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Steve Lyons: Dead Men Walking (Black Library) 4 stars

When the Necrons rise, a mining planet descends into a cauldron of war and the …

Dead Men Walking review

3 stars

Dead Men Walking is another Imperial Guard novel, this one focusing on the Death Korps of Krieg in a conflict with the Necrons. The book makes the interesting decision to not actually have any Death Korps pov characters, instead having a handful of characters around them. In my opinion this is a good way of handling them, as the Death Korps have always been displayed as somewhat emotionless, and purely military minded, so seeing relatively normal peoples perspectives helps show that. The characters we do get to see through are alright, theres the Commissar that I liked, a citizen being trained by the Death Korps to be a PDF trooper, and his missing girlfriend, the planetary governors daughter. The daughter doesn’t really interact with the Death Korps, instead seeing the Necrons and how people react to their world being a tomb world. Her plot is ok, its got heretics worshiping the Necrons which is interesting I guess. The Necrons feel a bit like they’re portrayed as monsters in a horror novel which isn’t done perfectly, but it does make them different to just generic Orks like we had in other novels. I like how the Death Korps are portrayed as well, just as one would probably expect if they know anything about them. On the whole though, the novel does do different things, which is nice, the characters are alright to read, and I liked the portrayal of the two main forces of the book. Its a pretty decent book, and if you’re interested in the Death Korps of Krieg or Necrons you might like it too.