The war is over and mankind is saved. But when war ends, politics takes over, and one man realises that the High Lords who nearly doomed the entire Imperium must be culled. It is time for the Beheading to begin…

Across the length and breadth of the galaxy, humankind celebrates its salvation, and relishes the prospect of a return to peace. But the war against the orks has riven the political bedrock of the Imperium, exposing its rotten core. One man, one powerful man, decides he has the solution, and launches a campaign of destruction so terrible that thousands of years later his actions will still be viewed with horror.

It has been a tumultuous year for the galaxy. Over the last 12 months, Black Library has been unleashing the The Beast Arises series unto the world, releasing a new installment every month. With The Beheading, this era of sequential short novels has come to an end. Let's have a look at how Guy Haley handled the finale.

The Story:

"The war is over and mankind is saved. But when war ends, politics takes over, and one man realises that the High Lords who nearly doomed the entire Imperium must be culled. It is time for the Beheading to begin…

Across the length and breadth of the galaxy, humankind celebrates its salvation, and relishes the prospect of a return to peace. But the war against the orks has riven the political bedrock of the Imperium, exposing its rotten core. One man, one powerful man, decides he has the solution, and launches a campaign of destruction so terrible that thousands of years later his actions will still be viewed with horror."

The Review:

All things must come to an end, and as far as endings to novel series go, The Beheading is a great, if flawed one. The big issue I take with it doesn't even have anything to do with what it says, but with what it doesn't say. Beyond that, everything that's in here felt exceptionally satisfying to me. Haley most certainly was the right person for the job of seeing this series to a close.

With the ork threat of the Beast done and dealt with in Shadow of Ullanor, this final installment had the chance to fully focus on the terran politics, culminating in the Beheading itself. Drakan Vangorich, Grand Master of the Assassinorum, finally makes his move. Characters die in droves. Everything the series' most interesting aspects have been building up to come to a climax.

For the first time in the series, the action and orks take a backseat to intrigue, intricate schemes and tragedies caused by good intentions. For the first time in TBA, I actually felt sympathy for the High Lords of Terra, and saw them as more than lying bags of incompetence, and instead as flawed people. In hindsight, I wish there had been more of this kind of attention paid to Juskina Tull, Abdulias Anwar, Helad Gibran and the rest throughout the series. Even just the short scenes they received here, when Vangorich's grand plan is set into motion, gave a lot of character to the High Lords that went beyond petty squabbling and self-service. Well, in most cases, at least.

Most importantly, the chapters dealing with the High Lords showed the degree of ruthlessness and preparedness that Drakan Vangorich has going for himself. While he only takes the life of one High Lord in person, orchestrating so much misery in such an efficient way shows him as fully deserving of his title as Grand Master of the assassins. An assassin should always know and utilize the right tool for a task if possible, and Vangorich does so magnificently.
The role of Beast Krule, Esad Wire, felt very neat to me as well. My complaint in regards to his opposition to Vangorich's plans comes down to how invested he appeared in the last couple of books; I can fully buy the seeds of doubt Haley put into his head here, and applaud them, but it came as a bit of a surprise this late in the game. But then, the results were a hugely compelling turnout for the novel that I wouldn't want to miss out on.

Maximus Thane, victorious Chapter Master of the Imperial Fists, has some very impressive scenes as well, as should be expected. However, the meat of the book occurs in his absence from Terra, reclaiming what the orks had taken from mankind. After setting Terra supposedly in order, he departs, leaving tasks for all the High Lords, and establishing Vangorich as his Lord Protector to reign in his stead. Thane gives the High Lords a big verbal thrashing aboard the Phalanx, which, at last, gets some explanations as to its whereabouts. Those notes I felt were a bit shoehorned, late justifications for a big editorial oversight, but needed either way. The way the Phalanx is described here, however, was exciting and intimidating.
Thane's decrees also include plans for Ullanor, the fate of which fans will definitely appreciate. In many ways, Thane's actions here steer the way for the future we all are aware of.
There are even more big revelations made in regards to the Inquisition, and even the Grey Knights, and the effects of it all ripple back to the Horus Heresy itself. Plenty of connective tissue here, some of which will boggle the reader's mind. I certainly didn't see it coming, but it explains a few complaints I had about earlier books away.

The Fists Exemplar / Iron Warriors plotline involving Zerberyn and Kalkator also finally gets a big payoff, and justifies further secrecy about the Imperial Fists' fate. While I am saddened at the fate of another great character who has seen little love since The Last Son of Dorn, the whole plotline gave birth to some magnificent tragedy and fall from grace. Lots of emotion here, satisfyingly presented. The dynamism presented here really puts the poor showing in the previous book when it came to this plotline into even stronger contrast.

But now to my big complaint for the book: Timeskips kinda suck.
It was inevitably going to happen here, with pre-established lore making it clear that certain events were going on for a while before being ended. However, the way it happened here felt jarring to me. That's not something Guy Haley could have changed much, however - not with a Great Crusade occuring amidst the 100 year gap. No, I blame the editorial team and series planning for it.
Up until the timeskip, everything felt like it flowed naturally, logically and satisfyingly. After the jump, things took a bit of a dive. After some readjusting the final chapters still panned out well, but were quite abrupt. Seeing that this novel is a tad longer than the average novel in the series, it seems obvious that the author managed to squeeze out as much space as he could, but the series's direction definitely backed him in a corner here, giving too much to wrap up in one volume and in the end squandering potential for a greater scope and a more definitive end.

There wasn't even room here for a short epilogue detailing the rebuilding of the High Lords after Chapter Master Agnathio of the Ultramarines and co travel to Terra to crush the prevailing anarchy on the Throneworld. There wasn't room to let the dust settle, or to show Vangorich's transition from hypocritical mastermind to dishevelled, self-serving yet somehow tragic dictator. There wasn't room for Wienand to formally establish the Ordos, nor for the rebuilding of the Imperium after the Beast's death to take place.
I cannot imagine just how much content, how many ideas and concepts, Guy Haley had to disperse of during the writing of the novel. Not because of any failings of his own, but because this book should have been two instead. He was given an impossible task to fulfill yet still excelled at showing what he did, and getting the whole thing across as a grand finale. It has got to have been a frustrating process getting there, though...

I loved the book. It was a great finale, if short in certain areas. It did more than I expected and hoped for as it stands. It took up all the pieces and lined them up in a compelling way, while adding many easter eggs for fans of the franchise. The highlight of the assassinations were exceptionally cool, especially for their believability. The Beheading was the end the series needed, and I am thankful that it is Guy Haley's name on the cover. His great attention to detail and subtlety benefitted this one greatly.

The Beheading on Goodreads

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After two failed attempts to annihiliate the orks, and the deaths of countless heroes, the Imperium may finally have a solution. But to win the war will take unthinkable sacrifice…

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.

Writing this review has been one of my least-favorite things to do in 2016. And I had to get surgery to fix a hernia this year. If that doesn't express my frustration and disappointment with this semi-finale, I don't know what will...

The Story:

"After two failed attempts to annihiliate the orks, and the deaths of countless heroes, the Imperium may finally have a solution. But to win the war will take unthinkable sacrifice…

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."

The Review:

Shadow of Ullanor is my biggest disappointment of the The Beast Arises series. Not only because of its inconsistencies with the rest, lost opportunities and continuity problems, but also because it wrapped up the threat of the Beast of Ullanor in such brevity and without much originality at this point in the series.

Let me preface by saying that this is the first book in a long while that had me mark sections on my Kindle and add notes, just so I wouldn't forget problems and continuity issues by the time I was finished. I also noted a lot of criticisms over on Bolter & Chainsword while reading, simply to have a way to vent my frustrations and not off-load them on my girlfriend. For me, this book was a massive frustration, and beats I Am Slaughter for my least-favorite installment. In a way, it has soured the series for me with its lackluster conclusion and disregard for some of the stellar character development preceding it.
While individual scenes and setpieces were well-done and some even great, there were few saving graces for me.

First off, I'll address the elephant in the room: This is the final attack on the Beast of Ullanor, and the final book, The Beheading, is bound to deal with the political fallout instead of the ork menace. That means that, within about as many pages as the shortest books in the series, Rob Sanders had to wrap up not only the reformation of the Imperial Fists and the death of the Beast (well, all of them). He had to deal with the loss of Koorland, and lead Vangorich up to his infamous deeds.
And it didn't really work.

I had speculated before that, since Rob Sanders already featured the Life-Eater Virus in Predator, Prey, it might be coming to the Imperial Fists using that devastating weapon to wipe out the Beast of Ullanor, rather than facing it in direct combat and wasting countless lives for the third time. While the psychic vulnerability was a cool aspect and almost worked in The Last Son of Dorn, a m0re pragmatic approach like that would have felt... cleaner.
Now, to go off further on that tangent, I think that would have made the book massively better, even if the final blow had to have been struck personally.

Koorland was an idealist. He had an idealistic need to be the one to end the Beast. He had to be there for all manner of reasons. But Maximus Thane, his successor and former Fists Exemplar Chapter Master, represents the pragmatism of the Imperial Fists Legion successors. The Fists Exemplar were the first to agree with Guilliman's assessment that the Legions needed to be split, and the idealistic Dorn didn't like that for a while.
While Thane does make some pragmatic choices in Shadow of Ullanor, he still went for a highly idealistic approach to the third and final attack, basically retreading the same steps as Koorland before him yet expecting different results. In my eyes, it would have been a far more suitable conclusion to have Thane opt for the Life-Eater approach, saving lives and resisting the urge for a personal confrontation. It would have been a fitting end to Ullanor as an ecosystem and usable planet for the Imperium - effectively discarding the glories of the past and the horrors of the present. A clean cut to safeguard the future of the Imperium.

Instead what we got is a book that, as far as Ullanor and the preparations are concerned, retreads most of the same ground The Last Son of Dorn did.
The Deathwatch manage to capture two more Ork psykers off-screen (even though it was stated that the Beast would keep them safe now that he knows that the Imperium figured out how to use them as a weapon, making the strictly-synchronized capture-missions in TLSoD a necessity), making the Imperium attack Ullanor with a trio of them.
Thane explains basically the same plan of attack to Vangorich and Fabricator General Kubik that Koorland did last time, but they're somehow surprised anyway. The Sisters of Silence once again swear to help out, though their powers don't seem at all nullifying this time, more like dampening, and their overall effectiveness is massively decreased.

Thane, like Koorland, forces the High Lords of Terra to cooperate, albeit in a different manner, and throws everything the Imperium had left at Ullanor. How many times have we heard that now? Oddly enough, this time the assault is far better prepared, more numerous and better equipped than in either of the previous two attacks. Bike squadrons, Land Raiders, at least a company's worth of terminator-suited Space Marines and, oh, by the way, the Phalanx is there too. Not even a hint of where the giant star fortress has been for the past 10 books, even though it is crucial to the invasion. While fans know for a fact that the Phalanx existed and were confused as to where it has been all along, Sanders failed to give us a believable explanation as to how it could be that it is now part of the strike force - or any explanation at all. Not even a simple "it had to undergo repairs after Armatura", nothing.
On top of that, it also appears that the Imperial Fists now have access to Centurion armor, which was supposedly not rediscovered until the Age of Apostasy, around 4-5 millennia after the Beast's Waaagh. What's up with that?

And yes, we all knew it was coming: The Imperial Fists are reformed by the Successor Chapters, with Thane at their head. The way it is depicted here struck me as awkward, however.
First the Last Wall celebrates the Feast of Blades on Inwit in Koorland's honor, duelling for the Dornsblade. Thane presents himself as the representative of the Fists Exemplar and ends up, naturally, winning. We only see him duelling the Excoriators champion Tychor, but that duel seemed to take up more space and time than the following proposal by Thane to reform the Imperial Fists from the Last Wall Chapters. No real arguments or opposition are being made clear, and even Bohemond of the Black Templars has nothing to add. Thane is simply accepted as "the man" and declared new Chapter Master, with the successors throwing their veterans at the newborn Chapter. There are no indentity problems here, no arguments of faith from former Black Templars, and Thane is the only one to my knowledge who even makes spoken reference to his former allegiance, in the form of a curse on Ullanor.

The second part of the reformation, the public one, happens on Terra, in Thane's bid for strength. Revealing the full Chapter to the Imperial Palace's powerful, scribes and serfs, the scene is awesome for sure. I liked that chapter of the book in particular, but that is also down to Vangorich making his move in support.
In general, Vangorich's parts were highlights here again. He has fully set his sights on the target we knew he had to come to, and makes sacrifices for it already. One early chapter even sees him asking an ecclesiarch for absolution after confessing his doubts about the way things are going to him.
The assassin's blade is in place for a fantastic conclusion on the political end of the series, at least.

But then there are further inconsistencies and a disregard for series continuity that I hated reading the book.
After the brilliant development of High Marshal Bohemond of the Black Templars in recent books, there is nothing of note about him here. He is mentioned in passing only. In my eyes, he should have been the one to duel Thane in the final round of the Feast of Blades, as he would have been the man to honor Koorland that way, personally, without representatives. He deserved a more prominent role in the book, especially after the tear-jerker of the last book.
Magos Laurentis, who featured alongside Bohemond last time, is completely absent here. So, too, is the Mechanicus adepts' use of tranquilizers on the ork psykers. Or, in general, so are all the adepts beyond Fabricator General Kubik. Inquisitor Veritus is only mentioned once in the entire book, and misspelled as Veritas. Wienand, the Inquisitorial representative, is mentioned but doesn't affect the story in any way beyond being said to be with the Deathwatch during the assault on Ullanor.
It also appears as if Vangorich is supposed to choose a new High Ecclesiarch for the High Lords, even though Koorland made a big show of ousting the Ecclesiarchy from the council and re-declaring a dedication to the Imperial Truth.

There are so many small things and absences of details and characters that were most enjoyable to me throughout the series that I can only wonder how much care the editors in charge put into this penultimate book of the series, and how they expected it to match up with the rest. There is a clear disconnect here that, regardless of a bunch of great scenes, makes the whole book seem like a weak excuse for a finale to me. It is no secret that the series has been on ice for years in Black Library's vaults, and that heavy rewrites were necessary in the meantime, but come the hell on. This is not the satisfying conclusion of one of the two major threads of the series that readers deserved, and I know that Sanders could have done better if the editorial direction had been more appropriate and time & page constraints not as strict.

But the real, the biggest bummer has got to be the ending. After spending a lengthy chapter just for the arrival on Ullanor, and most of the following chapter on slaughtering hundreds of orks to reach the Beast's throneroom, the actual confrontation with the big bad greeny is short and, again, retreading familiar ground. Once again a Chapter Master challenges the Beast, and gets pushed aside by his trusted lieutenant (which, at least, makes the introduction of Tychor sensible), echoing TLSoD. Once again a Chapter Master is near death at the hands of the Beast. Once again the Sisters of Silence unleash their payload.

With the climax being so similar to that of The Last Son of Dorn, it is unavoidable to compare the two. The result is clear to me: Shadow of Ullanor pales in contrast to David Guymer's contribution. It doesn't have the same emotional payoff, not the same sense of it being a showdown for the future of the galaxy, not the buildup for the ork psyker's power... Beyond mention of the other four surviving Beasts, the Great Beast is the only one to appear in the story as well, with the rest being taken care of off-screen apparently.
It is an all-around disappointing way to wrap up the Ullanor plotline and shows just how wrong the series went with having the Imperium go for a third attack on Ullanor. With little variation beyond the inevitable success of this attempt, it is hard to see a reason for this attack to even have occured on a separate occassion rather than being rolled into a previous book.

Thankfully, there were some cool scenes involving Lady Brassanas, and using the orks' strategy of using asteroids for planetary assault was neat. I just wish that the book hadn't spent so long on the latter part compared to the action on the planet.
A lot of the big and dramatic scale was merely glanced at and narrated in passing, but never actually focused on. The Phalanx is being boarded? All we hear about it is curt and detail-barren reports to Thane. Few (none) of the new Imperial Fists captains are explored in any depth, and even the Chief Librarian is reduced to doing communication jobs. The book is even worse at portraying the Imperial Fists as anything but faceless yellow-armored Space Marines than I Am Slaughter did - at least that one introduced the previous Chapter Master and had the Wall Veterans. All Shadow of Ullanor could offer were names and erratic reports, but no hands-on experience.

This review might be long and rambly at this point, and maybe I am being a tad too harsh, but as someone having followed the series for the past 11 months, reviewing installment after installment, this book just feels utterly wrong, disappointing and a waste of my time. The amount of things that could have been changed to make it more compelling is pretty big. It spent too much time on things that, in the grand scheme of things, didn't matter much, while neglecting what would have made for great payoffs. I was in awe of the second assault on Ullanor, yet this third one leaves me cold.

I cannot even be happy that this is one of the shortest books in the series. For all I know, a few additional chapters might have turned a poor semi-finale into a great one, by allowing for more intricate ideas to take shape and deviating from the formula. While not terrible by any means in its own right, as a successor to 10 better books, Shadow of Ullanor feels like a culmination of all the problems and missteps of the series, and makes me wonder why I bothered getting excited.
What should have been the biggest, most earth-shattering installment in the series instead turned out the weakest.

Shadow of Ullanor on Goodreads

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With their new Deathwatch kill-teams a resounding success, the forces of the Imperium return to the heart of the ork empire to finish what they started…

As the ork menace ravages the galaxy, the Imperium faces its darkest hour. Its fleets are in ruins, its armies devastated – amongst them the noble Imperial Fists – and even a primarch of myth has fallen against the Beast. As brute force fails, Koorland resorts to increasingly desperate tactics against the greenskins. A final hope lies in deploying the controversial Deathwatch and the Sisters of Silence in a deft strike at the heart of the ork empire. As the situation grows more dire, Koorland must live up to the symbol he has become as the last son of Dorn or all of humanity will be doomed.

This has to be my favorite book in the The Beast Arises series so far. It'll be hard to top with just two more novels to go. Likewise, it will be difficult to wrap up the story neatly from here. I felt my excitement for the series slip a bit, but David Guymer managed to pull it right back and I am eagerly anticipating the remaining two books and the series' conclusion.

The Story:

"With their new Deathwatch kill-teams a resounding success, the forces of the Imperium return to the heart of the ork empire to finish what they started…

As the ork menace ravages the galaxy, the Imperium faces its darkest hour. Its fleets are in ruins, its armies devastated – amongst them the noble Imperial Fists – and even a primarch of myth has fallen against the Beast. As brute force fails, Koorland resorts to increasingly desperate tactics against the greenskins. A final hope lies in deploying the controversial Deathwatch and the Sisters of Silence in a deft strike at the heart of the ork empire. As the situation grows more dire, Koorland must live up to the symbol he has become as the last son of Dorn or all of humanity will be doomed."

The Review:

The Last Son of Dorn is probably the best entry in the The Beast Arises series up to this point. It has politics, action, huge twists and gutwrenching scenes. It brings plotlines to their conclusion in a satisfying way and completely boggles the mind on how in hell the series is supposed to wrap up within the next two books.

The book continues on from where Watchers in Death left off, albeit on an increased scale. We are immediately plunged into multiple Deathwatch missions, all running parallel with similar goals, broken up by scenes set on Terra.
Those Kill Team scenes are to the point, introducing new characters and making up for the somewhat lackluster variety in Watchers; all manner of Space Marine Chapters are part of the Deathwatch now, from Flesh Tearers over Raven Guard to Doom Eagles and others. While most attention is paid to the Space Wolf Kjarvik Stormcrow as a new point of view character, I was happy to see the Deathwatch opening up from being just about Fists-successors, Dark and Blood Angels, Ultramarines and Space Wolves. That was a big criticism I leveled at Watchers in Death, and David Guymer doesn't repeat that mistake.

In general, The Last Son of Dorn offered a lot of variety. One of the Kill Team missions brings us back to Eidolica, giving us a much-needed look back for the Fists Exemplar, but the coolest thing was seeing Valhalla hands on. The Valhallans had harbored a deep hatred for the Orks ever since they first invaded their world, so seeing them in this series as one of the outposts resisting the Ork advance felt good, natural and brought a sense of galactic scale to the table that has been sidelined lately.

Looking back, a lot of the earlier novels in the series had split narratives that got us to different worlds and made us witness to their destruction. While I wasn't much of a fan of Predator, Prey overall, I appreciated the way it built up the Ork menace as an all-encompassing threat to the galaxy, especially with its fantastic first chapter. Somewhere along the way, the story got very focused on the more immediate threat of the attack moon above Terra, Ullanor and elements like the reunion with Vulkan. Fleshing out individual points of import like these, in a series with roughly 250 pages per book, meant that other side plots and the galaxy's general state of turmoil fell by the wayside, both for reasons of pacing and lack of room to tell more stories like those of Undine or Incus Maximal.
With this installment, we return to some of that at long last. Incus Maximal is revisited, giving us a direct view of what the orkupation did to the forgeworld. I liked the way Guymer incorporated stuff like that, as it makes previous events more relevant to the core narrative and shows the effects the War of the Beast had on mankind's dominion over the galaxy.

Likewise, this entry returns to the plotline of the errant Fists Exemplar and the Iron Warriors under Kalkator. This didn't have much room in the core narrative lately, and I wonder what it will lead to before the end. There wasn't terribly much about it here, but it gave a neat sense of foreboding and creeping corruption. Zerberyn is being set up here for something big, though I am not sure if the reveal will be able to contest the scale of his growing arrogance and delusion.

Back on Terra, we have another arrogant individual raving in madness: Ecclesiarch Mesring, with death finally upon him, after having endured longer than I had expected after his poisoning early in the series, shows himself clearly as the blaspheming, selfish individual that he is. His actions here speak of desperation and almost made me want to pity the man, if it wasn't for the fact that he was deserving of everything he received. His role in the story leads to the attempt of big reforms by Koorland. He tries to abolish the Imperial Creed and instead issue a return to the Imperial Truth, which had been ignored in favor of the cult of the Emperor-as-God. Vulkan lamented this in earlier books, and this was a good step in the series.

It also fueled the rivalry between Koorland and High Marshal Bohemond of the Black Templars. They had clashed before on various occassions, even on Ullanor, and seeing this theological disagreement between the two made me fear for a big fallout. What I got instead was a very rewarding tale of brotherhood and, dare I say love between the two that became clearer as the book progressed and ended with me appreciating Bohemond much more, despite his rashness and zealotry. Guymer managed to turn a character I disliked into one I could feel for.

On the subject of feeling for characters, there is more here, not least of all through Magos Laurentis, whose presence has always been interesting to me. He was there to witness the demise of the Imperial Fists and his blossoming friendship with Koorland was one of the best things of Abnett's I Am Slaughter. Here, there is a massive payoff to that. It had me stunned and in awe, and offered a very different view of the tragedies unfolding on Ullanor. The clinical, detached senses of the Adeptus Mechanicus lent themselves incredibly well to depict the numbness of the pivotal moments of the book, and the author handled it incredibly well. It jerks at one's heartstrings to see the personal struggle of the Magos, who has lost so much of his humanity already.

Wienand, too, receives some special attention in The Last Son of Dorn. Inevitably, she wrestles control of the Deathwatch from Koorland, as we all knew would happen, and part of the book shows her trying to earn the respect of the superhuman soldiers of the order. It felt right seeing her closer to the action again, rather than just scheming back on Terra. Of course, she continues her power plays, but in a more direct fashion than usual.
Beast Krule also gets to show off his skills - he impressed me, and showed for the first time just how dangerously powerful he really is. Before this entry, Krule has always felt more leashed and grounded by Vangorich, but on his second visit to Ullanor, he is finally loosened and reaps a heavy toll. I hope my predictions for the character's future will prove accurate, as this is a man who deserves some special attention in the series finale, The Beheading.

Overall I loved the novel. Seeing Koorland, Thane, Bohemond and co come into their own was amazing. Thane especially has some big shoes to fill, leading the main assault on Ullanor while Koorland takes a supposedly more direct route to the Beast. The Beast, too, is depicted as incredibly scary and makes you wonder just how the Imperium can prevail under the threat of such pure savagery and cunning. The final chapters were thick with action and emotions of all kinds. They drag you into the Beast's throne room and worry for the heroes, cheer for them, and despair with them. This installment is suspensful, raises the stakes even further, even if it shouldn't have been possible at this point, and marks a distinct turning point for the series.

‘The real work begins tomorrow and the day after. We will rebuild the Imperium, brother. [...] I would make our father proud.’

The Last Son of Dorn is literally two minutes before midnight. It channels the glorious heroism and the Astartes' willingness to sacrifice their own lives in their entirety to serving the Emperor and mankind. There's action of every scale, intrigue, character development that draws upon the whole series to convince, and a climax that takes the breath away. This is a novel that David Guymer should be proud of, even if it wasn't his favorite to write in this series. It deserves its spot on the pedestal for everything it does oh so right.

The Last Son of Dorn on Goodreads

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Brute force has failed – and drastically so. The assault on the ork home world has ended in disaster and new tactics are needed. But will Koorland's new force – his so-called ""Deathwatch"" be effective?

The attempt to hunt down and kill the orks’ leader has ended in catastrophe. The Imperium is reeling from the loss of so many beloved heroes, and the military forces of mankind have been reduced to tatters. Koorland now knows that brute force is not the answer – but how else can the orks be fought? In a radical move, he creates small, mixed Chapter units of Adeptus Astartes – compact teams that will hit the enemy hard and fast, and with deadly accuracy. With armour painted the black of mourning, the new strike teams become known as the Deathwatch. But will this be enough to tip the balance, or does the Imperium need to discover other new means to defeat the orks?

Nine done, three more books to go. The Beast Arises isn't going to let us go straight to the finish line, however, so here's another curveball flung at followers of the series, courtesy of David Annandale. This is his third and final book in the series, which means a full quarter of it sprung from his keyboard!

The Story:

"Brute force has failed – and drastically so. The assault on the ork home world has ended in disaster and new tactics are needed. But will Koorland's new force – his so-called ""Deathwatch"" be effective?

The attempt to hunt down and kill the orks’ leader has ended in catastrophe. The Imperium is reeling from the loss of so many beloved heroes, and the military forces of mankind have been reduced to tatters. Koorland now knows that brute force is not the answer – but how else can the orks be fought? In a radical move, he creates small, mixed Chapter units of Adeptus Astartes – compact teams that will hit the enemy hard and fast, and with deadly accuracy. With armour painted the black of mourning, the new strike teams become known as the Deathwatch. But will this be enough to tip the balance, or does the Imperium need to discover other new means to defeat the orks?"

The Review:

Watchers in Death was quite enjoyable to me. It suffers from some contrivances of the overall series, but the overall story was a satisfying origin piece for the Deathwatch and their particular style of engagement.

Firstly, though, the cover presents a discrepancy with the book's content. The Deathwatch marine shown is wearing an Inquisition-branded shoulder guard, whereas in the book, the Deathwatch are autonomous. They are allying with Inquisitors Veritus and Wienand, but over the course of the book the two merely discuss the possibilities inherent in the new Space Marine formation, foreshadowing future developments. But at the book's present, the Deathwatch is not a militant chamber of the Inquisition yet, and is under the sole direction of Chapter Master Koorland of the Imperial Fists, with Maximus Thane of the Fists Exemplar as his second.

The whole creation myth of the Watchers in Death was interesting to follow, especially seeing the animosity between Dark Angels and Space Wolves, and how that takes the backseat as the Kill Teams get more invested into their role as new elite strikeforce. In general, I felt that Annandale did a bang-on job depicting how the various Astartes grew into their new identities. It was moving in places, and neat to see how Deathwatch and Chapter origin could coexist.

Deathwatch. The word, the name, the truth was shouted by every warrior in the Monitus. It was the moment of creation. That which had been shattered on Ullanor had taken on a new shape, renewed of purpose.
Deathwatch. It was a blade aimed at the throat of the Beast.

A big woe of mine was that, once more, this was pretty much limited to the usual bunch of Chapters. Imperial Fists/Fists Exemplar in the leaders Koorland and Thane, Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Blood Angels and Ultramarines. We knew the Salamanders took part in the assault on Ullanor, but none of them seemed to join the DW. Neither did the infiltration specialists of the Raven Guard make an appearance, or any of the successor Chapters beyond the Fists Exemplar. It was a meek turnout, and seeing how the diversity of Chapters and their individual tactics are perhaps the biggest strength of the Deathwatch to come, this seemed too vanilla for my taste. It ticked the necessary boxes based on previously involved Chapters, but didn't go beyond, which it well could have.

Either way, the Kill Teams go on to finally deal with the attack moon above Terra, which is a plotline I would have liked to see tackled a few volumes ago. Thankfully, there is some finality here, as the Deathwatch come into their own. Where The Hunt for Vulkan and The Beast Must Die were stuffed with big action setpieces, Watchers in Death focused more on small groups of combatants, which was a needed change of pace and delivered something notably different from the rest of the series with its massive scale.

About half the book deals with another hunt for a legendary leftover force from the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy era: The Sisters of Silence. Like with Vulkan before, it is Veritus who divulges the secret of their continued existence. I thought that too typical. Using Veritus again might make sense considering his position, but it was also a bit of a cheap way to handle it. I keep wondering if much would have changed had Wienand found an old dusty tome instead, while Koorland dealt with the attack moon. If anything, that might have benefitted the book by exploring the Inquisition's customs a bit more, and had been more emergent from the events of TBMD, whereas Veritus just has a "oh, by the way, I know this and that" moment. Doing it the way I suggest here would also have made a stronger case for later events to turn out the way they did, involving the two Inquisitors.

But thankfully, we are back to Terra for half of the book. There are politics to be watched unfold again, from the proposal of the Deathwatch's establishment over power play predictions and the Inquisition's scheming. Mesring's role developed a little further, as did Juskina Tull, and even the uneasy relationship between Koorland and Fabricator General Kubik. Vangorich, too, has a chance to spread his influence directly again, which was welcome. His role has been moving to the back lately, whereas I still consider him the true star of the series, for (soon to be) obvious reasons.

However, the story soon moves on to Thane and his Kill Team searching for the long-lost and forgotten Sisters of Silence, guided by the Inquisitors. This was fascinating in a way, but also a little disjointed and could have benefitted from more pagetime and switching back to Terra once in a while.
I'd like to note though that I do not in theory object to the Sisters only entering the stage now. After all, their relevance was only clear to the reader, not the characters. Or rather, the characters who found out about the threat of the Ork psykers took quite a beating in past volumes and their messages only reached Terra now, after the disaster at Ullanor. So, in a way, while Vulkan hinted at the Sisters coming in handy, nobody knew why he'd say that, or that they still endured.
While yes, this drags the series out, it feels like more natural progression resulting from previous novels' plotlines finally developing further.

The individual Deathwatch missions were enjoyable to follow and had some pretty cool moments, especially involving ork-derived technology. If I have one criticism though, it is how comparatively easy their jobs were. Their success was always a given, seeing how their concept gives birth to a full force in the future, but even then, there was a surprising lack of losses and hard choices involved. That could have been handled better, even though the action scenes and infiltration sections were well executed.

A relatively small part of the novel also returns us to Captain Zerberyn of the Fists Exemplar and Iron Warriors Warsmith Kalkator. I won't spoil this part, because it was incredibly good, and showed the inner turmoil of the loyalist captain, and is foreshadowing some big reckoning. I loved this section.

In the end though, this was a solid entry in the series. I had a good time. Some memorable scenes came from the formation of the Watchers, which I remember fondly. A few tweaks could have made it better, but even without them it holds up and brings us one step close to the series' completion.

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The time has come – if the Imperium is to survive the ork invasion, it must strike at the heart of the greenskin empire. Their home world has been identified, and Koorland, aided by a primarch, leads the assault…

The Imperium has been brought to the edge of extinction by an ork invasion of unprecedented scale and depth. Piecemeal strikes against the invaders prove ineffective - for every ork fleet destroyed, five more appear. The only solution is to find and kill the orks' warlord - the Great Beast. Surely if its leader is killed, the greenskins' empire will fall apart in agony of infighting and confusion. Lord Commander Koorland assembles a mighty army, but when they arrives on the orks home world, the forces of the Imperium discover they have disastrously underestimated the might and ingenuity of their enemy.

Back from vacation, so let's go back to Ullanor and pay the Great Beast a visit!

The Story:

"The time has come – if the Imperium is to survive the ork invasion, it must strike at the heart of the greenskin empire. Their home world has been identified, and Koorland, aided by a primarch, leads the assault…

The Imperium has been brought to the edge of extinction by an ork invasion of unprecedented scale and depth. Piecemeal strikes against the invaders prove ineffective - for every ork fleet destroyed, five more appear. The only solution is to find and kill the orks' warlord - the Great Beast. Surely if its leader is killed, the greenskins' empire will fall apart in agony of infighting and confusion. Lord Commander Koorland assembles a mighty army, but when they arrives on the orks home world, the forces of the Imperium discover they have disastrously underestimated the might and ingenuity of their enemy."

The Review

The Beast Must Die takes the fight back to the orks for good. It is full of action and, oddly enough, development for the orks and the Great Beast. The latter makes it one of the coolest ork focused books in Black Library's stable (at least as far as 40k is concerned), which is at least in part due to Gav Thorpe's attempts to feature old and forgotten pieces from the background.

Political intrigue is at an all-time low. I expected to be bummed out by that and end up lukewarm on the book, but while the High Lords aren't on the stage for almost the entire book, their appearances in the first chapter, and their confrontation with Primarch Vulkan therein, left me excited and satisfied regardless. It is down to Thorpe's excellent pacing and raising of the stakes throughout the rest that I never really felt like a change of pace via Terra-based politics was necessary.

The rest of the book, meaning chapters two to twenty-two, are set on and around Ullanor. I highly anticipated the Imperium's strike at the Beast's home world, especially for how much of a symbolic value that planet had during the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy series. Seeing the orks build a new empire of their own springing from the place of their greatest defeat at the hands of Horus and the Emperor was such a promising idea, it would have been easy to deliver an underwhelming novel that didn't meet my expectations.

Thankfully, The Beast Must Die met them. Indeed, it is one of the top novels in the series so far, despite its heavy action focus.

Most of the chapters are prefaced with the introspections of Primarch Vulkan. I've seen people call them "emo", and indeed, they are depressing in many ways, but oh were they telling and fitting for a character like Vulkan. For all his legendary status, he is weary of life and seeing the Imperium's decay. He has a heavy cross to bear (see: Vulkan Lives and onwards in the HH series) and it makes perfect sense for him to take these mental turns over the course of one and a half millennia. Considering he was always presented as the most human of the Emperor's demi-god sons, I fully approve of how Thorpe depicted his inner turmoil.

Even on the active side, Vulkan's depiction is spot on. He is aloof where he should be, reminiscing about the glories of a lost age in places, and feels very disconnected from the rest of the Imperium. He rarely utilizes the authority inherent in his nature, but when he does, he moves the plot and characters forward in clever ways. In one chapter, he defends Chapter Master Koorland's authority as Lord Commander in a way that made me smile and cemented both Vulkan's subtle genius and Koorland's suitability in his role for me.

In other situations, Vulkan is a mighty warrior who goes head to head with mighty war machines - something we have seen in The Hunt for Vulkan already, but here he feels both less and more like a one-man-army. More, because he isn't fighting on his own anymore and leaves the Space Marines with him watch on in awe, and less so because he actually coordinates with them. Where The Hunt for Vulkan aimed to excite and awe the reader with how mighty Vulkan is, here it becomes clear that despite all that, he cannot fight this war alone.

The ork civilization meanwhile is sketched with great detail and should appeal to longtime fans who have seen old editions of 40k come and go. Many ideas and concepts long scrapped are alluded to, and the greenskins of Gorkagrod are far from the usual brutes. Unlike most Black Library novels, we see orks living in "peace", as a functioning society. It is a chilling prospect that bodes ill for the Imperium, but manages to elevate the ork threat of the series to even higher levels.

This is also the first time since the first book that we get a direct confrontation with the Great Beast. If you have been waiting for that, this is your book. Whatever you expected: Go bigger.
That final confrontation of the novel was excellently handled, and leaves the reader with a bit of a blown mind. Personally, I am not sure where the series can go from this. David Annandale's Watchers in Death has a big task ahead of it to continue on from that cataclysm.

The Beast Must Die is an excellent book. The series needed it, both in regards to plot, reveals, resolutions of subplots and moment to moment action. Seeing the Imperium act as a truly united force against the biggest threat since the Heresy was glorious, especially after all the backstabbing previously. Of course, there are still intrigues going on behind the scenes, but they are secondary here. The Beast Must Die, or all shall fall.

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