Book Review: Space Hulk: The Novel

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As the name implies, this book is a novelization of 2009's special edition of the Space Hulk Boardgame, depicting missions from Blood Angels space marine terminators against genestealers.

All the boardgame missions are narrated, capturing quite well the atmosphere and narrative of the old Space Hulk text excerpts present in rulebooks.

We read adventures of 5 man squads of terminators, cleansing a dangerous space hulk. And in this point is where the story breaks with old roots, because this novel says that "a hundred terminators, plus techmarines are sent to the hulk", which would mean that the full 1st company of the Blood Angels would be risked on a single space hulk at once. This feels quite unrealistic, plus in old stories (and in real games) only one or two squads are deployed at the same time.

Another thing I learned with this book is a nice trick: If you want to make a novel larger, put a letany each two character sentences. Like "purge the unclean!", of course followed by another as a reply from a fellow marine. This way you get almost twice the pages with the same real content.

Despite the abuse of letanies, the novel is an enjoyable tale, hooking correctly most of the lore, marines, weapons and monsters from the boardgame in the novel.


Book Review: Space Hulk: The Novel published @ by

Categories: Books Warhammer 40000

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