First Quarter Book Review

I have continued to spend time this quarter reading Warhammer 40,000 material, and I have gotten through a large brace of it. I love this stuff.

I read the second and third volumes in the 7th Edition core book set, Dark Millennium and The Rules. The first is an exploration of the lore of the setting, where the second is exactly what it sounds like. The game is in 8th Edition at the moment, but a lot of the rules remain the same, and the differences are interesting.

I have also subscribed to the all-things-Games-Workshop magazine White Dwarf, and I am reading my second issue of that. They are now running new short stories in each issue, the first of which was called The Herald of Doom, and showed the Black Legion beginning to arrive at the planet of Vigilus, which was already under siege by both Orks and Genestealer Cults.

There was a Black Library Celebration week in February, during which they released the Horus Heresy stories Lantern's Light, Bringer of Sorrow, and Ghost of Nuceria. These were centered around Mortarion, Arkhan Land, and Angron, respectively.

I read the novel Vulkan: Lord of Drakes in a couple of days one week, and The Buried Dagger the next, which was the story of the fall of the Death Guard to Nurgle, and the beginnings of the Grey Knights chapter of Space Marines, out of the latter part of the Horus Heresy.

There had also been a Black Library exclusive anthology of Primarchs short stories called Scions of the Emperor which I bought and read and then quickly sold on again on eBay, since it cost me approximately four times what it should have. It was well worth it, though. The stories contained therein:

Canticle - Ferrus Manus in his earliest days on Medusa
The Verdict of the Scythe - Mortarion tries an alternate path in the Great Crusade
A Game of Opposites - The Khan foils Iron Warriors late in the Heresy
Better Angels - Sanguinius mentors one legion warrior artisan
The Conqueror's Truth - Konrad Curze shows his legion's truth to a remembrancer
The Sinew of War - Guilliman becomes the defacto leader of Macragge
The Chamber at the End of Memory - Dorn stumbles upon forbidden lore of the lost legions
First Legion - Late in the Great Crusade, The Alpha Legion approach The Lion with an offer to ensure he is made Warmaster

Foiled by Black Library's past collector's editions of books and their exclusive stories, I found alternate means to read a few of them.:

The Wonderworker, set between the first two books of the Black Legion series, about Khayon's recruitment of a fellow Thousand Sons sorcerer to Abaddon's ranks,

A Flash of Silver Among the Corroded Ghosts, set after the second book in the Black Legion series, about Khayon's first encounter with the Grey Knights,

and In the Grim Darkness, a companion piece to Guy Haley's Dark Imperium, about Decimus Felix, and the interesting treatment he received from Belisarius Cawl after being selected to become one of the first Primaris Space Marines.

At the moment I am reading Chains of Golgotha, a novella from the anthology Legends of the Dark Millennium: Astra Militarum, about the ongoing rivalry of Commissar Yarrick and Gazghull Mag Uruk Thraka, the canny Ork warboss, as well as February's White Dwarf.

Year-End Reads 2018

To close out the year I am working through some of the 40K source books I have been collecting over the last few months. I read through the introductory magazine Getting Started with Warhammer 40,000, which came with a free Primaris Intercessor miniature. It was nice and informative of basics of the universe, game, and hobby, which is nice for a completist like myself who even after all this exposure could use some shoring up of the basics. I have then moved into the 7th edition set of basic books for the game, the first of which is entitled A Galaxy of War, and serves mostly as a showcase for beautifully painted armies meant to represent the hobby, with some bits of lore behind their creation. The second volume in this set is the one I am reading now, Dark Millennium, which is a much deeper dive into the fundamentals of the lore of the 40K setting, for people wanting to add a bit of role playing to their hobby, or just to fill out background lore of the universe for those reading the novels. I am of course a real lorehound in any fictional universe I really buy into, and the grim, dark future is one I find very compelling indeed.

I also read the final Horus Heresy short story from the Black Library advent calendar, one called A Rose Watered with Blood, about the shipsmistress of the World Eaters legion flagship, The Conqueror, Lotara Sarrin. She is a real gem of a character in the Heresy setting, or even 40K at large.

Since finishing up all the loose Heresy shorts, I have started into the newest novel, book 53, Titandeath. I'm only a few chapters in though, having been busy with other stuff lately.