"Priests of Mars"

Priests of Mars (Graham McNeill)

I'm gonna get right to the point on this one: Do not buy this book. There's no ending. This isn't just a Empire Strikes Back case where you have a climax and a shocking revelation, but the fallout has to wait for the next installment, or a Mass Effect 2 style finale where an immediate threat is dealt with, but the main villain is still on the horizon. No - this is a Halo 2 style disaster where the story just ends. It's particularly bad in this case as the entire book is an expedition leading up to arriving somewhere full of amazing secrets and, at the end, our heroes get there, and before you see what's actually there, boom, the book's over.
It's a shame, too, because the book up until the non-ending is quite good; This is vintage McNeill, and even if he does commit the sin of introducing too many groups of characters, it's very interesting. In fact, the non-ending probably wouldn't be such a big deal if the rest of the book wasn't so good. As it is, unless and until a sequel is released, I'd steer clear of this ripoff.

Grade: D