I had heard horror stories about Goto's writing on various Warhammer sites and while this one was not as bad as some of his other books apparently are, it still wasn't great. One of the main problem was there were a lot of awkwardly worded sentences that made me wonder if any proof reading was done on the book. In addition Gato seems to have taken some liberty's with the sources materiel which I normally don't have a problem with but in this case the liberty's seem to be due Gato not fully reading the source material (Space Marines don't have multi lassers, hellfire shells are not standard equipment, running out of a superior firing position so a sgt. can go to close combat with the enemy is not a standard Space Marine tactic, there are no arachnid 8 legged Tyranid ever created for the game ect.) I could probably go on but then i would have to go back through the book. The characters were stereotypical to the point of being hackneyed and the end itself was anticlimactic. The one think i did like about the book was the use of the Mantis Warriors chapter that i think up till this book had only been mentioned in the rule books as it was nice to see relatively unknown Space marine chapter given some screen time rather the the usual suspects such as the blood angles, black templars, or ultramarines. In the end the book could have been bumped up to merely average if Gato had done his homework and the editors at the black library had done their job. ( )