This review lacks a clever title ... the beginning of a pattern, mayhaps?

By Alex H.

Damocles is a series of short stories set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It's about the Space Marines of several different chapters, including the White Scars, Raven Guard, Dark Hunters, Ultramarines, and Jade Dragons fighting alongside each other as they battle against the Tau Empire for control of the star system. The stories are good because they all flow together really well, especially the first and last ones, which use the same White Scars characters but at the start and either the middle or end of the deployment of Astartes, for it's not mentioned.

The flow of the book is wonderful, for everything is in order and it's easy to tell who's doing what and at what time, and the descriptions are wonderful and let you know what everything is. For the second story, it's told by a traitor trying to prove his loyalty to the Tau Empire, and he keeps talking to the people outside, giving little notes about how they shouldn't take offense to things, which helps you get a feel for who he is.

The problem with the stories however is that there's too many characters and chapters at a time, with the five I mentioned it's hard to keep track of who's who, not to mention that some have similar sounding names. It also doesn't help that the chapters are swapping around so much, it's hard to figure out who's from where and what's actually there. For the story with the Jade Dragons and the Ultramarines, I didn't realize they were two separate Space Marine chapters until I was almost done with the story.

Overall, I would recommend this book for anyone that likes Warhammer 40k and the Space Marines or Tau armies. If you're not a fan of Warhammer 40k, some things may not mean as much to you as they would to someone like me. For instance, every mention to a "Chapter" in this book review is referencing the space marine armies that were deployed, not chapters like those you would see in a book. That doesn't mean you shouldn't read it, just that it might be harder for you to understand it. If you feel the need to find out what something is, like an Imperial Knight, google it and put "Lexicanum" at the end, because Lexicanum is a good website for finding this information out.