"Glass House 51"

Glass House 51 (John Hampel)

I don't really know what to make of this book; it kind of reads like a boring fever dream, if such a thing is even possible. I'll freely admit I didn't make it very far, giving up after the author introduced 15 characters in 10 pages over the span of a confusing, painful exposition dump about a company called AlphaBanc that's getting ready to become the world's most powerful E-bank, but this serial killer nerd called the Gnome and I'm sorry, I seem to have slam-dunked this book into the donation pile and picked up something else to read. Might be worth seeking out if you want to read something bonkers, but not for me, I'm afraid.

Grade: D-

"The Grey Knights Omnibus"

A collection of three novels about (checks title) the Grey Knights, W40's super elite anti-demon hunters, and as close as the setting comes to good guys. Contained within are three novels:

Grey Knights - This is a good start; the book kicks off with a battle where an isolated group of Grey Knights mounts a almost hopeless assault on a evil, naughty demon who's sealed for a thousand years, with the story picking up as some naughty, evil Chaos chumps attempt to summon him back into real space. The 13th Black Crusade is going on in the backround (as it is for the entire omnibus, actually), meaning that our heroes are working on as close to a shoestring budget as 8 foot tall psychic genetically modified guys in powered armor can be. Since our heroes work as the Inquisition  anti-demon branch and inquisitors need to be super suspicious, there's also a health dose of paranoia, although I'm not sure I exactly followed one character's redemption late in the book. Solid, slightly above average stuff.

Dark Adeptus - This is my favorite novel in the omnibus. It kicks off with an entire planet screaming out of the Warp, and our heroes go to investigate, saddled with suspicious allies who they don't entirely trust, and vice versa. This aspect really makes the book stand out, with our heroes fighting not just against the entire possessed world, but keeping an eye on their companions, who they suspect are there to steal some ancient, highly valuable technology. It does take a little while to get going, but once the characters make it into the more interesting parts of the planet (basically a corrupted super-server), this is the best material in the whole collection.

Hammer of Daemons - Unfortunately the omnibus goes out with a real slog; Our hero is captured in the first ten pages and spends the rest of the book trying to escape a demon planet dedicated to Khorne, the least interesting Chaos god, whose gimmick is that he's real angry and loves blood. While it's interesting seeing our hero taken out of his Grey Knight comfort zone, a lot of the book is portent-filled dreams and symbolic demon possession attempts, and this gets old real quick. I appreciate the author trying something new after the previous two novels, but it didn't quite work in this case.

All in all, this falls squarely into the large pile of good, not great, W40k fiction out there; two good and one okay novels for the price of a single paperback is hard to pass up.

"The Klingon Art of War"

The Klingon Art of War (Keith R.A. DeCandido)

A look into the culture and backstory of the Klingons from Star Trek, this book is presented in-universe as an ancient collections of precepts for how to live an honorable life, annotated with commentary by a modern Klingon.
And it's pretty good! I always appreciate when a group like the Klingons that can too frequently be boiled down to "angry" and "hits stuff" gets fleshed out, and they're in capable hands here; I guess it helps the book's readability that the Klingons are a culture that values conflict as a way to better themselves, so it's rare to go more than a few pages without something interesting happening. You don't need to be much of a Trek fan to enjoy this book, but if you are, you'll be rewarded with a few "I remember that!" moments from the TV shows.

Grade: B

"Star Trek: Destiny"

Star Trek: Destiny (David Mack)
Review by N. Web

As I said in my review of The Good that Men Do, one of my biggest
problems with the Star Trek literary universe is that its status as
canon is questionable at best.  Perhaps this is either good or bad,
because having a bad, ridiculous story as part of official canon can
lead to serious problems.  But, at the same time it can also lead to
authors not taking much of a risk for fear of disrupting established TV
and movie canon.  Which, as "These are the Voyages..." shows, sometimes
probably deserves to be disrupted.  Star Trek Destiny is a huge risk, as
far as I'm concerned.  But one that ultimately succeeds.

Star Trek Destiny also tackles one of the biggest problems in the
established canon, that being the Borg.  Much has been made over the
years of the "nerf"-ing of the Borg in Star Trek.  It seems as though
the Borg were always meant to have been seen as indestructible, and
indeed in "The Best of Both Worlds", they were only defeated through a
fluke.  Over the years in canon, the Borg seemed to lose their
unbeatable quality and in Star Trek Voyager pretty much became relegated
to Monster of the Week status.  Even the crew of the NX-01 Enterprise
had a turn at the tee.  So, how does an author manage to make the Borg
seem threatening again?  This radical of a solution doesn't seem like it
could possibly work, but in the end I was ultimately left more satisfied
than I have been with any Borg story since at least "Endgame" (the
against-all-odds inexplicably good series finale to Voyager), and maybe
even since "The Best of Both Worlds."   Massive spoilers to follow,
perhaps you don't want to read before finishing the book.

Verdict:  Highly recommended.




*** spoiler space ***


For David Mack, it seems the solution to the problem of the Borg was to
ultimately get rid of them.  But, it does make sense.  In order to
prevent the perpetual nerfing of the Borg or the perpetual power creep
that the Federation would have to go through in order to constantly
defeat them; perhaps the best solution really is to just eliminate them
entirely to prevent not only over-use of the Borg, but further
degradation of the "canon."  David Mack takes a gamble, and ultimately
wins, as far as I'm concerned.  The send-off they get is equal parts
relieving and moving.

Mack manages to tie together all four post TOS Star Trek series and a
large amount of established literary universe into three novels that not
only give the Borg an origin story, but an end story that manages to be
quite thought-provoking and moving.  Of course, the main stars are the
TNG cast, with almost everyone other than Ezri Dax relegated to small
parts and cameos, and the Enterprise crew is entirely off camera even
during the parts that take place during the 22nd century.  Captain
Hernandez ultimately becomes quite interesting, and ended up once again
making me wish that Enterprise had continued past Season 4.

I found myself less interested in the characters that were created in
the literary universe, but as the story went on I grew more familiar
with them.  The story is very evocative, and I found Mack manages to use
the prose to generate genuine dread, fear, creepiness and ultimately
relief throughout the tale.  It's to his credit that when I was done I
immediately began looking into more Star Trek literary universe ebooks
on Amazon.  David Mack's new series seems to be a three parter about
Geordi attempting to rebuild Data, and I'm already thinking of
purchasing it.


Stray observations:

This seems to be sticking with the "Bashir and Dax broke up post DS9"
book canon.  Also very weird that Bashir, O'Brien, and Nog are not
appearing in this film at all.  At least Garak shows up.

Speaking of, it would have been nice to see more of the Federation's
allies involved other than the brief cameos Garak and Martok and a lot
of generic ambassadors have.

Geordi doesn't have a lot to do, though a short romance is shoehorned in
for him, which I feel like he deserves at this point.

I like the idea of Worf as Picard's first officer, but isn't he supposed
to be the Ambassador to the Klingon Empire?  Worf also gets a short
romance shoehorned in.

I had one small gripe in that Picard seems to have dropped back into his
jerk mode he was in for most of Star Trek First Contact.  Which, I
thought the point of the movie is he gives up on the White Whale.  Maybe
I missed some kind of a relapse he had in the literary universe, but I
couldn't get over his inability to function for 2.9 books because of the
Borg.

"The Good that Men Do"

Star Trek Enterprise: The Good that Men Do (Andy Mangels & Michael A Martin)

(Guest post by N. Web)

As I'll probably explain in my upcoming review of Star Trek: Destiny, one of

my main problems with Star Trek literature is its inherent questionable canon

status, to the point where the series can tend to look like elevated

fanfiction. And where I felt that Star Trek: Destiny was a great (statuesque)

example of proving that the literary Star Trek universe is worth looking into,

I was sadly kind of disappointed with this story, even though I had good

expectations for it. Granted, those expectations were along the lines of

"Well, they couldn't have done a worse job than 'These Are the Voyages...'"

(the series finale of Star Trek: Enterprise) did, but that's not a high bar to

clear if we're being real here.

A brief summary of background: Star Trek: Enterprise was the last Star Trek series on television, and it's four-year run was the only since the original series to end in cancellation. The series is well-known rather derisively amongst fans of the series as kind of a bad one, and largely one that went unwatched by much of the fandom. I personally felt the same way for much of the series' original run on UPN (or was it the CW by that point? Does anyone care?) However, by seasons 3 and 4 of the series, the tone shifted from one of "silly situation of the week" drama along the lines of Voyager to one more of "long-form interconnected story" that Deep Space Nine rather perfected during its run. By the time Enterprise hit Season 4, it had a new showrunner, had ditched the "Temporal Cold War" storyline that never made any sense to begin with (the previous showrunners have stated that the sinister Future Guy was supposed to have been Captain Archer's future self, if that makes any damn sense); and it finally felt like the series was running on all cylinders, leading into what surely would have been an awesome multi-season conflict with the Romulans preceding the founding of the United Federation of Planets.

Except the show was confirmed to not be renewed just before the season ended, giving them enough time to hastily put together a finale which has proven to be the last hour of Star Trek on television in what is going on ten years now. They brought back Rick Berman and Brannon Braga for the finale, writing a ridiculous framing device wherein Commander Riker, during his The Next Generation days (I'll save a comment about how much he should not have aged since then), is visiting the holodeck to witness Enterprise's last mission before the founding of the United Federation of Planets (which itself is a time-jump to 5 years after the previous episode of Enterprise.) The disservice this does to the cast and story of Enterprise notwithstanding, this episode is also notable because in a ridiculous contrivance, Enterprise's chief engineer and one of the three primary characters on the show, Charles "Trip" Tucker is killed protecting series recurring character Andorian Commander Shran's daughter from pirate kidnappers. It makes no sense and seems to only serve to further dilute fans' final memories of the franchise with ridiculous forced drama, reportedly the character was killed off "to get people talking." Suffice to say, the episode is not well-remembered by fans.

Telling statements from Memory Alpha:

"This is the only series finale in the Star Trek franchise where the actual

ensemble crew of the series do not appear, but rather, their holographic

copies."

"The only exterior shot of the NX-01 Enterprise in this episode appears in the

closing montage."

"Rick Berman described this episode as a "valentine to the fans"."

"At a 2009 Star Trek convention, Jonathan Frakes simply said this episode

"stinks.""

"In 2013, eight years after the airing of this episode, Brannon Braga apologized to the entire cast of Enterprise for it and said he thought Rick Berman and himself made a "narcissistic move" in trying to make the episode a "valentine" to Star Trek. He also called it "a crappy episode.""

So, without Star Trek on TV, it's up to fans to fix it. The Good that Men Do serves largely as a fix-fic. Hilariously enough, the holodeck framing device which did a disservice to the cast of Enterprise is ultimately an easy way to ret-con Trip's death, because the program Riker was using was a lie, based on a false account of history! Weirdly, this revelation is presented to us by the framing device of old Jake Sisko and old Nog, discovering these recently unclassified files about Trip Tucker's "death." In reality, Trip faked his death so he could go undercover in the Romulan Star Empire and help the proto-Federation's efforts against Romulus.

What seems strange is that what is to me a delightful appropriation of a bad

episode to righteously upend a wrong done to the fan community ends up being

kind of unsatisfying. I read reviews of this book on Amazon before purchasing

it and all were largely positive, but one negative review stood out to me in

that it was criticizing the book because people were constantly crying. I

wasn't as upset for Archer wanting to hug T'Pol and Trip constantly as this

reviewer was, but man, I have to say, Trip, Archer, and T'Pol spend quite a

bit of time throughout this book misty-eyed. T'Pol, a damned Vulcan,

literally breaks down in tears on two separate occasions. The Denobulan

doctor Phlox, in on the conspiracy, almost cries thinking about not-dead Trip

Tucker. I know there's a lot of emotion and drama involved in faking one's

death, but c'mon.

What I liked:

During his fake death, Trip remarks at how ridiculous and unbelievable the

circumstances surrounding it are. Take that, canon!

Who's a good boy? It's Porthos! He's a good boy!

Things that bothered me, in order of annoyance:

At one point Trip is paired with another undercover human operative, who espouses the really deep observation that the universe is just so vast and amazing, that it makes you wonder if God did it. No, not just any God, the Christian one, apparently. Trip is written as conceding the very deep point that it really makes you think, don't it.

While undercover as a Romulan, Trip recognizes that another, potentially hostile Romulan is actually the same person as a Vulcan captain he met months before. Nothing comes of this. We never find out if he was a Vulcan operative undercover in the Romulan Empire or vice-versa. It just hangs out there.

Characterization. Yikes. T'Pol is all over the place, and Shran is stuck in default ANGRY until the final chapters of the book when he realizes what an idiot he's been. This mistake costs him nothing other than some internal guilt, and then he is subsequently rewarded. The most complex character is a Romulan nobody cares about.

Why doesn't Trip tell T'Pol about his fake death plans immediately? He eventually does anyway, I feel like this is just more unnecessary drama insertion, but what do I know?

Although this isn't much different than the television show, I would have hoped that Sato, Reed, and Mayweather would have gotten more time focused on them. Mayweather in particular was quite invisible. Again, just like the TV show.

Again, not to overly criticize Star Trek literature as "elevated fanfiction", but I was quite often reminded of fanfiction that loves to pepper in foreign words that the author knows just to prove their cred. Right, senpai? I can sort of understand doing this for Klingon words everybody knows (I don't expect "Q'apla" to be translated), but every tenth word out of a Romulan character was italicized, and even the Andorians were occasionally complaining about how others didn't have any ZHAVEY, which I assumed was "honor." This is even more ridiculous when Romulans were constantly counting down things, which it was obvious they were numbers, and yet during at least the third countdown in the Romulan language (nerd voice: That's RIHANNSU!) Trip is translating in his head to English for the viewers at home.

Along these same lines, the questionable fanon of the Andorians having four genders and declining population growth is brought up. Further, this book takes the bold step of declaring the Aenar extinct in the 2400s. I'm less annoyed with the fanon gender theory (even though this was not represented in the considerable time spent on the Andorians in the Enterprise TV series) than I am about suddenly declaring the Aenar extinct. (especially when they exist in Star Trek Online.)

"Snow Crash"

Snow Crash (Neal Stephenson)

I really hated this book; it has the William Kennedy style of writing where it sounds like an annoying person at a party you can't escape yammering nonsensically at you, with Stephenson's twist being that it sounds like you've been cornered by a 10 year old boy who can't shut up. Here's a quote from the first ten pages, talking about the hero's car, which goes, like, a billion miles an hour:

The Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a pesta.

I made it through maybe 15 pages of this crap before it was hurled into the donation pile with great malice. I don't know that I have much to add beyond that horrible quote. I guess I would say - do not buy this book; do not check out this book; do not recommend this book; do not read this book.

Grade: F-

"The Bounty Hunter Code"

The Bounty Hunter Code: From the Files of Boba Fett (Daniel Wallace, Ryder Windham & Jason Fry)

I feel silly saying that a book with a sticker price of $99.99 is only for fans of the series, but here we are; this book comes in a really cool case (you put in a fake ID card and the hard lid opens while lights go off), but the books inside are a little bit slim. The main attraction is the Bounty Hunter Code, and it's pretty entertaining, but unless you're interested in a social history of the Mandalorian clans, I don't know that there's really much here to entice you. There's also a 48 page autobiography by Cradossk, a guy so obscure I had to look him up on Wookiepedia. (Turns out he's Bossk's dad!!)
Overall, this is a fun little set of books with a cool case; but even at Amazon's half price of $50 - let alone the MSRP of $99 - this is pretty hard to recommend unless you're a Star Wars nut.

Grade: B

"On Such a Full Sea"

On Such a Full Sea: A Novel (Chang-rae Lee)

I really wanted to like this book, and for the first 70 or so pages, I did; The setting of a ambiguously radiated future where Western civilization has declined seemingly more of malaise than anything else and been largely replaced by Chinese settlers is really interesting, even if our heroine doesn't have much of a personality.
The problem is that eventually I would like the scene to be set and the story to begin, and this never really happened. The author is unable (or, I suspect, just unwilling) to actually tell the story; for each page of our heroine's journey out in the wilds, you'll get a page about the city our heroine left, and while some of these are interesting, I eventually became deeply annoyed at cutting away from the main plot to meander through four pages about the weird uncle who used to live upstairs. By the time I was a third of the way through the book and realized that the plot was never going to be able to pick up any momentum this way, I bailed.
I'd recommend checking out of the library and going about 100 pages; if the author's elliptical style and refusal to get to the point aren't driving you crazy, you're set.

Grade: C-

"Architect of Fate"

Architect of Fate (Edited by Christian Dunn)

Remember when I said after the last W40K book that I was "almost out"? Well, after this one, I'm out, I promise. This is another book in the SPACE MARINES BATTLES series, and it's a short story collection. I'm just gonna run them down real fast:

Accursed Eternity: This is pretty good; it details a group of Space Marines having a Battle wherein they board a ghost ship that appears and disappears, attempting to destroy the demon within (the giant blue bird pictured on the front cover). I liked the approach the author took to the demon ship, where it starts out as a pristine, if empty, starship and only morphs into a rusted metallic blood-oozing hellscape because that's what our heroes start imagining. Very entertaining, if slightly confusing.

Sanctus: I'm not too crazy about this one, which is about a bunch of relic-hunting space marines battling Chaos space marines and cultists and a weird prophet dude who is trying to set up a stable time loop by turning the Chaos space marines into statues using a dust storm made up of loyalist prayers and meanwhile up on a ship there's an Inquisitor guy and a demon gets lose after a navigator baron's son blows up a bomb in his boot while they're trying to torture him and then the Grey Knights have to fight the demon so that the inquisitor has enough time to start bombing the planet. (deep breath) I think the author tried to pack a little too much in this one.

Endeavor of Will: I liked this one. A Iron Warriors bad guy attacks two star forts guarding the Eye of Terror, and who shows up but the main charecter from Maldorax? I didn't realize that the giant hammer he uses called the "Fist of Dorn" has the part you hit someone with actually shaped like a fist, which I guess makes sense since he's a member of the Imperial Fists, but all I could think of was a gag weapon you'd use in a jrpg.

Fateweaver: This one was better than Sanctus, but I wasn't really a big fan of it. I will give it credit for wrapping up all the loose plot threads (no easy task!) and nailing the ending, a distressingly rare feat in W40k.

I guess that was "real fast" after all. Well, let me sum up quickly: It's a little confusing, but there's a lot of good action in here, hung on a frame that all comes together in a pleasing way at the end. It's stuck firmly in good-not-great territory, but it's easily worth the $9.

"The Unremembered Empire"

The Unremembered Empire (Dan Abnett)

I was really worried about this book - it's currently sitting on two stars on Amazon, and reviewers were harsh on its inclusion of (ugh) THE PERPETUALS, which I have complained about before at length. In addition to that, it's a book about the Ultramarines and Rowboat Girlyman - not a good prognosis.
Maybe it was just because I was expecting a stinker, but I have to say this book wasn't that bad. In fact, if you cut out the Perpetual crap - and there's not really a whole ton of it - there's a really decent book in here somewhere. It follows up on both The Mark of Calth and (ugh) Vulkan Lives, even going so far to slightly fix some of Vulkan Lives' problems. (Don't get too excited; this basically raises it from a F- to an F.) All the non-Perpetual parts work because here the Ultramarines and Guilliman are fallible; it's amazing how readable a book about them can be when everyone isn't standing around talking about how cool, powerful, and attractive the designated Gary Stu is.
All that being said, if you haven't read at least Mark of Calth, you'll be pretty lost. If you're already reading this series, I'd say pick this one up and just skim past all the Perpetual stuff; otherwise, it's not really worth reading the previous books just to read this one.

Grade: C+

"The X-President"

The X-President (Philip Baruth)

Is there anything more frustrating than a book with a good idea that has no idea what to do with it? That's the case with this novel, based around the idea that Bill Clinton - through no fault of his own - sets in motion a chain of events that leads the world to unite against America, and his biographer is recruited to go back in time and steer him away from this path.
At least, that's what the back cover and reviews say. I got to page 80 (out of 369), and not only has our heroine not yet traveled back in time, she doesn't even know time travel is possible, having farted around for 80 pages getting nothing done. I could forgive how long this takes to get going if the writing was excellent, or if interesting things were happening, but neither of these is the case. The most egregious example, to me, is a clutch of pages wasted showing the heroine returning to her house that she's sublet and breaking up a party that her tenant's teenage daughter is throwing. What do we learn from this? That our heroine doesn't like having keg parties thrown in her house? Why should I care? Why are you showing me this? When is something exciting going to happen?
Urgh. Baruth either needs a more forceful editor, or to have more respect for his readers. This leaden brick is going right in the donation pile.

Grade: D-

"The Founding"

The Founding (Dan Abnett)

This is a omnibus containing three Gaunt's Ghosts novels, Gaunt himself being a Commissar in the 40k universe. Collected here are First and Only, Ghostmaker, and Necropolis. Since it took me so long to read, I don't feel bad reviewing each novel one by one. Suck on it, libs!

First and Only: According to the introduction, at one point this was the best-selling book published by Black Library. I get the sense this book came out quite early in the Black Library's run. It's entertaining enough, but it's marred by some weird issues - The Guard is all male, Chaos Space Marines are killed with single shots from a Guardsman's laser rifle (!!), and there's a deformed psyker commissar (!!!!) who "atomizes" an entire city when he dies (?!)
There's also just weird careless details: Gaunt's bolt pistol becomes a laspistol becomes a lasgun becomes a boltgun. On top of that, some of the writing is, put charitably, clumsy (a character's reaction when he realizes he's just been decapitated: "Only when his headless body fell onto the deck next to him he realized that... his head... cut... bastard... no.")
So with all that, is this book worth reading? Well, it's not bad, but the above mentioned issues make it rather difficult to recommend. I'd probably only suggest this book if you either love military-style novels (which this is at heart), or are looking for a friendly introduction to the 40k universe. Otherwise, it's perfectly serviceable, but I can't really recommend going too far out of your way to track it down.

Grade: B-

Ghostmaker: This is a short story collection that meanders around giving different Ghosts some time in the spotlight. I applaud the idea - up until now they've basically been cardboard cut-outs whose personality is no more fleshed out than "medic", "scout", "heavy weapons guy". In fact, the Ghosts themselves have less personality than the Team Fortress 2 characters who are literally named Medic, Scout, and Heavy Weapons Guy. So giving them some personality is a very welcome idea, but the actual execution unfortunately sinks the entire enterprise. What do we learn from a spotlight on Mkoll, the silently-moving scout? Turns out he's a scout, and that he can move silently. The author seems either unwilling or unable to flesh out characters  If they're good, they're tough, blue-collar, gritty heroes, and if they're bad, they're either deformed chaos monsters or blue-blooded elitists sipping coffee while our heroic, blue-collar, gritty heroes get the job done. Maybe I've been spoiled by other w40k novels. I'm bumping the grade up because I appreciate Abnett's efforts to imbue the Ghosts with a personality, but it's a cringing failure, and I only got like an eighth of the way through it.

Grade: D+

Necropolis: I was hoping that these novels would improve with time as Abnett became more familiar and comfortable with the setting he's working in, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. Although the writing isn't as clumsy in this book, it's still full of distracting, careless errors. On page 669, a character is Trygg in the first paragraph and Trugg in the second. A character is hit by a lasrifle shot and bleeds out in a matter of minutes, even though the author has pointed out numerous times that lasrifle wounds are self-cauterized because of the weapon's heat. At the book's climax, Gaunt himself is shot by a bolt in the heart, but lives because he's wearing a steel rose on his shirt. This is dumb and cheesy enough as it is, but is nonsensical because a "bolt" is basically a rocket-propelled explosive. This is like surviving a hit from a RPG because you have a steel plate in your chest pocket; Gaunt would either be a mess on the floor or have had his steel rose punched straight through his body, but then I guess there couldn't be any sequels. Oh, and people also use "gak" as a swear word, and all I could think of was Nickelodeon Gak.
In short, this is not a good book. Some of the military action is exciting, but combined with Abnett's carelessness, lame characters  and annoying habit of cutting away from the actual important parts of the book to follow needless sideplots that don't go anywhere, this is a slog far more often than it is an engaging story.

Grade: C-

So in sum, I can't really recommend this at all. Even if you're looking to dip your toe in 40k, I'd suggest the much better Caiphas Cain omnibuses, which not only actually get the details right, but are actually, you know, enjoyable to read.

Grade: D-

"Void Stalker"

Void Stalker (Aaron Dembski-Bowden)

I often have trouble reviewing the third part in a trilogy  I feel like I've already said everything I have to say in the reviews for books one and two. So what can I add here? This book is just like the other two novels, which is to say masterfully written, packed with expertly crafted characters and tense, explosive action scenes. In fact, this entire novel is tense; It opens with our hero foreseeing his own death, and I am still amazed at how the author manages to portray monstrous murderers who are running around literally eating babies as sympathetic enough that you're rooting for them by the end. At this point ADB needs to write a bad novel so I have something new to say about his books besides "they are great" and "you should read them".

Grade: A

"Blood Reaver"

Blood Reaver (Aaron Dembski-Bowden)

Part 2 of a trilogy kicked off by Soul Hunter. I'm going to pay this book an unusual compliment in that I enjoyed its aimlessness. Our heroes (I'm sure that's not the right word) are a hunted group of desperate murderers, and after being on the run for thousands of years, they're running low on beans and bullets (well, bolter rounds and kids to gene-hance into Space Marines, but you know what I mean). They put into port and spot a ship from their legion that's been stolen and re-painted, and the rest of the book is them scheming to get it back. There's no big evil villian - there are people who stand in opposition to the group of characters who get the most ink, but really, there's no good guys here. This feels nice and refreshing, and surprisingly realistic for a setting where nine foot tall supermen eunuchs in power armor hit giant bugs and space elves with chainsaw swords. As with the previous book, what started as a joke of a Space Marine Legion (the assassin who kills their Primarch is named after Martin Sheen, for chrissakes) is given a thorough rehabilitation and turned into a very nuanced set of characters (again, surprising for a setting where "He shoots guys" is a perfectly acceptable personality type). I'm trying not to just heap praise on this author and his books, but the sheer quality isn't making this task any easier.

Grade: A

"Soul Hunter"

Soul Hunter (Aaron Dembski-Bowden)

There's a bunch of Space Marine legions that don't get much attention in W40K; The Ultramarines show up everywhere, but the likes of the Salamanders, Iron Warriors, and White Scars never get any ink. This book is about the Night Lords, one of these neglected groups, and it may be understandable why they've been ignored up until now - the concept behind them is Batman, if he went around murdering criminals to keep everybody in line. This is an interesting concept, but in the world of 40k where you can be an intolerant, murderous, paranoid bunch of religious fanatics and you're still as close as the setting comes to being the good guys, "killing criminals" isn't really that evil.
Luckily, they've been placed into the hands of an author who's already worked miracles with one chapter. The result isn't quite the masterpiece of The First Heretic, but it's quite good. The Night Lords are admirably fleshed out so that their underlying concept kind of makes sense. I only have two issues with this, and in fact these are my two issues with the book itself. One is that the Night Lord's leader, Konrad Curze, let himself be killed by an Imperial assassin; the book kind of lays some groundwork for why he let himself be killed, but never comes out and says his reason (or if it did, I didn't understand it). To be fair, there's an earlier novel about the Night Lords that probably covered this ground. The second issue is that the titular Soul Hunter of the novel's title has a long flashback towards the end of the book that explains his name and fleshes him out as a character, but coming where it does also drains a bit of the tension out of the climax.
Both of these are minor issues, though. The rest of the book is great, and the author is able to pull off one of the most difficult literary tricks out there - mixing humor and drama and pulling it off well. He's also able to repeat an effective technique from The First Heretic where you come to root for our anti-heroes even as they go around murdering innocent people and generally acting like, well, Chaos Space Marines.
So, to sum all that up: Book good; you should read.

Grade: A

The Left Hand of Darkness
by Ursula K. Le Guin

Envoy Genly has come to the planet Winter to passively convince its inhabitants to join the interplantary union, the Ecumen.  The inhabitants of Winter are genderless and that's where the book gets very interesting.  The people of Winter have the physical traits and characteristics of both men and women, making them only identifiable as human rather than as a man or woman.  When a native Winterite enters their kemmer cycle, they can become either male or female.  A person who is father to two children may be mother to three others.

The genderless and sexual urge-less (aside from kemmer) society is very interesting.  Wars do not happen, but there are land disputes.  There is not the traditional labor divide one would find on Earth where we still have jobs thought of as more manly or feminine occupations (think construction workers and hairdressers).  On Winter, no such presupposition exists.  Any Winterite can do any task or job as well as any other, the only determining factor is individual ability.

I highly recommend this book for sci-fi fans.  I put it right up there with And Having Writ and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

"Hammer and Anvil"

Hammer and Anvil (James Swallow)

I promise this is the last 40k book for a while. Actually, I don't really have a lot to say about this book besides recommending it; I don't think I've read a bad James Swallow book yet, and I liked this one even more than the previous book in this series (Faith & Fire). You don't need to have read the previous book, but it does feature the same characters, this time headed to a dusty rock called Sanctuary 101 to re-consecrate a shrine that was overrun by Necrons, basically evil space robots. The Word Bearers omnibus used the Necrons as well, but I like them a little better here - Swallow is great at making villains who are both plausibly justified in what they're trying to do while also being hateable scumbags, no small feat when some of them are also ancient evil space robots. More than that I can't really say without ruining Swallow's excellent pacing and character work. Recommended.

Grade: B

"The Word Bearers Omnibus"

The Word Bearers Omnibus (Anthony Reynolds)

This is three novels collected into one omnibus. I'm going to give each novel its own mini-bite-size book review - if you have an issue with this, take it up with Black Library; There's three full size novels in this omnibus, so you get three reviews here. More like small meal sized book review.blogspot.com!

Dark Apostle: I liked this book well enough, but I have two nits to pick, one big and one small. The small one is that the Word Bearers are about as evil as you get, and that's saying something in Warhammer 40k; I feel that the author goes a little overboard in trying to drive home that these guys are scum, to the point where they don't just light a candle, they light the BLOOD WICK on a BLOOD CANDLE, because, btw, they are evil. The larger issue is that these guys are chaos Space Marines, some of the baddest MFers out there, and when they invade an Imperial world and start fucking shit up, the loyalists send in..... the Imperial Guard? This is like sending in your local middle school's football team to play Green Bay. Even the chaos space marines comment on this, with one of them wondering what the hell the Imperium is thinking here. There's a little less tension than there could be because the Word Bearers never face credible opposition. These issues aren't huge, but the second one especially keeps the book at a good-not-great level, and it's perfectly skippable except that it sets up the next novel.

Grade: B

Dark Disciple: This is where it really picks up. There's a little bit of a refresher for those just joining us, and then it's straight into the ultraviolence. Most of the book is our heroes (is that the right term?) racing to unlock the macguffin from the previous book, backdropped against the Tyranids battling an Imperial fleet trying to stop them. Oh, and there's also a spoiler race hanging out up to no good (who ever is in Warhammer, though?). I really enjoyed this book - there's not a wasted page here, and once it gets going,  I believe this may be the most violent novel I'e ever read. The amount of humans, space marines, tyranids, and race I can't name because it's a spoiler getting shot, stabbed, cut, blown up, burned, bludgeoned, and otherwise dispatched is truly impressive. I don't want to sound like a psycho and say I enjoyed it just because it's so violent, but it certainly is action-packed, and I'm not sure I can say more without sounding like a back of the book quote. (Although the back of the book quote is from somewhere called "Huntress Reviews" that yells right on its 1998 era front page that they ONLY GIVE OUT THREE TO FIVE STAR REVIEWS, so, Black Library, if you're one of the four people reading this blog, I'm sure I can come up with a better quote: Buy this omnibus or you're a dumb stupid moron!)

Grade: A

Dark Creed: Now with the activated mcguffin (spoiler alert), the Word Bearers plan is sprung. The first half of the book is setup and a big naval battle, which is nice and tense. In the second half, the Word Bearers finally (!) come up against loyalist Space Marines.  I'm kind of amazed it took three novels for this, and unfortunately when it does come it's kind of an anticlimax. In fact, the second half as a whole is a bit weak, culminating in a not so fulfilling ending (there's one thing the Word Bearers do to save the day that had me wondering why they didn't just do it sooner). This is still a pretty good book - lots of 40k novels unfortunately have less than great endings, and judged against some of the ones I've read, this one is just a mild letdown - but I can't really say more without giving the whole plot away. Having come this far, it's nice to see everything get wrapped up. Dark Creed's not quite as good as the second book in the omnibus, but thanks to the cracking first half is better than the first.

Grade: B+

The omnibus closes out with a extra short story called "Torment" that wraps up the fate of one of the series main characters. It's not really nessessary reading, but it's a nice little bonus. Overall, this omnibus is pretty easy to recommend - $10 for three pretty good full-sized novels is nothing to sneeze at.

Overall grade: A-

"Klingon Bird-of-Prey Haynes Manual"

Star Trek: Klingon Bird-of-Prey Haynes Manual (Ben Robinson & Rick Sternbach)

I don't know what exactly a Haynes manual is, but what you've got here is a slim little tome about, yes, Klingon Birds of Prey from Star Trek. Wisely, it's light on technobabble and instead is full of charts and diagrams (if you've ever wondered where the bathrooms are on these starships, here's your answer!), and the book's delving into Klingon society is a nice side-trip. To come totally clean, I did fall asleep reading this book, but that was more because I was exhausted and not because the book is boring, which would make a great jacket blurb for the next print run.

Grade: B+

"Iron Warriors Omnibus"

Iron Warriors: The Omnibus (Graham McNeill)

This omnibus collects one full-sized novel and a bunch of short stories about the chaos-aligned Iron Warriors. These are all by the same author, and all have the same main character, a guy named Honsou, and at times this feels more like the Honsou omnibus featuring the Iron Warriors. This isn't to say that the omnibus is bad, but it's not terribly thrilling either, and the second half of the book where it's all short stories can feel quite disjointed. One of the more interesting characters, a renegade Raven Guard, shows up for a few short stories, then is captured off-screen and never seen again, and Honsou's entire motivation for hating the Ultramarines is not present in this book, either taking place in other novels or not appearing in print at all. This isn't to say the book is bad, but it's entirely skippable; For the low price, you do get a lot of 40k violence, and that's just about the best thing I can say about this book.

Grade: C