Shadow of Ullanor: Warhammer 40,000

The Beast Arises, Book 11

By: Rob Sanders

Narrated by: Gareth Armstrong

Length: 5 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

The Imperium's attempts to defeat the ork menace seem doomed to failure; it is only a matter of time before the greenskins triumph and mankind is wiped from the face of the galaxy. Yet there is some cause for hope - the psychic weakness of the orks has been discovered, and a few Sisters of Silence yet survive.

Supported by the full military might and technology of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Space Marines head to the orks' home world one final time. This time there will be no retreat, no surrender. They must succeed...or die in the attempt.

©2016 Games Workshop Limited (P)2016 Games Workshop Limited

endless war

this one is yet another endless war book. little plot and lots of action. luckily, this is the first one without an insulting game changing twist at the end

great book, not so great narration

I really wish games workshop would be released with a different narrator. The story is very good. I like these shorter books from a while ago, they're more of a long serialized novel than they are individual books. It's great to see some of the things that exist in the contemporary era and where they got their origins.

misplaced book

the story seemed very much out of order with the rest of the series. seemed like the author either ignored previous books or just didn't care how the story had gone so far. kind of a shame considering how the story had been building over the series

11th verse, same as the first (but slightly worse)

There's two ways to address this book, the first being a short cut into the series- it spends a brief time recapping the story and wrapping up a lot of the main story arc. This it does well enough and is going to be a pretty typical Space Marine versus Ork story. It's no Helsreach, but not much out there is.

The second way to approach this book is as the 11th book in the series and it fails for two reasons. The first is the lack of Coorland and the second is the revisionist history out it's recapping the previous stories.

Space Marines are typically one-dimensional and boring charactersk it's the imperfect humans that are the interesting ones. Not so with Coorland, we see him fail, learn and grow, and try again. We see doubts in him, frustrations, and how her ultimately becomes worthy of his position. To have him replaced by Thane who has been completely one-dimensional up till now and continues to be only "the toughest dude bro of the dude bros" is a step back in terms of narrative.

But that narrative gets rewritten white a bit at the end. Over the series we see the Imperium throwing all the forces or can muster time and again at the beast with only marginal success. We see them try to adapt and those efforts also being frustrated. This book waters it down to the idea that no one had ever fully committed the forces of the Imperium. They them go on to recommit the same assault as had been done twice before expecting new results. For the reader of the whole series it pays off as repetitive and done better previously.

So make this the first book of the series, not the 11th and you will like it just fine otherwise be prepared to be bored and somewhat annoyed that the authors didn't share notes well enough.