Necromunda Junktion 2005

Junktion was the best written Necromunda novel I've read. Had a main protagonist I could dig, really great visualisation of the 3D aspect of the hive - with some nice character depth too - even for the ones that weren't around long!

The story is based around the trials of a "lamp lighter" Kass.

He's a tech-savvy hiver, trying to get by. His day job is keeping the lights on - no mean feat in the rapid-changing, chaotic, capricious environment of the underhive.

It manages to touch on all the main features of the hive, cramming in a surprisingly good depth of plot for such a short novella. That does mean that there's a lot going on though, especially if read over a long period of time.

I'm going to give this 5 star, not because it's a literacy masterpiece, but because it gives such a unique view, take and description of life in the hive. It has things like busting through dome walls, the cavities and empty/wasted space within the hive, shows scavies, Escher, goliaths and cawdor/redemption and also shows how they interact with non-house folk and each other.

This is great for showing how gangs actually 'run' or 'own' territory, by muscling in on places, forcing the locals to not trade with other gangs, and generally being a menace.

These outlooks and views from within the hive are generally not shown or talked about in the rest of the necromunda background so I would recommend this as reading for anyone wanting to get a new perspective of how parts of the hive work

I've only read three Necromunda novels, but this was my least favorite. It was actually very confusingly written; I had to go back and check what was going on numerous times. That being said, no Necromunda book could ever be "bad" - it was fun to learn more about the world. And I liked the idea of a lowly lamplighter (kinda like a Hobbit) taking on all of these powerful guys and girls. Plus there was some very cool socio-economic allegory about injustice within the Hive and how the people at the top don't even notice how they affect or are affected by those below them.

I like the descriptive nature of the setting which was why I read it (on a recommendation) and used the extremely detailed scene setting as the basis for my own Junction City campaign. I found it hard to empathise with the main protagonist Sinden Kass though. The books blurb stated "... there are times when you can’t just put your head down and mind your own business, not if you want to live with yourself." yet i felt this is exactly what the main character did.

Overall a good read, and excellent if you want to get a physical feel of the under hive.

I really wanted to like this more, since it's Necromunda, but I really couldn't figure out the motivations of the main character. All his coworkers and friends are dying around him and yet he does nothing. In the end it was implied that he was the type of guy who kept his down and did his job, but that really should have been established in the beginning. One thing that it did that was interesting was name EVERYTHING. Every alley, every town, every neighborhood, every landmark had a name. Perhaps if less attention were paid to naming things, no matter how interesting, it would have been a better story. Still it was fun to read about Cawdor, Goliath, Escher, & Orlock.