Bloody Books Reviews - The Beast Arises Book Eleven: Shadow of Ullanor by Rob Sanders

We are into the final two entries in The Beast Arises, and this time we turn again to Rob Sanders and his second novel. We see the Imperium is hanging on a thread now, and the gambits are becoming more desperate as the Imperial Fist successor chapters gather to create a final, violent strike to behead the Orks, and bring the war of the beast to a end at long last. The Iron Warriors return as well, and the ramifications of their support begins to show itself.

Sanders does a bang up job here of laying the foundations and building up to the final book. the focus of this entry is wide and vast for the first third before narrowing down to a laser precision narrative to Vangorich and his associated cast. Vangorich is been a joy to behold but beside him has grown Thane who in this book steps out of Vangorich's shadow to become something very interesting indeed. The last half of the book does suffer somewhat for being too "on-rails", needing a little less haste and more time to breathe, especially as there's so much of that in the first half. Sanders is a character writer, and his work in breathing life into both the characters and locations is sublime, but things feel somewhat undercooked once the book explodes breathlessly into the sprint for the end.

That may all sound a little too negative, but Sanders excels at what he does and knows his strengths well. He struggles against the small page count rather than anything else, and he's done enough to make me look at his other work with much interest. We are about to enter the final chapter....