Astra Militarum soldiers from one of Warhammer 40,000s most recognisable deathworlds running around causing death on a world condemned to death? Sounds like… well sounds like a lot of death is on its way. It’s a Warhammer 40,000 novel, after all.
And yes, there is death. But there’s so, so, so much more.
In Deathworlder we meet Major Wulf Khan and her merry band of Catachans on the Tyranid infested world of Lazulai. Both Khan and the Catachans we spend the most time with in the book are well fleshed out (quite literally, as any good Catachan should be) and play off each other well. Adair in particular is a character a lot of people are going to grow quite fond of, myself included. Sure there’s tension between them, but author Victoria Hayward manages to find a sweet spot between too much inter-character anger to be outright unbelievable and so little it’s effectively pointless, then tiptoes across that trapeze without tumbling as a small cast of other characters joins the fray.
One in particular, Lamya, would’ve been relegated to little more than a three paragraph tirade ending in a plasma bolt to the face in most. But in Deathworlder she, a captured Genestealer Cult propagandist, adds a curiously human element to it all. The sheer horror of what’s going on around them might wash off the soldiery like water off a Termagants back but in Lamya we see what the whole horrible experience can do to a person, even one as bought in to the notion of creatures from beyond the edges of the void devouring a world as her.
The insights we’re treated to in how Catachans think and the way they act in relation to what we expect from decades of their exploits in codex books and background books and past novels is quite spectacular. Rather than merely humanising the 6ft something musclebound caricatures of 80s action movies, their behaviour and concerns make it far easier to empathise with them than in almost any past Astra Militarum-focused fiction I can remember. Seeing how they interact and reflect against a Cadian is a particularly enjoyable element to the whole thing.
My favourite part of the book, though? Nobody on the planet is really sure what’s going on. They know what Tyranids are and sort of how to deal with them at a command level, but for the normal soldiers it’s just another hellish fight. When a serpentine floating Tyranid monster with a bulbous head appears, the characters don’t go “oh, that’s a zoanthrope, this is how you deal with it” like one might find in some past novels. They’re flummoxed, they’re horrified, but they’re going to do everything they can to win. That more than anything else (minus the endless fun that is Trooper Adair being Trooper Adair) kept me glued to Deathworlder. I liked these characters, and I wanted to know exactly what they would face and how they would face the nightmare creatures in much the same way your or I might on finding a Haruspex crawling around the churchyard on a Thursday afternoon.
Beyond the ubiquitous ‘horde’ creatures a trooper would’ve likely seen in the months of conflict on a world under tyranid attack like gaunts and rippers, the more rareified and ‘strange’ creatures are just that. Creatures. Creatures whose motions and actions through the lens of people watching them are ramped up in sheer nightmare to eleven. We the readers know what they’re facing. We know what that bioform can do. We know it’s name. We know how tough it is to kill. But the characters in the book don’t, and watching as they come to terms with and find ways to combat what the Tyranids can do is almost as entertaining as them actually fighting the beasts.
Seeing a world slowly devoured and how it’s done without the initial need for a purely military victory is ten times more horrifying than anything else. There is one particular scene, which I’m reticent to spoil, which will stick in my mind for a very very very long time. You know That Bit from Deep Rising everyone remembers? Yeah. That. And it’s wedged itself into my mind with just as much gusto. It’s the real main antagonist of the book, far outweighing the sheer biological horror of the Tyranid creatures themselves tenfold.
Deathworlder takes larger than life soldiers, teams them up with other larger than life soldiers, then throws them wholesale into a literal churning hell of darkness, death, and biological creatures set against a planet which is just as deadly as the blade-limbed monster racing across it.
If I were to level any gripes against the book, it’d be that there’s not enough of it. That’s not to say it wraps up too quickly or draws itself out to much. Not at all. More, we only really get to spend a lot of time with a handful of Catachans throughout the book. I could have quite happily sat through a few more chapters of more of them chumming around and getting into fights before the plot kicked in at full pace.
And then find out whether Adair will love them or punch them square in the face.
Would I recommend reading Deathworlder? Wholeheartedly yes! Get ready for some horror and some Tyranids in a way we so rarely get to see them attacking a world while falling head over heels in love with a cast of characters I could happily follow into more and more books as it goes.
Copy of Deathworlder provided by Black Library
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