Baneblade

Warhammer 40,000

By: Guy Haley

Narrated by: Toby Longworth

A Warhammer 40,000 Audiobook

The crew of the Baneblade Mars Triumphant wage bitter war against the orks for the fate of the Kalidar system – but old rivalries threaten to doom them all.

LISTEN TO IT BECAUSE

It's fast-paced, hard-hitting action based around one of the mightiest battle tanks in the galaxy – and Guy Haley does a fantastic job with not only the crew of the Baneblade, but their ork enemies too, making this a fascinating look at battle from both sides.

THE STORY

By the blessing of the Omnissiah was the Mars Triumphant born – from the forges of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the mighty Baneblade super-heavy battle tank comes to bring death and destruction to the foes of the Imperium. As part of the Paragonian 7th Company, Honoured Lieutenant Marken Cortein Lo Bannick commands the venerable war machine in a bitter war against the orks in the Kalidar system. As the campaign grinds on it begins to take its toll upon his crew, and old clan prejudices from the regiment's home world arise once more. In a war which cannot be won by force of arms alone, such division may prove to be their undoing.

©2024 Games Workshop Limited (P)2024 Games Workshop Limited

Mars’ Triumph Can Rest Now

…and I hope to read Bane Blade: Cortein’s Honor one day. This reminded me a bit of the amazing 2001 and 2003 40K novels Execution Honor and Shadow Point, which focus on Imperium navy battles during the Gothic Wars. That might sound a bit dull, but they are richer and more compelling with far better world building and action than 99% of SM focused novels. This reminded me a bit of that because we get to dig somewhat deeper into a specific discipline of the Imperial Guard through the POV of some fairly interesting characters. No endless 10 SM vs 20,000 ork bolter fodder, overblown knightly speeches and dialogue about fearing nothing, “brother” Historca Romanius Nameus.

Not alot of Baneblade in a book called Baneblade.

First off it's narrated by Toby Longworth so thats an automatic 5 star. Seriously this guy should be the official narrator for any 40K book.

The story was ok, a bit more rambling that it should have been, I don't know why we had to dragon the MCs backstop for so long.

Manily I was disappointed in the lack of Baneblade action. You are basically in the Tank for 2 battles and half the time the MC kept getting out of the tank for some reason or another.

If you looking for a good Tank book in the 40K universe read Steel Tread. Don't listen as the narrator was bad, but it's a good read.

Overall decent

Overall this isn't a bad novel. What I loved about it was finally showing intelligent orks. And personally I thought there was enough baneblade in it to warrant the title. My two problems with this story was the main character's "dishonor" that felt pretty shallow and wasn't a good motivation to drive him. The other was it can get pretty heavy in exposition at times making some dialogue feel drawn out or unnatural.
It's a good listen if you have nothing else to listen to at the moment.

Very enjoyable

The narrator was excellent and the over all story was good. I found the battle sequences were well written and easy to follow. There’s a second volume about another Baneblade pattern tank that I hope comes to audio book soon and narrated by the same guy.

For the Emperor!

Who would have thought big tanks would make for a good story? Another great performance by Toby Longworth. I actually really enjoyed this novel, more than I anticipated from reading reviews on here and Reddit. I thought the story was compelling with a satisfying ending.