Death World

Collected into the Shield of the Emperor omnibus, Death World is about a Catachan Jungle Fighter and his squad sent on a mission to help fight Orks on a newly declared death world. This is the second book in the omnibus and is accompanied by the short story Better the Devil. We open the novel on Lorenzo, our protagonist complaining about struggling to sleep in space, and excitedly waiting to be deployed on Rogar III, a newly declared Death World. His squad gets sent on a mission to kill Big Green, the Ork’s warboss, and most of the book follows this squad with their Commissar. This squad is 12 men strong, and I feel we don’t have that much time to actually develop them all that much. They are kind of just stereotypical gruff soldiers in the style of those from Predator, and their stereotypical by the books commissar. Lorenzo is obsessed throughout the book with being given a nickname by his comrades for some kind of feat, a Catachan tradition. However sometimes it gets annoying and repetitive of him just being afraid of not getting one, or getting a bad one, but there are chunks of the book where we just completely forget about this. When he isn’t thinking about this though, we do get a few fun interactions between him and some of the squad members just being bros, which I quite like. The best part about the book would have to be how we see the world as a kind of horrific enemy itself that the Jungle Fighters have to adapt to. It’s kind of interesting to see the how the world operates and changes, even if there isn’t much detail about it. At the same time though, the Orks are kind of pushovers, sure they kill some characters, but they are also gunned down by the dozen, so they never felt like much of a threat. This isn’t a book ruining problem, it’s just disappointing to see them be so weak, especially after how they were portrayed in Fifteen Hours. In the end, the book is fine. I doubt I’ll ever read it again, but it wasn’t a pain to go through. After having read Fifteen Hours, I definitely felt a little disappointed, but maybe Rebel Winter, the next book in the omnibus will be better.

Once again, this book is accompanied by a short story, Better the Devil, and also once again, I’ll mention it briefly. Better the Devil is a prequel, showing Lorenzo’s fight with a Catachan devil that led to him being admitted into the jungle fighters. Honestly it was pretty much the same level of enjoyment as the actual novel. You don’t really gain much by reading it, but if you’ve got is you may as well.