Title: Kharn: Eater of Worlds
Author: Anthony Reynolds
Published by: Black Library
Publication date: 5th April 2016
Genre: Science Fiction
Pages: 174
Format: eBook
Source: Private Collection

Blurb/Synopsis

The Horus Heresy is over and the Traitor Legions have scattered, fleeing the wrath of a vengeful Imperium. The World Eaters are leaderless, their primarch missing and their greatest hero, Khârn, in a coma. The surviving World Eaters have turned upon themselves, the Butcher’s Nails driving them to ever greater acts of berserk savagery. Poised on the brink of destruction, the Legion needs a leader. It needs Khârn – but will his awakening save them, or doom them entirely?

Review

I read this along with Dave and Spalanz. Thanks for reading this along with me and I hope that in future we can read more together.

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The World Eaters are left reeling and unguided after the Horus Heresy. Angron has vanished and the Legion is a mess because all they want to do is destroy so that they get some peace from the Butcher’s Nails.

I’d like to start my review off with a quote from this book:

Ruokh’s eye twitched. ‘That was a fair fight,’ he growled.
‘It was to first blood,’ said Dreagher.
‘I only hit him once,’ said Ruokh.
‘You decapitated him.’
‘There was a lot of first blood,’ admitted Ruokh.

Kharn: Eater of Worlds, Anthony Reynolds.

I think this perfectly sums up a lot of Space Marines, World Eaters more so.

It feels flat to say I enjoyed this book. It was a decent read, even if the titular character didn’t really enter into the story until about halfway.

However, it seems to be generally lacking in plot. The world Eaters are somewhat lost without someone to guide them. Some believe that someone is Kharn. Some are abhorred by the idea and want to kill him instead. So, there’s infighting and bickering in only the ways that Space Marines infected with nails in their heads can.

On the Battle Cruiser, there are also pit fights between humans. One of the characters involved in this is Skoral, who is also the ship’s only functioning medicae – which just seems like a bad idea waiting to happen, but when did people amongst the World Eaters use their brains!? There are some really cool scenes that involve Skorala, and she’s a pretty bad-ass character. I enjoyed reading about her.

The crux of tension between the World Eaters comes to a violent head which sees Kharn emerging from his coma just in the nick of time to witness a battle between the World Eaters and the Emperor’s children. Throughout the book, there is the dilemma of ‘How do we unite the Legion’ and, Kharn has the answer.

‘Nothing unifies like a war,’ he breathed. Then everyone started shooting.

It\’s a pretty standard Warhammer 40k affair that leaves everything open-ended so that more books can be sold in the future featuring these characters. I have no idea if there are more books with Kharn in? Hopefully there are and they’ll be a more rounded novel than this one, which has a lot of \’rule-of-cool\’ moments, but is very much style over substance. (I still enjoyed it though)