Skitarius: Warhammer 40,000

Adeptus Mechanicus, Book 1

By: Rob Sanders

Narrated by: Toby Longworth

Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins

Publisher's summary

The skitarii are the soldiers of the Machine God, the tireless legions of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Holy warriors, they carry the word of the Omnissiah across the galaxy, destroying the impure machines of aliens and renegades and spearheading the Quest for Knowledge.

A discovery of ancient technology sends a skitarii legion, commanded by Alpha Primus Haldron-44 Stroika, into battle on a forge world overrun by Chaos. When a cataclysm cuts him off from his tech-priest overseers, Stroika must rally his forces and battle both corrupt machines and Chaos Space Marines if he is to achieve victory.

©2015 Games Workshop Limited (P)2015 Games Workshop Limited

storyline not on par with the excellent narrator

As far as Warhammer 40k stories go, this just did'nt live up to my expectations. As always, Toby Longworths narration was top notch, but I found myself hardly listening as the first book drew to a close. Hopefully the second book in the series will be better.

A truly epic story!

An absolutely epic story! If you like Ad Mech, do yourself a favor and give this a listen.

Ad Mech!

It’s a good book. Not a lot of lore as I hoped, but overall it’s a good book

Hail the Machine God

What a read. Fantastic voice work. Amazing story. Tragic and inspiring all the same. Truly an epic depiction of the horrors of 40k, as well as an insightful look into the inner workings of the Mechanicus.

Skitarii!

A bit pompous. lots and lots of superlative, excessive descriptions of just about everything. it felt as the story stopped and stumbled, waiting for the absurd amounts of repetitions about "sinister warpspawn mega blood death bullets" and the likes to pass.
Would like to hear more about the main character instead of endless repetitions of his "palm-locked arc pistols" sliding back and forth.
Great story overall though. Praise the Omnissiah

decent story, good content, room for improvement

liked the story in terms of Warhammer mental scenery, some parts of acting we're over done in sense of hard to hear but, story also leaves you quite dependent on next book; as in this feels very three books being the focus not three story's that line up... still quite enjoyable read

Good

Greatly enjoyed, listened through to the end during my shift. Looking forward to book 2.

Interesting but shallow

This is a good read if you are at all interested in the Adeptus Mechanicus, particularly the Skitarii side (shocking I know).

However, if you don't enjoy listening to detailed battle scenes about Radium Rilfe slugs slamming into enemies or how Transonic blades vibrate so fast they can peirce armor, you're not going to enjoy a good 80% of the book.

If you do like detailed battle scenes, this is a very fun read that explores the weird weaponry and tactics of the Skitarii. It also has plenty of the requisite 40k "grim darkness" to it if you need that to enjoy a story.

Overall I enjoyed this book, but I also really enjoy the AdMech as a whole, I think someone listening to this without prior interest in them would find it a bit of a slog.

Toby is great as always though.

How Did I Miss This?

Spoilers ahead: This book is very unfair. Released as a tie-in to Games Workshops launch of the Skitarii army in Warhammer 40k, I've avoided reading it for years because of the assumption it was fluff for the four squad kits that came with the release; it's annoyingly entertaining because of what's in the story that DOESN'T exist in the tabletop game! A Skitarus Prime described with dual archpistols and two archmaul arms, the individual officer-specialist under a fabricator general, descriptions of the forces of the dark mechanicus, and an Iron Warriors Obliterator Warsmith.

GW recording quality

I love every 40k book I've listened to so far and this is the same. Exactly what I hoped it would be like and more. my issue is so many of them have crud recording quality. The performance of the reader is good it's just that it is filled with static and just generally low quality. Seriously my ONLY complaint.