Thursday, May 25, 2017

Book Review: The Last Chancers


The Last Chancers, a Warhammer 40K series of omnibus novels by Gav Thorpe, is in short, The Dirty Dozen--IN SPACE! 

It's a tale about the 13th Penal Legion, or what's left of the unit, told from Lieutenant Kage's point of view.  Who after the first story, turns out to be the team's Ax-Crazy "Maggot"--with latent psychic abilities.  Oh, and who eventually becomes possessed by a daemon.

Since this is about the most notorious of the Imperium's penal legions, the "grim darkness of the far future..." is cranked up to 11.  Also, in each of the three books, the team ends up drearily slogging through the most inhospitable terrain the dystopian galaxy has to offer.

The narrative ends abruptly, when Kage sacrifices himself on their last mission.  So we don't know what happens immediately afterwards.

The Last Chancers has an average 4.1 out of 5-star rating on Amazon.com.

But I'm only going to give it a subjective 3-star rating, because there isn't a single character in any of the stories I could identify with.  If there was anyone I came close to liking, they either showed their truly depraved colors later in the story, or died a horrible death.  More often than not--both. 

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