Bookworm Speaks!- Yarrick: Imperial Creed Review

Bookworm Speaks!

Warhammer 40k

Yarrick: Imperial Creed

by David Annandale

****

The Story: The thrilling exploits of one of Warhammer 40,000's most iconic characters

Yarrick: the very name carries the weight of legend, of great deeds and of wars won for the Imperium. But Sebastian Yarrick, who fought on Armageddon, who Space Marine Chapter Masters show their fealty to on bended knee, was not always Lord Commissar. He was once just a man, a newly minted officer from the ranks of the schola progenium.

His first mission under the tutelage of Lord Commissar Rasp was on Mistral. Here, an uprising of barons had upset the delicate balance of power. But, as Yarrick was soon forced to learn, Mistral and Imperial politics are often murky, the truth seldom clear cut. As war engulfs the world, a plot unravels that pits old friends against one another and fashions unusual alliances. Chaos cults, the fanatical Adepta Sororitas and clandestine inquisitors all stand between Yarrick and his mission. Here is where the legend began. In this crucible was Lord Commissar Sebastian Yarrick forged in blood.

The Good: Let’s start off by saying that this is a very handsome book. A lot of Warhammer 40k covers tend to lean toward the ‘over the top’ covers and fonts, leaning more toward comic books. This cover on the other hand has a very tasteful color scheme and a very elegant font. It has a certain dignity to it that separates from other books. 

But like they say, you can’t judge a book by its cover…so lets get into the meat of it all. 

Commissar Sebastian Yarrick is a famous character in Warhammer 40K, the hero of the War for Armageddon, but in the original stories he was already old and grizzled. In this book he is a young(er) man, and on one of his first missions as a Commissar. He is still learning his stripes and it shows through the text. He is constantly reminding himself of his lessons and struggling to be a force for the Guard to rally behind. 

The way the story is written partly from the perspective of Yarrick himself, it is almost like a memoir. This lends itself to an intriguing tone for the book that separates it from previous volumes in the series. 

The action of course is top notch. It is said that the Imperial Guard is a meat grinder for the excess populations of Imperial Worlds, and this book reinforces this mantra is spades. Every other page seems to depict another dozen soldiers being blown up or trampled but on the next page it shows more being mustered. They are the hammer of the Emperor and few things can withstand a thousand men shooting something all at once. The sheer ferocity and firepower of the war oozes off of the page. It is easy to see why war is such a fact of life in the Imperium of Man and how it defines the identity of so many of its inhabitants. 

One of the best things we see in this book is the inclusion of Adeptus Sororitas! The Adeptus Sororitas are the all-female army of the Ecclesiarchy or the Imperial Church. The closest things to female Space Marines in Warhammer 40K, the Sororitas are a fascinating aspect of the lore and Bookworm desperately desires more stories that feature them.   

Females are sorely underrepresented in Warhammer, as well as popular media in general and it 

is great to see them in this story and for one of the characters to actually be a main one. 

The Flaws: It was said in one of the Codex’s of the RPG that there was no such thing as an “average’ Imperial World. Yet, a lot of the books in the Warhammer 40k universe seem to dispute that. The world of Mistral seems to be very much like a lot of other Imperium worlds visited by Imperial forces in a variety of other stories. There is not a lot to distinguish this world from the others. This is somewhat in place with the universe as conformity is considered a virtue in the despotic Imperium of Man but at the same time, every place is different and the only thing that seems to separate Mistral from Salinas is that there is a lot of wind. Boring. 

What is also boring is the Imperial Guard themselves. Aside from Yarrick and Rasp, all the other characters seem to be rather cookie cutter. Again this consistent with the lore, but variety is the spice of life and a crucial part to telling any story is to not make it boring. A lot of characters from the Inquisitor to the cardinal fall into this trap. 

What is also troubling is the depiction of combat, somewhat. We have plenty of action but Bookworm is sometimes lost on the matter of the scale of the combat. The Imperial Guard typically uses it’s large numbers to overwhelm the enemy. Here, it is not made clear if this is actually how the war is being waged. When Yarrick is battling cultists in the city streets, it sometimes seems like there are only five people waging the battle and it the next paragraph there is a whole battalion opening fire on the enemy. While the story is being told from the immediate perspective of the character, this kind of inconsistency can make the plot choppy and confuse the reader. 

As mentioned previously, one of the strengths of this book is the Adeptus Sororitas but they are given the short straw when it comes to the overall story. Most of the time, they are little more than side characters. The passages that feature are extremely brief and the characters feature are very flat-featured and boring.  Overall, they were given the short-straw in this story and it is very disappointing. 

Final Verdict: For a story of one of Warhammer’s most iconic characters, this book is a good place to begin. 

Four out of Five Stars

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