Sea of Souls (Volume 7)

Chris Wraight's Sea of Souls is the best Dawn of Fire book written thus far. While it doesn't necessarily advance the Dawn of Fire narrative much, it tells an incredibly compelling and detailed story that demands you turn page after page until the end. Naval battles don't get much time in 40k lore, but he does an admirable job of showing the engagements to the reader thoughout the book, without ever making the battles themselves the focus of the story. The characters are complex, thoughtful, and the center of the story.

Most of these new crusade fleet stories are a poor comparison to the Horus Heresy or Bequin novels because there are no stand alone protagonists. Almost feels like the only reason for the crusader fleet success is Guillaman

The book itself is good - but its problem is it does not belong to the Indomitus series. Or rather, the book is completely separate from any other 40k series. Apart from the opening chapters and the epilogue, there is absolutely no link between this book and the rest of the Indomitus Crusade. The book is completely separate from it. So if you want to get it to learn more about the progress of the overarching story - don't bother. If you want it as a self-contained independent 40k story, it's a good read. Since I am in the former category and got it for the Indomitus context, this to me is a significant drawback of the book.

This book was nothing like I expected it to be. It started off like a typical Space Navel Book. The about a quarter of the way through it, the book took a left turn. It goes down a dark path (no surprise) but in a good way. There are several twist and turn throughout the book. It did a great job of drawing me back in. I had not expected the ending. Definitely a good book overall.

This was hands down the worst book in this series. The entire thing was pointless to the overall narrative, you only need to read the last 3 pages to see how it "fits". It was well written, but I think my opinion was marred by the fact that it was supposed to be a part of a series and not a standalone grim dark tale.