Titanicus [Paperback]

I never played the tabletop Warhammer 40k Game. I got turned on to it when my brother-in-law gave me the "Dawn of War" video game back in 2006. I enjoyed the game and then saw "Brothers of the Snake" in the new Sci-Fi section of the bookstore a few years ago. I purchased it and got hooked. Since then, I've consumed the Ultramarine Omnibus, all of the Horus heresey novels and all of the Gaunts Ghosts novels.

I have three reservations about this novel that prevent me from giving it five stars. I've listed the reservations as least concerning to most concerning.

First, Dan Abnett's books always tend to get the action going pretty quickly (within first 30 or 40 pages) and the action stays at a high pace until literally the last page of the book. Unfortunately, this sometimes makes the end of his books feel rushed. I had that feeling in Titanicus as well. During the book there were many good and detailed descriptions of Titan versus Titan combat. However, near the end of the book, there is an epic battle against an enemy force of over sixty titans. This "historic" battle is described almost at a high summary level over the course of just two or three pages. I would have liked some more "blow by blow" coverages of this battle.

Second, Dan Abnett likes to juggle alot of characters in his books. This has worked well in the Gaunts Ghosts novels mainly because there were a few characters in the initial books and characters were slowly added over the series. The reader to a new Gaunts Ghosts novel is already familiar with most of the characters. In Titanicus, there are alot of characters, all of whom are new to the reader. It was alot of characters to try to keep track of in 400 pages and I sometimes found myself asking "Now who's this guy again???"

Third, and most annoying point: Dan Abnett will often use terms or phrases that he doens't define. He did this in "Legion" as well, but would often embed the definition later in the book. In many cases, he used terms that were never defined anywhere in the book. I found myself wondering "What is a noosphere?" "What is the manifold?" "Which one is bigger, a warhound or a warlord titan?" "What is a skitarri?" "What's the MRU?" Since Titanicus deals with the Mechanicum, there are alot of technical terms and processes, none of which are really described. I found this to be very distracting. Maybe someone with experience with the tabletop game or the background material might have a better understanding of these terms and this might not be such of an issue to them.

If someone were to ask me about this book, I would say to read Dan Abnett's other books first. I would not recommend this book as a first read for someone new to the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

[Disclaimer: I am prepared to receive an Eye of Terror's worth of spam and malign threats from the BL "true believers," but I want to be honest in my review in spite of the inherent danger that comes with that honesty.]

Titanicus was a robust and filling read with some interesting twists that ultimately satisfied, but it was not Mr. Abnett's most engaging or clever book.

It is not a bad book; it just is not the "must read" kind of book that I have come to expect from Mr. Abnett.

One of the things that has brought me back to the Black Library time and time again are the snippets of insights into the universe of Warhammer 40,000.

Titanicus reads more like a juvenille than most of Mr. Abnett's books. The plot is straight-forward, and the characters are largely flat compared to most of his books.

It might be a timing issue. Titanicus comes on the tail of the Horus heresy books in which many secrets of the WH 40K universe were revealed.

There is nothing new in Titanicus. It is about Titans, but Mechanicus covered that angle a few years back. It is about some interesting bits of mis-direction and plots within plots, but Eisenhorn covered that niche up nicely a few years back. And so on ...

I read the book from cover to cover, but it is not a book that I read in one sitting, nor would I read it again as I often have with other tomes from the BL.

In the end Titanicus is satisfying, but unspectacular.

In service,

Rich
[...]

Titanicus takes a break from the normal lines of battle that make up the wealth of 40k fiction. This story follows Legio Invictus, a Titan Legion thats deployed to Orestus, a vital forge world supporting the Sabbat Crusade (which is pretty much Abnetts Dark Tower at this point) to help defend the planet from a sudden incursion of Chaos Titans and skitarii. This helps to illustrate the dichotomy between Imperial nd Mechanicus, as one seems to have all the power in the universe, and the other is essentially at the mercy of that power.

The storyline fatlers slightly by trying to branch together two separate plotlines, involving a stray squad of auxillary PDF with the Titan Legion engagements. While I'm a fan of ground pounders, and Abnett can write that incredibly well, it was hard to hold the squad members in mind, and I kept losing track of who was doing what why, and who was augmeted and who wasn't. The Titan battles are incredibly well written, and the technology at the disposal of the Mechanicus was both impressive and disheartening, in that its knowledge lost that can't be regained.

The other sideplot, which ties nicely to the recently released HH novels was also a good side tag, that helped to round out the ending, and allowed the Mechanicus characters to display more than their normal level of humanity, although it came dangerously close to tossing GW's holy status quo out the window.

All told, the book is great, and only suffered from one very weak thread. I'd happily heard another installment of Titan warfare, but it would probably start to bleed to Mechwarrior at that point. The God Machines don't work well with others, either. Heres hoping the manage to work it into future HH novels as they did here.