Picked up a new Codex and a new Army, or revisiting an old force in a new edition? Welcome to Start Reading 40k, our guide to the best novels of the Black Library for each faction slugging it out in the Grim Dark Far Future. Each article will cover our top picks for reading about the armies you’re putting down on the table, so whether it’s inspiration, background or the deepest darkest lore secrets you’re after, we’ve got you covered. Let’s get reading!
The Astra Militarum are the anvil of the Imperium’s armies. Thousands if not millions of soldiers are fed into the meat-grinder with a callous disregard for anything except victory.
In the grim dark future, every crime is heresy and is considered especially heinous. In the Imperium of Man, the dedicated warriors who prosecute the will of the Emperor are members of a numberless hordes of soldiers known as the Astra Militarum. These are their stories…
Book #1: Catachan Devil
Author: Justin Woolley
Published: 2022
Recently conscripted Trooper Ted Torvin gets seconded to a unit of the Catachan 57th Jungle Fighters after he is the sole survivor of an Ork ambush on an outpost. He’s poorly trained, unmotivated and borderline traumatised from his first and only contact with the dreaded greenskin. Will the jungle claim him before the Orks do? Or will his newly assigned ‘allies’ dispose of him as a liability?
Why You Should Read It: I’m a simple man. I see Catachan Jungle Fighters on the cover of a book? I’m going to buy it. However, some of our more discerning readers might need a little bit more encouragement before buying a 40k novel, so I suppose it would behoove me to list the other reasons to buy this book…
The book does a good job of showing off the prowess and unique characteristics of the Catacham Jungle Fighters in contrast to the regular guard, as well as selling the jungle as an opponent almost as deadly as the Orks.
As a sidenote, I also rate this book highly as an insight into how Ork culture (kulcha?) works. The scenes with the Blood Axes and Death Skulls butting heads are an absolute joy to behold. Getting the perspective of Nogrok (a Bloodaxe Kommando Nob) as he hunts the sneaky ‘oomies and pursues his vendetta is a compelling counterpoint to the protagonist’s side of the story.
Why It Is a Good Astra Militarum Book: By adopting the perspective of a recently conscripted Trooper, the book is able to give the reader an uninitiated view of how the Astra Militarum works. As Ted Torvin encounters new concepts, so does the reader. It’s a good primer on how Orks and Catachans operate, as the author isn’t talking down to the reader or assuming they are familiar with the source material.
Catachan Devil shows us how the Guard use a variety of tactics to give them the edge against their physically superior foes, ranging from entrenched positions with minefields, fixed weapons, and curated fire-lanes through to camouflage, booby traps and ambushes. Unlike a significant number of the other factions in 40k, the Guard feel like an organised fighting force that uses believable tactics to pull down enemies who are either vastly stronger or more technologically advanced.
You also get a feel for the politics of the Militarum and how different regiments and ranks all interact and attempt to assert dominance over each other, usually at the cost of the Troopers on the front line.
Finally, this is a good Astra Militarum book because the protagonist and his allies aren’t invincible super-humans with plot armour, which is a very pleasant departure from the usual GW bolter porn. People get hurt; people die. Even Catachans. Sometimes your luck just runs out. That’s life in the Guard.
What Inspiration You Can Take to the Table: Wooley’s descriptions of the jungle and how the Catachans navigate it are a great inspiration for how you could base an Astra Militarum army. I’d even extend this inspiration to doing up an entire table worth of terrain, the description of Outpost Four and its key locations as well as the jungle itself would make for an amazing table to fight over.
It’s becoming a bit of theme for this book review (I’m not even sorry) but this book does a great job of selling you on Orks, the Bloodaxes in particular. The sneaky gitz.
Book #2: Steel Tread
Author: Andy Clark
Published: 2021
Recently transferred into a Cadian Tank Regiment Hadeya Etsul is the newly promoted commander of a Leman Russ Demolisher. Her crew is dysfunctional, her enemy numberless and malevolent. Does she have what it takes to not just survive but snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?
Why You Should Read It: What I like about this book is how the author limits the cast to just the crew of the tank and then crams them into a sardine can so they can argue, sulk, and stress each other out. You don’t need an expansive dramatis personae or a variety of scenes/locations to build a good story. It’s an interesting challenge that the author has set themselves and they acquit themselves nicely.
It’s also interesting to see how the books chooses to frame the core conflict of the story as one of a dysfunctional tank crew learning to work as a team rather than a direct conflict with the foes of the Imperium (Yes, there are foes, but defeating them isn’t the crisis that the book presents the main character).
Additionally, scenes like the following that provide an insight into how the common folk of the Imperium (mis)understand technology are an absolutely charming addition to the book:
“Verro was faced with a nest of wires, a small gauge and two plex-glass switches, one lit red from behind, the other green. None of it meant a thing to him, but he remembered the wire-wife spell well enough…
…’Green is the poison’s bane, the machine to keep pure’, he recited to himself. Grey the wire forbidden, touch not lest darkness fall. Blue the saintswire, not for mortal hand. Red the heartsfire, thirsting for libation. That’s it…right?’
Why It Is a Good Astra Militarum Book: The short answer to this question is: It’s all about tanks, and the Astra Militarum are also all about tanks. Like the other novels I’ve listed here, this book also touches on the politics and procedures of life in the Guard. There’s hierarchy, unpleasant orders issued by disconnected leadership and a fog of war that isolates people and introduces uncertainty into their decision making processes. This is life in the Astra Militarum.
What Inspirations You Can Take to the Table: Personally, the next tank for my Guard army is going to be a Demolisher with Etsul hanging out of the cupola. Even if Heavy Bolter sponsons and a Hull Lascannon are a categorically sub-optimal configuration.
If you’re deadly keen, there’s also some conversion work you can do for the primary antagonist of the book. I wouldn’t dare presume where to start with such an ambitious project but whoever had the gumption to make it happen would be my Internet Hero.
Book #3: Deathworlder
Author: Victoria Hayward
Published: 2024
Lazulai is a world beyond the brink, its battle against the Tyranids all but lost. Once-magnificent cities lie in ruin. The seas boil. The skies crack. Horrific alien bioforms devour. In mere days the planet will be consumed.
The 903rd Catachan ‘Night Shrikes’ defend one of the last fortresses still standing. Led by Major Wulf Khan, to die fighting is all that is expected of them… until she is given one last mission: To lead a squad through the apocalypse and recover a piece of archeotech that may doom or deliver the entire Lazulai System.
Facing impossible odds and zero hope for aid, the major must hold her squad together as they pick their way through an endless Xenos jungle. The enemy is merciless, relentless, endlessly adaptable and formidably resourceful… but so too is Khan.
Why You Should Read It: Why read Deathworlder? Well, I had a raging argument in the Goonhammer Boardroom this week with the Editor over this, I was told I could only use the phrase ‘Jungle Muscle Mommies’ once in the entire review (Ed: Ha! You just wasted your one opportunity, idiot.), so I guess I’ll have to sell this book to you on its literary merits instead.
Honestly, my favourite part of this book was how well it described what a post-invasion Imperial world looks like while the Tyranids metaphorically (and almost literally) mop up. The war is over, almost all organised defences have been broken and the Hive Fleet has moved much of its forces off planet while the clean-up crew chews up the scenery and tosses corpses (friend and foe) into the stew pots for rendering down into raw materials before being sucked up into the Hive Fleet by giant silly-straws.
There are still survivors: Civilians, Militarum and even a few disorientated Genestealer Cultists, some of whom are only just now realising that Sky Daddy isn’t here for hugs. The way Hayward paints the picture of misery and inevitable consumption for the walking dead of this planet is chilling in some parts. So much of 40k fiction is only concerned with the current conflict while this book explores what happens after the Bolters have Bolted and it’s really quite melancholy to see the consequences play out for the survivors.
I will outline one critique of the book, though. I suspect this is more a factor of Black Library author guidelines more than a failing of the author but the length of the book wasn’t conducive to pacing the introduction and menace of the ‘Persistent Individual Bad Guy,’ as that story beat was snuffed out before it could be played out properly. It was clear that Victoria Hayward was trying to build up tension by having the protagonists chased by a single, potentially unique, Tyranid creature but the book had to dive into the ending so quickly after 300 or so pages that we never got a satisfying resolution to that build up.
Why It Is a Good Astra Militarum Book: The book touches on a core part of the Astra Militarum ethos, which is to be loyal and dutiful even unto death. The war is over, the Imperial Guard lost, but the heroes still have one last order to carry out, no matter the cost and no matter the significance of their actions in the end. That’s Militarum AF and I’m here for it.
What Inspirations You Can Take to the Table: Get yourself a Jungle Mus- (Ed: Nope.). Oh, right. Well, you can certainly put together a charming Command Squad of Catachans (and a single Cadian) to match the main characters in this story. A lot of them are female so you’d have to look a little beyond the current Catachan range to make this happen. (James Workshop, please update the Catachan range like you did the Cadian. I beg of you.) I’ve used a classic metal Escher gang as one of my Catachan squads but the new plastic Necromunda Escher faction should have enough in there to get a convincing squad or two together.
You can also use the scenery/locations described in the book to inform your basing choices for an army. Having the utterly alien tyranid flora underfoot as your troops march to war is a great way to personalise and add character to your army. Hayward also has the characters range across a few other set pieces in the story: A mine, a half-submerged chapel and a ruined township. All of these locations can help inspire you to tell your army’s story.
If you play GSC, there’s also a prominent character in the story (no spoilers) that you could convert up as a Character for your cult. You might need to raid classic Fantasy or even Age of Sigmar to find a model with the right clothing (ie. not science fiction grunge-core) but some of the fun in modelling is in the search for that elusive component that completes your conversion.
Common Themes
All three of these novels see the protagonists encounter opponents that vastly outmatch them, which is a delightful change of pace for the usual Space Marine fare of one-man-armies.
Additionally, these books do a good job of expanding on military hierarchies function in the 41st Millennium. The characters have to navigate uncaring and even actively hostile bureaucracies that are almost more dangerous to the average Guardsman than the enemy.
Being stories about unaugmented humans, I find the characters in all three books to be far more relatable and interesting than the protagonists in the average Space Marine novels. The thrill of looming threats and wondering how the protagonist can possibly overcome them is a key part of writing an engaging story. It’s much easier and compelling to do this with the Guard than it is with Space Marines.
Conclusion
These are very definitely books about the Astra Militarum. I feel like these books help sell the fantasy of the guard as a faction on the tabletop, which is the underdog, the everyman (noting that the protagonists for two of these three books were women), the poor bloody infantry. The average Guardsman is your standard reference point for comparing how powerful/terrifying basically everything else in the Grim Dark future is and these books do a great job of showing how horrific and unstoppable even the most basic troops in other factions (Ork boyz, Hormagaunts, etcetera) are when it comes to the perspective of a lone human living in the darkest timeline.
Also, are you proud of me for having done a Guide to Reading Astra Militarum without having to lean on Gaunt’s Ghosts, Schaeffer’s Last Chancers, Minka Lesk or even Ciaphus Cain? I am.
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