‘Veterans of the Fall’ – William Crowe (Black Library)

 

Page Count: 220 Pages

I spent a large chunk of yesterday afternoon at the hospital (nothing urgent, just a regular appointment for blood tests and so on) so of course I made sure that I had a book in my bag; for the queue in the pharmacy if nothing else ;o)

And when I’m stuck in a long, and seemingly never ending queue, the best book to have in your bag (in my bag anyway…) is a ‘Warhammer 40K’ book. Your mileage will undoubtedly vary but a large slice of ‘all out warfare’ will always make the wait in a line a little easier; especially when the pharmacy forget to put your number up on the screen and it turns out your medication was waiting on the side the whole time… Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

I’ve been enjoying William Crowe’s ‘Veterans of the Fall’ collection (check out my reviews of ‘Tattershield’ and ‘Tatters of Hope’), and I figured I wouldn’t be in the hospital that long, so I thought I’d take the chance to read the final novella and finish off the book. Given how it all ends, and who is left standing at the ending, I suspect we may well have seen the last of the Tattershields. I wouldn’t mind being proved wrong though… ;o)

It’s only in the war-torn universe of the forty first millennium (or is the 42nd millennium now, I may have lost track of the dates at this point…) that a planetary conflict can be almost over and somehow just about to begin, all at the same time. That’s the situation that 04-Gavaine finds itself in with the Chaos Cults finally being subdued while at the same time, a battlegroup of Heretic Astartes enters the system with murder on its mind.

04-Gavaine must ready itself for war one more time, none more so than Sergeant Taikon of the Kasrkin ‘Tattershields’. And when you can’t trust anyone outside of your own squad, you have to take the battle straight to the enemy; even if it’s a suicide mission…

As I’ve made my way through this collection, I’ve watched the stakes grow steadily higher, in terms of the quantity of the Archenemy (if not the quality) at least. Well, ‘Veterans of the Fall’ strikes a good balance between raising the quality of the opposition and keeping it vaguely plausible. A daemonic incursion would likely roll over the Imperial Guard on 04-Gavaine; Heretic Astartes are still near insurmountable but can be taken down through ingenuity, luck and overwhelming firepower. The odds are against the Guard then (especially when you take the fifth columnists into account) but there’s a little hope, all I needed to keep reading and see what happened.

The outcome was probably never in much doubt but over the last two tales, Crowe has given us a very solid cast of characters and so reading ‘Veterans of the Fall’ is more about seeing which of these make it, rather than what state the planet is in, by the end. And while I was in the process of finding that out, what I got was a stirring tale of ‘heroism on the back foot’ accompanied by at least a novels worth of ordinance going off in the space of a single novella. It just doesn’t stop, not even for a second, and like I mentioned earlier, the threat can explode into action at any time.

Crowe has already given us a cast of characters that it’s impossible not to get attached to; ‘Veterans of the Fall’ is the point where the odds are that you will have to say goodbye to a favourite. I did… Not everyone will make it but you can guarantee they’ll complete their arc, before they check out, and that proved to be very satisfying for this reader. Just what I needed yesterday afternoon ;o)

‘Veterans of the Fall’ proved to be a fitting finale to a collection that has held my attention pretty much from the first page. It’s safe to say that ‘Imperial Guard readers’ will get a lot out of this but I’d say there’s also something here for ‘military sci-fi’ fans in general. Definitely worth a read if you fall into either category.