‘The Killing Ground’ – Graham McNeill (Black Library)

I had a few days off last week and the plan was to use these to really get stuck into some of the larger books on the pile that need a good few hours uninterrupted reading to get the best out of them. I just couldn’t get into any of them though and I couldn’t work out why... Had I fallen out of love with sci-fi and fantasy? Had I discovered a new love for housework and gardening instead? It turned out that the answer was a lot simpler than that. I was very tired and needed a light fun read where huge guys shoot the hell out of each other with even bigger guns. Yep, it was guilty pleasure time alright!
One look at the cover of Graham McNeill’s ‘The Killing Ground’ suggested that this was the book I was after. It turned out to be all that and a little bit more as well...

The universe of the Warhammer 40,000 game is one dominated by war in all its shapes and forms and ‘The Killing Ground’ looks at the aftermath of conflict in a universe where the raw chaos of warp space means that anything is possible. Having fulfilled their ‘Death Oath’, Ultramarines Uriel Ventris and Pasanius now seek to return home to their Chapter but fate has one more trick to play.... The planet Salinas is a place where the ghosts of the past are far more than just a bitter memory and certain members of the occupying Imperial Guard face enemies that a bullet cannot stop. Uriel and Pasanius must uncover the secret of the Killing Ground before the decision is taken to exterminate all life on the planet (the stakes are that high)...

After a prologue that throws questions into the air, and had me really interested in finding out what happened next, ‘The Killing Ground’ immediately slows right down so that we can catch up with what has happened to Uriel Ventris and Pasanius since the last book. “The last book?” I hear you say... Yes, it’s not made particularly clear in the blurb (hence this book only really being for people who have followed the series so far) but ‘The Killing Ground’ is the latest book in a series detailing Ventris’ and Pasanius’ deeds as part of the Ultramarine Chapter. The rest of these adventures are collected in ‘Ultramarines: The Omnibus’. Here’s the thing though the ‘slowing down to bring readers up to speed’ trick isn’t really necessary as long time fans will know the story already and, as a first time reader, I was more impatient for things get a move on after a promising beginning. And there are things that won’t make sense (at first) if you haven’t read the other books already...

Stick with it though. After the awkward beginning, things do pick up and the end result is a read that Warhammer 40,000 fans will enjoy as will people who like their military sci-fi touched with a hint of the gothic...
The Space Marines are the mainstay of humanity’s armies in the fortieth millennium, packing enough firepower and physical strength to punch a hole in whatever stands before them. As a result this is what you can expect from any ‘Space Marine’ novel and ‘The Killing Ground’ delivers admirably as far as this goes. War is brutal and this book doesn’t hold its punches as far as that goes. In case you’re worrying about ‘tedium through the invulnerability of main characters’ then there’s no need. There is a mystery to be solved, and a dilemma overcome, that require far more than strength of arms and the Space Marine’s sense of loneliness away from their Chapter is exploited to give us characters with enough stacked against them to make their struggles interesting.

It was the atmosphere that really made ‘The Killing Ground’ work for me though both in terms of the story itself and the background universe it’s set against. Information is doled out bit at a time and this really helps maintain the air of uncertainty that everyone is working under. ‘The Killing Ground’ is also a ghost story in every sense of the word and when the ghosts come calling they do it in a way that really made me jump!
Above all else though, ‘The Killing Ground’ has that oppressed air of superstition and religious dogma (set against a totally unforgiving universe) that immediately marks it out as a Warhammer 40,000 novel. It’s a place I love to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there...

‘The Killing Ground’ starts off shakily but recovers to become a cross between ghost story and ‘military sci-fi’ that’s worth reading. You might want to read the other books first though...

Seven and a Half out of Ten