Just Finished Reading: Desert Raiders by Lucien Soulban (FP: 2007) [245pp] 

The distress signal was strong. Strong enough to kill the receiving psyker and incapacitate three others. An Imperial Guard unit had been eliminated, and naval units were dispatched to find out who, where and how. Two battered Tallarn regiments, barely recovered from previous battles, had been dropped on the barren desert planet – previously unknown and presently unregistered – to investigate. Within hours of their arrival the orbital fleet was directed to another emergency and assured the Imperial Guard units that further supplies would be dropped in 90 days. After months of base building, patrolling and growing tension between factions with a long and troubled history contact with the fleet and Sector command had not been established. For now at least they were on their own. With supplies running low and infighting becoming a real possibility, a sudden arrival from space manages to concentrate minds. It would certainly explain why they had been abandoned and why their supply drop was so overdue. Two hundred kilometres away in the deep desert a ship had arrived that drove fear into the hearts of the most experienced warriors amongst them. They were about to face the horror of the galaxy, the relentless force with only one aim, one mission, one drive – to feed. The Tyranids had arrived... 

This is my second Warhammer 40K novel. As much as I enjoyed my first experience with the novel side of things (I’ve been playing the PC game versions for years) I enjoyed this even more. It did start rather slowly with lots of good character building, world building and the expected sprinkling of 40K lore but I forgave all of that once the action started. The Tryranids are a truly terrifying species – imagine the xenomorph from Aliens except there are THOUSANDS of them and some of them are HUGE, some can fly or burrow through solid rock and some of them carry guns firing living hungry bullets – so the carnage was sometimes quite breathtaking. The second half of the novel, except for short breaks and breathing spaces, was almost constant combat so if you’re put off by that kind of Sci-Fi based fighting this is definitely not the book for you! If, however, you’re a fan of Combat SF then this will definitely tick ALL of your boxes. 

I actually wasn’t expecting all that much from this novel sequence. I suppose that I assumed that they’d just be disposable fun (for an existing 40K fan) but I’ve been surprised by how creditable the writing is over and above the action and the lore. The characterisation here was particularly good with respectable nuance and believable backstories and motivations. Some of it was clearly taken from the existing split in Islam but it still worked. Although there’s ZERO chance that I’ll get around to reading even a reasonable percentage of the books in this series produced so far, I’m definitely looking forward to reading more from this grim dark universe. Recommended for fans of 40K and of combat SF in general.