Category Archives: Reviews

QUICK REVIEW: Do Eagles Still Circle the Mountain? – Graham McNeill

The second story from the Honour of the Space Marines anthology to get a standalone e-short release, Graham McNeill’s Do Eagles Still Circle the Mountain? picks up the story of Uriel Ventris between the end of The Chapter’s Due and the as yet unreleased The Swords of Calth. Engaged against the orks on Sycorax, when circumstances change and the Ultramarines’ mission changes from assault to survival, Ventris and his warriors of the Fourth look for refuge away from the sucking mud flats. A Mechanicus facility offers shelter, but it also provides a troubling mystery for the captain to consider.

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Barricade – Jon Wallace

Barricade by Jon Wallace, the author’s debut novel, is the first in a trilogy set in a post-apocalypse Britain. It’s a pretty standard dystopian setup – humans build artificial life, stuff goes wrong, war ensues and ruins everything for everyone involved – except, unusually, it’s seen through the eyes of one of the artificial beings, or Ficials. A construction worker by ‘optimisation’, Kenstibec is now a taxi driver, and is hired to take a journalist (another Ficial called Starvie) from Edinburgh to London. To do so he has to find a way out of the Edinburgh barricade, past the besieging army of Reals (normal humans to you and me) and through a country prowled by tribes of half-feral humans out for Ficial blood.
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QUICK REVIEW: The Burden of Angels – Nick Kyme

Another story previously only available in an anthology (the limited edition Honour of the Space Marines), Nick Kyme’s The Burden of Angels follows on from the events of his Tome of Fire trilogy, focusing on Tu’Shan, Chapter Master of the Salamanders. Meeting with his opposite number in the Blood Angels to renew oaths of brotherhood, Tu’Shan seeks guidance from Chapter Master Dante, who he holds as a figure of virtue and nobility. When circumstances pit the two chapters against each other, he finds his perception of the virtuous Dante challenged, and his own humanity tested.
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Shadow of Ullanor – Rob Sanders (The Beast Arises Book Eleven)

IMPORTANT: This is book eleven in a series – there will be spoilers unless you’ve read I Am Slaughter, Predator, Prey, The Emperor Expects, The Last Wall, Throneworld, Echoes of the Long War, The Hunt for Vulkan, The Beast Must Die, Watchers in Death or The Last Son of Dorn.

Shadow of Ullanor is the eleventh, and penultimate, book in The Beast Arises series, and Rob Sanders’ second contribution after the excellent Predator, Prey. After the disastrous end to The Last Son of Dorn, the Imperium stands on the edge of the abyss. Gathering together on Inwit for a solemn Festival of Blades, the Imperial Fists successor chapters form a plan which will honour their First Founding chapter and see one last, all-in attempt to end the greenskin menace once and for all. Meanwhile First Captain Zerberyn begins to see the implications of his alliance with the Iron Warriors.
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Children of Sicarus – Anthony Reynolds

A Horus Heresy audio drama from Anthony Reynolds, Children of Sicarus follows on from the end of the graphic novel Macragge’s Honour to show a little of what happened when Kor Phaeron led his surviving followers to the daemon world of Sicarus. Surrounded by enemies and with ever-dwindling numbers, the Word Bearers find strange allies who promise to aid them against the malicious attentions of one of Sicarus’ daemonic warlords, the ‘Kairic Adept’ Larazzar. Along the way Kor Phaeron encounters a reincarnating priest, an ancient and worryingly precise prophecy, and a tangible link to his distant primarch Lorgar.
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The Hanging Tree – Ben Aaronovitch

Ben Aaronovitch’s latest novel in the Peter Grant/Rivers of London series – The Hanging Tree – brings us back to London after Peter’s foray into the countryside in Foxglove Summer. The focus is on Mayfair this time as Peter investigates a drug-related death where one of the suspects is the daughter of Lady Tyburn, physical manifestation of one of London’s rivers and not one of Peter’s biggest fans. As the fateful events are gradually revealed and the implications uncovered, new players in the magical scene are introduced, some familiar faces reappear, and a bigger mystery might just be solved.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Fissure – Nik Vincent

Another anthology tale given the e-short treatment, Nik Vincent’s The Fissure was previously only available in the Sabbat Crusade anthology. While set in the Dan Abnett-created/curated Sabbat Worlds this is an Iron Snakes story as opposed to the usual Gaunt’s Ghosts fare, and sees a squad of three Marines sent to Formal Prime when something evil is unearthed in the foundations of a new hive. Told in an unusual structure interspersing action scenes with Ithacan funeral rites, the story gradually unfolds as the full horror of what lurks beneath the hive is revealed and the Iron Snakes’ heroism is aptly displayed.
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The Dumas Club – Arturo Perez-Reverte

First published in English in 1996, translated from the Spanish by Sonia Soto, The Dumas Club is Arturo Perez-Reverte’s third novel. Though narrated by Boris Balkan, Madrilenian editor, writer and Alexandre Dumas obsessive, its protagonist is one Lucas Corso, a ‘mercenary of the book world’ who approaches Balkan to verify the authenticity of a supposed Dumas manuscript. Finding himself subsequently dispatched by a different client to seek out a rare book on demonology he’s soon caught up in a bizarre trail of events bearing striking similarities to the story of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, much to Corso’s scorn.

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QUICK REVIEW: In Service Eternal – Matt Smith

A new short story from a new Black Library author, Matt Smith’s In Service Eternal sees Wing Commander Arden Graves and the pilots of the 41st Antropia Aerial Division in action in the murky skies of the gas giant Antropia. Veterans pulled back from the front lines, the 41st act as both test pilots and air cover for Antropia’s Adeptus Mechanicus cohorts. Responding to reports of missing mining servitors in the depths of the planet’s rocky core, Graves leads his Valkyries in a reconnaissance flight which rapidly escalates into a much deadlier mission.
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QUICK REVIEW: Ork Hunter – Dan Abnett

An old short story first published in the Black Library anthology Words of Blood, Dan Abnett’s Ork Hunter follows Corporal Ondy Scalber of the Jopall Indentured as he and his fellow guardsmen blunder through the Armageddon swamps under the ‘guidance’ of the wild Sergeant Keyser and his Ork Hunters. As feral as the orks they hunt, indifferent to the fates of the ‘skinbait’ Jopall, Keyser and his men are ruthless killers compared to whom the Jopall are careless children. To survive, Scalber will have to adapt to his environment, the enemy he hunts, and the company he keeps.

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