SYNOPSIS: Legend tells of an expedition past the Halo Scar, led by a radical Magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus in search of a mysterious technological artifact. Now, thousands of years later, an ambitious and desperate Magos leads an Explorator fleet into the dangers of wilderness space in pursuit of the lost expedition.

MY RATING:

MY REVIEW
PROS:  From the solid prose to the beautiful descriptions, the solid and varied cast of characters to the wonderment of the expedition, this book brings an entirely new flavor to the franchise.
CONS: I wanted more. I wanted a lot more, and this book was just a sample of what is to come.
VERDICT: This is McNeill’s best novel since Storm of Iron and Dead Sky, Black Sun. Not only that but this is also a refreshing change of pace for the Warhammer 40,000 universe.

Graham McNeill is a member of what I would consider the Black Library, Old Guard. This is a man who has been writing 40K fiction since I started reading it, a man who was able to turn my distaste for the Ultramarines into a glowing admiration. He is also the man responsible for one of the best pieces of 40K fiction available, Storm of Iron, perhaps one of the coolest sieges I have ever had the pleasure to read about. Unfortunately some of McNeill’s more recent novels have been less worthy. Though his latest Horus Heresy novel, The Outcast Dead, started out with promise, it faltered in execution. I am happy to say that Priests of Mars is everything I hoped it would be and more. This is McNeill writing at his best, and when that happens everyone wins.

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There’s an overwhelming selection of appealing titles to choose from when it comes to reading science fiction, fantasy and horror books. Yet some titles float to the top of the pile, making them more immediate candidates for the next books you’ll read.

Read on to see the tasty selections of this week’s panelists…

Art the top of my stack is Islington Crocodiles, the highly praised short fiction collection by the UK’s Paul Meloy. Intro by is by Graham Joyce. Really looking forward to that.

Next up: Strange Forces – The Stories of Leopoldo Lugones, a collection of fantastical stories from an Argentine writer released in 1906. Lugones is very well known in Latin America, almost unheard of here. He’s supposed to have been an eccentric a la Lovecraft and killed himself over a woman 30 years his junior by drinking a mixture of whiskey and cyanide.

Horacio Quiroga is a classic Latin American writer of extremely dark stories, some of which are included in The Decapitated Chicken and Other Stories. A disciple of Poe, he lived a tormented life that included the suicide of one wife and desertion by his wife and child while enduring his final illness. Many of his stories are set in the jungle where much of his life was spent. Sounds like my kind of guy.

Lucy Snyder’s Spellbent — I’m not sure what this one is, a YA I guess, but it sounds like a blast. About hell coming to Ohio. Having played in a lot of Ohio’s armpit bars, I can relate.

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Hey, Warhammer 40K fans…here’s a brand new book trailer for The Horus Heresy Books A Thousand Sons by Graham McNeill and Prospero Burns by Dan Abnett, two upcoming Warhammer 40K books from Black Library.

• The Teeming Brain interviews Stephen Jones (The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror).
• Thanks to this helpful post at The Black Library, I’ve added the following authors to the list of sf/f authors who blog:
  • Graham McNeill
  • James Swallow
  • Aaron Dembski-Bowden
  • Nick Kyme
  • Nathan Long
  • Steve Parker
  • Richard Williams
  • Clint Werner
  • Chris Wraight
• Free Sample: Marooned notes that PS Publishing has posted the first 17 (PDF) pages of Gilbert and Edgar on Mars, a forthcoming novella written by British science fiction author Eric Brown.
• URL Update: Grasping for the Wind.
• @Suvudu: The Trouble with Zombies.
• SCI FI Wire lists 6 most awesome Stephen King horror films (plus 3 that sucked).