Articles tagged with: Books

Closing the second trilogy of books, The Chapter's Due presents a quite weak and simple story of chaos space marines and daemons attacking the homeworlds of the Ultramarines.

The interesting points are a lot of battles and an abundance of known heroes: Uriel, Tiberius, Sicarius, even Maernus Calgar.

But even with all that, the book has a dumb plot, unexciting events, unrealistic battles * and in general feels more like a book just written to close the trilogy instead of because of having a nice story to tell.

* Sometimes a lot of space marines die against normal enemies, while other times a bunch of them kill all that gets in their path.

Publication date: 2013-07-16

Tags: Books Warhammer 40000

Note: This is a short story, published initially in the Hammer & Bolter magazine and now part of The Primarchs Black Library book.

The Dark Angels are my space marine army since I collect Warhammer 40,000, so having more background about their primarch is quite appealing.

This story depicts Lion El'Jonson, through two Horus Heresy events: A chaos attack to the primarch's warship and mediating between Iron Hands and Death Guard chapters on a conflict in a Dark Angels planet.

You get a sharper image of the attitude, character and intelligence of the primarch, and at the end, a better picture of what Lion knew about Caliban before returning to the home planet. Even what or how was his idea of helping to finish the war.

A nice lore information burst added to the Dark Angels background. Too bad it feels too short.

Publication date: 2013-06-01

Tags: Books Warhammer 40000

Another childhood dream came true today.

I learned about 40k with the second edition, when the game was already about battles (although much smaller than now) and no longer about roleplaying.

I've seen many times the original cover, I've read a lot about the first edition setting, how it was a lot more mature, the old eldar pirates only role...

Well, after searching a while on the net, I decided to give a try to eBay again, and bet for one. I was lucky, and today I received via mail my first edition Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader rulebook!

The book is used but so little it appears new.

After I finish reading the 6th edition one, I will read this and compare.

Now that the 6th edition is also out, feels ironic to get the first edition too, the one that spawned everything.

Publication date: 2012-08-13

Tags: Books Warhammer 40000

I must confess I hadn't read anything about this trilogy before talking with Agramar one day about Warhammer 40k books (he is a living encyclopedia). And buff, I should have learned way before!

Jaq Draco is an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor, who has become a member of the inner circle (those with access to secrets and hidden twists).

Grimm is a squat, grunty, always complaining, but a good companion and mechanic.

Meh'lindi is a beautiful Callidus assasin, who has been chosen for a special treatment. Instead of using pholymorphine to just mutate into other humanoid forms, terrible surgery is done inside her to introduce special muscles and bones so that she can morph into a genestealer hybrid and infiltrate their cults.

Googol is an imperial navigator who likes poetry (and women), "driver" of Jaq in the warp.

Those four widely different characters, plus later on Lex, an Imperial Fists space marine captain, will start perfoming some imperial missions like killing a genestealer patriarch, but things will get interesting when Jaq finds about a über-secret plot with an unknown secret organization, regarding humanity's Emperor, Eldar, Chaos... And that's only the beginning.

 

I won't spoil anything because the beauty of this books is reading them without summaries/intros. Just believe me that if you could only read one Warhammer 40.000 book, it should be this one.

Ian Watson had lots of problems with the books because he chose to ignore Warhammer's main target (young people) and instead write adult, serious sci-fi novels. You have topics like sex, raping (mental, but anyway), violence, sacrifices... Not for children, but neither targeted for them.

The story unfolds so great and has quite a few good twists and revelations that it sucks you into reading more and more.

The best book I've read so far.

Publication date: 2012-07-22

Tags: Books Warhammer 40000

I've been playing a lot Diablo 3 lately (up to the point that now I need to slow down before I burnout my desire to keep playing), and although I really like the Diablo series, I don't think they have too deep lore/setting.

My friend Jorge just gifted me for my birthday the recently released Book of Cain, which extends Diablo 3 lore by representing all the notes that Deckard Cain wrote and gathered during his years of research.

The truth is that you cannot make something brilliant if it isn't. The book indeed extends the lore a lot, not only linking the three videogames, but also providing the base of all the scenarios you will visit in the games, alongside all the characters, monsters, demons...

It is nicely presented, as if it were an old book, with side notes, remarks and really well done hand drawings of places, characters, sigils and monsters (the best part).

Around 2/3 of the book are about the eras before the first Diablo videogame, with all the angels and demons presented and detailed, so you definitely extend the game lore by reading the book (and then probably replaying the games).

While not too deep, if you liked the games (specially Diablo 2 and 3) you will enjoy the Eternal Conflict tales.

Publication date: 2012-06-11

Tags: Books Videogames