RRP £6.99 Lowest New Price £2.47

Black Library Number of pages: 416 Language: English (Original Language) Language: English (Unknown) Language: English (Published)

RRP: £6.99
More Deathwatch action
Review date: 2006-10-25 Rating: 8 out of 10

Warrior Coven is the second book in the Deathwatch series and sees a team of the elite alien hunters sent to help the Eldar of Ulthwé repel raids attempted by the Dark Eldar. Captain Octavius and Librarian Ashok from the previous Deathwatch book, Warrior Brood, return but other than that all the major players are new to the series. There are also appearances from a couple of existing characters from the Warhammer 40,000 game in the form of Eldrad Ulthran and the Wych Queen Lelith Hesperax.

I do feel that the C. S. Goto's Deathwatch series is superior to his Dawn of War series but it does suffer from the same lack of knowledge misunderstandings of existing background as his previous books. For example, Warrior Coven features a substantial Dark Eldar colony not only outside Commorragh, the Dark Eldar city within the Webway, but within the Eye of Terror itself and Eldar referring to the Chaos God of pleasure by its human name Slaanesh rather than She Who Thirsts, its eldar name. Along these same lines Goto seems portrays the Dark Eldar as Chaos Eldar, something many Dark Eldar collectors would find rather distasteful.

I do find all of this slightly annoying as C. S. Goto is actually a very good writer able to produce brilliantly evocative and involving fight scenes and getting the personality of his characters just right. I feel that C. S. Goto has the potential to become one of the best writers of Warhammer 40,000 literature if only he could get the existing background right, until then I wouldn't feel comfortable giving him more than four out of five.