Priests of Mars

Forge of Mars: Warhammer 40,000, Book 1

By: Graham McNeill

Narrated by: Joe Jameson

Book one in the Forges of Mars series.

An Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleet ventures beyond the borders of the Imperium in pursuit of arcane technology. Who knows what perils may lie outside the dominion of mankind?

Listen to it because: it's a novel like nothing else from Black Library. Graham McNeill crafts a tale that only he could tell, beginning a mind-bending saga of the Adeptus Mechanicus, Chaos and more besides.

The story: legend tells of a foolhardy expedition, led by the radical Magos Telok, that ventured out into the unknown space beyond the Halo Worlds in search of the 'Breath of the Gods' - an arcane device with the power to unmake and reshape the very stars themselves. Thousands of years later, the ambitious Lexell Kotov musters his Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleet and sets out to follow in mad old Telok's footsteps. With the might of the Imperial Guard and the Space Marines to augment his own forces, he searches for the hidden clues that will lead him to greatest power that the galaxy has ever known. But who knows what ancient perils may yet lie outside the Imperium and the dominion of mankind?

Written by Graham McNeill. Narrated by Joe Jameson.

©2021 Games Workshop Limited (P)2021 Games Workshop Limited

if you just past the reader voice for the 1st hour

the reader was a bad choice take about an hour to get over him

Good story with some minor production issues

I really wish Audible has a separate rating for the actual production of the book. The narration is fantastic, but sometimes a sentence accidentally repeats, and I checked to make sure it wasn’t just my phone glitching.

Overall the story is good. However, I do have a complaint with just how many different stories and characters there are at a given moment. I think one chapter alone ended up cycling through like 6 different POVs. It’s not really that hard to keep track of them, I just hate being drip fed some of the ones I’m more interested in.

Also really enjoy how this one expands of some more detailed Mechanicus stuff, as well as starting to scratch the horror that is Servitors.

Would recommend!

Tekboys!

My only real problem is that there are multiple repeat lines, at least 4 times. Other than that, this is grimdark 40K at its grimdarkest. While the narrator may not be to everyone's cup of tea, I still liked him. I recommend this.

Good, but errors in recording

It seems like editor forgot to parse some words from the takes. The reader is great and fantastic but the editing needs a couple more passes.

Awesome story, nice break from HH series

Coming off the "Siege of Terra" novels, this was a nice breath of fresh air. Where the Siege of Terra books draw out every single detail and go on and on about nothing just to fill pages, Priests of Mars is always on point. Characters have some dimensions to them (more than typical 40K books anyway), and there are genuine surprises and plot twists.

The narrator isn't bad. The guy who did the original narration of Avenging Son was bad (so bad they had to replace him). But here, Joe Jameson does a good, if perhaps a little amateurish job. There are a few editing issues, like the same line repeated twice in a row, a microphone issue, and one line was cut off. As for character voices, I didn't really care for the Space Marine voices, which sounded like dumb cartoon characters. Fortunately this isn't a Space Marine book so there isn't a ton of their dialog.

On the positive note, I was very impressed with how well the narrator does female voices, I even had to rewind a couple times to make sure it wasn't another person. He has a great range of voices for all the characters and I would enjoy another book by him. Just fix the editing please!

On a side note, I highly recommend the short story "Ancient History" from the 40K book "Let the Galaxy Burn". It's a bit older, but its very similar to Priests of Mars and it offers another view of working inside the bowels of a 40K ship, especially its ancient secrets.

How all parties are disgraced I'm some way

I overall enjoyed the book but my onlly real gripe was whether or not this story took place before or during the Era Indomitous?

Essential Mechanicus Novel

This was a surprisingly engaging book, and for an impulse buy I found that it was a breath of fresh air well worth the price. The weakest link unfortunately has to be the narrator as the story is top tier, but I found his performance for some of the voices (the Black Templars in particular) to be a little underwhelming. Some pronunciations, and repetitive line readings aside however, he did a great job with the book so I'm still giving his performance a 4/5 star rating and it should by no means turn anybody off from this story. I'm buying the second book in this series immediately after writing this review, so that should be a good indication of how I feel about this book, the story hooked me and I need to see the continuation of the adventures of the Speranza and the Archmagos in uncharted Galactic space. A great 40k novel that Mechanicus fans won't want to miss, and a good standalone series for new and old fans alike.

A good start to an epic series!

The first thing to know going into this book is that it is the first of a trilogy. Meaning the first half of this book does a lot of groundwork for the many characters that will be involved in the rest of the trilogy. The book is about an expedition to an unknown part of space in search of an ancient tech relic and includes the Mechanicus, Skitori, Rogue Traders, a small unit of Black Templar Space Marines, Mech Titans, and the poor bastards that get forced into servicing the gargantuan flagship of the voyage.

I absolutely loved this book. It is rare for Warhammer 40k books to focus more on the characters than fighting, but that is what this book does. It excels at making all of the characters on this voyage feel like real people in a strange and terrifying environment. If you find it slow in the beginning, push through it. It picks up speed at the halfway mark when the voyage truly begins.

The end was so exciting that I am buying the rest of the series after I finish this review.

It seemed a little off.

I've read several other books featuring the Admech. The ones in this book were far more "human" than in the other ones I've read.
Bah, maybe it's just me, but a novice space marine shouldn't be easily defeating a combat magos in single combat. And maybe I misunderstood it, but a Black Templar Ecclesiarch feeling doubt and a loss of purpose (if even for a moment) while fighting aliens seems off.
But what do I know? This guy writes for Black Library and I'm just some dude that paints minis!

good stuff

Space marine blood Flash clots to an almost glassy like substance. Other than that fantastic.