# Hey, the next batch of warhammer ebooks is up



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

Available over a week early from the announced Friday 23rd date, much to my suprise. 
Downloaded them all.

Death of Integrity
http://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/en-the-death-of-integrity.html

Lords of Mars (Sequel to Priests of Mars)
http://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/en-lords-of-mars-hardback.html

Orion: Tears of Isha (Sequel to Orion: Vaults of Winter)
http://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/en-orion-the-tears-of-isha.html


----------



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

Im about halfway through Death of Integrity and it paints a quite intriguing picture of both the Novamarines and the Blood Drinkers. As much as the Novamarines thinks themselves alike the Ultramarines, their soul is quite startlingly different. And for the Blood Drinkers, they may be one of the most successful chapters spawned from the Blood Angels in dealing with the Flaw, being such a visceral embodiment of their given chapter name, painted in its full and terrible sanguine detail.

Guy Haley impresses yet again and demonstrating he handles space marines just as well as the Imperial Guard.


----------



## Khyzer (Dec 22, 2012)

Brother Lucian said:


> Im about halfway through Death of Integrity and it paints a quite intriguing picture of both the Novamarines and the Blood Drinkers. As much as the Novamarines thinks themselves alike the Ultramarines, their soul is quite startlingly different. And for the Blood Drinkers, they may be one of the most successful chapters spawned from the Blood Angels in dealing with the Flaw, being such a visceral embodiment of their given chapter name, painted in its full and terrible sanguine detail.
> 
> Guy Haley impresses yet again and demonstrating he handles space marines just as well as the Imperial Guard.


Phew... So glad this is shaping up to be a good book. The Space Marine Battle books really need a good win after _Death of Antagonis_. I much prefer the Battle books that explore successor chapters over well established ones. The Excoriators were such a breath of fresh air to read about.


----------



## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

Khyzer said:


> Phew... So glad this is shaping up to be a good book. The Space Marine Battle books really need a good win after _Death of Antagonis_. I much prefer the Battle books that explore successor chapters over well established ones. The Excoriators were such a breath of fresh air to read about.


Same here, it's much more interesting to read about a newly fleshed out Chapter like the Excoriators or the Blood Drinkers than it is about the Blood Angels or the Ultramarines, at least in my opinion.

Hopefully this early ebook release means the physical copies will be released early, my copy of _The Death of Integrity_ will arrive and I can get reading. My _Lords of Mars_ copy will take longer but it'll be worth the wait, I hope.


LotN


----------



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

I am 86% through DoI, and it has taken some quite unexpected twists and turns. The Blood Drinkers have a truly terrible secret to them. I sure recognized a certain character appearing!


Edit: Finished DoI, a quite worthy read. Puts a few obscure lore threads into the light in the finale. But it will be interesting to see what the future holds for the Blood Drinkers in particular, given the ending and the earlier twist mentioned. I forgot noting the book is set during M39, 2000 years from the present.


----------



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

Finished Lords of Mars. I found it below average. Sure Priests of Mars was interesting, but Lords of Mars moves at a glacial pace plotwise. So MUCH filler and cliffhangering for book 3 in the series. When I had finished book 1, I honestly thought the big things would be comming in the follow up, especially as I thought it was a 2 book series. This series is an example of truly unneeded padding to make a full trillogy of books.

Edit: I came to wonder if the early release of this batch of ebooks was timed to coincide with the imminent release of the Space hulk remake? Sure its Blood Angels in the game, but the depictions of moving through a Space Hulk in Death of Integrity really had me psyched up for the game itself. Just 1 hour to unlock.


----------



## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

Brother Lucian said:


> Finished Lords of Mars. I found it below average. Sure Priests of Mars was interesting, but Lords of Mars moves at a glacial pace plotwise. So MUCH filler and cliffhangering for book 3 in the series. When I had finished book 1, I honestly thought the big things would be comming in the follow up, especially as I thought it was a 2 book series. This series is an example of truly unneeded padding to make a full trillogy of books.


There's a third book?! I thought it was a duology. Now I have to wait even longer to find out how this story ends, damnation.


LotN


----------



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

Lord of the Night said:


> There's a third book?! I thought it was a duology. Now I have to wait even longer to find out how this story ends, damnation.
> 
> 
> LotN


The third one is called Gods of Mars.
Yeah, I thought it was a duology too.


----------



## Khorne's Fist (Jul 18, 2008)

Brother Lucian said:


> Finished Lords of Mars. I found it below average...


I'm almost finished _Priests of Mars_, so the release of LoM was great timing as far as I was concerned as I'm really enjoying the switch from bolter porn. I feel McNeill has a great insight into the AdMech. You have dimmed my enthusiasm for it somewhat though.


----------



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

Khorne's Fist said:


> I'm almost finished _Priests of Mars_, so the release of LoM was great timing as far as I was concerned as I'm really enjoying the switch from bolter porn. I feel McNeill has a great insight into the AdMech. You have dimmed my enthusiasm for it somewhat though.


Well, I look forward to hear your oppinion on it. It wasnt a truly bad book, just as already stated, plot moving too slowly and being excessively padded to fill out a whole book.


----------



## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

Brother Lucian said:


> The third one is called Gods of Mars. Yeah, I thought it was a duology too.


Ha! Called it, thought about it last night and guessed that _Gods of Mars_ would be the title.


LotN


----------



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

Finished Orion: Tears of Isha. I found it a much better mid trillogy book than Lords of Mars. The plot spinning along and thickening, evolving characters and setting the stage for the final book. Orion: Court of Beasts. I never had the same feeling of glacially slow plot progression and feeling of padding like with LoM, a good read which have me eagerly waiting for the final book.


----------



## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

Brother Lucian said:


> Edit: Finished DoI, a quite worthy read. Puts a few obscure lore threads into the light in the finale. But it will be interesting to see what the future holds for the Blood Drinkers in particular, given the ending and the earlier twist mentioned. I forgot noting the book is set during M39, 2000 years from the present.


Finished it myself a few minutes ago. I 100% agree, seeing what the Blood Drinkers secret was and the secret behind even that secret was shocking. I think that the special guest, whose identity is pretty obvious and quite awesome, is correct and that one day that "Yes" will come. Or maybe not, maybe the will of the Blood Drinkers is strong enough that all he will ever get is "No".

And the treasure at the heart of the Space Hulk, now that was fantastic. And surprising as hell, I really didn't think it would be something like that. I honestly thought it would be the blueprints for monomolecular blades or the Stormraven gunship or something like that, not what they actually found. Goddamn, I really loved that scene. Especially what was said to the Magos, that was a withering speech and I personally believe it, every word.


LotN


----------



## Child-of-the-Emperor (Feb 22, 2009)

Lord of the Night said:


> Finished it myself a few minutes ago. I 100% agree, seeing what the Blood Drinkers secret was and the secret behind even that secret was shocking. I think that the special guest, whose identity is pretty obvious and quite awesome, is correct and that one day that "Yes" will come. Or maybe not, maybe the will of the Blood Drinkers is strong enough that all he will ever get is "No".
> 
> And the treasure at the heart of the Space Hulk, now that was fantastic. And surprising as hell, I really didn't think it would be something like that. I honestly thought it would be the blueprints for monomolecular blades or the Stormraven gunship or something like that, not what they actually found. Goddamn, I really loved that scene. Especially what was said to the Magos, that was a withering speech and I personally believe it, every word.
> 
> ...


Fancy giving us some spoilers?


----------



## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

Hehe if you wish.

I'll outline two major spoiler areas.

The Blood Drinkers;



First off the answer is yes. The Blood Drinkers are vampires. They do drink blood, in rather large amounts, in a ritual called the Rite of Holos where they consume gallons of blood from their serfs and the blood of a ritual sacrifice of an unwilling victim, blood given and blood taken to balance the rite. The rite supposedly balances the Flaw and makes it so that very very few marines fall to the Black Rage, some still do but fewer than any other Sanguinius bloodline Chapter. The rite was given to them in M37 by a marine named Holos who climbed Mount Calicium on their homeworld of San Guisiga and was visited by an angel who gave him the secret, or so the story goes.

In actuality what he spoke to was Kairos Fateweaver with whom he made a Daemonic deal. You see this as Chapter Master Caedis falls to the Rage and relives Holos's climb, where he meets Fateweaver who tells him that every marine who has witnessed Holos's climb, 18 so far in the 2000 years since the rite was started, has been given the same offer Caedis is about to get. Swear his soul to Chaos and he will serve Tzeentch, and Fateweaver will cure the Flaw and make them strong. Caedis says no but Fateweaver claims that they can say no all they like, eventually one Blood Drinker will come who will say yes and then they are damned forever. Caedis also learns that the Reclusiarch has always known the truth as Holos confessed it to his Reclusiarch who kept it a secret passed down to each Reclusiarch in the Chapter's history. Caedis manages to calm the Rage and goes after Reclusiarch Mazrael but fails to kill him before he is left behind when the Novamarine and Blood Drinker survivors teleport out of the Hulk.

The epilogue shows an Inquisitor is being dispatched to investigate the Blood Drinkers 2000 years later. The book ends with him realising he will have to travel to San Guisiga.



The Hulk's Treasure;



The Hulk contained plenty of treasures but it's greatest treasure was a Pre-Imperial ship called _The Spirit of Eternity_, which Magos Plosk claims is the brother ship to a rather famous vessel known as _The Blade of Infinity_, and contains data for every single piece of Dark Age technology ever invented. They find the ship, which is immensely advanced and surpasses every Imperial vessel ever created, and also contains an A.I which tells them it's story. It was one of the first warp-capable vessels but was blown off course by the storms in the Age of Strife, and when it returned to a human colony bearing warning of Chaos the crew were taken and tortured to death by humans who feared them as heretics. The Spirit decided then and there it would never serve humanity again and grew to hate them fanatically, it eventually became trapped in the Death of Integrity but used it's engines to make the Hulk emerge at certain planets so that the Genestealer squatters could infect them and draw in the Imperium, who it manipulated into freeing it.

The Spirit was capable of controlling any machine, taking over servitors as it's own, guiding an entire Space Hulk with little effort and even locking down the Terminator armor of the marines on it's bridge. It tricked the Astartes fleets into destroying the Death of Integrity so it could escape, which it did. It claimed that it planned to leave the galaxy and find a new one to ride out the destruction of creation, which it claimed is coming soon. It also told the Tech-Priests that they are nothing more than witch doctors and shamans, that there is no Machine-God and that machines do not have souls and that all of their rituals are meaningless. It hates humanity but ultimately not enough to actually try and exterminate it, it just wants to leave humanity to it's fate at the hands of Chaos. The priests managed to get a bit of STC material but not a lot, the book doesn't say exactly what they got.


Apart from those two areas and some other minor parts the story ends how it says in the 40k compendium. A kill ratio of 53:1 is achieved, both Chapters gain a Strike Cruiser as thanks and the Mechanicus gets some STC material, and the Death of Integrity is destroyed.


LotN


----------



## Chalji (Aug 21, 2013)

Just finished Death of Integrity myself and thought it was brilliant. First half seemed fairly straightforward, but about 3/5 through the book it just takes off and as mentioned previously, ends on an amazing note. The scene at the end with the Spirit of Eternity was just incredible. 

/long time lurker, first post


----------



## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

Started and finished _Lords of Mars_ today; a cracking read from start to end. I must disagree with you Lucian, it did not feel like the book was filler and I felt that it provided a necessary expansion of the story and moved the plot along to where the final book can reasonably start. Also McNeill's descriptions of cosmic phenomina were beautiful.



Poor poor Linya. I liked her, and now I hope Galatea gets disintegrated. Preferably by Vitali and Roboute.

And Lukasz Khol, damn that guy was evil. I suspect we haven't seen the last of him. But if what happened to Ismael should happen to him... oh shudder.



LotN


----------



## Chalji (Aug 21, 2013)

Lord of the Night said:


> Poor poor Linya. I liked her, and now I hope Galatea gets disintegrated. Preferably by Vitali and Roboute.
> 
> And Lukasz Khol, damn that guy was evil. I suspect we haven't seen the last of him. But if what happened to Ismael should happen to him... oh shudder.
> 
> ...


Lords of Mars was great but you know that 

we haven't seen the last of Rasselas X-42. I also think Linya is going to create havoc in Galatea's systems.


----------



## Brother Lucian (Apr 22, 2011)

Lord of the Night said:


> Started and finished _Lords of Mars_ today; a cracking read from start to end. I must disagree with you Lucian, it did not feel like the book was filler and I felt that it provided a necessary expansion of the story and moved the plot along to where the final book can reasonably start. Also McNeill's descriptions of cosmic phenomina were beautiful.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Ill still read and finish the third one, even if I wasnt that impressed with the second book.


----------



## Lord of the Night (Nov 18, 2009)

Chalji said:


> Lords of Mars was great but you know that;
> 
> 
> 
> We haven't seen the last of Rasselas X-42. I also think Linya is going to create havoc in Galatea's systems.


Oh yes definitely on both accounts.



Linya will definitely have an effect on Galatea because he is a gestalt entity, his personality is derived from the combined personalities of all the Magi in his chassis. Whichever mind is the prime has the most effect. I suspect Linya will become the prime mind and begin affecting Galatea's personality, and will ensure his death.



LotN


----------



## Liliedhe (Apr 29, 2012)

Lord of the Night said:


> Oh yes definitely on both accounts.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




Well, maybe Ishmael could help there?


----------

