Annihilation Squad Book Review

 

Book: Annihilation Squad
Author: Gav Thrope
Pages: 412
Hard Core Scale: 1/4
Normal Scale: 5/10
Publish Date: 2004
About: Lt. Kage and his new last chancers come to the war torn world of Armageddon. Not to fight orks, but instead to either rescue or assassinate the planetary governor depending upon his decisions. At the same time Kage’s warp dreams are getting worse along with his blackout panic attacks. Is it all his PTSD or something else entirely? The third novel of the Last Chancers series.

Review: No frame no game. Thus, present tense does not function. On top of this weird plot twists with old characters does not paint a pretty picture. Many pages of getting places instead of the mission at hand makes the journey often a moot point. One of the most boring space battles I have ever read. The telling over showing is too strong here. Plus a very muddled nonsensical plot for 40k. The ending weirdly detached, but would of ended on an acceptable end despite the bloat and oddity of the story. Last year a 4th book came out undoing this ending and thus makes this work even more problematic in function. It has gone downhill. Instead of a dirty dozen representing that fascinating old model range we have a series of Kage doing things “just because” and his PTSD with most characters barely anything at all. If you had to pick any of these up, pick the up the second one, but there are better works in the Black Library by better authors. 


Book Cover: Kenson Low, Copy Right, Games Workshop, Black Library

 

Popular posts from this blog

The Rats of Acomar: Book Review

Image
  Book: The Rats of Acomar Author: Pauli Kidd Pages: 396 Hard Core Scale: 2/4 Normal Scale: 7/10 Publish Date: 2000 About: The valley is separated from Acomar by a giant wall. Its purpose, to keep the wild rat men from entering and devouring the rest of the world. G’kaa seeks to rally the rat clans and do the impossible. However, a wandering dreaming rat, a hoopey coyote, a dutiful dog, and a white furred rat who sees the world differently are pulled in the strings of fate to determine their world’s future. Review: This sadness me of things that could have been. A first of a shared universe with many powerhouses that I love. Jeff Grubb and Lynn Abbey were supposed to write books in this shared world and never happened because Vision went up in smoke in September 11 th . Wonder what their books would have been.  Lots of power houses. This is probably Pauli’s worst book mechanically. Very cut and chunky in its parts. The beginning has a lot of tell issues to tell the w...
Read more

Book Diary Entry: Whispering Woods Review

Image
  Book: Whispering Woods Author: Clayton Emery Pages: 294 Hard Core Scale: 3/4 Normal Scale: 8/10 Publish Date: 1995 About: The beginning of the first MTG book series. Gull after the destruction of his village by wizards is offered a job by a wizard to lead his mule teams. He accepts despite his hatred against casters as long as he can bring his special needs sister along. However, wizards attract other wizards after all. Review: A simple fantasy romp of middle ground. Well written it is an enjoyable read. Things are more concrete and in line with the card game. The first mention of Urza and Mishra used as curse words in the lore which is interesting. More and better card name drops than arena. Interesting look into morality and suffering   of summons reflecting a actual player. Funny that the first two MTG books and wizards are terrible people. Emery has a bad issue with crazy none sensual similes that I will have to put up for two more books, but if that is the on...
Read more

Writing Treatie IX. Defending Purple Prose and Writing with a capitol W:

IX. Defending Purple Prose and Writing with a capitol W:                 So, there is a story of why I am bringing this up. Once there was a terrible story in my review slush pile, and I mean incredibly terrible. It was already published, but here it was in my review slush pile. It was extra insulting to my senses because it was in a shared universe started off by a majestic, master writer many decades ago who had lost his right to the universe due to some copyright fiasco and here was this stinking mass of pure excrement in that legacy. Now, I make many friends with my editors, a good thing to do. So I grabbed several writers’ old manuscripts that wrote in this shared universe and sent them to such editor so we could despair at what had happened. At the same time, since this freighting editor never gave me the freight, and only ever said good things about my works I secretly slipped a story of my own into ...
Read more