Customer Reviews

Ice Guard (Warhammer 40,000 Novels: Imperial Guard)

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

 

 

The world has been lost. The order to withdraw has been given. In forty-eight hours Cressido will be virus-bombed from orbit, completely sterilized. Colonel Stanislav Steele of the Valhallan Ice Warriors has one last task to perform. Steele handpicks a squad of nine to go with him on a stealth mission. Their task is to find and rescue a stranded Imperial confessor. The chrono is already ticking.

The group must quickly learn to trust in themselves, as well as, each other as they follow Colonel Steele through mutants, Traitor Space Marines, and other obstacles.

**** As with most novels in the Imperial Guard series, this story focuses on just one objective rather than the wider mission of evacuating all possible people and the cleansing of the planet. Author Steve Lyons has a way of putting a lot of action in as few pages as needed. This means readers will never fear becoming bored and end up skimming paragraphs. Lots of good reading within these pages! ****

Reviewed by Detra Fitch of Huntress Reviews.

The story line does not add or describe anything new that other novels have not already covered. Even the use of the Valhallen Imperial Guards unit theme is not very strongly explored. It is not a "bad" novel, it just follows a very predictable story line and does not take the story line further by fully developing the characters and the unit. Take away the word "Valhallen" and replace it with any other Guard unit in the WH40K universe and would still read the same. It did not engage me as a reader as much and I did not enjoy it as much as novels from Dan Abnett.

Nice to read to pass the time but not my first pick, there are better ones.

Steve Lyons delivers another solid and action packed story in the Warhammer 40k universe. A commando team is pieced together to rescue a captured religious leader, held by the Chaos forces invading the planet.

The story has the main plot of attempting the rescue while fighting the forces of Chaos. The more subtle theme is what determines if a person is a loyal servant to the Imperium of Man? Is it one's outward physical appearance or one's loyalty and faith?

The author creates characters that the reader quickly identifies with and as the mission and dangers increase, not all will survive. The action is vivid, battles quick, and the book an enjoyable story.

The book entails another setting for the Imperial Guard. Overall it was a nice read that does portray the struggle of the Imperial Guard well.

For all the Warhammer 40K fans it should be enjoyable.

I agree with other reviewers that this book could have been any Imperial Guard unit and gave no reason why it had to be the Valhallan's other than that the planet was getting colder. But it was an entertaining book nonetheless. The action sequences are pretty engaging but character development is lacking, I had to go back to the first 2 chapters several times to figure out which character was which. It's your typical war movie (think Dirty Dozen) turned novel where just a single unit storms the castle to rescue the princess (or in this case a member of the ecclesiarch). And without giving to much away the Imperial Guardsmen are more like space marines in that they are damn near impossible to kill except for at random times when you least expect it and it almost seems unnecessary to knock off a character.