Titanicus

Titanicus is the standalone Dan Abnett 40K novel about Imperial Titan war-machines (which are basically eighty-meter walking cathedrals with weapons) being deployed to defend a manufactorum world from a Chaos invasion. The premise sounds like an excuse for set-piece destruction. It is, and it is also more than that.

Abnett uses the giant-robot framing to do something subtler than the form usually allows. The Titan crews have a religious-military relationship with their machines that the book treats with genuine seriousness. The civilian chapters, in which a forge-world's population reckons with what is happening above their heads, are some of the most interesting in the whole 40K catalog.

The battles are spectacular. The political subplot involving the planetary governor is sharper than it had to be. Four stars. Recommended even to readers skeptical of Warhammer; this one carries on its own.