War in the Shadows

Book Review: Nemesis

Now, before those of you who don't read books yell "NERD" and hit the back button, let me tell you about Black Library's latest and greatest in the Horus Heresy series. Nemesis follows the mission of the first ever strike team of assassins as they track the highest priority target of all...Horus. Of course things don't go according to plan because we all know the Emperor strikes down Horus, but this book is full of surprises for those of you who follow the fluff as closely as I do. Nemesis reveals far more about the inner workings of the Assassinorium than I have ever seen before. It also gives us a glimpse into the life and history of rogue traders, which I feel is becoming increasingly harder to find as most people don't remember the days of 1st edition and Rogue Trader.

I also particularly enjoyed Nemesis because it was a nice change of pace from reading about nothing but super-human killing machine space marines. You really come to realize as the story progresses that assassins, as highly trained and well equipped as they are, are still only human. This humanity also leads to them being more 3-D as characters than space marines really can be. Nemesis gave a lot of insight into the personality and inner turmoil behind these relics of a forgotten codex. I would suggest Nemesis to anyone who enjoys reading 40k fluff or even to someone who just wants to better understand what exactly an allied assassin represents in their army.