Disclosure: I knew Steve Parker when I lived and worked in Japan in the early 2000s.
I don't know how it happened, but I've found myself immersed in all things Warhammer 40,000. Over the years I've flirted with the universe that Games Workshop has created, but never really dove into the fiction. The closest I came was reading Steve's Rebel Winter around the time it was published. I've played a good number of the video games. I even have a set of the models moldering away in storage, unpainted and unloved. But something drew me into the Black Library recently. I have a collection of the 40K novels in ebook form from a Humble Bundle of years gone by, and I was sorting through the files on my Kindle when Deathwatch scrolled by. On a lark, I decided to open it up and give it a go. That seemed to lead to downloading the video games I have in my Steam library, acquiring a few more, and then proceeding to get a hold some fifty-odd audio books of the Horus Heresy.
I'm neck deep in it now.
This particular book was an easy read. It has a tremendous build up that then picks up speed in rapid-fire chapters as it rockets towards its conclusion. Although I feel like I would have benefitted from having a deeper understanding of more of the lore-that in itself being an herculean task-I never really felt lost. The book is very much a bridge from and to other places in the Black Library, but I feel that's very much by design. The characters are well defined, and the action is blazing hot. If you're at all interested in the sprawling literary venture that these books represent, this is certainly a solid volume to start with.