Within the Medina Corridor, a highly potent relic called The Old Kings has been long lost and forgotten by the native population… but not the Archenemy. As planet after planet fall into the clutches of Chaos, Inquisitor Obodiah Roth is summoned, to unravel the mystery behind the sudden invasion on this seemingly strategic insignificant system. This proves to be a very hard and costly assignment indeed.
The plot is fairly simple, yet it still guards what is going to happen on the next page. Only on rare occasions, were I able to predict what was going to happen later in the book. This makes the book a great read, in my opinion, as you get captivated by slowly solving the next challenge and then the next. Unfortunately it also makes the book last shorter, as you just have to read one more chapter before putting it down.
Being as simple a plot, as it is, it did not impress me in any way regarding the complexity, but I think the good story compensates for this. The amount of references to other novels were minimal, if existing at all, which also goes for explaining the world of Warhammer 40.000. In general you could say that the focus i mainly on the story and action, while the world is used as a background setting and the plot is linear.
The book i written in third person, and it follows either Inquisitor Roth, his henchman the hunter Silverstein or his superior Inquisitor Gurion. The time line between them is mostly parallel, but at times it breaks up and jumps back and forth a bit. This is not used to its full potential, but it still works pretty well.
The character’s actions are described in simple words, but the description of the scenery, clothing and architecture has a very high level of detail. Almost to the point of excess, in my opinion. This puts you in the mood for how the setting would look and feel like, but it also puts a higher focus on lower level of detail on the actions, despite it still being written in a quite acceptable way.
The language is fairly light and easy to read. It has a nice flow, which enables you to read chapter after chapter without threatening to put you to sleep.
In general a good book, which is straightforward to read and quite entertaining. I have a feeling that we haven’t heard the last of Obodiah Roth
