Teaser

When a battle against the orks goes horribly wrong, a small band of Imperial soldiers must fight for survival on an enemy world. Yet they are not alone against the green tide, for the Lord Solar walks among them . . .

Review

Black Library’s ‘Character’ novels fill an interesting niche in the Games Workshop ecosystem. In terms of format, the mini hardback is aesthetically pleasing, and unique to the range now that the Warhammer Horror series seems to be defunct. They are short, very grabbable books that have little in common beyond the fact that each deals with an iconic character from the lore of Warhammer 40,000. You know, the sort of people who have their own dedicated miniatures to collect, paint, and display on your battlefields. Some of these characters were known to me before I started reading. Ephrael Stern was a name lodged in my mind before reading David Annandale’s excellent The Heretic Saint, for example. Some, however, are total unknowns before I pick up the book. This was true of Mike Brooks’ Huron Blackheart: Master of the Maelstron, and it’s equally true of Rob Young’s Leontus: Lord Solar.

What I’m going to say next comes with the caveat that this was )I do sincerely hope) the last book I’ve read while under the influence of lambing-induced brain fog. I was a huge fan of Young’s debut Longshot, so naturally I had high hopes for his sophomore outing. Perhaps too high, in hindsight, because while Leontus is a fine book, I have come away with exactly that impression. It’s perfectly fine, no more, and no less.

There’s a lot to like here. You’ve got a ragtag group of survivors facing an enemy that vastly outnumbers and massively outguns them. I love a good story of survival against the odds, and Leontus has plenty of that. The grim survival saga (and, in no small part, the cover art) reminded me strongly of the 2010 film Centurion in all the best ways. Coming off the back of the decidedly more madcap Da Big Dakka, I also think Leontus does a fantastic job of showing the orks as a serious threat.

Okay, I’m going to qualify that last statement. The orks are clearly having fun. This is a Speed Waaagh, after all. Which means while the humans are struggling to survive conditions to do The Walking Dead proud, the orks are out there living their wildest Mad Max fantasies. The clash is exactly as violent as you’re expecting. There are books where the grim-faced humans and comic antics of the orks don’t gel, but this is not one of them.

I think most of my frustrations with Leontus – those things I cannot help but see as shortcomings – are the fault of greater powers than the book itself. Being so short, there isn’t much of a chance for the characters to establish themselves, and there are probably too many characters squeezed into the human survivors. Especially once horses are getting names and personalities as well.

Then there is Leontus himself. As I said earlier, I came to this book with no idea who he was. Two hundred pages later, I’m in a similar position. There’s nothing wrong with this story, but I don’t feel like I’ve learned anything about Leontus’ place in the broader universe. He’s got some depth to him, but nothing that distinguishes from from the dozens of other well-written characters out there. Leontus is a novel ostensibly about a character, but I feel I understand him less than Longshot‘s Darya Nevic, who had to contend with a more elaborate novel. Having said all that, Leontus has one killer line in the novel’s climactic action sequence that drives through to the heart of what the Imperium aims to be. To what separates man from ork.

Leontus: Lord Solar might be one of the weaker character novels out there, but if you already know who the man is, you’re going to get more out of it than I did. And if you go in as blind as I did, you’re still going to get some great action scenes, and a fair bit of brutal violence.

Book Stats

• A Standalone Novel
• First Published in 2025
• 218 Pages