The young reader reviewed grimly

Okay, first off, it was a perfectly enjoyable story and a good listen. If you're a Space Wolf fan, it's a good way to spend a few hours during a hobby session. The action popped, and there was a few moments of genuine humour sprinkled throughout. The performance was great with excellent characterisation and emotion throughout, would happily listen to another Space Wolf story narrated by this performer.

Okay, now the rest.

Seriously, if I hear the phrase "...young Ragnar grimly..." again in the next ten years, it'll be too soon.

"The young Ragnar looked grimly..."

"The young Ragnar smiled grimly..."

"The young Ragnar ate his chips grimly..."

Every. Single. Time.

To the point where it was making me laugh, it was so meme-like.

We know he's young, we know he's grim, you've said it twenty times already!

For Russ' sake, get a thesaurus!

Also, for anyone familiar with the lore, there were some odd choices, possibly even some lore breaking ones. Especially odd given how new the book is. For instance, the constant self referral by the main characters i themselves as "Space Wolves" when it is very well established that this is something of a slur for the warriors of the Vulka Fenryka.

All that aside, it was enjoyable enough and I don't regret using my credit on it.

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Great finish to the series

At Long last Ragnar makes good on his oath to get back spear of Russ and the 13th great company appears

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Great ending to the series

Really satisfying and honestly quite emotional end to a stellar series. Feels more dangerous than a lot of the other novels.

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Haegr!!!!!!

Great end to the series, the previous review says this is a new book, it is not, this was released in 2005 but has just become an audio book, as for the lore comment- the wolves don't mind being called that as the translation from fenrissian to high gothic often mistranslates the language of the wolves, Russ stated that they accelt it because it allows them to play into the simple barbarian mindset.

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One for a fans of The Young Space Wolf

Excellent voice acting- that out of the way the earlier William King Space Wolf books aren't perfect but the first in particular is excellent. I don't know what happened to the editing in this one but wow, repetition after repetition, storylines not tied up, odd narrative decisions.
I actually think the plot is pretty good and there are some decent setpieces, but at this point Black Library was putting out Storm Of Iron, Horus Rising, deep in to Gaunt's Ghosts. This reads like good fan fiction. One for the purists, which is a shame as it wraps up an important series.

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A tired entry in a dated series

Following the Ragnar Blackmane saga on audiobook over the last twelve months has represented something of a guilty pleasure for me. The first book, 'Space Wolf' was published in 1999, and let's just say that the 'house style' of the 40k universe novels was quite different then. For a start most BL material today is written for an adult audience, but back in the day this stuff was squarely aimed at teenage boys. There was also far less lore, in terms of sheer quantity—particularly concerning the Space Wol—sorry, Vlka Fenrika. As a result, like all these books, Wolf's Honour contains some outdated characterisations (in this pre-Prospero Burns era, the Wolves were still caricature "vikings in space"). Space marines are noticeably more religious ("Praise Russ" and "Holy Tera" gets uttered a lot), and the Space Wolves call themselves, er - Space Wolves.

Although violent, the tone of these books is also noticeably cheerier than the current grimdark mood and the style dial is firmly set to 'Maximum exposition'. Ragnar has a lot of conveniently descriptive trains of thought, just in case the reader doesn't know the background of the universe: ("Of course, Ragnar thought, he was a space marine, one of humanity's super human warriors...") or hasn't read the previous books: ("It was on one such adventure, Ragnar remembered, that he and his companions had first encountered the chaos sorcerer..."). Given this is book six, that's a lot of exposition to swallow.

To be honest, given how dated the material is, and how out of keeping with the current tone and lore of the 40k universe, the best thing about these audiobooks has been Philip Sacramento's narration. He's really wasted on material this limited. His range of regional British accents and voices generally distinct from his own is impressive. His Northern Irish 'regular' reading voice is neutral yet serious and would lend itself to any number of 40k novels. His narration of 'Outgunned' by Denny Flowers is a far better showcase of what he can bring to the setting.

This is the final book in the Ragnar series, and to be honest, it feels like money for old rope. Lee Lightning sticks faithfully to the template established by William King from book 1. In fact the best thing you can say about Lightning's writing is that he sticks very closely to King's voice in the first four books, so it reads like it was written by the same man—or a man doing an impression of another writer. He takes no risks with the material, introducing no new characters or plotlines. The whole story - as they all do - revolves around Ragnar and co going to a Chaos-contested planet, only to uncover that behind it all is the same villainous Thousands Sons' sorcerer, Madox, still trying to summon daddy Magnus from the warp (itself a little redundant seeing as Magnus seems to come and go as he pleases nowadays) using (inexplicably) the Spear of Russ, an object that is the central macguffin in every single one of these books and gets mentioned so often that it became necessary to dedicate an entire Horus Heresy novel to explaining precisely why the primarch of the space vikings had a famous spear of all things. The level of coincidence required for all these elements to be present on every planet Ragnar ever goes to is quite absurd.

Even if you can overlook all the dated and silly things about this book, it remains noticeably less fun than the earlier Ragnar books. It's more than my overfamiliarity with the format: Lightning lacks the lightness of touch as writer that keeps King's older books like the Macharius series or the much loved fantasy characters, Gotrek and Felix, so popular today. Some 40k books do survive the passage of time. This one didn't.

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