Friday, February 24, 2012

Book Review: Space Hulk

Every once in a while I troll the Black Library site looking for ebooks they have published that may have not got as much press as some of the flashier titles. The other week I found Space Hulk by Gav Thorpe.

This is an ebook version of the novella (not sure why it isn't called a short story) that came with the Space Hulk board game from GW. I have played a few of the mission for Space Hulk so I know some of the background information, and it is nice to see that the novella was written with the board game in mind. 

All of the characters from the board game are in the story. In fact, it was like Mr. Thorpe dramatized each of the missions that were in the board game. And to top it off, it was very well done.

One of the things I found a bit odd was some of the speech from the Blood Angels terminators, I really didn't think the Blood Angels were as "holy" as the speech made it sound. I would have thought maybe that the Dark Angels, or Black Templars talked that way, but not the Blood Angels. Please note, this is not a criticism, just something I didn't realize before reading the story.
Now while I did like how the story mirrored the missions from the board game, there were a few times where it felt a bit too much, it felt as if maybe there was a word count constraint and Mr. Thorpe had to rush through a few of the missions with minimal dialog in order to get the book done, and I think that was a shame.

I think this was a very well done, and quick read. I give Space Hulk four (thousand) dead genestealers out of five (thousand).

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