Skitarius: Warhammer 40,000

Adeptus Mechanicus, Book 1

By: Rob Sanders

Narrated by: Toby Longworth

Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's Summary

The skitarii are the soldiers of the Machine God, the tireless legions of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Holy warriors, they carry the word of the Omnissiah across the galaxy, destroying the impure machines of aliens and renegades and spearheading the Quest for Knowledge.

A discovery of ancient technology sends a skitarii legion, commanded by Alpha Primus Haldron-44 Stroika, into battle on a forge world overrun by Chaos. When a cataclysm cuts him off from his tech-priest overseers, Stroika must rally his forces and battle both corrupt machines and Chaos Space Marines if he is to achieve victory.

©2015 Games Workshop Limited (P)2015 Games Workshop Limited

Great Political Intrigue, Poor Show Piece for Adeptus Mechanicus

Right off the bat I read this book so I could familiarize myself with the Skitarii of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Instead what I got was a passable political intrigue storyline and a great focus on a Skitarii named Stroika.

The problem is every other character is bland. Stroika has a great backstory of being a normal human being with tattoos marking what augments he wanted and where. The rest of the Skitarii Princeps don’t get enough character development except for one Rust Stalker who actively looks for loopholes in his commands so he can kill more.

The narrator is as good as always(he has done a lot of Black Library’s catalogue) and does great robot voices.

The Rogue One of 40k books

Beep boop the robots are going to war. At a glance an Ad Mech book may seem unappealing but I've got to say this book was more emotional than some of the space marine books I've listened too over the years mainly because its very easy to forget that these are people, sure they've got some extra bits, but they're still people at the core and surprisingly emotional for cyborgs. All in all, great read.

-Soft Spoilers-

This book really reminds me of Rogue One in a good way as it follows a similar-ish plot line of find thing, debate the use of said thing, use thing to get other thing, die, sacrifice allows allies to win the war. While that sort of spoils things and is kind of simplified I felt that I had a better connection with the main character, a skitarii commander who cares about his men and gets redeployed with a magos who doesn't care about the risk to his men's lives. Books like this are few and far between and if you've got a spare credit or are looking for something to read pick this up.

storyline not on par with the excellent narrator

As far as Warhammer 40k stories go, this just did'nt live up to my expectations. As always, Toby Longworths narration was top notch, but I found myself hardly listening as the first book drew to a close. Hopefully the second book in the series will be better.

sadly disappointing...

This book fell into the trap that I feel many 40K books fall into. The character development was lacking, primarily because the main character was an emotionless cyborg. While Sanders did a good job in making us understand that, there just wasn't enough done to make the main character relatable, and thus there was very little buy in on my part to listen to and care about what was happening to him. The story line could be summed up as "Skitarii went to a place, fought a lot, the end." It wasn't until the very last chapter or two of the book that I really was drawn in to see what was going to happen. Overall it wasn't horrible, but just didn't draw me in. I won't be listening to the next one.

Paper thin characters

Pap are thin characters and a weak storyline are only saved by an excellent reader.

It's for fans

If you like admech, you'll like what this book has to offer. It isn't a character driven narrative so much as it is a depiction of what it is like to be a skitarii, a topic that doesn't receive enough attention in the lore. Plenty to keep you interested, if a bit short.

Is GW fiction any good?

Honestly, it lacked nuance and was pretty predictable. I don’t really know what people see in GW fiction. The grim darkness really limits an author’s ability to write a compelling story.

for the machine god

this book is an interesting view point of your standard Skitarii soldier doing his best for his God and this gives a proper feel for the adeptus mechanicus

I love the Skitarii

This book provides a nice view into the perspective a skitarii Primus who is in charge of all the Skitarii forces under his tech priest master, 10/10 would recommend GLORY TO THE OMNISSIAH

A truly epic story!

An absolutely epic story! If you like Ad Mech, do yourself a favor and give this a listen.

Sensational

A great listen very well read a great plot twist another fantastic 40k book

brilliant audio book.

So glad that the black library has come here. look forward to future bombs coming out.

Pretty dull and aimless. Good narration

not much story here to speak off. few characters and a thin plot. good narration as ever from Toby Longworth

Tale of a cog

insight into how the admech make war. Giving a insight into the likely fate of these skitarti who serve as the cult of Mars military.

better than the first book in the series!

this is a strong release from black libary, when they do it well. they do it well! well worth the credits. this book I found better than the 1st book in the series (sequels are usually worse).

A book that should have been an animation?

Like many of these books it haha almost no storyline, it’s just action shot into action shot with long winded descriptions of what kind of gear everyone is using and what kind of augmentation everyone has…

A must listen!

Brilliant story narrated by the awesome Toby Longworth. Can't wait to listen to the next part.

great if you like this stuff!

enjoyed this book,hard to follow the names and technical sounding bits but great story and read well.
maybe a bit of an eager first audio book but now ive had a go im definately going to be "reading" more titles on here besides my paper back reads.

slow burn

sometimes the authors in 40k audiobooks go on a tangent and describe things ad nauseum, my poor peanut brain can't make a mental image that precise. this happens at times, you need to listen intently. the story really picks up the end.

Still can't make them interesting

I picked Skitarius up as it was recommended to me by a friend who claimed it was better than your average outing of the Mechanicus. Having found most things related to the Mechanicus to be quite tedious, the thought that something stood out above those got me a little bit excited.

In a sense, Skitarius does, indeed, stand above other works featuring the cog boys ... but not for depth of story or interesting characters (that seems to be something quite out of the question as far as Mars goes). It stands out because it keeps the reader interested with battle scenes. An unfortunate amount of them.

I almost feel like they've tried to boost the appeal by going balls to the walls as far as action goes and, much like your average adept dreams of cutting away their flesh and replacing it with machine parts, Black Library have cut away all thought of a deep, meaningful story and replaced it with lots of gun-fights. I genuinely had high hopes as it started with a good premise, but I lost interest to the extent I forgot what was going on at times. There's only so many battles you can sit through before that happens. Especially when they feel like they're there simply as filler rather than anything of true substance. Any time I tried to hold onto the meat of the story, conversations about in-depth probability calculations etc ... had me tuning out and treating this as background noise for good portions.

I think, other than those in the Horus Heresy series, my hunt for an enjoyable Mechanicum novel may have to be shut down. The characters always seems to be devoid of anything that makes them interesting and possessive of utterly annoying, throwaway names that, especially when listening to an audio renders things pretty meaningless.

My overall opinion is that yes, it's pretty good to an extent, but never really threatened to be great. I understand that, with a short novel/novella such as this, you could hardly ask for epic story lines. But a meaningful one that makes the battles feel as though they aren't just Games Workshop battle reports can't be too much to ask?

Toby Longworth's narration suits the Mechanicum very well. So, if I were Black Library I'd certainly be grabbing him for future projects featuring them.