Priests of Mars

Forge of Mars: Warhammer 40,000, Book 1

By: Graham McNeill

Narrated by: Joe Jameson

Book one in the Forges of Mars series.

An Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleet ventures beyond the borders of the Imperium in pursuit of arcane technology. Who knows what perils may lie outside the dominion of mankind?

Listen to it because: it's a novel like nothing else from Black Library. Graham McNeill crafts a tale that only he could tell, beginning a mind-bending saga of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Chaos and more besides.

The story: legend tells of a foolhardy expedition, led by the radical Magos Telok, that ventured out into the unknown space beyond the Halo Worlds in search of the 'Breath of the Gods' - an arcane device with the power to unmake and reshape the very stars themselves. Thousands of years later, the ambitious Lexell Kotov musters his Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleet and sets out to follow in mad old Telok's footsteps. With the might of the Imperial Guard and the Space Marines to augment his own forces, he searches for the hidden clues that will lead him to greatest power that the galaxy has ever known. But who knows what ancient perils may yet lie outside the Imperium and the dominion of mankind?

Written by Graham McNeill. Narrated by Joe Jameson.

©2021 Games Workshop Limited (P)2021 Games Workshop Limited

if you just past the reader voice for the 1st hour

the reader was a bad choice take about an hour to get over him

Good story with some minor production issues

I really wish Audible has a separate rating for the actual production of the book. The narration is fantastic, but sometimes a sentence accidentally repeats, and I checked to make sure it wasn’t just my phone glitching.

Overall the story is good. However, I do have a complaint with just how many different stories and characters there are at a given moment. I think one chapter alone ended up cycling through like 6 different POVs. It’s not really that hard to keep track of them, I just hate being drip fed some of the ones I’m more interested in.

Also really enjoy how this one expands of some more detailed Mechanicus stuff, as well as starting to scratch the horror that is Servitors.

Would recommend!

Tekboys!

My only real problem is that there are multiple repeat lines, at least 4 times. Other than that, this is grimdark 40K at its grimdarkest. While the narrator may not be to everyone's cup of tea, I still liked him. I recommend this.

How all parties are disgraced I'm some way

I overall enjoyed the book but my onlly real gripe was whether or not this story took place before or during the Era Indomitous?

Essential Mechanicus Novel

This was a surprisingly engaging book, and for an impulse buy I found that it was a breath of fresh air well worth the price. The weakest link unfortunately has to be the narrator as the story is top tier, but I found his performance for some of the voices (the Black Templars in particular) to be a little underwhelming. Some pronunciations, and repetitive line readings aside however, he did a great job with the book so I'm still giving his performance a 4/5 star rating and it should by no means turn anybody off from this story. I'm buying the second book in this series immediately after writing this review, so that should be a good indication of how I feel about this book, the story hooked me and I need to see the continuation of the adventures of the Speranza and the Archmagos in uncharted Galactic space. A great 40k novel that Mechanicus fans won't want to miss, and a good standalone series for new and old fans alike.