Good day everyone! Zak here from Cape Town. This is a review of a novel set in the fictional universe of Warhammer 40,000.
I post a lot about the hobby side of things: the game, the models, the rules and some lore. Lore comes out in many forms. Games Workshop own a publishing company dedicated to churning out books based on the fiction of the universes of their model ranges.
There are other sources of lore, the Codex books, campaign books and internet sources published by GW.
There is always more diversity and content in the tabletop than there is in the computer games based on this universe. And there will be more in the books and novels than there are in the tabletop!
So: SPOILER WARNING
So I want to discuss what goes on in this book, fair spoiler warning has been given, so if you wanted to read this book yourself, then stop reading.
Even so. I am not here to spoil all the fun. Even this review won't go and list and tell everything there is to say.
The book follows 6 characters, one of which is really just setting you up for Book 2 of the series. This character is an admin person who goes on a quest to bring information to the right people.
The other 5 characters are: A historian, Captain Messinius of the White Consuls, a Primaris Marine, a Guardsman Lieutenant caught up in an Inquisator's retinue and a ship's Captain who commands a battle group.
The main content of the book deals with the Primarch Roboute Guilliman who had been revived from a near-death state by a combination of xenos technology and arcane technology.
The former came from Yvraine, the leader of the Ynarri, who are Aeldari. The Eldar have always had the ability to foresee the fates of things, and decided that in order to assist themselves that they needed to assist Bellisarius Cawl, the Fabricator-General of Mars and restore the Primarch.
Now the Primarch has a lot to deal with - Chiefly the Great Rift.
Abbadon the Despoiler, the Warmaster of Chaos has managed in tearing a hole in the fabric of space so large that it has bisected the entire galaxy! This has cut off one half of the Galaxy from the Astronomicon and because of that Guilliman can only assume that this half is lost.
On the Terran side of the Rift is Imperial Sanctus. On the other side it is Imperial Nihilus. For now, Guilliman wants to focus on establishing order in Imperial Sanctus that he knows is salvagable.
The Inquisitor mentioned earlier figures out that not only is there this massive Rift, but there are agents of Chaos ripping it out further and spreading the edges of the Rift.
So all the characters mentioned above are involved in one way or another in a mission to find out how this is done and to stop it from happening!
As I said, not going to give super precise details. It was a great book.
One of the key happenings that occur in this book was the initial reveal by Cawl and Guilliman that the Primaris project had been made in secret and was now revealed.
Torchbearer fleets of Primaris were despatched to start reinforcing Chapters that have lost the most manpower right after the Rift opened.
Remember that the moment the Rift opened the amount of Chaos attacks and Daemonic incursion spiked and all manner of Xeno races also took the opportunity to attack the Imperium where they could not support one another.
So many Space Marine Chapters were reduced in numbers.
Meanwhile Guilliman launched the greatest military operations the galaxy has seen since the Great Crusades - The Indomitus Crusade.
Ten massive fleets were one by one sent out from the Sol system, all their parts not even in one place initially, the would collect parts of a massive armada each!
Each of these ten Fleets do not usually deploy in one space battle at a time, they are hundreds of ships strong. Each fleet is broken up into Battle Groups, who are broken up into Task Forces who are subdivided into flotillas called Strike Groups.
The book gives an example of Fleet Tertius' Battle Group Hephaestus... this is to say, one Battle group of the Third out of Ten fleets.
That Battle Group is made up of the following ships:
5 Imperial Navy Battleships
12 Imperial Navy Cruisers
9 Squardons of Imperial Navy Frigates
2 Adeptus Astartes Strike Cruisers
26 Imperial Navy troop transportation macro-landers
1 Adeptus Mechanicus War Barge
1 Adeptus Mechanicus Macro-Lander bearing 6 Drop Keeps
3 Adepta Sororitas Invasion Cathedra
1 Inquisatorial Warship of unknown class
Military assets for the ground include:
9 Regiments of Visillian Praetors (armoured/artillery)
14 Regiments of Gattakar Rampagers (10 Infantry and 4 Airborne)
3 Lances of House Hawkshroud Knights
1 Full Preceptory of the Order of the Ebon Chalice
4 additional Commanderies of the Ebon Chalice
10 Maniples of Metalican skitarii and attached combat support maniples
1 Strike Force of Black Dragons Adeptus Astartes
1 Strike Force of Exorcists Adeptus Astartes
Assorted Strength of Unnumbered Sons Adeptus Astartes
Notes show how some of these ships and military assets are Part of Task Force II and Task Force IV indicating that the rest belong to other Task Forces.
This is a massive amount of troops and armies!
I look forward to reading the next book: The Gate of Bones.
Thank you for reading!
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