Articles tagged with: Books

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 :)

Publication date: 2013-12-07

Tags: Books Warhammer 40000

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.

Publication date: 2013-11-17

Tags: Books Warhammer 40000

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.

Publication date: 2013-10-12

Tags: Books Warhammer 40000

Note: I misunderstood this was a full fourth book, but it is instead a short story, part of the Victories of the Space Marines novel.

This short tale on the surface appears to be telling about Alaric's squad of Grey Knights' assault of an imperial ship captured by a chaos fiend, but really what it talks about is how the process of becoming a grey knight happens. From how the storm bolter bullets become sacred, to how their armour gets the magic wards, or how a simple human becomes an inquisitorial interrogator.

All of them share one common denominator: huge sacrifices.

Recommended read, I enjoyed it a lot.

Publication date: 2013-09-14

Tags: Books Warhammer 40000

Starting a new trilogy of books about the Dark Angels Space Marine chapter, Ravenwing tells the story of an astartes who just joined the Ravenwing company and is becoming initiated in the inner circles and secrets of the chapter.

The famous Sammael, company master, is present through the book, and the story, which I don't want to spoil, beings with the investigation of a distress signal in one of the planets that the Dark Angels use to recruit future marines. Things of course will go wrong, and secrets will be sometimes told sometimes kept hidden between battle brothers.

Having my SM marine composed of Dark Angels was a clear target for reading this summer. While the book pacing is sometimes a bit slow and you're left with the desire of more, how the chapter's secretive inner circles, rites and how the Ravenwing behaves is nicely depicted and will provide with "food" for those of us that like to know more about the sons of the Lion.

The way the author has made the Ravenwing bikes more present that you would initially imagine in a miriad of situations and scenarios is quite clever, not abused nor underused. Also how other normal chapters would feel of the Dark Angels sometimes strange actions in the battlefield (done to try to hunt the Fallen) gets interestingly depicted.

Although the book is chronologically set after another book I'll review soon, The Purging of Kadillus, can be read on its own.

Publication date: 2013-08-02

Tags: Books Warhammer 40000