Dawn of War II

Chris Roberson

2009

Dawn of War takes us to the worst of times in the Empire of Man in the 40,000s. Not only do the Blood Ravens of Captain Thule’s Fifth division find themselves fighting feral orks as something stirred them up to attack the humans on the desert world of Calderis, they find themselves facing the space travelling cousins of the planet bound orks and in a deserted warehouse in Calderis’ only fixed town a hatched egg of xenos origins proves to have been the birthing pod of something more lethal than an overgrown cockroach. With the captain seriously injured command falls to one of his inexperienced sergeants as the remaining members of the squad are faced with a fragment of a Tyrannid hive fleet intent on turning the subsector into a vast feeding station.

Badly outnumbered though they were, the Blood Ravens fought on even as they fell in battle one by one waiting for reinforcements from other Blood Raven divisions that they know won’t make it in time.

I have never really liked the Space Marines, super powered as they are but this story makes them a bit more human. The book itself is a novelisation of a computer game and it did sort of have that feel as the enemies gradually upped their lethalness.

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