjoy this, and if he keeps writing books like this, I'll keep reading them.
Anyway, I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments!