Review: A Thousand Sons

Page 1: Blah blah blah...
Page 472: The Wolves Attack.
Page 556: The End.

I think Graham McNeill has the same problem that Dan Abnett has developed. They're both really friggin wordy. I know that this book and and Prospero Burns are supposed to go together, and I'm hoping that PB will deal a bit more with the actual combat, but after 470+ pages, I was hoping that there would be a bit more combat in the book.

Again, just like Abnett, there were a lot of sub plots that were just there...

Blah. 3 out of 5.

Review: Rynn's World

So I finished Rynn's World last night. Wow, what a book. Steve Parker did a really good job with this book. From reading a lot of the fluff from the 40k book and other sources, I knew that the Crimson Fists were gunna get jacked up in this book, but Parker did an excellent job of fleshing it out.

I have really been impressed lately with the action "scenes" in a lot of BL books (40k and Fantasy), and this book is just as good. The battles were pretty epic, even when it was just a skirmish. The only thing I was disappointed with was the fact that the space battle was glossed over, but this was a pretty beefy book, so a chapter or two of space battle missing isn't too bad.


My major pet peeve of having too many plots and characters going on at one time was thankfully absent in this book. There were quite a few characters, but they mostly revolved around different parts of two major plots. For me this was good because I got a bit of the "oh my god this is good, I can't wait to get back to it in the next chapter," but I didn't get the, "OK, now I have to remember what this character was doing 200 pages, and 15 sub-plots ago."


Another thing that was thankfully missing was the "uber-evil imperial guy" that is just there to make the lives of the major characters more of a PITA. There was one dude in the story that I thought was going to shape up into one of those characters, but it didn't turn out that way. Thank you Mr. Parker!

With prior knowledge of that fact that the Crimson Fists were going to get mauled in this book, it made me hesitant to cheer for characters, but I knew that many of them were gunna be blowed up, and this was the case. I actually think this was a good thing in the book because every time a new and interesting character was introduce, I was like, "Oh no! I hope he doesn't die!" Another thing I liked was that Mr. Parker did in fact kill off some of those likeable characters you were just getting to know. It made it feel real. It made it feel as if the Crimson Fists were well and truly boned.

A couple of the things I didn't like about the book were the distain that many of the Space Marines felt towards the humans that they were fighting for. There are some circumstances that do come up in the book that explain it, but it was the differences between that different Astartes that really made me stop and blink before continuing.

The last thing that sorta stuck in my craw was the fact that we saw Space Marines in this book had a stat line that was roughly, in my opinion, BS 7 WS 7 S8 T8 W10 I6 A8 Ld 11 Sv 1+. Regular tactical marines were ambushed by Orks and killed every ork without taking a casualty, there were fights were you would think SOMEONE is gunna bite it, but no one does. Now I understand why this is written this way. It's a Space Marines novel, so we want them to be heroic. We want them to stand against the Green Tide and never give up, but there were a couple of occasions where it was a bit unbelievable, even for Space Marines.

Overall this was an excellent book. I would encourage anyone to read it. I give it 4 out of 5 stars!

Damn You Black Library!

So I've been reading a lot of Black Library books. Recently I've started in on Fantasy. The first one I picked up was a Dorf book (of course) called Honourkeeper by Nick Kyme. I then went into the Gotrek and Felix First and Second Omnibuses (Omnibusi?). There were some really good books in there. I especially liked Daemonslayer and Beastslayer, and I loved the use of the Skaven in the books.





Well after I finished the second omnibus, I didn't think the third was out yet, so I bought some other books. I picked up the 40k book Inquisition War which seems very interesting and it also happens to be one of the first Black Library publications, I believe. I also picked up Matthias Thulman: Witch Hunter which is a three book omnibus as well as The Blackhearts yet another omnibus. I heard on one of the podcasts about the Times of Legends series, which looks to be WHFB version of the Horus Heresy, so I picked up and read Heldenhammer with is the story of the rise of Sigmar and the fledgling Empire. Good book. After I finished reading that I went back and read the first short stories and the first book in the Witch Hunter book. I then saw the Third Gotrek and Felix book so I had to pick that one up.

Then Tamara comes home with Rynn's World which seems to be the first in a new series of books for 40k which go over some of the significant battles that the Space Marines have fought. And F me if it doesn't start out good. So not-so-long story, long. I've got an ass-ton (perhaps even a metric ass-ton) of really good books waiting to be read.

Anywho, I'm off to read some more Rynn's World.

Review: Titanicus

So Dan Abnett's Titanicus now that it has come out in soft back.

So believe it or not, this book deals with a Titan war. A forge world in the Sabbott Worlds area (The same region of the Imperium that Gaunt's Ghosts takes place) has been attack by a chaos Titan legion. The Titians of Legio Invictus are rerouted against orders to defend the forge world.

I am an admitted Abnett fan boy (I think he is the best Black Library author bar none!), but I was not very happy with this book. I think that Abnett was reaching to far when he wrote this book. There are literally twelve plot lines going on in the book. And there are a few of those plot lines that have absolutely nothing to do with the overall story line.

There are so many characters, and so many jumps within each chapter it is hard to remember, was this the tank commander guy, or the commander of the Warlord titan? I am used to authors having multiple plot lines going on and just as you get into one, it jumps to the next one, but this book takes this idea to the extreme. I found it difficult to follow.

Review: Cadian Blood

One thing I tend to forget when considering the Imerial Guard is that when we think of the countless billions that die everyday in the wars of the Imerium; regiments tossed into the meat grinder to take a nameless hill, the barely trained conscript given a lasgun from the fellow in front of him that just took a bolt round to the face, these are the "normal" Guardsmen of the Imerium, and for some reason, I always lumped the Cadians in there with these poor schlocks.

For some reason I had assumed that the Cadians were the lowest common denominator. I mean it isn't like they were Catachans, those guys grew up on a jungle death world! The trap a fell into is that although Cadia isn't technically a death world, the Cadians treat it as if it is.

It says in the fluff that Cadians learn to strip a lasgun before they learn to walk. They are inducted into the guard at age 14. The thing I forget about the Cadians is that they are all badasses! These guys are like the Green Berets, Navy SEALs and the SAS all rolled into one.