HUNT FOR VOLDORIUS By Andy Hoare – Reviewed

This is one of the Space Marine’s battle novels, so you pretty much know what you can expect. Plenty of action, and you get that, in bucketloads. What the book fails to deliver is character-development and a decent plot.

Voldorius is a chaos space marine, leader of the infamous traitors the Alpha Legion, and sworn nemesis of Kor’sarro Khan of the White Scars Space marines. Basically, Kor’sarro hunts Voldorius and his legion to the enslaved planet of Quintus and attacks with the help of the mysterious Raven Guard Space Marines.

Ok, so not much story, cardboard characters, but plenty of action, loads of fighting and some nice touches, including the rebels, the hints of Voldorius’ power and the tension between the two space marine outfits.

The problem with the book lies within the limited premise of the series. What we want when picking up a battle novel is a lot of action. But action cannot be maintained throughout an entire novel, the reader would just become numb. The majority of 40K universe books are heavily action-led, but (the Horus Heresy novels at least) have a well-crafted plot behind the action and noticeable character development.

This book isn’t a failure, it’s entertaining enough for me not to write off the entire series, but Hoare needs to look at Dan Abnett, David Gunn and Andy Remic to see how truly brilliant action-heavy novels can contain good characterisation and plotting.

Good, but not quite good enough for a recommendation. Does what it says on the tin, but I was expecting a bit more.

NEKROPOLIS By Tim Waggoner – Reviewed

On the cover SF Site says this is an “exciting mystery”, well, I’m not sure what book they were reading, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t this one. This isn’t so much a mystery as a travelogue or an adventure.

Mathew Richter is a zombie, he’s a dead detective who followed a serial killer and warlock to the dark world of Nekropolis, the underworld where all manner of creatures live and non-live. Nekropolis is an amazing land, filled with vampires, were-creatures, witches and warlocks, talking insects, and the aforementioned zombies and other creatures of the dead. It’s a riot of Tim Burton-esque touches that will appeal to any horror and fantasy fan. A kind of really dark Harry Potter world, Diagon Alley after Voldemort takes over!

Anyways, back to the story. Mathew is contacted by a hot blond half-vampire who is in charge of her father’s – one of the five dark lords who rules Necropolis – collection of rare magical artefacts. One of the items in the collection is a powerful magical crystal capable of destroying the entire city, and today just happens to be Decension Day, when the five dark lords and Father Dis (the god and creator of Nekropolis), join forces to re-energise Umbriel, the dark moon that lights the city. And the artefact has gone missing.

So the meagre plot involves Mathew and his half-vampire friend searching the city of Nekropolis to find the artefact. But this is not about plot, it’s much more about exploring the amazing world of Nekropolis. Our protagonist is really the city, and whilst Richter and his squeeze are fairly well developed, there’s not really much to any of the other characters, and many of the citizens only make a brief appearance.

The book fails on many levels, the plot not the least as our hero goes round the entire city meeting up with someone to ask a few questions and then moving on to the next clue, and working his way round the city. The trail of clues (if you can call it that, some are tenuous to say the least!) is fairly easy to follow, or the next trip just takes them to another unexplored section of the city, seemingly at random. There isn’t really a mystery, and there’s no overall tension apart from the situational type as Richter finds himself in some sticky situations during his investigation.

But it’s still so much fun to discover the city. It’s like entering the world of nightmare, which since this book was originally written, has been explored by Tim Burton, Harry Potter and Hellboy. But this manages to be just a little darker than all of those and is all the better for it.

With a decent plot and some new material this book could be scarily good! Well, the good news is that the second and third books have been commissioned! Excellent.

Despite its failures this is still a bloody good book, and you’re unlikely to read anything else like it. It will make you grin with delight and make you want to visit the strange world of Nekropolis. It’s the perfect travel-guide, it’s just not the best novel.