Iron Devil

By: C L Werner

Narrated by: Joe Absolom, Gareth Armstrong, Michael Fenner, Luke Thompson

Length: 1 hr and 1 min

Publisher's Summary

The last survivors of their company, the battered remnants of the Cadian 267th trek across the deadly toxic deserts of Sanzu in search of salvation. Taking shelter in a damaged Adeptus Mechanicus facility, they think they have found a place to await reinforcements - but something lurks in the darkness, something large and dangerous and determined to kill every last Imperial Guardsman. The Morkanaut awaits....

©2013 Games Workshop Limited (P)2014 Games Workshop Limited

Narration Takes Away from the Audio Drama

If you are looking for a quick synopsis of the plot, the story is like the movie “Aliens”, but with a platoon of soldiers fighting a single alien in a giant robot.

What I liked:
An Imperial Guard unit is in a tight spot. The Adeptus Mechanicus makes an appearance with a oddball Techpriest. The titular Iron Devil is well described and has a multitude of tricks that throw the Imperial Guard for a loop. The fighting with the Iron Devil is excellently done.

What I disliked:
The additional narration is unnecessary and takes me out of the story. There are two types of audio dramas that Black Library does; ones that have a lot of narration in between dialog, and those that overly explain surroundings. While this is a good story the dialog could have been removed in places and I wouldn’t have cared; such as when the Captain says he is staring at the horizon stoically.

Storywise there are a couple of problems. For one the Techpriest character is a pretty stock standard character; possibly insane and probably couldn’t have survived on his own. The Guard characters are so numerous that you don’t get a sense of how many people there are in the story. After each encounter they’ll mention who died, but these are faceless redshirts who didn’t add much to the story. Or if they were important characters it was hard to tell. If the number of characters was smaller and more focused I think a lot more could have been done with character development and differentiating who is who.

The thing that took me out of the story the most was one of the Guardsmen coined the name Morkanaut, which is very lucky for him because that’s what it is. In the 40k game the Morkanaut name is just what the Imperium and Orks call that type of Ork Robot. But it’s a minor quibble for most people.

Who I would recommend this to:
People who are looking for an audio drama with good action scenes and have some change lying around. If you are looking for a better audiobook about Orks I’d suggest Blood of Iax. If you are looking for a better audiobook about Imperial Guard I’d recommend any of the Gaunt’s Ghost series. If you are looking for a good starting point for 40k I’d recommend Dark Imperium. If you are looking for an Audio Drama check out either the Prophets of Waaagh for Orks or Corsair the Face of the Void for a human story.

Well done! I'll be listening to this one again.

An excellent short audio drama and introduction to the 40K universe created by Games Workshop.