I liked Warriors of Ultramar about equal to how I liked Nightbringer, the previous book in the Ultramarines series. They are similar and close in quality, but if I had to choose one, I may have to give Nightbringer the nod. There seemed to be a lot more battle scenes in this one and a lot less (for lack of a better term) intrigue. That made it a little less compelling for me. Although I do enjoy battle scenes to an extent, they are hard to continue chapter after chapter and still keep the story interesting. My mind kind of drifts off into a sort of haze when I read lots and lots of battle descriptions. Maybe I am kind of weird in that, but I remember feeling that way about movies too. Friends of mine would describe movies and say "man there are so many good fight scenes" or "this fight scene was awesome" or "that was awesome" or whatever, and I always just kind of nodded along.. but the truth was and is that I'm much bigger on the intrigue or the drama or the espionage or even the internal politics than the scenes of battle.

Perhaps that's what I missed in Warriors of Ultramar. The bulk of the text leans post heavily on the battle action and less on the behind the scenes espionage and politics than in the previous book. I started out really interested with the emergence of the other factions of Space Marines, such as the Mortifactors, and later the Deathguard, but their differences quickly evaporated into battle scenes, and that's far less interesting for me.