Customer Reviews

Dark Disciple (Warhammer 40000 Word Bearers 2)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dark Disciple is the continuation of the stroyline that began with Dark Apostle. Marduk, now acting head of a Host of Word Bearers Chaos Space Marines, travels to a planet on the fringe of a tyranid invasion, to discover the secret to operating the xenos device discovered at the end of the first novel, that could well spell the doom of the Imperium.

Dark Disciple still has the dark, sickly feel that Dark Apostle did, but the storyline focuses solely on the Marines. One of the things that made Dark Apostle a smash was the sideline involving a lone Adeptus Arbite that was enslaved by Chaos, and chronicled his descent into madness, there is no character you can really get behind in this. The same sort of progressive corruption is present in Darioq, a tech-magis captured by Marduk, but its hard to root for a character that speaks like a computer.

The combat is once again well laid out, and helps impose the feel that Marines are gods among men. While the tabletop game would have you believe that Marines are equivalent to twice or thrice their number of Guard, the Word Bearers go through whole companies like they're sheep. Theres also a third party that is introduced very nicely, and sets the stage for some well handled three way combat engagements.

Disciple is still a great storyline, but like any sequel, its hard to recapture that particular spark that made the first novel so memorable.

Marduk, aspiring Dark Apostle of the XVII Legion of the Word Bearers, has an ancient and deadly artefact in his possession. However, its secrets remain locked within itself. He and his Chaos Space Marines travel to the ice moon called Perdus Skylla. The moon is being evacuated of it Imperial people. Three days is estimated before the xenos fleet makes planetfall. The Imperials cannot evacuate all in time, but as many people as possible are to be rescued before the dreaded command, Exterminatus, is ordered. Somewhere on Perdus Skylla is an Adeptus Mechanicus with eight hundred years of knowledge hidden within her mind, knowledge that Marduk requires to unlock the artefact's dark powers.

As Marduk and his brethren search the moon, the Dark Apostle must keep wary eyes upon Kol Badar, the Host's Coryphaus, who hates Marduk with every bit of his black soul. Marduk had killed Kol Badar's blood brother and he refuses to rest until Marduk is made to pay for it.

All does not go well on Perdus Skylla for anyone. Their Imperial enemies not only deal with a timely evacuation, but also with the dark eldar who are already on the moon claiming bodies and souls. The traitor marines will not only have to find their target, but also get themselves and the gained knowledge through Eldar and Imperial forces before the xenos fleet arrives and the moon is destroyed.

***** FIVE STARS! Though this is a sequel, you do not have to read Dark Apostle in order to fully understand and enjoy this story. This book begins and ends with one mission involving Marduk and his traitor marines. I found myself totally enthralled with Burias-Drak'shal, the Icon Bearer who is daemon possessed. I would very much like to read more about that character. I can only hope the author, Anthony Reynolds, is sitting at his computer, within his darkened cave, and creating another Marduk novel.

From beginning to end readers will overload on battles and dark mayhem. There are no pauses in the action and no time for you to catch your breath as you are swept from one bloody scene to the next. A terrific addition to the darker side of the W40K universe. *****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

this story is pretty good. the writing is cliche in its use of typical warhammer descriptors. enough about patrician's features and cloying this and that. i swear i saw a single sentence with two uses of the word "cloying" in it! enough with the gruesome details of evisceration and the myriad of ways a skull can get crushed. all the gore seems forced, like filler to take up empty pages. i would guess that a different editor tackled this book. the first book was well done, this one not so much. the story was pretty good though. there was too much going on and some of the story was lacking, under-developed. the 'nid invasion was nothing more than a ticking clock's time restraints on the narrative. there was some spacehulk type action that brought back pleasant board game memories though. this book could have used the polish of a good editor and it would have cleaned up very nicely.

Anthony Reynolds does a fantastic job of portraying the post-heresy Word Bearers. I am not going to lie, after reading the first batch of Horus Heresy books (up to The Thousand Sons), I really hated the Word Bearers. But after reading this book, and its counterparts, I now bear a grudging respect for the Word Bearers.

I am not a very good "reviewer", but I deigned it fit to say something about this book. That is how much I enjoyed it.

I have to say I'm extremely impressed with this author. It's exceedingly hard to write a book on the bad guys point of view in the Warhammer universe, with most of the others I've read being lackluster. This trilogy just nails it. The bad guys are bad and there's all the demons and evil stuff that you'd expect, but they're also rational and their actions make sense.

In this surprisingly hard to find volume of the story of Marduk, we forgo the huge battles of the first book for a large and varied number of small battles. Marduk has his prize from the first book, but now he needs to know how to use it. His quest takes him to several worlds, the final stop being a moon that is being attacked by Tyrannids. So he has to fight his way in to the planetary defense force and those evil space bugs with only a handful of warriors who could slip past the imperium defensively protecting the world. If that weren't enough dark Elgar slave traders have set up shop on the planet. Between the first and second book you covered nearly every major race.

Instead of the great sub story about the guy being turned over to chaos from the first book, the little sub plot in this book is about survivors trying to get off planet before the attack comes. I won't give away the ending, but I found the final bit be a nice way to end that subplot. There are a couple of other minor subplots including a smuggler and the dark Eldar themselves, but the vast majority of the book is dedicated to the Chaos space Marines.

I read these books out of sequence, reading the third book first. I'd highly suggest any role of these books to anybody who likes Warhammer. I'm hoping someday the release Omnibus so that people missed out on this book will get a chance to buy it. I looked all over to find a copy of it, was able to find only one place that had it for less than $30 used. It's a great book, but not that great. Anyway, thoroughly enjoyed it and almost sad just finished it it was so fun. I may end up reading the whole trilogy again.

The second in the Word Bearers series, Anthony Reynolds gives another tale of the evil that the Chaos Marines live. From their casual extermination of innocent humans whose only fault is being born into the Imperium of Man, to the unending pursuit of the means to harm or otherwise overthrow that Imperium and advance the efforts of the demon powers of the Warp, the Word Bearers continue to presecute their war against the Emperor many millenia after the events of the great Heresy (which readers even now can get a fantastic background in through the Black Library's Horus Heresy series, including meeting some of the characters in this series long before this book takes place).

Having killed his master, Marduk seeks to ascend to the station of Dark Apostle for himself in his master's place. Facing dissent from within in the form of Jarulek's most loyal servant in the Word Bearers, the Terminator Kol Badar, as well as the challenges of keeping in line two minions who are inhabited by demons, Marduk leads his fellow Word Bearers on a quest to recover information on how to unlock an alien artifact of great power. Proceeding much like a linear quest video game, the Word Bearers go to one place, find a clue to head to another, which leads to another, and so on. When they finally arrive at their goal, they have encountered a great number of the various factions present in the 40k game universe. From tyranids/genestealers to Imperial Guard to Imperial Navy to Dark Eldar to human mercenaries to unarmed civilians, Reynolds throws just about everything into the mix. From the obvious foreshadowing of the spread of the genestealer infection via an infected person seeking to escape the system being assailed by the tyranid hive fleet to the battles between somewhat evenly-matched eldar and chaos marines, Reynolds takes a few hundred pages to get through the long flashback that is the bulk of the book to the point where the prologue is once again the current time. The best part of the book for me is the dedication the Word Bearers have to one another, mostly, and their self-sacrifice to save their brethren. From lamenting the losses that cannot be replaced to the disgust they feel at one of their own being infected by the genestealers and needing to be "dealt with" there is a strange mix of evil and honor that is actually a joy to read. Also, as a sequel, this book does a fantastic job of standing on its own, never making references to the first in the series without giving a good explanation to keep the reader properly apprised without forcing one to go back and read the first book.

The problems lie in the fixation on certain words and turns of phrase that find them really overused, as noted by some of the other reviewers. Compounded with the linear (here, then there, then there...) nature of the story makes the read not the best in the Black Library. Also, there are no good guys, aside from an admiral whose final action is to murder a few million innocent people. Still, this is a good look into the machinations of the Word Bearers. So, while it's not the best in the 40k universe, it's far from the worst.

I am the type of person that has to read "every" book in a setting. I've read every Star Wars, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance book, and am now trying to read every Warhammer 40k book. The reason why I mention this is because I've read many fantastic Warhammer 40k books, including the Eisenhorn novels, Grey Knight, Gunheads, Horus Heresy, Space Wolves Omnibus, Storm of Iron, etc...and I would definitely include this novel in my list of Top 3 best 40k novels. I was actually shocked when I came to Amazon to see this didn't have a 4 1/2 or 5 star average. The writing was superb, the plot was ridiculously entertaining, I learned things about 40k I didn't even know about, such as many things about the Dark Eldar, and even felt an emotional attachment towards Chaos characters, a connection I've never had before. At 2 points in this novel I literally had a tear in my eye, but can't mention them due to spoilers. If you are a fan of Warhammer 40k, I would definitely include this trilogy *Dark Apostle, Dark Disciple, and Dark Creed* in my must-read list, you will not be disappointed.

This is the second in the Word Bearers series of books told from the villain's point of view as with Dark Apostle, Lord of the Night, and Storm of Iron. WH 40k books are one of the few series of books that tell stories from the "bad guys" perspective. This book does not disappoint with great action, characters, and plot. I stopped playing the tabletop game a long time ago, but the novels and comics are some of the absolute best the sci-fi world has to offer. I look forward to Anthony Reynolds' future forays into the WH40K universe.Dark Apostle (Warhammer 40,000 Novels)Storm of Iron (Warhammer 40,000 Novel) Lord of the Night (Warhammer 40,000)