Courage and Honour Paperback – 17 Dec. 2015

Great continuation of the ultramarine saga like all 40k books it's full of action and is faithful to the source material

Ok to book 5 of 6 in the ultra marine series. Ive just finished it and after the dubious book 4 (the killing ground) i can say dear graham has returned to the action and descriptive environments and character portrayals we all know and love. This time another alien race are the protagonists (no spoilers lol).What happened when uriel and pasanis retuned to mcragge is explained and it is clear that various elements inside their chapter are still unsure of the returning heros. The book is rather good and i enjoyed it but the title courage and honour is repeated far too often in the book. It becomes amusing that a skilled writer repeats himself so much...its almost laughable. Courage and honour...courage and honour to you...and what of you oh more honour and courage bla bla bla. I made rubbish like that up in primary school. The read is good but i get the feeling that this series has lost its momentum. I have book 6 of 6 in my hands now (the chapters due) so ill review this soon. If you have read the first 3 books i can tell you that the iron warriors of chaos are back. Hopefully we will finally understand what happened to the rebel marines left on medregard, the evil new born clone of uriel and perhaps an epic standoff of honsou and uriel. I pray this will be epic but sadly im not holding my breath. To conclude....Courage and honour is a good read and can be used as a standalone book. Try and forget the title although it crops up again and again and again and again and again in the book and you'll be in for a blast.

...courage and honor, courage and honor....in case you didn't get it, the book's title is Courage and honor because it's all about courage and honor. Courage and honor seems to now be part of the Codex Astartes as the standard greeting in the book between Ultramarines seems to be 'courage and honor' which spreads to the Imperial Guard who are soon also greeting each other courage and honor and thinking about courage and honor in their heads and admiring the courage and honor in the Ultramarines. Honestly I don't think there's a single chapter in the book that doesn't mention courage and honor at least twice and usually multiple times at the end, it really sets the tone for the book and it's not good.This book (I'm not going to say the title again!) sees Uriel Ventris redeemed after his Death Oath and put back in command of the 4th company. Unfortunately he's right back to the way he was at the start of this series of books as a flat, bland and uninteresting Ultramarines with little in the way of appeal and it's much the same for the soldiers under him. Over and over throughout the book you get the 'his heart swelled with pride at the efficiency of the Ultramarines' which once is bad enough but I found it increasingly irritating that it happened throughout the book and even the IG officers were spouting the same rubbish about how amazing the Ultramarines were fighting with such courage and honor (sorry!) and it was such an honour to fight alongside them. The author shouldn't need to tell us how great these Ultramarines are as we should be able to see it through their actions.It's particularly disappointing that Ventris hasn't really changed at all after his Death Oath and just feels like a school child always trying to please his teachers and is just back from detention for being a naughty boy. I've always thought his punishment was daft as clearly he did the right thing and saved the planet rather than the planet destroyed and the Ultramarines killed. Ventris has been convinced he was in the wrong and is doing his best to make it all right by following the Codex Astartes as closely as possible rather than the potentially far more interesting development that he would believe he was correct in the first place and start to disagree with the rigidness of the Codex Astartes and Ultramarines in general. One of my favourite aspects of the Eisenhorn trilogy is the change in Eisenhorn himself over the period of the three books yet after five books with Ventris, we seem to be going backwards.Although I've never been a fan of Ventris or the Ultramarines I've found in the series so far that the author has made the rest of the story good enough to be worth reading the book. This time the bad guys are the Tau which are fairly well portrayed and good to see as there's not many books with them and the continuity of returning to the wrecked Pavonis after the first book is also appealing to see what's happened in the aftermath of a Spare Marine battle. However most of the story is not particularly appealing as it's almost one long battle from start to finish with little else happening, there's a few story elements introduced that seemed to start to build then almost immediately collapse and go nowhere. I get the feeling the author had a few ideas he wanted to develop but for whatever reason they went nowhere and he went with a fairly straight forward big battle which there's plenty of elsewhere.Here's hoping Chapter's Due is better.

good

Present

Anybody who's into the Horus Heresy or any other 40k book will enjoy this read, the descriptions of battle are like any other but just seem to draw you in even more. Im not going to ruin it for those who have'nt read it but the ending does leave you thinking about the future of the characters like a certain sergeant of the Ultra's. Leadless to say ill be getting Chapters Due. =)

i loved this book when i got in to it you should get it bit of a slow start and odd end but i wond spoil it any more than that thats just my opinion as i have a 40k tau army