Salamander; Book Review

I just finished Salamander by Nick Kyme and I am happy to report that it was a pretty good book. I have to give credit to Mr. Kyme for bringing a fresh face to the adeptus astartes which can be a rather difficult task to accomplish. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the Slamanders s a chapter they re probably the friendliest to regular humans. Unlike other chapters that reside in huge fortresses that seclude them from a planets populace the Salamanders live among them and have a larger appreciation for human strengths and weaknesses than any other chapter. They have black skin and red eyes which makes them one of the last things I would want to see in a dark alley. Their favored weaponry is anything that has a flame attached to it and they enjoy making the weapons they wield super fancy in the free time they have. As with any book review of mine expect spoilers to be there so if you have been looking at this book and have been waiting for a stranger to recommend it to you then you can go pick it up now since it is worth the $8.99 price tag.

Into the fires of battle! Unto the anvil of war!

As with most books published by Black Library this one starts with death, not just anyones death though, it is a Captains death. The death of Captain Kadai has a tremendous impact on every main character in the story. He was well beloved by his company and his death nearly destroys the third company as an effective fighting force because everyone blames someone else and themselves for his death. Previously the companies champion, brother-N'keln gets promoted to the rank of captain which is not widely supported and one sergeant named Tsu'gan openly opposes the promotion because he seeks the rank of captain himself. (Personally I would have loved to see N'keln beat the hell out of the dissenters and put them in their place. He was the companies champion, I'm sure he could have slapped the other guys around no problem.) One of the big weaknesses of this book is that past events are not explained very well such as why everyone loved Kadai and why nobody has faith in N'Keln. As a reader I can take a leap of faith and assume that Kadai was a charismatic leader that cut down his foes like a scythe through wheat but it is hard to give any of the other characters credit for not trusting N'Keln. It just made me cheer for N'keln any time he did something good which was more often than not.

As a whole I thought the charcters were well thought out even if their reasons for doing things was not. It is hard to get a unique composition of characters in a story since there is only so many that can be done thanks to the restrictions a codex abiding chapter has on it. What you get in this story is two sergeants who hate eachother and are about as different in personalities as one could expect one being a latent psyker and the other a self mutalating emotional mess, a librarian, xenos hating chaplain, Terminator sergeant aka Preator, grief stricken apothecary, battle-brother Iagon akaLijah Cuu in power armor, and Ba'ken aka the jolly green giant. This eclectic group gives the reader a story that is not your run of the mill run and gun tale of space marines killing everything while bullets bounce off them. This story is one that is clearly character driven which sadly hampers the book because none of the characters are really ever put is a scene where I am worried for their life. There is a scene where it is less than 100 marines hudeled in a little fortress against tens of thousands of orks, not once was I worried that they would lose.

For better or worse combat scenes are really where Black Library books are judged for me. After all it is the 41st millennium where there is only war. I found the combat to be slightly lacking. Most fighting scenes took the perspective of someone watching the battle, the reader is told what squad is doing what, Preator and his Fire Drake (bad asses) terminator buddies bashing orks by the hundreds, but rarely did it go to a one on one view and put the reader in power armor and fight the good fight. The tactics and strategies employed were all sound and made sense which was nice since nothing takes me out of a story like a bad battle plan created by someone who exists only to prosecute the wars of the Emperor.

At the end of the story Nick Kyme did a really good job making me want to read the second book. Sergeant Da'kir gets taken to the librarium thanks to his latent psychic abilities, Tsu'gan the self mutilator gets promoted to the Fire Drakes leaving Iagon behind which hopefully means he will get his head on straight without that guy whispering his creepy things in his ear. N'keln dies (damn it!) and a decent guy replaces him, but really the third company is now out of characters I care about since the ones that I found interesting are moving on to bigger, better, and far more interesting things.

Overall I would give this book a 7.7 because it was just a good book, nothing made it stand out other than a bit of unique quality that the Salamaders themselves bring to the table and some pretty awesome Chaplain quotes. I would compare it to Lord of the Rings (movie version), lots of walking and nice dialogue with epic combat scenes thrown in for good effect except the combat scenes in this book were not nearly as good. I will be expecting a lot form book number two is this trilogy which is either Fire Drake or Tome of Fire. Thanks for reading and have a Vulkan blessed day!