Dark Adeptus (Warhammer 40,000: Grey Knights)

‘Dark Adeptus’ is a very good book and it is nice to see the Adeptus Mechanicus without the shadowy presence of the Necrons that seems to be the norm nowadays. The fantastical scenes and events in the book are well described and the narrative is fast paced enough to keep you interested. There are a couple of breaks in the story that explain the background of what is happening and these are quite interesting, especially the interlude explaining the Horus Heresy from the point of view of the Chaos forces. All in all this is a very good book and I am looking forward to the future of the series.


The Adeptus Mechanicus   January 11, 2006
B. Wong (UK)
5 out of 9 found this review helpful

The Adeptus Mechanicus

The Adeptus Mechanicus, the Tech-Priests of Mars, are the engineers and technicians of the Imperium, and create most of the Imperium's more advanced weaponry, build and maintain the Titan Legions and so on. They are in effect a political entity by themselves, containing their own hierarchy of laws and armies.

Prior to the founding of the Imperium, the tech-priests were an independent entity unto themselves, and had already settled various worlds througout the galaxy with seed worlds of their own planned Empire. Their alliance with the Emperor was a much a matter of convinience as of conquest by him.

Its members acknowledge the Emperor as the ruler of the Imperium, but not in the divine sense mandated by the Imperial Cult. Instead, they follow their own dark and mysterious strictures.

The Tech-Priests of Adeptus Mechanicus believe all knowledge is the manifestation of divinity, and all creatures and artifacts that embody knowledge are holy because of it.

The Emperor is the supreme object of worship because he comprehends so much, and is considered an aspect of the Omnissiah, the Machine God.

From Wikipedia, if you dont care about the machine god and didnt bother to read the above..dont bother buying this book heretic!!!

In all my years of reading 40k fluff there has never been a book on the background to the Dark Mechanicus...ok dead sky black sun had a bit...but this trumps all that!


A good read, but falls for familiar cliches   December 29, 2005
Mr. R. W. Robbins (UK)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

If you enjoyed the first Grey Knights novel, you will like this one. Alaric is back, and fighting daemons as before. Its a reasonably good read, but offers nothing new to the avid 40k reader. In particular, it falls for the age old cliche of discovering new tech, only for it to be corrupted and the Imperium loosing large amounts of resources in preventing something horrible (and previously unforseen) from happening. Why this format is used so often, and the Imperium never gets a break, I will never know. It seems to be inconceivable to BL writers that the Imperium might actually achieve something off of their own backs, without managing to turn it into a pyric victory. Oh well. Perhaps I am being overly harsh; this book is better than most BL fare, but suffers from being indestinguishable from many that have come before it.