Here is an example: 'He cut and cleaved, and rent and slashed, and gored and sundered until a grisly wall of body parts surrounded him.' I wonder which edition of Roget's Thesaurus this came from? I would need a thesaurus myself to express all of my disdain for this title.

Salamander is painfully overwritten and whole passages look as though Kyme just went to a thesaurus and copied out entire entries.

If I were a newcomer to the Warhammer 40,000 universe, Salamander would put me off the whole thing. That is, until this horrible thing reached print. The Black Library usually has the highest standards and their tie-in books consistently outshine all other series. I cannot even conceive of how this book made it to print. I'm not sure who his editor was but he needs to have his position re-evaluated. This book reads like the worst kind of fan fiction, overflowing with Mary Sue characters and names full of apostrophes, easily one of the most overused tropes in science fiction. As an editor, Nick Kyme may be good at his job (I can't speak to that), but as a writer he is absolutely atrocious. So the fact that this book is perceived as terrible is not something limited to newcomers. This book is so bad I had to write a review to warn others to save themselves! Unlike some of the other reviewers I've seen, I've been a fan of 40K universe since I got my first copy of Rogue Trader in 1989.

Malamander book 5