Desert Raiders review
4 stars
Desert Raiders is the third book in the Hammer of the Emperor, and the fourth book from the Astra Militarum series, because they put them in the omnibus backwards for some reason. I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Of course we follow the Tallarn Desert Raiders, and they are actually quite an interesting Regiment. Unsurprisingly they are very Arab inspired, and with that at first I was worried about this being some British guy writing some poorly understood planet of hats group. Turns out hough, Soulban is Arabian, and the depiction of different Tallarn tribes being made to work together creates some interesting lore and conflict. We have a Cadian commissar, which once again scared me because I did not want to read about some white mans burden character showing the savages how to work together, but again, that didn’t happen. The commisar, Rezail has and adjutant Tyrell, who …
Desert Raiders is the third book in the Hammer of the Emperor, and the fourth book from the Astra Militarum series, because they put them in the omnibus backwards for some reason. I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Of course we follow the Tallarn Desert Raiders, and they are actually quite an interesting Regiment. Unsurprisingly they are very Arab inspired, and with that at first I was worried about this being some British guy writing some poorly understood planet of hats group. Turns out hough, Soulban is Arabian, and the depiction of different Tallarn tribes being made to work together creates some interesting lore and conflict. We have a Cadian commissar, which once again scared me because I did not want to read about some white mans burden character showing the savages how to work together, but again, that didn’t happen. The commisar, Rezail has and adjutant Tyrell, who is from a third tribe that tries to stop the larger two from killing each other constantly, and he actually explains to Rezail all of the issues and is the one to deal with it. This novel, we again get a different enemy faction, this time its the Tyranids. They’re a decent enough enemy for our characters, I don’t have any complaints about them. They are suitably grimdark, and they aren’t watered down to be an easy foe. My biggest issue with the book is that there is maybe a bit too much fighting. I get it, it’s warhammer, but I do like to have some downtime but that might just be me. On the whole, this was a pretty good book. As always, I love seeing factions being expanded upon to be less one note. I do really like the lore and details about the Tallarn now, and they are probably one of my favourite regiments. They were treated the way I wish every regiment was in this series, and it makes it stand out amongst the rest of these stories.