Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint

Warhammer 40,000

By: Matthew Farrer

Narrated by: Harry Myers

A Warhammer 40,000 Audio

War rages across the surface of Urdesh as the Iron Snakes Space Marines attempt to hold the planet against a tide of Chaos forces.

Listen to it because: Urdesh is a brutal world, the fires of its forge-cities mixing with the many volcanoes and an endless expanse of battle wreckage littering the plains. When the reincarnation of Saint Sabbat herself appears on the blasted battlefields of Urdesh, powerful forces race to secure that which may decide the ultimate fate of the world and the crusade at large.

The story: the mighty world of Urdesh is burning. The smoke of war mingles with that of her many volcanoes; the wreckage of battle litters her forge-cities and chokes her fertile seas. Until the warriors of the Imperium can free Urdesh from the grip of the Anarch, the future of the entire Sabbat Worlds Crusade will hang in the balance.

Across these ashen battlefields strides Brother-Captain Priad and the warriors of Damocles Squad. They must keep safe one of the Imperium’s greatest weapons: the Beati, the reincarnated Saint Sabbat herself, whose very presence on Urdesh inspires the Imperial armies on to glory. But the enemy has plans for the Saint too, and against the malice of the Anarch and the trickery of the warp, the Iron Snakes may truly need a miracle to prevail....

Written by Matthew Farrer. Narrated by Harry Myers.

©2022 Games Workshop Limited (P)2022 Games Workshop Limited

Matthew Farrer is Black Library’s secret weapon

Some of the best action scenes that I’ve read in a BL novel; it moves at a frantic pace from fantastic set-piece to fantastic set-piece, and it’s always more than welcome to see non-Imperial perspectives in a 40k novel.

Sabbat worlds written in a new style

Matthew Farrer takes a good stab at Annette sabbat worlds.
A fairly traditional space marine novel.
But with a very welcome underwater fight scene.
The saint also makes an appearance with some anime level power flexes.

must read gaunt's ghosts first

A these characters are from that series and really should read books 1-8 first.
It was a decent book there was nothing really special

Pretty good

The narrator is good, and his female voice acting is passable. The Snakes are cool, the enemies frightening.

The bolter porn is pretty boring. Least interesting part of the story. Looking forward to part two.

really good writer

This is what books can be in the hands of talented writers you aren't writing for pre-teens.

blah

The His narration was OK but the overall story was just boring. Is the space brains and the regular humans aren't developed at all. Space Marines aren't the easiest things to write but there is almost nothing too is nothing to these characters. I was very disappointed

Eh

This story is all over the place with all of its story archs which makes it hard to follow in this format. Lets go over and do a single chapter about this one dude who has minimal impact on the main story line. I don't care what this one random chaos marine is thinking for 5 min who then dies in the next chapter. What does that have to do with the price of milk? The story does make sense but it could have been written and put together better with a bit more backstory to bring people up to speed if you haven't read everything regarding this crusade up to this point.

Action Describing is abundant

This author doesn't do a bad job at writing a "doing this while doing that" kind of story, but it really isn't ideal for me who is trying to listen while qt work.

Would like a refund, utterly disappointing.

This was terrible, listened to the entire audio book. Have no idea who the characters are in the book and no idea what happened or even what the story was. The only things that stood out was Priad is back but written poorly and the Tanith first made a brief cameo. The whole thing was just a confusingly written mess with no story and just chaotic battle descriptions.

Underwhelming

A long and tedious story about something to do with wolves or space marines. Maybe both. A saint was present and she was weird or calmly majestic or something. I don’t know, I’m just glad it’s over.