Know No Fear

I was mega excited about this novel, finally the Ultramarines would get some Horus Heresy loving properly. I didn't know a huge amount of detail on the battle of Calth other than who was involved and that the boys in blue got their shit well and truly fucked.

The style the book is presented in was a great mechanic, breaking it down into 'marks', basically time-stamped journal entries that made following the planet wide conflict simple, with multiple story threads held together in a common timeline. It also meant stopping and starting was a lot easier.

Old characters made a return on the Word Bearers side, and although the demonic contingent was absent at first they soon got their mutant claws stuck in!

There were plenty of stand out moments, from the return of John Grammaticus, to the descriptions of vast spaceships tumbling out of the sky. The Mechanicum aspects were fascinating as usual, but the stand out moment of the whole book for me was when Ventarius wrenched an assault cannon clean off a land speeder and open fired on a Word Bearer, proper heroic shit.

The novel contains way too many awesome moments to note here, you'll just have to read it to find out. That's why I've kept this review so short. Dan Abnett has done another top job and I can't recommend this enough, whether you're a fan of the smurfs or not. An absolute 10/10!