Dark Vengence: The Novel - Review

Over the past two days I’ve read this book and whilst everyone else is out there giving their opinions on the Hellbrute figure and how best to paint the bone of the Deathwing I thought I’d give a quick review of Dark Vengence: The Novel, the Black Library’s offering for the new edition.



Hard bound, as looking at the Chaos Space Marine codex will be the way of things during 6th edition, and penned by CZ Dunn (also known as an editor by the name of Christian Dunn). The story is clearly intended to be accessible to younger readers, with a large spaced typeface that barely fill up the 126 pages and short attention capturing chapters. This is not said as a complaint, but is worth noting so as people know what to expect.

In fact the short chapter style is probably the books greatest asset, as it provides the perfect opportunity for a very broad range of viewpoints to be explored in so few words. In greater and lesser amounts we get some story from the points of view of seven Dark Angels, two Chaos Space marines and two Chaos Cultist Leaders. The last two are only single chapters that go into depth on the characters backgrounds, detailing how they came to be fighting alongside the Crimson Slaughter Chaos Space Marines and tying them into the box set figures nicely.

It’s the story told through the Marines views that drive the narrative forwards. Between the White Dwarf (Sept. ‘12 – 393) and the contents of the box the outline of the story and some salient details about the characters are fairly well known, and I won’t spoil it all any further. Suffice to say that the story is simple and fast paced.

The story’s best part in my opinion were the flash back scenes that detailed what characters had been up to before their arrival at Banes Landing, the books setting. The tale of Sergent Arion’s good fortune in the Fourth Company before becoming a member of the Ravenwing or learning some of the details behind Mortis Metalikus’ creation were great parts. I feel also,that Dunn captured the mistrust, secretive and layered ways of the Dark Angels at all levels of the chapter with uncertainty and duplicity being constant in the ways the Dark Angels handle things. However all these flashbacks add to the fact that the central story is brief at best, token at worst. Not the biggest crime for a little add-on to a main product, but at £12rsp it is expensive for what you get.

I’ll give this a 5.5/10. The story was enjoyable though brief and the characters were interesting though underdeveloped individually. The biggest problem I have with the book though is the price, it seems too much for 126 sparse pages to compliment a box set, although if you get a chance to read it the little time you’ll use will not be wasted.