The Man who Never was

Red Tithe by Robbie MacNiven My rating: 4 of 5 stars Going into this story after reading about the unique lore of the Carcharodon Astra chapter, I had a lot of expectations. Especially after reading about Tyberos the Red wake, who's a veritable beast, even when compared to your standard space marine. After reading it, those expectations were, may be 70-75% met you could say. The space sharks are a chapter whose founding is shrouded in mystery. A fleet-based chapter, they've been wandering the far fringes of the imperium for the past 10000 years, exiled for reasons unknown. There, they wage a silent never-ending war, against the horrors and threats which hide in the shadows, threatening to consume the Imperium. Based on their age, as well as the parts about them being exiled, my head cannon is that they might be the remnants of the legion belonging to one of the lost primarchs. Whatever the offenses of them or their gene father might be, they were condemned

For the Emperor by Sandy Mitchell My rating: 5 of 5 stars Caiphas Cain, Commissar and hero of the Imperium, is basically the 40k version of Tanya Degurechaff from The Saga of Tanya the Evil, Vol. 1: Deus lo Vult . if you haven't read that book yet, why haven't you? Go and read that right now. A simple descriptor of that story is a middle-aged man reincarnated as a young girl, becomes a conscripted child soldier in an alternate history pre-WWI era Imperial Prussia, with mages acting like aerial weapons. Where she uses her knowledge of real-world military history, as well as her considerable intellect, to commit war crimes which technically are compliant to the Geneva convention. Intrigued? Go read it. Caiphas Cain is much like Tanya, in the sense that, the last thing he wants to do, is to be in the frontlines fighting a war. Or facing down heretics, Xenos or chaos. Unfortunately for him, he happened to be form in the world of 40k, where according to

Death World by Steve Lyons My rating: 4 of 5 stars Imagine a group of soldiers, facing the predator. Now imagine, that every person in that group, is an 80s action movie protagonist, dripping with manliness, swag and regularly give one another, epic handshake like Dutch and Dillon from predator. Now Imagine, instead of a single predator, it's a planet full of predators. Now Imagine, if the entire fracking planet is the predator, and is trying to deal with these pesky creatures on it, like you would deal with mosquitoes irritating your skin. That would give you a near idea as to what you can expect from the novel Death World, by Steve Lyons. If features a mission embarked upon by the legendary members of the Catachan Jungle fighters. As they come across a planet designated as a 'death world'. In case anyone was wondering what that designation meant, it's quite literal and mentioned at the beginning. A little context on these guys. Thes

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga My rating: 3 of 5 stars News outlets keep telling us how, despite the great leaps made by science and technology, despite globalization and relative global peace, in our current world, wealth disparity is at its worst. Where, on one end we see billionaires (and unreported oil trillionaires) whose total assets exceed the GDP of small and some medium sized nations. Ones who can afford to purchase ludicrously exorbitant eccentricities, have entire private nation states under their command, can control the economies of the world and remake it according to their (often naive) whims. And when the end of civilization becomes apparent, the only ones will be fully stocked and furnished bunkers and lifeboats, all ready to create a new dystopian post-apocalyptic new world order. Think 2012, but with less CGI and a lot more suffering. On the other side of the spectrum, there are those who work 3 or more jobs, jumping through hoop

Gyo by Junji Ito My rating: 5 of 5 stars Warning: This story contains mature, graphic body horror; Not for snowflakes. Reader discretion required. A man going out on a swim, encounters a mysterious fish. When he returns to land, he finds that the fish has followed him home; one its four legs. Yes, the fish has legs and is walking on land. Jaws, stand aside. Believe me when I say, this is the least horrifying thing one would be subjected to, when reading Ito Junji's Gyo. Even though this is par for course, for those who've Connosseur'd the horror maestro's previous works, such as Uzumaki or Tomie . But Ito Sensei seems to have taken the gross horror to a new plane. Now it seems we should not only be afraid of that which lurks in the shadows; but also, those that dwell in the depths. If H.P. Lovecraft, one of the mangaka's inspirations in horror, were to somehow get a copy of this book in the afterlife, he would be r