To be completely honest I really don’t read that much in the way of fiction. If I want fiction, I go off to play a videogame or watch television. I suppose some would call me a simpleton that way. But a few months ago I was looking down the barrel of a ridiculously long two-way bus trip. Before my return trip I pulled a novel off a bookstore shelf and bought it based on nothing more than the cover art. I guess I really haven’t taken the lesson of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ very well, because that was seriously the only reason I bought this novel. I’m a tank fanatic – a treadhead – and the cover art features an Imperial Guard tank smashing its way over the crumpled remains of a go-kart with guns blazing, and the commander of said vehicle standing out of the hatch firing a weapon at a Viking space orks. Awesome.

To be honest I really didn’t expect a whole lot out of this book. I’m kind of aware of the Warhammer 40k universe and I know how things generally tend to work with the humans being these religious zealots fighting and killing everything in the universe because we hate them and they hate us. I thought it was just going to be a cut-rate story that I probably wasn’t going to bother reading even a few chapters of before I tossed it into my carry on bag and never looked at it again. I own a lot of novels and that’s how it always was: because they tended to be exceedingly boring with nothing happening save for a sudden spike in action for no reason towards the end of the book.

I was pleasantly surprised in this case!

Without getting into too big of spoilers, what you see on the cover art is generally what you get consistently through out the entirety of the book. Most books that I’ve read have cover art pertaining to maybe one insignificant scene in the book, or maybe a glimpse of the climax to rope buyers in. But Gunheads doesn’t screw around. It’s action pretty much the whole way through. Most books that I have experience with tend to run on this assumption that you, as the reader, need to earn the action by sitting through page after page, chapter after chapter, of boring and hammy dialogue. Gunheads is the opposite: You have to earn your very short reprieves by hunkering down, gritting your teeth, and fighting off chapters’ worth of Viking space orcs who want to kill your ass!

I just can’t get over how great the action is. It came as such a shock to me that you would dive right into it within the first couple chapters and it would so consistently keep up! I know that Warhammer 40k is well known for its gritty sci-fi action, but so is Star Wars and, I’m sorry, but most Star Wars books I’ve read put me to sleep. Even the X-Wing novels, which focused on my favorite character from the series, were completely uneventful right up to The Bacta War wherein there’s a few exciting fight sequences. But that’s a lot of reading just to get some exciting mental imagery.

But at the same time I do not think the book makes any compromises when it comes to the brief sequences where they actually aren’t fighting. Those are honestly interesting! With characters that you honestly get attached to (during the fights in particular, naturally) and the shadowy efforts of various groups amongst our heroes I really didn’t feel like I was missing out on any time that could have been better spent. I honestly cared about these guys and their relationships with each other, and I cared about the obstacles they faced and how they meticulously planned to overcome them.

That having been said, the book has a couple weaknesses. Granted I don’t think they take away from the book that much – I still think it’s a good investment for anyone even remotely interested in science fiction ground warfare. But things go surprisingly well for the characters. I’m going to try not to spoil too much here, but they score some rather spectacular victories like the God Emperor himself is guiding them. Which, since it’s 40k, I wouldn’t be surprised. But let me explain one such incident. Don’t worry, it’s not that big of a deal and contributes disappointingly little to the story.

In the second half of the book, just before the climax, the main character, Wulfe, a tank commander, is appointed a new gunner for his Leman Russ battle tank. Before this, nearly every round fired from the main gun on any tank in the book is a direct hit. You’re wondering if these gunners have aim bots because they never miss, and they make it clear that the Leman Russ does not have a sophisticated fire control system, so you assume these gunners are just that damn good. They make a huge deal about how a new gunner can spell doom for a crew because of the differences between gunning in combat and simulated exercises. In fact they really ramp this up over a meaningful period of time where you think “Oh man, this kid is gonna mess up and the crap is gonna hit the fan.”

Well, it never happens. His greatest mess-up is that they’re attacking a massive wall and the tanks are skittering around this desert floor firing at the artillery batteries mounted on this massive structure. The new guy misses once, the loader chambers another shell, and he fires again and hits the target dead-on from a moving vehicle with no fire control, at night, all inside of a paragraph. That was his massive failure that they’ve been having you wait for. It didn’t result in any catastrophic shift of the battle, nor did it result in any adverse condition that our characters had to conquer. It was a total disappointment and left me more than a little sour.

There’s also this rivalry between the main character and some other douchebag. I honestly don’t know what the hell it’s all about, Wulfe just says “You look like this one guy who I saw a bunch of years ago!” and the antagonist responds “orly?” and then they knife-fight. That being somehow stretched over the course of 416 pages and an entire planetary campaign. Yeah, don’t ask me; it left me scratching my head, too. I think I must have missed something.

But over all, despite the books relatively few and minor weaknesses, it kept me thoroughly entertained. The book gives you exactly what you see on the cover; it’s good from beginning to end; the characters are entertaining; and it’s got tanks massacring Viking space orks. If you’re a tank fanatic like me, and if you’re in to science fiction like me, then it’s worth picking this up. It’ll leave you feeling good and very satisfied. There are a lot worse you can throw your money at.