Space Marine Conquests: Apocalypse

the Apocalypse turns out to be a pretty good read.

rumor is that Josh wrote this book in a month. if so that's an impressive feat. he knows his stuff, the story moves around briskly, and divides well into four or five sub narratives. everything makes sense and there's some genuine tension as to what's going to happen to characters. plot is strong, and so is the general theme. it all goes well with the standard warhammer trappings.

characterization is the weak point, and would have gained the most from more time. the good guys are fairly flat, especially the imperial fists, the Raven, and the sisters of battle. the white scars come off well.

it should surprise no one who's read Reynolds fabius bile books that his strong suite is traitor space Marines. the word bearers are fantasticly characterized, full.of passion, and have the most realized motivations and interactions.

narration was solid. reeds always good, but I question two of the choices. the lead human comes off a bit weaker than I think he was written. and the second word bearers comes off a bit more craven.

anyways a solid B rating.

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when you start you cannot

I'll have to say this is one of the better performances I've heard so far. The storyline has you engrossed in the characters and their views passing moments of the story. A great book to listen and sitting down or while driving.

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An Epic Tale written on loose-leaf notebook paper

Reynolds captured characters in a way that is engaging and cuts to the essence of them in a way that is understandable in the setting and the background of the universe in which they are in. They were adequately three dimensional, nobody was playing-against-the-type in a way that was jarring, their foibles and virtues were not magnified in a way that was off-putting, and they were all believable for the universe of the setting. The down-side to the story was the setting itself which I feel came up a bit short of the plot devices that were used. The Cardinal World didn't feel very fleshed out for the plot threads that were used that were more than adequately engaging and that is its only failing. It is not hard to immerse yourself in the characters and the plot, but the world-stage itself is not immersive.

Individual plot points are engaging; there is a competent mystery occurring, the plotting and duplicity is engaging if a bit predictable, the differences between the legions and the backgrounds of their warriors as well as the denizens of the Cardinal World and their various backgrounds are well thought out and makes the reader want to know more about them. The characters themselves are interesting enough that I want to know more about them, I'd like to see them in other stories and experience their continued adventures. Reynolds manages to make the Astartes seem unique and reasonably different from one another based on the background and culture of their parent chapters (legions) where many other authors tend to merge the rather generic archetypes into one another and create tons of the same character, just in different colored armors.

Reed is a decent narrator, but other than how generic the Cardinal World feels, his performance would be the only other thing that could be considered weak in the narrative. Since Black Library has worked with other narrators with a far greater range of characterization and vocalization he can, perhaps unfairly, be considered weaker in this regard but he doesn't serve to excessively take one out of the story nor diminish interest. At the end of the day, not everyone can be Jonathan Keeble or Toby Longworth.

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A good look at primaris

A good mix of characters, a good story and a good insight at how primaris work in the universe. I was hesitant about the primaris, but this novel made em reconsider my position.

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kept me engaged

i thought the plot was good and even the villians likable in their own way. i wish there was some additional resolution at the end...

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enjoyable

I enjoyed the narration and the book would recommend it to anyone.
to listen to

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Decent, but—

While the story has some interesting moments and insights into the lives of the factions involved, the narrative suffers from two major issues: its plot is contrived rather than organic; and its pacing is off. Also—one more thing—the main antagonists are interesting characters whereas the protagonists are stereotypically archetypal. They say things and think things they would of course say and think because they are who they are according to a codex somewhere that says so. For example, the Raven Guard in this book literally harkened to some kind of “Crow” depiction of gothic bleakness and fatalism, which plays to the chapter’s stereotype.

Imperial Fists fortify, and so most of the book follows from that, but why? What was missing most were hooks into the Imperial characters that provided any kind of emotional impetus for caring about them. The antagonists were well developed, but any kind of investment in them was ultimately sapped by the plodding length of the contrived plot.

Enjoyable to a degree but could have been 6 hours shorter as far as that goes. Could be fixed with proper editing.

"They are not us"

a fascinating look at the primaris marines from multiple first founding chapters take on the modern 40k setting. the book also shows us how the modern word bearers view the long war.

there are some absolutely astounding moments in this book. JR shows us the inner workings of the motivations behind many factions and ideas of the setting and how they have evolved from the Horus Heresy setting to the Psychic awakening.

easily one of the best stories of the year for me.

Way better than I expected!

Space marine battle books are not my favorites. They seem to lack characters and story development Josh Reynolds has done a great job in this somewhat long book.

There were a lot of significant characters in the story. This usually means that chargers will go through periods of not doing anything or being ignored. Reynolds has seen to did the all of the characters seemed to contribute to a very complete conclusion.

This story adds depth to the Ecclesiarchy, their characters are not 2D bafoons and villains, but layered characters with purpose. The Sisters of Battle are tough, meaningful, and admirable.

On the side of the villains, they have as many different camps and factions as anybody. We know this because we are following members of the different groups all of the time in their schemings and their thoughts.

This book is well balanced, serves to develop all of the factions that it touches, and also serves to advance the over all story line of the current grim darkness of the 41st millennium.

Better than expected

Due to the name, and the fact that it came out around the time tbe simmilar boardgame did, I expected non-stop action from start to finish.
Instead I've got a story with lots insight into the Imperial Faith, interaction between space marines and primaris marines... and actual Word Bearers who I did not find annoying.