Bloody Books Reviews - The Beast Arises Book Six: Echoes of the Long War by David Guymer

We enter the halfway point of the series in the hands of David Guymer where a lot of threads are up in the air. For this entry we are mostly examining the Navy of the Exemplar Fleet, Marines of the Black Templars and the usual state of affairs back on besieged Terra. Amongst all these goings on, we start to peek at Mars and the larger plots taking place there. In fact, this book is a very tight political thriller in many ways, more so than I would have expected from a 40k series.

This series has much more plots and plans than I was led to expect for what was promised as a Ork heavy collection.

Guymer does an incredible job here, never once shying away from the downright unsettling elements of the 41st Millennium, especially when it comes to the Adeptus Mechanicus. It's a collection of dark as hell hell scenes punctuated with obscene levels of violence that punches harder for coming out of the political murk the rest of the book is swamped with.

There's more I could say, but I feel this is one to let speak for itself. It's a genuinely superb read, that taps wonderfully into the tone of what has come before and runs with it. It appears that this was Guymer's first foray into 40k, and it shows he understands the setting alongside the best that Black Library has to offer. Whilst it's more on a straight tunnel narrative to get to (once again) a hell of a cliffhanger finish, the core is one that's strong enough to hang that narrative on.

Genuinely great.