Snapshot Review: Treacheries of the Space Marines

 

Hearing that Treacheries of the Space Marines, a new Black Library collection of 40K stories featuring various power-armored traitors and renegades, was out I hopped down to the local bookstore and picked it up.  With the new Chaos Space Marines codex out soon I was eager for some related reading material.

The stories themselves were mostly OK, nothing spectacular, but readable, and present different traitors in various situations, against each other as often as not.  The more disappointing part for me was that so many of the stories were reprints; ones I had read in The Best of Hammer and Bolter Volume One - which came out a mere three months ago.  If you've read that previous collection already, the value of Treacheries goes down significantly.  

The stories are:

• The Masters, Bidding
• The Carrion Anthem - from Hammer and Bolter collection
• Liberator
• The Long War
• Throne of Lies - text form of previous audio drama
• Bitter End - from Hammer and Bolter collection
• We are One - from Hammer and Bolter collection
• Torturer's Thirst
• Vox Dominus

So out of nine stories, three are from a prior collection and another is an older story in a different format.

There are a few stories of note I wanted to briefly mention, not especially for the stories themselves but more from a background perspective.

"The Masters, Bidding" by Matthew Farrer shows interactions between some members of various Legions, and demonstrates how not everyone in those legions, even prominent ones, are Horus Heresy leftovers.

"Liberator" by Jonathan Green, showcases the renegade Constantinus, who IIRC first surfaced in the last Chaos Marine codex.  Nothing especially new, but don't recall him featuring before.

"The Long War" by Andy Hoare is interesting for being the first to feature some things that Chaos Marine players only recently learned about - Mutilators, Forgefiends and Maulerfiends, new units in the upcoming codex.  I wouldn't be surprised if this piece was specially commissioned to feature them and has snippets appear in the new codex.

If you're a big Chaos fan and haven't read the other stories yet, might be worth picking up.  If you've read the previous stories, get it second-hand or borrow it.  If you don't care for Chaos, give it a pass.