"Angel Exterminatus" by Graham McNeill

Going into this, I was very cynical. The Iron Warriors and Perturabo are tied with the Iron Hands and Ferrus Manus for the place of "Legion and Primarch I give the least amount of fucks about". Dude just has no charisma at all and I'm unsure if that's sloppy writing or a conscious choice on the part of the HH team. I know Fulgrim plays a part in this as well, and while I liked 'The Reflection Crack'd', I'm not crazy about the HH book that bears his name. To top this off this is written by Graham McNeill, who has written a few of my favourite HH books, but also a couple of my least favourite.

"You fist 'em, I'll hammer 'em!"

I needn't have worried. Angel Exterminatus is a masterpiece of breathless plotting which keeps you invested right to the last page, and hooks you from the very beginning. Ahh, that beginning. I like the fact that shortly after the book gets underway, we get allusions to Iron Warriors from previous HH stories: Dantioch from 'Iron Within' whose name is now synonymous with failure and disgrace, and the poor schmucks from 'The Crimson Fist' who fumbled the executioner's blow at Phall. A lot of these Iron Warrior characters apparently show up later in the 41st-millennium setting for Graham's 'Iron Warrior' and 'Ultramarines' novels and stories, so fans of those books will probably welcome a chance to see the origins of those old, villainous bastards as... middle-aged villainous bastards.

In fact, the beginning of this story is excellently paced: by the beginning of the third chapter, we've had the violent breaking of a siege, some musings on the nature of the 4th Legion, some battlefield promotions and a very humiliating battlefield demotion, a dude waking up as a dreadnought, the revelation that Perturabo made Conrad Kurze a special semi-magical labyrinth to hold a mysterious but unnamed 'uniquely capable prisoner', and FUCKING EIDOLON COMING BACK FROM THE DEAD. (I really hope that last one doesn't cause too many problems for y'all, since he's listed on like page 2 of the Dramatis Personae as 'The Risen'.) It also gave me a geniune LOL moment when Perturabo sneeringly describes the 3rd Legion's ships as 'capering in orbit'. I dunno, but when I read that, I just imagined a bunch of battle-barges zipping around broadcasting Wiz Khalifa's laugh to each other.

Soon after the action begins, we're seeing the true horror of the Emperor's Children, as described from an outsider's perspective: I have to give McNeill credit, his description of the orgiastic horde of supplicants that precede the III Legion's approach is geniuinely gruesome. Unlike Astartes, Slaaneshi cultists DO be fuckin'... And of course it's great to see the Phoenix Guard again. Those cads.

An extremely brief overview of the plot: Using the promise of unimaginably powerful weapons of unknowable antiquity, Fulgrim ropes Perturabo into a mission deep within the Eye Of Terror, guided by a mysterious Eldar. Little do they know that some Loyalists - with similar xenos guidance - are determined to stop them at any cost. The thrust of 'Angel Exterminatus' involves three Legions: the sullen Iron Warriors, the Emperor's Children (now in the full grip of Slaanesh's corruption) and a 'terror cell' of Iron Hands who have been through the crucible of Isstvan V.

Each Legion has its own distinct character which McNeill handles with ease; unsurprising for Iron Warriors and Emperor's Children, as he's written books for them before, but I was surprised at how much I liked his Iron Hand characters. The 10th always seemed to me the most humourless, dour and self-righteous legion (tied with the Iron Warriors, perhaps) but while they're still not exactly a barrel of laughs, I genuinely cared about these guys and their internal struggle to decide the best course of action. Should they attempt to regroup at Terra or should they continue to harass Horus as best they can? What's more, every one of their number who dies is like a kick in the ribs to Ferrus' corpse, and I winced at some of the battle scenes here. The culture of the Legion, or what remains of it, is also very well handled; at this point, these are the only guys in the HH fight utterly without higher direction or any hope of it coming to them, and the opposing factions are beginning to clash without any higher adjudicator to stop them. The Iron Hands characters are great, although there is one eccentric Techmarine who verges on comic relief, who is sometimes a bit much, but it's worth it for the exasperation he creates in his fellows (at one point he's ordered "Come in here so I can beat you to death"). They are joined by a Salamanders apothecary and a badass (though perhaps a little unbelieveable) stealthy Raven Guard. How stealthy can a gene-bulked Astartes be in power armour? But the way McNeill describes it really works.

STEALTHY AS FUCK

The Iron Warriors are arguably the main characters of the book. They are the ones we spend the most time with as viewpoint characters and it's their Primarch whose thoughts we most often are shown. Perturabo is no fool. He is eternally suspicious and vigilant for the slightest sign someone might have a secret agenda or is being snide or false. While this alerts him to no small number of slights (either real or imagined) from his father, brothers or even his own sons, it also seems to leave him blind to very obvious manipulation and traps; Horus' 'forgiveness' for his atrocities on Olympia, for example, or, well, all the ways Fulgrim fucks him over in this book (the list is just too long). This can leave him seeming quite naive; at the same time, his colossal arrogance makes him hard to sympathise with or love. We also find that of the Traitor Legion Primarchs we've dealt with so far, Perturabo seems to have the least amount of axe-grinding for the Emperor. He joined the rebellion more from a loyalty and respect for Horus than from festering resentment for his father, and there are several moments where he thinks back on his conversations with the Emperor with something approaching fondness. He certainly does have resentment for many of his brothers though - on both sides of the Heresy (though he does seem to think highly of Guilliman). Perturabo is a complex character and, since he's a Primarch, that's as it should be.

His Legion may suffer from its father's chilliness. Not for them the bonds shared between Primarch and Legion that the sons of Lorgar, or Horus, or Sanguinius have. Their Primarch is forbidding and cold, as likely to mete out brutal punishments as he is to give them some understated praise. He's not quite Conrad Kurze with nothing but contempt for his own Legion, but nor is he Lorgar. This perhaps pushes them on to more and more heroic (or reckless) deeds in hopes of gaining approval, as well as fuelling their brutal, cynic personalities.

This is the first time the Iron Warriors come into contact with Chaos and witness its corrupting nature; to their credit, their reaction (mostly) is "Fuck off". Still, regardless of their overt attitudes, the rot doesn't need to be obvious before it fully sets in and I would be surprised if certain elements of the Legion haven't embraced Chaos by the next time we encounter them. The only question mark / complaint here I have is the treatment of Olympia. Or rather, the lack of treatment. Are they just not going to describe this in HH and go instead for the approach of darkly alluding to it? Has it been done elsewhere? Is it in an audiobook? I know McNeill's done a few Iron Warriors books, maybe he's covered it in those? For an event which clearly cast Perturabo further into gloom and morbidity, it's certainly given very little attention in 'Angel Exterminatus'. But whatever, I suppose that's not really a big deal as you're rarely given much room to think about it!

There are some very nice moments of conflict between each legion involved in 'Angel Exterminatus', sometimes overt, sometimes not. For example, the repressed, introverted Perturabo has far more respect for the Iron Hands than he does for the flamboyance and needless drama of the Emperor's Children. And that's before he sees some of Fabius' projects in action. The moment where the Fourth Primarch has finally had enough of the Phoenician and cuts himself a switch for a whippin' of Fulgrim's hide, is truly cathartic. But who will have the last laugh...?

Fulgrim himself has become a great character too. I think his titular novel is best thought of as a scene-setting warmup. I still don't think of the events of that book with any real fondness, but without them, the current state of the Legion wouldn't have its gravitas. His Legion is really slipping into irredeemable madness at this point, and the descriptions of the Pride Of The Emperor make it sound like a gigantic crackhouse with a warp drive.

All in all, Graham McNeill has crafted a book which I feel is hands down the best he has ever contributed to the Horus Heresy line, and quite possibly one of the best in the series by any author. Perhaps in 'A Thousand Sons' and 'False Gods' he was just writing for Legions he didn't really have a - for lack of a better term - kinship with. Perhaps he, like some of the other HH writers, has just got more comfortable with the era as the series has gone on. Or perhaps it's because this novel doesn't have any fucking Remembrancers... those guys are the worst! I completely disagree with the notion that you need to have read his 40K-era Iron Warrior books to enjoy and understand this. The characters who later appear in those books are perfectly-rounded characters here and, having seen their origins, I'm eager to see what those crazy cats got up to next! (Obviously, the trade-off is that no matter what peril those characters may face in subsequent books, you know they're not gonna croak at Terra, which could rob them of a bit of dramatic capability.)

This review, like my review of 'Fear To Tread', is probably kind of insulting. "Oh, Graham, didn't you do well, considering I don't like your writing much!" But like 'Fear To Tread', it's a great, 'first tier' HH novel from an author I'd often thought of as 'second tier' to Black Library. And like 'Fear To Tread', it's very long, but so action packed it never feels overstuffed. It's also packed with allusions to characters and events from the last few HH books (and the upcoming ones as well), some of which made me drop the book and hoot "NO FUCKING WAY!" I give this 9/10.

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