BLOODY BOOKS — THE RELENTLESS DEAD by Steve Lyons

The Kriegers are slowly forming a place at the forefront of the Imperial Guard Posterboys. Sure, everyone thinks of Cadia now, but give it another few years and Krieg is going to be the ones front and centre.

Happy shovel noises.

A lot of this comes down to the novels and short stories created by Steve Lyons and how he's very much understood the assignment from the start. He understands that to be Krieg is to be anonymous, one amongst many. A dead man walking if you will. A ghost that is yet to actually die.

So, here we follow Colonel Graven and the 401st onto Oleris III, a Cementary world with a slight issue of undeadening. The Inquisition have also decided to take a look, and we can all imagine what the plan there will end up being. The book wisely adopts tonal shifts, the warfare of the 41st millennium and the whispered haunts of secrets in tunnels deep under the earth. This slow burn tension sets it above the industrial scale grind of previous tales and instead imbues it with a sense of victorian-era horror. Having spectres that use the doubt and emotional weakness in humanity as a weapon is a great touch as it moves just how much a a shovel and a gun can do in the faces of such an adversary. There's a small touch of John Carpenter's nihilistic flair through the book, and not only in the paranoia as the inhabitants and troopers alike begin to mistrust the man next to them. It's less a siege of weaponry and more a siege against the darkness inside.

We switch over to the Sisters of Battle throughout the story, and whilst never truly bad, it's a shame that once again the Adeptas Sororitas are so rigidly displayed, that they almost fall into parody. Not fully, but it threatens to as common sense is roundly ignored in favour of the conviction of their standing. I get the point and meaning but it gets a little hard to swallow when the evidence is so obviously tipping to one side.

The truly fantastic atmosphere does begin to dissipate when, as it must, the horror gives way to explanation. It is 40k after all, and the bullets must begin flying. Whilst it comes a landing a little shakier than I would have liked, The Relentless Dead is very much recommended