The Purging of Kadillus

Knights of Caliban: Warhammer 40,000, Book 1

By: Gav Thorpe

Narrated by: Andrew Wincott

Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

A Space Marine Battles Audiobook

Faced with an ork invasion of one of their recruiting worlds, Piscina IV, the Dark Angels initially believe the threat to be minimal, but a renewed xenos offensive takes the Chapter by surprise..

LISTEN TO IT BECAUSE

Captain Belial and the Dark Angels fight to free a key planet from the grip of the orks in this classic Warhammer 40,000 story told anew – including the infamous tale of Scout-Sergeant Namaan’s final battle.

THE STORY

Faced with an ork invasion of Piscina IV, the 3rd Company of the Dark Angels believes the threat to be minimal. As enemy numbers continue to increase, their commander, Captain Belial, insists that his Company are strong enough to resist. But Scout-Sergeant Naaman knows just how dangerous this foe can be, and when a renewed offensive takes the Dark Angels by surprise, the orks swarm towards Kadillus Harbour.

Belial, Naaman and their fellow Astartes must fight a desperate siege at Kadillus, knowing that if they do not hold out until Imperial reinforcements arrive, the planet will be lost. Little do the Dark Angels realise the technological power available to the xenos, and the true scale of the threat they face.

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

Preview before you buy

The general narration is ok, but the highly stylized manner in which the dialog between the dark angels is preformed really detracts from the experience for me. I much prefer the more pragmatic and grimdark portrayal of space marines by someone like Toby Longworth over the highly embellished and almost caricature-like portrayal.

Action packed

Not understanding the bad reviews this one was awesome constant action great story telling honestly left me wanting more

baited with gaz

a lot of nothing happens for the most part, insert generic "everybody dies as always" with the space Marines. there's a monologue from a dark angel about why they're so much better but each astartes in each story dies without learning a lesson or their squad mates learning anything. it's redundantly repetitive and repetitively redundant. there's very little gaz in the beginning and end, that's it.

listen if you're a die hard DA fan, otherwise avoid the purchase.

Not worth the credit or the time to listen to.

The narrator seems to want to put a subordinate clause at the end of almost every sentence with a pause and a change of tone. That got pretty old pretty fast. The storyline was linear and ponderous. The writer seems to have forgotten that the reader can infer what they are referring to after naming it once, rather than repeating an object’s name in several consecutive sentences. It felt like I was listening to a 13 year old’s fan fiction at times.

Sadly this is one of the worst audiobooks I’ve heard from GW (but not ‘the’ worst - that dubious accolade went to another last year that I couldn’t finish it was so awful). I would strenuously suggest you listen to something else from GW’s catalog, as there are some outstanding stories performed by truly world class narrators in their line up.

skip it, unless you're a dark angels fan

it is a very slow and pondering story, every character seems like a souless cutout of a more interesting version of themselves. The dark angels all seem to have rods up their butts they are so stiff, that can work if you have contrasting characters but none exist in this book.

Keep zoning out

The way the action is described, makes me zone out and have to keep rewinding. Other comments nailed it, would skip and go next.