Publisher: Black Library (Audiobook – 22 June 2024)
Series: Warhammer 40,000
Length: 9 hours and 48 minutes
My Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
The always impressive Steve Lyons once again dives into the wars of the legendary Death Korps of Krieg with this epic new novel that shows just how massive a Warhammer 40,000 campaign can be with the ultra-exciting and intense Siege of Vraks.
I have been having a ton of fun with Warhammer 40,000 fiction this year, as complex books like Da Big Dakka by Mike Brooks, Deathworlder by Victoria Hayward and Lord of Excess by Rich McCormick have greatly impressed me. However, few have had the scale or pure brutality of the amazing new release, Siege of Vraks by Steve Lyons. The third standalone book by Lyons that focuses on the Death Korps of Krieg (see my reviews for Dead Men Walking and Krieg), Siege of Vraks brings to life a massive event from the Warhammer 40,000 canon (as featured in several game books), with the long-running siege of the planet of Vraks.
In the far future, humanity has been forced to fight on many brutal battlefields, but none are as infamous as the slaughter that occurred on the planet Vraks. Once a vital armoury world used to supply regiments throughout the Imperium of Man, Vraks has become tainted by humanity’s greatest enemy. Thanks to a corrupted cardinal, the entirety of Vraks’s population has fallen under the sway of the Chaos Gods and have risen in rebellion against the rest of the Imperium, believing themselves to be fighting in the god Emperor’s name.
Desperate to reclaim the vital world, the Imperium has no choice but to send in a massive besieging invasion force to purge the traitors. Only a completely relentless force has a chance of success on the bloody fields of Vraks, and to that end the stoic soldiers of the Death Korps of Krieg have been chosen to lead the attack. Experts at sieges, fanatically stubborn, and desperate to wipe away the stain of their planet’s historical betrayal, the soldiers of Krieg are prepared to destroy their enemy no matter the cost.
However, even with the implacable Krieg soldiers leading the assault, Vraks is no simple planet to conquer. Its massive central fortress is impregnable, and the entire population of planet has been mobilised to fight against the Krieg, equipped with the massive arsenal of weapons previously held in Vraks’s armoury. To defeat their enemy, the Krieg will need to spend years and millions of soldiers to slowly approach and wear down Vraks’s fortresses. But with the constant battle drawing the attention of other malign Chaos forces to Vraks, can even the massed forces of the Krieg win this impossible siege, or will these fearless soldiers finally face an army even their devotion and dedication to duty is unable to overcome?
Siege of Vraks was another particularly strong Warhammer 40,000 novel from Lyons, who excels at diving into the grimdark core of Warhammer fiction. Filled with an insane amount of action, Siege of Vraks proves to be an intense and addictive siege novel that cleverly explores a well-established lore event and presents it in an outstanding and moving way to the reader.
The story of Siege of Vraks is one of action, sacrifice and self-discovery, as it recounts the events of the titular siege in its own compelling way. Starting off with a quick prelude that covers the events that led up to the conflict, the main story starts a few years into the war and then goes all the way to the very conclusion of the siege which occurs after years of brutal fighting. Rather than having one concise narrative thread, Siege of Vraks is instead made up of a series of connected storylines set around key events of the war. Each of the initial chapters features a new central character caught up in a different battle and scenario of the war, and often focuses on them fighting in dangerous or impossible situations. While these initial chapters are often linked by the inclusion of recurring character Confessor Ignea Tenaxus or by showing different sides to the same battle, for the most part they are unconnected and some of their messages and themes remain self-contained within the chapter. However, as the book continues, a few point-of-view characters return for another chapter, often years removed from their last appearance. These characters, especially Colonel Tyborc, will then continue their storylines from the previous appearances, which often play into the larger events of the overall siege in some interesting ways. While I imagine the slightly disjointed way that Lyons tried to capture the siege might not be for everyone, especially those who would prefer seeing every event from one character’s eyes, I thought that it was extremely clever and fit into the unique mindset of the Krieg regiment.
The rest of the book takes places over a series of years as Lyons attempts to capture the entire epic and lengthy sieges. The author includes multiple time skips here to showcase the dragging length of the battle, often interspersed with useful context inclusions that provide an overview of the carnage. These time skips move the story along at a sensible pace and the reader is never lost, especially when it comes to the key recurring characters. While Lyons is primarily showing the carnage of war from the perspective of the fighter on the ground, you get a good understanding of just how big the scope of the fighting is, and really get drawn into the over-the-top action. The loosely connected character arcs continue in the second half of Siege of Vraks, and there are some complex stories being featured here. I particularly enjoyed the fascinating standalone chapter that followed the interrogation of a local inhabitant of Vraks after he defected and pretended to be a member of a Krieg regiment. While other chapters featuring recurring character Colonel Tyborc provides some unique insights into the mindset of a Krieg soldier and what being a hero means to them. All these chapters are loaded with some intense action, intriguing discussions, or shocking occurrences, as the horrors of war, and even darker things, take their toll on the Krieg soldiers. Everything leads up to the conclusion of the siege, with final battles, deadly confrontations, and despair in the aftermath, leaving plenty for the reader to get drawn into. This ended up being a particularly epic narrative which I personally really enjoyed.
As I mentioned above, Lyons features a more fractured narrative structure in Siege of Vraks that shows detailed snapshots of key parts of the larger war and the lives of certain protagonists. Considering that the overall siege lasts many, many years and features a lot of smaller, pointless battles, this is honestly the best way of doing it, and I think that Lyons’s choice provided the best view of this conflict, while also taking the time to explore multiple characters and storylines. The resulting book has an interesting flow to it, as you are introduced to new dark scenarios and figures in peril, and forced to watch them participate in a pointless, unrelenting conflict. While some may not connect with the way in which Lyons dived the book between characters and time periods, I really appreciated the way it was told, and other readers’ dislike will be well bridged by the book’s awesome action. There are so many impressive battle sequences featured throughout Siege of Vraks, and you see the Krieg soldiers and their allies face off against all manner of opposing forces, from corrupted civilians to daemons and traitor Space Marines. All these scenes are particularly epic, as Lyons succeeds in showcasing the elaborate big battles of the franchise, and you really get drawn into the resulting carnage. There is a palpable desperation in many of these sequences, as the Krieg soldiers face off against terrible odds, and Lyons also adds in a bit of horror in places, as Warhammer 40,000 zombies, disgusting daemons, and even more terrors enter the fray.
Due to all this cool action, Siege of Vraks is a highly accessible read to those readers unfamiliar to Warhammer fiction, and any general fans of science fiction and military fiction can have fun with the over-the-top battles featured in the book. Indeed, I personally felt that Siege of Vraks was one of the few of the franchise novels that really captured the epic scope of a Warhammer 40,000 war, as this book captures a literal world-spanning conflict with millions upon millions of casualties. Lyons really takes the time to explore just how devastating a full-on war in the franchise can be, and I appreciated seeing the extent of this slaughter here, compared to other Warhammer books that focus primarily on one regiment or relatively small-scale conflicts. As such, long-term Warhammer fans will also get a lot out of Siege of Vraks, especially as Lyons really does a good job of capturing this event, which has been discussed in some of the games books for ages and showing it to the reader from the soldier’s perspective. However, the thing that will appeal most to established Warhammer 40,000 readers, is Lyons’ portrayal of the awesome Krieg soldiers.
Due to their dour background, German World War I aesthetic, and the utter devotion to death and duty, the Krieg are a particularly popular faction in the Warhammer 40,000 games and extended fiction, and Lyons is the undisputed author of them. His previous books have all explored different aspects of the faction, with Krieg looking at their history and the events that made them, while Dead Men Walking showed them as near-soulless automaton, especially through the eyes of the desperate civilians they were there to save. In Siege of Vraks, Lyons goes a slightly different way and presents a more nuanced and complex portrayal that fans of his previous works will really appreciate. For the first time, Lyons features several Krieg perspective characters, and you are given some intriguing insights into their mind, which proves to be highly fascinating. While on the surface they are dedicated and fanatical fighters, you do see some threads of humanity in several of the characters, such as ambition, fear and uncertainty. I liked how Lyon tries to humanise the Krieg soldiers in places, especially around main character Colonel Tyborc who struggles with the notion of being a hero when all he wants is to fight the war and redeem his planet. Tyborc’s arc proves to be particularly compelling in places, especially as his experiences cause him to doubt the war they are fighting in, and lead to an infamous showing of fear. Despite this attempt at showcasing humanity, Lyons is clear that the Krieg have their own unique drive and take on human nature, such as when one Krieg character sends his older Commissar on a suicide mission because he believes its more merciful than letting him retire. As such, there are some complex depictions of the Krieg here in Siege of Vrak, which serve as an interesting comparison to some of the author’s previous novels, and I felt that Lyons’ dive between different Krieg characters produced a very complex read.
Unsurprisingly to anyone who has read one of my Warhammer 40,000 reviews, I chose to enjoy Siege of Vraks in its audiobook format. I have waxed poetic many times about how awesome I find Warhammer audiobooks to be, and this proved to be the case again with Siege of Vraks. The many intense and over-the-top battles really come across in an epic way when read to you, and I personally find that I can envision the action much more effectively this way. I also find that the complex character interactions and personal developments that Lyons loads up into the story are expertly captured by this format, and I believe that I got a lot more out of the audiobook than reading a physical copy. It helped that excellent narrator Timothy Watson returned for Siege of Vraks. Watson has previously really impressed me with Lyons’ previous audiobooks, as well as in The Lion: Son of the Forest by Mike Brooks, and it was great to see him continue to add his own spin these Krieg-focused books. Watson is very effective at conveying the excessive violence and intensity of the Warhammer universe with his narration, and you really get drawn into the action as a result. I also really love the Germanic accents that Watson attributes to the various Krieg characters, especially as it fits into their faction aesthetic. While the various Krieg characters all sound a little similar (which does fit into their potential clone background), the narrator does a good job differentiating between these characters, and you are never in doubt about who is talking. This excellent narration really helped to drag me into the Siege of Vraks audiobook, and I honestly flew through its near 10 hour long run. There is honestly no better way to enjoy Siege of Vraks then on audiobook, and you are going to have a great time doing so.
Overall, Steve Lyons’s Siege of Vraks was a particularly epic and intense piece of Warhammer 40,000 fiction, that is going to appeal to a lot of different readers. Loaded with massive and over-the-top action sequences, Siege of Vraks had me hooked from the very beginning, especially as the author once again expertly showcases the iconic Death Korps of Krieg. This was such a great read, and all fans of Warhammer fiction and excessively massive science fiction battles, are in for an amazing treat with Siege of Vraks.
The Unseen Library 