Articles tagged with: Books

Second book in the new trilogy of the Legacy of Caliban, Master of Sanctity continues the story of the Dark Angels secret Hunt of the Fallen started with Ravenwing.

Chapter Masters Sammael, Belial and Saphoon appear again, but the main characters from the first book are now elevated one to the Deathwing and the other to the Ravenwing Black Knights.

Without spoiling the book itself, this time the story focuses and further details about captured Fallen, the famous Chaplain-interrogator Asmodai and his extreme devotion, and making thought decisions due to keeping the chapter's secrets.

I enjoyed the lore and plot, but readers should be warned of two small points:

1) This time the story doesn't closes, at a certain point "some things happen" and you're left with how they unfold for the last book. It is a good cliffhanger that leaves you eager for the end, but I wanted more :P

2) This book focuses a lot more on character dialogs, scenarios, event descriptions and the like, leaving battles almost for a secondary role. There is action, and its bloody and detailed, but I welcome the abundance of dialogs and character thoughts.

Being biased, I can't but recommend the book for Dark Angels collectors.
Now to wait for the final entry.

Posted on 2014-08-03

I had Titanicus in my wish list since a while, having had Space Marine/Epic 40,000 and owning some Space Marine, Chaos and Eldar titans I wanted to read a book about their battles.

After finishing it, my feelings are quite mixed.

The book uses the typical trick of telling multiple stories and points of view of the same event (a series of battles in a forge world between imperial and chaos titans), and while some are quite interesting and indeed provide different angles of what is a fight using titans, others seem out of place, redundant and could have been removed without any problem.

I got lost sometimes with so many names and scenarios, and some characters/stories don't add much (if something, chaos to the reader). Also, while some fights are really well depicted, detailed and thrilling, there is one special big battle that is so quickly finished and so briefly described that dissapoints a lot.

Not a bad book, but I definetly expected more. It falls halfway of what could have been.

Posted on 2014-04-12

The Purging of Kadillus is another book about the Dark Angels, this time combining stories from multiple points of view: Belial (captain of the 3rd company), Boreas (chaplain), Naaman (scout sargeant) and other secondary characters, while they fight a fierce battle with the orks at Piscina IV.

Each chapter tells part of the story from a single point of view, sometimes returning to the same character, sometimes moving on to another. Although the book is just a battle with not so many twists, this multiple angle storytelling makes it more appealing.

Dialogues and action itself are just decent, certainly not the best I've read. I actually had more interest in reading the orks chatting but sadly there are quite few occurrences.

It was an ok read, I will probably read other "Space Marine Battles" books to see if they are better than this one.

Oh, and here the lore about Dark Angels is quite small and barely to fit having DAs instead of other chapter, but at least isn't another Ultramarines story :)

Posted on 2013-12-07

The Emperor's Gift is the fourth full book dedicated to the Grey Knights, after a not too great trilogy.

We follow through the eyes and mind of a "young" GK, Hyperion, who seems to have quite some psychic powers, above the average knights, but also seems a bit hesitant and "thinks too much" instead of just following orders from his superiors.

Some fights against chaos forces will slowly take him to great and unforseen battles with not so good... "happenings".

I quite enjoyed this book, it is well written, has plots, secrets, thought moments, nice action... Also I think here the Grey Knights are properly depicted, as being few but really powerful, and yet only superhuman, not fully invulnerable.

Recommended if you want to expand your lore about the Emperor's finest.

Posted on 2013-11-17

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.

Posted on 2013-10-12