SHORT REVIEW :
For readers who know the 40k background and hold a special place in their heart for the classic Imperial Guard special characters, the appeal of this book can basically be summarised in three names : ‘Iron Hand’ Straken, Nork Deddog and ‘Sly’ Marbo. If those names mean anything to you, you’ll be heading out to get this book right away, and you won’t be disappointed.
LONG REVIEW :
In his first novel for Black Library, Toby Frost – author of the entertaining Space Captain Smith series, tackles the Imperial Guard, specifically the Catachan 2nd regiment. A staple of the Imperial Guard on the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop, this characterful regiment of jungle fighters has been strangely under-represented by Black Library in the past. No longer, however. Straken bursts out of the page from the get go and hits the ground running, the first alien gribbly receiving the shotgun-to-the-face treatment within three pages. You know straight away that this is going to be about Catachans going toe-to-toe with whatever the galaxy throws at them, which is exactly as it should be.