'Krieg' – Steve Lyons (Black Library)

Yesterday suddenly got very busy, very very quickly, so any plans I had of finishing 'Feeding Ground' had to be put to one side while other stuff got done first. It's looking good but I need to finish it first before I'll know for sure. I reckon you'll see that review on Friday, but anyway... ;o)

Where did that leave me in terms of a post for today...? Well luckily, my HBR pile is still in a little bit of credit from Christmas so I had a few books to choose from. In the end, I went with 'Krieg' and it's promise to shed a little more light on the mystery of its faceless armies. Nothing too in-depth today I'm afraid, work is looking rather hideous today so I need to make sure that I'm in a decent state for that. For now though, lets talk 'Krieg'...

Krieg is a dead world.

Fifteen hundred years ago, it declared its independence from the Imperium of Man, and paid the price. One loyal soul defied its treacherous rulers, and laid the world to waste. From these ashes emerged a unique fighting force, forged and tempered in nuclear fire…

Today, the Death Korps of Krieg lay siege to a captured hive city on the outskirts of the system-spanning Octarius War, in a desperate attempt to secure the cordon that stops untold masses of orks and tyranids from spilling out into the Imperium at large. The Korpsmen are relentless, ruthless, implacable and unstoppable, even in the face of a war that seems unwinnable. How far will they go to achieve victory, and is history doomed to repeat itself?

'Krieg' was far from a 'did not finish', I polished it off very quickly and had some fun with it while doing so. Having said that though... I really wanted to love this book but it didn't quite make it there for me. Not a bad read then, just not the read I wanted it to be.

A large part of this was down to the story being told across two timelines, Krieg's not so illustrious past and the 'present' day fight for Hive Arathron. I was there for the Krieg storyline primarily but given the fact that it had to share page-space with the Hive Arathron storyline, it felt like it only had the room to tell the bare bones of the story and not a lot else. Which was a bit of a shame really, I mean it's not like we don't know the tale already but there was a chance here to really get into it and it wasn't taken.

And that wouldn't have been so bad had the other storyline been up to scratch but... it wasn't. The plot is split down even more here with an examination of the remnants of the Cadian Guard vs the Death Korps of Krieg; a faction that is slowly dying out vs a faction that continues to grow implacably. Again, there's not enough room here for the subject matter to get the time it deserves. The Orks do their best to be entertaining in the meantime (and to be fair, watching Orks at war is never dull) but it's not quite enough. And that would be a good way to sum up the book as a whole, not quite enough. Certainly 'not quite enough' time for it to tell the story that I think it wanted to tell.

To be fair though, there is a lot to enjoy here at the same time. The examination of the Death Korps does offer some food for thought that balances nicely against the more or less constant siege warefare (which again, has a nice balance between anticipation and attack, both handled well). And the Squigs... I loved the Squigs, any time they showed up I did a little cheer in my head. Their chaotic unpredictability was just what this book needed.

But it wasn't quite enough, not when there was a story dying to be told but not allowed to. And that's ok, you can't win em' all ;o) I think it's fair to say that Death Korps fans will get more out of this book than I did; I think 'Krieg' tried to do too much and didn't have the time to really give its subject matter the time it deserved. Oh well, onto the next book.