Bookworm Speaks!- The Siege of Castellax by CL Werner

Bookworm Speaks!

The Siege of Castellax

by CL Werner

*****

The Story: The Chaos Space Marines of the Iron Warriors Legion have long been renowned as the masters of siege warfare able to inflict devastating firepower and unimaginable cruelty upon their foes. On the world of Castellax, twisted Warsmith Andraaz builds his own empire even as a system crushing ork Waaagh! approaches, and drives his own slaves ever harder to meet their production quotas and supply material for the Legion’s many Warbands. Their walls are strong and their weapons ready, but how long can the planet hold out against the deadly, greenskin invasion when whisperings of a rebellion begin to pass between the Iron Warriors’ downtrodden vassals. 

The Good: Among the enemies that mankind faces in the grim, dark, future, Orks are probably Bookworm’s favorite. They are the perfect enemy for nearly anyone who indulges in dreams of war and conquest. There no innocent members of their society, no women or children, just an enemy that dreams of nothing but fighting. That is why zombie media still holds such a strong sway. There is no possibility of emphasizing with the enemy, just kill and kill and kill without anyone bringing up those pesky ethics. We get plenty of that in this text. 

Nonstop, gunpowder and gasoline fueled combat fuels the action in this book and it does not disappoint. The orks are just so mindlessly focused on destruction that the Iron Warrior’s have their work cut out for them. In the real world, war is not that much fun. In the book though…it is made to be fun. Seeing the human slaves and the Iron Warriors clash against the orks is just as fun as it is in Orks vs Space Marines in Rynn’s World. As for the Iron Warrior’s themselves, they do not disappoint. 

There are two main ways to make a good villain. The first is too make them sympathetic, the heroes of their own stories. The second way is to completely rob them of sympathy, make them full-blown diabolical and just a ton of fun. That is the way the author goes in the text and it really pays off. The Iron Warriors a just so deliciously evil, they all hate each other to the fullest extent and the way they regard their human slaves as ‘The Flesh” in a singular term is just so indicative of their mindset. While it can get a little dull if it is focused on too much, it is nice to see the Iron Warrior’s focused on things such as logistics and manpower during the course of the war. All too often, the warriors of Chaos are described as slathering beasts, little better than the orks themselves, this book helps break that mold and gives another layer to the Iron Warriors’ character.  

During the action and adventure…we see the affairs of various slaves of the Iron Warriors who serve as the laborers and soldiers of Castellax. Bookworm really likes it when we see humans and Astartes in the same story, and to see slaves born and bred to be the servants of the Iron Warriors and to see them to whatever it take to see tomorrow. That is what makes Warhammer 40k so appealing. Even in the face of a nightmare future, the will to survive is as strong as it has always been in the hearts of humanity. 

The Flaws: Bookworm throws his hat into the ring of the Imperium of Man, for all of its faults. While reading this book, any other loyal servant of the Emperor will be waiting for the deaths of one of the foul traitors of the Iron Warriors, and there are not that many who meet the end they so rightly deserve. That is also indicative of a problem with this text in that it tends to drag in some parts. The Orks shoot and blow stuff up and the Iron Warriors shoot back and blow stuff up. This back and forth barrage continues in several places and it gets a little wearing at times. 

What also gets wearing is the continual references to the plight of the human slaves. We get in the first chapter that the Iron Warriors don’t give a damn about them and they are basically little more than cattle. We get that…it does not need to be referenced every other page. 

Something that pops up fairly frequently in tomes of the Black Library is pervasive head hopping. The text juggles almost a dozen different perspectives from various members of the Iron Warriors, to various human slaves, and a hidden tech-priest. It doesn’t help that many of the human slaves have similar sounding names. As a result, it can get a little confusing about who exactly is talking at the moment and what story arc we are returning to at the moment. Further adding to the confusion, is how the Iron Warriors, while not uninteresting, have basically identical personalities. This is also common in the Black Library: there is not a great deal of variety when it comes to those who follow the eight-fold path. The only real way to tell them apart is by their names and various details about their appearances. 

Final Verdict: The Siege of Castellax is a good change in perspective from the other side of the Warhammer 40K coin: The Ways of Chaos. 

Four out of Five Stars

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