I went into this one not overly sure what to expect. It didn't sound like it was going to be the typical Space Marine shooty extravaganza that readers of the Warhammer universes expect when they pick up a book with an Adeptus Astartes emblazoned on the cover.

Was it a typical shooter for bibliophiles? No.

Was that a bad or a good thing? A bloody amazing thing!

It feels like the folk at Black Library have tried to break the mould with this one by making it a more character-driven novel than your usual Space Marine experience. It's incredibly rare that, outside of the Horus Heresy (which has over 50 books in it, so I'd expect that to get a mention in this category) a Space Marine novel has me thinking how deep the characters are and how in-depth the world-building is.

We get the background of a chapter that, to my knowledge, hasn't been fleshed out yet. We get some seriously cool, non-Space Marine characters and some incredible looks into not only the society of the Dark Eldar, but their psychology as well.

The writing is paced excellently and had me not wanting to stop when my brain was really insisting that I do other things. All in all, this was a breath of fresh air that I wasn't expecting and I feel it hits a little harder because of having so little expectation of what I was going to get.

Oh boy.. I could barely make it through this one. This book was a classic case of interesting premise with poor execution. There was just no entrance point into the story's world for someone who wasn't a diehard fan of the game already.

***Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for providing me with a digital copy of this book to review.***

This is my own fault, but I requested this book without understanding/knowing about WarHammer.

I was a little lost, and it felt like I needed a background of the game to immerse myself in this story, which I didn’t have.

Reading previous reviews, it’s apparent that many people were upset with Albert’s treatment of the source material. Seeing as how I am not too familiar with the particular space marine chapter this story focuses on, I am writing this review as such.

Firstly, Albert’s writing style is very good. He is detailed but not overly so, and he creates good pictures of the characters and environments. He’s very good at immersing the reader in the world he is creating. The action and battle scenes are well written, but very gory. (Normal for a 40k novel) The characters are much more human than I’m used to in a 40k book, but I ended up liking this aspect.

The story itself is also very well done. There’s plenty of twists and turns during the characters journeys. It honestly feels like a space faring adventure. The characters journey through multiple locales, and the journey changes all of them in different ways. There is a surprising amount of character development in such few pages.

The story follows a small group of space marines belonging to the Carcharadons chapter. The marines are on a “hunt” for a long lost object of special importance to the chapter. During the course of the hunt they find themselves helped by unlikely Allies and in ever more dangerous situations. The climax of the book is excellently done, in a final battle kind of way, but the way events end up being resolved still feels right.

If you are a huge fan of the carcharadons space marines chapter, you may want to skip it, but read the other reviews first. If your’e not a huge lore guy and just want a good, fast paced story in a warhammer setting, it’s worth it. It definitely stands out from other novels in the universe in the way it’s characters are portrayed. I honestly hope to see more warhammer novels from this author, and am tempted to pick up his other writing as well.

Oh my, I've been away from Warhammer 40k for so long. I had a hard time getting into any sort of groove here, to figure out the different races and everything again. It just made reading so hard.

Overall it's a classic warhammer book, with a lot of action, which is always good. I would have preferred a bit more humor maybe, or different humor.

The combination of the many names and races which makes you think and the light-hearted action doesn't work too well this time for me.

Thank you for sending me this eARC, I just want to say before I start the review, thank you to the publisher, the author and netgalley.

This is a robotic sci-fi fantasy book, the characters were intreasting and the pacing was spot on with detailed characters that felt realistic. I enjoyed it overall but I felt like the writing style was holding back so I couldn't get fully immersed.

While I normally love all the BL books I pick up, I struggled with Silent Hunters - I didn't find the book to flow together very well, nor was I that invested in the characters or their actions. It just didn't grab me

Not one of my favorites and one of the rare Black Library books that I'm leaving unfinished.

Edoardo Albert is a talented writer, but I can't help but feel that this book is nothing but a sequence of scenes that were forced together leaving justifications for actions or events either lacking or nonsensical.

Mild spoilers follow:

A few examples that stand out to me include:
- Uncharacteristic lenience shown to servants where the spared individuals immediately turn out to be important and unique 'bait' to draw out a new enemy;
- A Chaplain denied the right to continue the hunt for a chapter artifact and sentenced to death, who is immediately sent to die by continuing the same hunt (and bringing his squad along to presumably die with him); and
- An odd, armorless, surfboard ambush that shows that the space marines can anticipate the location of Drukhari attacks, for which they bring their untrained liability "bait" anyway...