I've been looking forward to getting hold of this since I learned of it as a work in progress about a year ago and as soon as it dropped I finished it off in short order. Having waited 25 years for a Blood Drinker novel, there was no way it was going to see a bookshelf until the very last page had been turned. So grab a 'brew' and pull up a chair for another not so brief book review.
Death of Integrity is the latest in the Space Marine Battles series, a series I must confess to having not read anything from previously, something I will now have to rectify; it's also only my second foray into works by the author Guy Haley. The first being his short story The Rite of Holos which featured in Hammer & Bolter last year and is now available as an eBook. I covered 'Rite' very briefly in a
post back then, a cracking little read of its own and also a prequel to DoI.
If you're a regular visitor to this Blog you'll know that the Blood Drinkers have been my chosen Chapter since I first got into 40k all those decades ago, you'll also be aware that I have written extensively about their existing cannon background and generated a huge amount of my own material to fill in the blanks as it were. This makes me a harsh critic indeed, you only need look at the roasting James Swallow's Blood Angels books endure at my hand and the Angels are only cousins to the Drinkers.
Suffice to say Guy had his work cut out, he'd shown real promise with the short story, now expectations were doubly high; would he, could he deliver?