This second volume in MacNeill's "Adeptus Mechanicus" trilogy further details the quest for an ancient Martian Archmagos beyond the bounds of the galaxy. Many of the unresolved problems from the first book only get thornier in this one. The revolutionary potential of the Speranza bondsmen is realized in a strike, the Black Templars suffer a key casualty, the simmering challenge for Alpha in the Legio Sirius boils over, and the Eldar in the shadows start to flex their psychic muscle to control certain humans.

While the story covers two significant new settings, it doesn't really introduce any major new characters, which is something of a relief considering the size of the cast presented in the previous volume. Kotov, the leader of the expedition, seems more self-assured in this installment, with less of the handwringing that he indulged in before, but also increasingly incautious.

These books have clearly been written as a single work of some 1300+ pages, and are only broken into three volumes for the convenience of binding and marketing. There's little orienting exposition at the outset of Lords of Mars, and certainly no narrative resolution at its end, but it has considerably developed the characters and situations from the first book to a point where they are set up for a satisfying conclusion.

This book is a classic "bridge" novel, taking characters from the first Adeptus Mechanicus novel and moving them through a series of events to get to a point that I wish McNeill had approached more in the first novel. Very choppy and extremely technical, this one required less reading and more studying to make sure I was staying on track to the ultimate goal, Magos Kotov et al finding Archmagos Telok and finding out WTF he is doing on a forge world outside galaxian boundaries. I am a huge fan of McNeill's work in the Horus Heresy, but I had the nagging feeling I was reading another entry in the Wheel Of Time series: nail-pulling jargon about perhaps too many characters that does not really advance the story. This book wasn't quite that bad, as any who have read Jordan's WOT behemoth can identify with, but McNeill would be wise to seriously advance the premise, or even wrap it up, with the third novel. ( )