This is a nearly perfect space marine novel. First Claw and the Night Lords are profoundly interesting compared to their thin-blooded loyalist brethren. The Blood Reaver himself is the Tyrant of Badab (which is such a love-lettter to old geeks like me who still have their 40k Compendiums). Much comes to a head but even more seeds are sown for the final book in the trilogy.

It sounds dumb, but stuff happens and characters develop! This is actually quite rare in much franchise fiction and especially when dealing with the bad guys. Dembski-Bowden has you ending up empathizing with monsters.

GW should have used this story for their animated project instead of Ultramarines. ( )