Brothers of the Snake

I borrowed the Warhammer 40,000 role-playing game from a friend and I really liked the setting: in the far future, humanity has been ruled for millennia by an undead God-Emperor, and his agents, the Inquisitors, scour the galaxy putting down heresy and keeping the Empire pure of aliens, daemons, and things from other dimensions. In many respects, it's very anti-Star Wars: this isn't a galaxy of heroism and redemption, but of survival, duty, and oblivion.

Anyway, I picked up Brothers of the Snake, a stand-alone book in the Warhammer 40K setting. I was a bit thrown because instead of being a standard novel it's more a collection of short-stories spanning several years in the life of a Space Marine named Priad. I don't tend to like short story collections all that much, because by the time I figure out the setting, plot, and get interested in supporting characters, the story's over and a new one awaits. Still, this was well-written--very dark and gory, hard military-SF. It didn't have a lot of the flavour of the setting in terms of Inquisitors, arcane conspiracies, etc., but I could imagine picking up another Warhammer 40K book in the future.