Malleus

This book is, more or less, exactly as it presents itself to be: a pulpy sci-fi fantasy about a guy with an impossibly cool outfit and a big gun. However, that does not mean that it's no good. Dan Abnett is perhaps most well known for his 'Gaunts Ghost' series of Warhammer 40000 novels, following a company of unusual Imperial soldiers with an even more unusual leader. With the Eisenhorn Trilogy, he takes a rather different route. Released nearly in tangent with the Games Workshop 'Inquisitor' game, the books follow the investigations of an Inquisitor Eisenhorn and his coterie as they uncover numerous plots of heresy and corruption within the Imperium. They are not fantastically written, but measure up to an author like Clive Cussler in both pacing and engrossment. Abnett makes his character's smart, but just enough that the reader can keep up with them, mixing both mystery and action in a read you just can't put down. Often, the protagonists will speak in a sort of improvised cipher, which can be fun to try and figure out. I'll be honest, after reading all three books in quick succession, I began to inadvertently drop words of this code into my own language, which may or may not have been a good thing.

If you are already a fan of the Warhammer 40k Universe, these books give a great peek at the civilian workings of the Imperium of Man and showcase many different strange and frightening worlds. If you are not learned with the background material, they may be a little hard to follow at times. Luckily, it is more or less character driven, and every time one of them meets a fate worse than death, you'll be sorry to see them go. ( )