Just Finished Reading: Fifteen Hours by Mitchel Scanlon (FP: 2005) [254pp] 

They knew it was a possibility, but the call-up papers still came as a shock. The Emperor needed two new regiments and 17-year-old Arvin Larn would be joining one of them. His parents knew, even if he survived his service, that they would never see him again. After four months of basic training Arvin and the other 2,000 men were told where they were needed most. A Planetary Defence Force had revolted, and it was their job to restore order. But only days into the journey their ship was diverted on the orders of Sector Command. A typo by a tired clerk had redirected Arvin’s company of 200 men to quite a different world. Dropped into a battle between Imperial Guard units and alien Orks Arvin’s transport is shot out of the sky and crash-lands in No-Mans Land. Escaping by luck more than judgement he is assigned to join a combat fire team defending a crumbling trench. After recovering from the shock of being alone, far from home and on the wrong planet Arvin grows increasingly annoyed that his team mates only refer to him as ‘new fish’. But his complaints fall on deaf ears. No one is going to bother learning his name until he proves himself and shows them that he can beat the odds – the odds that say his life expectancy on the front line is 15 hours. If he can beat that time, they’ll start using his given name and might even give him some of the spare equipment they have to hand. Knowing the Orks as his team does, it's going to be quite the challenge! 

I’ve been playing Warhammer 40K for a LONG time (on the PC rather than the traditional tabletop game) but this is my first book in the set/series - 316 books and counting. With most games I’ve not overly interested in the background story or lore and 40K is no exception. Obviously, you’re going to pick up something whilst playing and I picked up quite a bit more from some of my gaming buddies who are MUCH more interested in lore than I am. The rest of my knowledge comes from watching various long & short YouTube videos. Although not exactly lore-free (how could it be?) this slim volume was pretty lore-lite so can easily be read by anyone even those completely unfamiliar with the 40K universe. It actually read like a WW1/Vietnam cross and, although the Orks were not exactly irrelevant, they could have been replaced by almost any other enemy without impacting on the story. Most of the focus was on Arvin himself but there were digressions with other characters such as an artillery officer and the sector commander which both rounded out the story and added some lore-lite background. Overall, I really enjoyed it. The novel was reasonably fast paced, full of interesting fleshed out characters (wonderfully cynical after 10 years of fighting over a patch of mud) and some pretty good action/battle scenes. I’m looking forward to spending more time in this grim-dark universe soon.