"Fulgrim" by Graham McNeill

Yikes, the only HH novel (so far) solely titled after a Primarch ('Aurelian' is a novella, and 'Vulkan Lives' is a very short sentence). You'd hope it'd be an all-but-definitive capturing of that Primarch's personality, backstory, and motivations. I'm not sure 'Fulgrim' quite gets there.

The cover illustrates the problem with the HH 'let's use the right-hand 50% of a large picture as the cover drawing' format. This is Fulgrim's book, but the cover shows the Iron Hands, and the actual image of Fulgrim himself, relegated to the back of the book, is covered by a fucking text box.

The story of 'Fulgrim' begins soon after the Triumph at Ullanor, and runs parallel to the initial HH trilogy of 'Horus Rising', 'False Gods' and 'Galaxy In Flames'. 'Fulgrim' is one of the longest HH books at 500+ pages and this review was a bitch to write (I wrote like 9 A4 pages on this shit!).

When we join the 3rd, they're embroiled in an alien war on some Kevin Costner-ass Waterworld. They're fighting a creepy snake-like species who seem to take a great deal of pleasure in, well, everything. UH OH!!! We also learn that the Emperor's Children apparently suffered some unspecified tragedy near the beginning of their fucking-shit-up career, which left them dangerously below strength. While outwardly poisonously arrogant, their past has made them a tad insecure and also had the effect of giving them the urge to succeed and constantly push BEYOND their past successes. Around the time of this, their lowest point, the III Legion also fought alongside the Luna Wolves, which brought the two Legions close together and gave them an enduring mutual respect. MANY YEARS LATER THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN WOULD CLONE THE SONS' DEAD PRIMARCH JUST FOR KICKS. That's what enduring mutual respect gets you in 40k.

Going into this re-read (not one I relished the prospect of), I remembered the problems with 'Fulgrim' being in two main categories. Art, and Sex. As a pawn of Slaanesh, Fulgrim is swayed by the heady scent of sensuality and also the unknowable expanses of the mind unlocked by great art. More than in any other book, more than any other Primarch's story, it's natural that sex and art would feature heavily in 'Fulgrim'. But... I'm not sure how much Graham is really a big fan of writing about either subject. Dude does not seem to be secretly hoping for a career as an art critic or an erotic writer. (Thank fuck. 'Fifty Shades Of Warplate' is a scary concept, the world's not ready.)

I'm reliably informed this guy was never called an asshole

Maybe I'm being paranoid here, but it sometimes feels like McNeill is equating "appreciation of abstract art" with "ripe for corruption". He also seems be playing to the often-held prejudice that artists are ready to throw themselves into taboo-busting bacchanals at the drop of a hat, or indeed at the drop of some panties. It annoys me that Ferrus Manus seems to be set up as the archetypal, stolid "I don't know about this art stuff, but I know what I like: good common sense" dullard. Hey, guess what: he turns out to be hella resistant to corruption and the seductive call of Chaos! Art: Dangerous frippery which leads you to the Dark Side. Having said that, I really like the fact that one of the first 'chips' the forces of Chaos use to turn Fulgrim against his "dearest brother" Ferrus is the Gorgon's casual dismissal of Fulgrim's artwork. In fact, one of the most consistent messages of 'Fulgrim' is that you should never criticise the Phoenician's artwork. Dude is frankly the most dangerous art student since Mobb Deep.

And the problem of sex... well. McNeill's between a rock and a hard place here. The charms of Slaanesh manifest themselves commonly through PRIAPISM and LASCIVIOUSNESS so, really, he's gotta put SOME concessions to Feverish Lustfulness in there. But... yikes, man. It starts off aiight I guess, a few glossed-over sexual trysts and some guys growing big goggle-eyes with a comedy BOIIING noise when a lady in a 'tight, revealing' dress that shows 'a great deal of cleavage' walks by. The most risqué we have to get at this point is "I've always found that when sex involves all five senses it's a quite mystical experience." I dunno, when does it NOT involve all five senses? Unless one of the parties involved is wearing headphones, and also a big sack over their head. Weird. I personally prefer it when all SIX senses are involved. Yep, when Haley Joel Osment is watching me and crying. But DAMN does McNeill lose it pretty quick. I mean goddamn son. On one hand I applaud him for not shying away from depicting weird creepy daemonic orgies as, well, weird and creepy, but JESUS FUCK! I damn near wanted to tie on a chastity belt on after I read some of these.

On another sex-related note... I'm really not down with these female 'characters' at all. They're shallow illustrations of standard dumb fiction tropes. Hey, we can't avoid some of that in HH. It is Warhammer 40,000 fiction after all, and where would the Space Marines be without a bit of trope-usage? But when it's women being so clumsily characterised, shit just seems more egregious. We have Bequa, the spoiled bitch who's terrified of rejection, and by extension, terrified of ageing into someone who's not physically desirable. She actually thinks at one point - I'm paraphrasing, BARELY - about how she loves nothing more than corrupting the young and the innocent, making them used-up and bitter like her. In a way, Bequa is nothing more than a rewrite of the spoiled-ass hoe in 'False Gods', but whatever. Did McNeill get burned by a rich older women? I'm feelin' him if so, you gotta stay away from those maneaters Graham! Then we've got Serena D'Angelus and, well, Jesus Christ. Serena starts off as a beautiful but self-doubting "wounded bird" who just needs to be nursed back to health so she can flyyyyy. But she quickly becomes an unstable perfectionist who cuts herself JUST TO FEEL SOMETHING when she runs into problems with her work. ART, HOW MANY LIVES WILL YOU RUIN?! It says a lot that the self-confident, sexually aggressive female character is portrayed as venal and terrifying, and our heroic sculptor would much prefer the more vulnerable, slightly hysterical Serena. Though Ostian is happy to ogle the rapacious Bequa, he runs a mile when she's like "whip it out then". McNeill, you sly dog, you've satirised who a lot of your key reader demographics see women! We'd much rather have a startled faun who we can protect from the big bad world, right...? But - horrible to relate! - even the Good Girl is corrupted. Corruption which leads to... her bangin' hella dudes. And killing them. And using their blood and shit and (probably) cum to paint foul-smelling paintings. That's that 'outsider art' yo...

I will say that generally, the writing quality in 'Fulgrim' is much better than in 'False Gods'. Still, there are a few slip-ups... not to be too fussy, but McNeill's comma use is quite shady here. I don't like this sentence much:

"Perhaps, she had thought, a galaxy, reawakening to the manifest destiny of humanity, to rule would provide new and undreamed raptures and enchantments."

I mean, WTF is going on there?! I do like McNeill's writing in general, but for this and 'False Gods' a few scenes are ruined by mistakes which should have been spotted by a cursory proof-read. There's also the unintentionally Australian/Californian moment where Fulgrim shouts "I will not believe you?" LOOK THERE'S NO TIME FOR GRAMMAR, THE GALAXY IS IN CRISIS. Also, we're told fairly early on that Fulgrim and Ferrus Manus have the very closest relationship of all the Primarchs. I'm so fucking sick of any HH book telling me "of all the Legions, (X) was the most (Y)." Shit is mad lazy.

It sometimes feels like Graham still didn't know his strengths at this point, and was trying to be Dan; the inordinate amount of time spent with boring non-Astartes characters, or describing the dull opulence of the 3rd's surroundings... well, it detracts from what he's always been truly good at; describing intense battles and developing Astartes characters. Still, there some pretty cool parts in his scene-setting for this Legion. The Emperor's Children culture seems heavily based on that of ancient Rome. It's a good idea, and works fairly well, though it doesn't really go beyond them wearing togas, being fond of pillars, and (later on) throwing some pretty crazy orgies. There's also a real relish to their warmaking, a sadistic love of action and, well, violence as an undercurrent to their operations. Something you'd not get with the Luna Wolves at this time, or the Space Wolves.

I can't tell you how many times I've written 'Emperor's Chode' when trying to type this Legion's name.

Fulgrim's actual introduction as a character in this book is pretty great. I'm not sure if any Primarch introduction will beat Abnett's unveiling of Horus, but McNeill certainly does his best. We see quickly how charming, intelligent and, let's not beat around the bush, beautiful Fulgrim is. We also see how he's kind of a spoiled, vain little bitch. As Horus perceived in 'Horus Rising', Fulgrim's Legion is slipping into extreme hubris. Still, that's all ultimately to Horus' benefit. The III Legion lodges are, like Erebus planned, breeding grounds for ill-feeling towards the Emperor. Under the guise of 'fraternal informality' to be sure, but it's still there. Even within the lodges, though the Children are some butt-smooching, up-the-chain-o-command motherfuckers.

One of the charms of 'Horus Rising' was ambiguity of characterisation. (Yes, I'm still singing this same sad song.) Even when you knew a character was going to end up on the side of Chaos, bitter and corrupted and trapped in the Eye Of Terror... Dan made it fun to wonder WHY and HOW they would get there. In 'Fulgrim', a lot of 'em seem to be, well, there already. Take Fabius Bile, for example. Dude is basically Josef Mengele from the first time we see him, all sinister glances and noticeable erections as he rubs his hands with glee at cutting up his fellow Astartes. There's no ambiguity at all. He starts as a sick sumbitch who likes vivisection, and, as we all know, he's still that way in the 41st Millennium. The Heresy, it would appear, had almost no effect on him. McNeill's Fabius is like McNeill's Erebus. You can't believe someone so obviously slimy and manipulative could influence a Primarch, but those supposed towering intellects/Gods Among Men totally buy into it. Fabius only takes a few words to convince Fulgrim he should be allowed to meddle around in the Legion's geneseed. I'm not denying his creepy experiments and their horrifying results lead to some of the best parts of the book. But how hard would it have been to have him start as a good guy? Even a kind of shitty, vain good guy like Lucius? Right now I'm just thinking "don't these guys have any kind of vetting procedure to their recruitment?"

Likewise, I often typed 'Fabius' as 'Fabolous'.

Obviously, Tarvitz, Lucius and Eidolon will play their important parts in the novel, but McNeill makes sure to also introduce us to "his" Emperor's Children characters - Marius Vairosean, Julius Kaesoron, Apothecary Fabius and Solomon Demeter. In fact, I'd say McNeill does his damnedest to give these characters the most 'screen time'. Only fair. He actually could have gone a bit further in this regard; Lucius and Tarvitz were pretty insignificant captains in the scheme of the Legion during the time of 'Horus Rising'. Here, it's retconned so that before the war on Murder they'd been inducted into a secret society of the highest echelons and had the ear of the Primarch. Not out and out impossible (Loken saw himself as a pretty insignificant captain at the beginning of 'Horus Rising', after all) but for Lucius and Tarvitz to not mention it (or in Tarvitz's case, even think about it) during the Murder campaign? Weird.

Naturally, the 'new' Emperor's Children are horrendously arrogant, but their arrogance and perfectionism manifest in different ways. Solomon Demeter is ultimately a pretty straightforward, aggressive bruiser with a taste for the thrill of combat, which can make him act with a cavalier disregard for his (or his command's) safety. Solomon's very impetuous and seems cheerfully polytheistic, with his talk of fates and gods of battle. Beginning the book, I was certain that Solomon would embrace the Pantheon, but he becomes a mini-Loken quite quickly in the narrative. Marius is a much more regimented and controlled Space Marine; his esteem for Fulgrim's perfection results in him being a complete kiss-ass. Julius Kaesoron (errrr... not sure who he's named after, and if he's gonna get stabbed by someone called 'Bruteus' later in the series) is a bit of a dilettante, aspiring to get his feet in both the "good at war" and "appreciative of art" categories. JUST LIKE HITLER!!!

The final assault on the alien Laeran is a bit of a disaster. First, all the warriors inhale a weird vapour that makes the colours, sounds and sensation of battle so much more VIVID. Four twenty, bro!! Then they stumble across a giant alien orgy (seriously) and get, understandably, a little creeped out. Then Fulgrim sees a beautiful sword right in the middle of the alien orgy-temple, and he's like "takin THAT shit lololol". This last bit leads me to believe that Fulgrim is deeply idiotic. When you come across a creepy sword which seems to be worshipped by an alien civilisation, and which seems to have driven said civilisation to wild excess, and shortly after picking the sword up, YOU START HEARING CREEPY FUCKING WHISPERS IN YOUR MIND, what would stop you from throwing that shit away? Er, if it was real purty-like apparently. Ugh.

By the end of part II, we're on a dark path with the Legion. Marius' (fairly minor and understandable) failure in the Laeran endgame leaves him with a burning need to redeem himself - we can see how easily manipulated this trait could be, so I could have done without the "pointing out the obvious" bit where he baldly states that in future, he will carry out Fulgrim's orders without question WHATEVER THEY MAY BE. Meanwhile, Julius' drug trip in the Laeran temple has driven him to seek out similarly intense sensations to recreate that first high. And hey, Fabius just straight up gives the whole Legion combat drugs rendered from the bodies of the fucking Laer. That's gotta cross one or two lines, right? Meanwhile, Fulgrim is having actual arguments with himself in front of his soldiers. Surely some alarm bells are ringing by now... I'd forgotten that after the Laeran war, we're given a section heavily involving Ferrus Manus and the Iron Hands. Certainly a much more straightforward, unimaginitive Legion than the 3rd. You wouldn't find the 10th jerkin' around with no xenos artefacts... Honestly, I'd always remembered Ferrus and the pre-Isstvan Iron Hands as incredibly boring (aside from Ferrus' brief flashback cameo in 'The First Heretic'). But I gotta admit, McNeill's portrayal of Ferrus Manus is pretty great, and really gives you a feel for the character in only a few short descriptions.

As the book goes on, Fulgrim's appearance becomes more and more ornate..

Part III of 'Fulgrim' sees the introduction of Eldrad into the HH series, with his annoyingly circuitous schemes to SAVE ALL THE HUMANS but certainly not by keeping them well-informed on the dangers of Chaos or helping them out in any demonstrable way. It also presents a useful get-out clause for why the Eldar didn't just predict the Heresy and have Horus bumped off: apparently, the warpcraft involved in the Primarchs' creation makes it impossible to see their futures. All in all though, the 'Eldrad parley' sequence always seemed a bit superfluous to me, just a way to make explicit what was already pretty clear - Fulgrim's new sword houses a daemon. Still, it IS really cool to see Fulgrim in an all-out crazy Primarch v Wraithlord "who has the most ridiculous warp strength" contest. And if you think THAT's crazy, wait until Fulgrim goes gorillas and punches an Avatar's brainz out!! This is also the part where the sword lures Fulgrim with the actual name of its patron... Slaanesh. If you hadn't guessed. But Fulgrim embracing that name marks the point at which he can't turn back... Fuck it, writing about this sequence has convinced me that it's actually really awesome. Definitely one of the highlights of the book's often treacle-slow first half.

Meanwhile, Kaesoron is being corrupted slowly by the poetry of Cornelius Blayke and his insistence that sensual desires must be yielded to. I actually found the break in the action for Julius' extensive Ancient Poetry Criticism Corner pretty interesting and a worthwhile fleshing out of the story. Part III also sees the chronology catch up with 'Horus Rising', as Tarvitz, Eidolon and Lucius rejoin us fresh from Murder. This helpfully reinforces what a slippery shit Eidolon is; dude be str8 LYIN about his alien adventures. Not everything in Part III is good or even logical. When they make planetfall on one alien world, Solomon Demeter is obviously extremely moved by the beauty of the place and wishes - however briefly - that it could remain untouched. Then, when Fulgrim has the same reaction - except with more tears - Demeter's all "What's HER problem?"

And how are the Remembrancers/artists doing? Ahhh, Serena. She used to be a good girl, now she's slutting it up. It doesn't seem to take long (after she's cut herself up a bunch and thought about her low self esteem) before she hoe-traps some random shithead from La Fenice, fucks him and then cuts his throad while totally coming her brains out. Hey, that's what it takes for a woman to have an orgasm. Someone's got to die. Right, HH fans? Anyone? No? Oh well. It was kind of funny to me that - while way more graphic than expected - the sex scene was extremely coy compared to the horrific bloodbath that followed. Y'know, those kids, we can give them the most horrifying violence ever, but we can't have 'em learnin' about the sexin' from a Black Library novel! I hate to say it, but this horrifying development is one of the only 'corruption' plots here that actually makes sense. Serena is corrupted by alien substances and possible witchcraft on Laer, and her motivation becomes capturing the strange beauty of that planet in her paintings. Her inability to do this drives her to murder and turns her paintings into ritualistic things. The resulting magickal/warp-touched painting of Fulgrim becomes significant at the end. One of the few times that everything comes together in the book. Shame it's the result of such a misogynistic plot.

Yikes, we're on to... part four?! Most of these novels don't go beyond three parts. This is where you start to suspect 'Fulgrim' is two books smooshed together (or maybe three or four novellas of varying quality). This is where we first see That Fucking Painting. Fulgrim seems pretty stoked about it. Now that the guy's so heavily corrupted, he does become oddly paranoid in his vanity - believing he's so perfect that everyone is jealous of him. Hmm, could Kanye have become a servant of Slaanesh at some point? Shit, do I even have to ask? This is where shit starts heating up in terms of the overarcing Heresy storyline. Horus' slow 'feeling out' of Fulgrim for possible inclusion in his Heresy starting line-up is masterfully handled.

The controntation between Ferrus and Fulgrim is excellent, and makes their first meeting seem more bland and pointless. That's one of the main problems with this book; too often you're left feeling something is boring, pointless and artlessly handled, but it turns out to be necessary backstory which is needed for the second half of the book to be so good. During the confrontation, Fulgrim flaps his trap a little too much, letting Ferrus know that Angron and Lorgar have already turned, and Mortarion will be with them soon. This just reminds me that there's still so much mystery around Morty and his character. I mean, there's those bits in 'Eisenstein' or 'Thousand Sons' - but they're little more than cameos. Dude needs to get his due one of these days! I'd love there to be an equivalent to 'Fulgrim' covering this time period for the Death Guard and shadowing their Primarch closely. It does seem unnecessary that Fulgrim tells Ferrus all of his evil plans while trying to sway him to Horus' banner - but if you think about it, it's also one of his cleverest moves. The attempted corruption led to Ferrus' all-encompassing rage and total abandon of tactics on Isstvan, which you could say is one of the main factors in the doom of the Loyalist army. If Horus could have got under the skin of Corax or Vulkan in this way, we'd be looking at zero Shattered Legion survivors, probably.

Further to this little conversation though, once Ferrus got word that Fulgrim was telling the truth about Horus, and that Mortarion and Angron had joined the cause... might he not have also surmised that the stuff about Lorgar wasn't just Fulgrim bullshitting? And MAYBE got a little bit wary when he heard the Word Bearers would be reinforcing the Loyalists at Isstvan V? Ehhh, even a brief moment where he acknowledged the earlier conversation and then dismissed the idea that Lorgar would ever turn from the Emperor would have been good enough... it seems like an unnecessary plot hole to me.

Vespasian is a pretty boring character at the best of times, but his final scene is incredibly dumb: Fulgrim is just openly musing on how he's going to betray the Emperor soon and join with Horus... once he's purged his ranks of the pesky loyalists, which is happening soon, very soon. Vespasian's response: UHH MY LORD I CAN'T UNDERSTAND THE THINGS YOU'RE SAYING RIGHT NOW, COULD YOU EXPLAIN THAT SHIT AGAIN??? YOU SAY YOU'RE GONNA CLEANSE THE LEGION'S RANKS? CAN YOU BE MORE SPECIFIC ON WHAT THAT ENTAILS? Basically acting like he's wearing a wire. Ahh well, he's dead soon. I'm still not too sure why Fulgrim was given the anathame by Horus, I don't recall if there was a 'payoff' for that in 'Angel Exterminatus'... And oh shit! Ostian's still alive! I bet you forgot about that dude! He does contribute to one last bit of wackness though. Serena's suicide once she sees his desiccated corpse. She seems to think she killed him. HOW WOULD SHE THINK SHE USED A GIANT, PRIMARCH-TAILORED SWORD TO IMPALE A FULLY GROWN MAN, PINNING HIM, SUSPENDED, TO A STATUE OF SOLID MARBLE?? So fucking stupid.

Lucius' final betrayal of Solomon Demeter is another win in the "Lucius is awesomely horrible" column. It also gives even more sting to the Lucius vs Tarvitz final confrontation in 'Galaxy In Flames'. It is a bit of a shame that McNeill has Solomon slowly collapsing in death while a single tear rolls down his face and 'Adagio For Strings' plays in the background as he slowly whispers "Forgive them... they are... so lost..." But you can't have it all. Another 'You Can't Have It All' moment is the last duel between Fulgrim and Ferrus. Superbly written, and then once the thing's over, we just get yet another cliched "WHAT HAAAAVE I DOOOOOOOONE!" moment.

Ahh, then we get to the shitstorm at La Fenice. First. Julius Kaesoron finds himself physically aroused by Bequa Kynska's appearance, which raises... unpleasant questions. And then, a hideous, reality-destroying musical spectacle begins, something that breaks the very mind of the audience to witness it - no, not 'Phantom Of The Opera'. Something worse. Considering that this is the birthplace of one of the goofiest, retarded-est units in 40K (Noisemarines, a deadly daemonic rock band with guitar guns) it's handled with aplomb, despite going prrrretty close to unreadably unpleasant at times. After that shit stops, the post-Isstvan V worldbuilding FINALLY rolls around in the last few pages. It's great, but it confuses me a bit. It sets up the Night Lords for the Thramas Crusade, sets the Alpha Legion up for trolling the White Scars, sets the Iron Warriors up for Phall... all well and good, but the 'Core Four' plus Lorgar all rendezvousing at Mars, I don't remember that at all. Maybe I need to read 'Mechanicum' again... but yeah, what a great scene.

As soon as I saw Harry Lloyd as Viserys in Gamer Frones, I was like "That's Fulgrim". No contest.

So now we finally return to La Fenice for the great epilogue which is a perfect introduction to 'The Reflection Crack'd'. Though if you hadn't got the Dorian Gray parallels yet, it's made painfully apparent in this part... "Nooo it's nothing like Dorian Gray! That's about a picture which starts off beautiful and becomes horrifying as its subject is more and more corrupted; this is a picture that starts off horrible and ugly and becomes beautiful when its subject's soul is trapped within!" Yeah, totally different. So, ultimately this ends up as kind of a shitty rewrite of 'The Picture Of Dorian Gray' which is a pretty shitty book anyhow I feel. (Yeah, HERESY, but I don't think Wilde was suited to prose.) Except that book would have been WAY shittier if Dorian had several thousand adoring, much smaller versions of him who followed his every move and he still somehow managed to keep his extensive corruption a secret from his various puritanical, apparently super-perceptive brothers and a stern, all-knowing father figure. Right after I finished 'Fulgrim', I dove right into 'The Reflection Crack'd'. My memories were right: this novella is way better. Yet it feels like the 'twist' of 'Reflection' - while excellent and surprising - might have needed a bit more explanation, or maybe the end of 'Fulgrim' being a bit more ambiguous instead of deliberately misleading... but hell, that's just another example of how 'Fulgrim' seems a little rushed.

I don't think I can dismiss this book as easily as I could before. It's still deeply flawed, overlong, padded, and frequently seems drop-dead repetitive. Then again, it's also got some wonderful scenes, and sets up one of my favourite HH mini-arcs so far ('Reflection' / 'Angel Exterminatus'). Were I an editor, I'd have cut the whole 'daemon painting' angle, and left all the non-Astartes characters on the cutting room floor. But they're in there, and we've just gotta work with it. I'm going to hedge my bets and give it 7/10.

Fuck, I hope I never write a review this long again.

New to PurpleHeresy? Head on over to the index page to see a more chronological list of the Horus Heresy reviews on this blog.

The Hand of the Ship

Holy shit, I found this when looking for Horus Heresy on Amazon... not sure how long ago this was announced...

A few thoughts:

-Hmm, is Horus wearing the same armour - and basically in the same post - as on the cover of 'Tales Of Heresy'? Dude may need to diversify his wardrobe.

-Graham McNeill is back! 'Angel Exterminatus' was the shit! However, 'False Gods', the only Horus-centric book Graham has done, is one of my least favourite in the series. I think Graham's writing style has improved dramatically in the last few years, but his characterisation of Aximand, Abaddon and Horus himself were... shaky. Mind you I hated his version of Fulgrim in the titular book, but then in 'Reflection Crack'd' and 'Angel' he's a badass... I'm still a little dubious.

-I have been whining about a lack of Sons Of Horus books in the series for ages now, though, so I can't really be trippin'.

-So, what's the battle of Molech? This, apparently. Looks like some more opportunities for Gareth to do some freaky-ass Slaanesh orgies, the stuff he loves to do more than anything else in the world.

-I didn't know what Knight Houses were. It seems they're the bitter smaller cousins of Titan Legions. That could be pretty damn cool - I'm not really a massive fan of BIG MECH BATTLES, but of all the HH guys who've tried it, Graham's 'Mechanicum' stuff was the best to me.

-The fact this is on Amazon, and 'The Shattered Legions' or 'The Silent War' aren't - perhaps this is next up after 'Scars'? Then again, there's a looooong gap between both books' projected release dates.

Here's maybe the best cover ever:

1. "Premier Heretique" is the best thing ever.
2. "Du sang por le Dieu de Sang" shows that French Khornate players must be so much more genteel than their Brit counterparts. I can't make it sound like anything other than politely asking for a brand of herbal tea in a restaurant.
3. Angron and Lorgar are definitely some felons by now...

"Galaxy In Flames" by Ben Counter

'Galaxy In Flames' closes the inaugural trilogy of the Horus Heresy series. It takes us up to the finish of the Isstvan III virus bombing/massacre, and sets up the storylines of several Horus Heresy books that came next.

There's a Titan behiiiind youuuuuu!

In my 'False Gods' review I alluded to the Night Of The Long Knives... stupidly, I seem to have forgotten that Part 1 of 'Galaxy In Flames' is called 'Long Knives'. Ahh, me and Ben Counter, just totally on the same wavelength. Ahhh... First things first. I'd like to apologise for saying that Ben Counter is Black Library's 'watchword for wack'. Actually, reading this book, I'm forced to admin Ben is pretty fucking good. But you might not know that from reading the first few pages. Unlike with 'False Gods', the first few pages do have a fair amount of superfluous "IN CASE YOU JUST JOINED US" scene-setting and recapping. "Oh what's up Sindermann?" "Nothin' man, just thinking a lot about all the events which brought us here, in minute fucking detail." Kyril used to be a master of rhetoric, now he talks like, well, a rhetard. I'm guessing that's a lack of the authorial skill necessary to write a convincing-sounding speech rather than Black Library's subtle comment on the simplifying effect religion can have on politics. That aside, we are not too long into the book before the conflict on Isstvan III starts. Sure, it takes a while for the betrayal to happen, but it's not a drag at all to read the buildup. Of course, this "get to the main battle REAL QUICK" approach led to a lot of people whining about 'Prospero Burns' so it ain't all good...

Before re-reading this, I remembered this as a significant step down from 'False Gods' in every way. In fact, the writing style is very similar. Counter is a little more terse in description, but his dialogue can be just as clunky, laboured and non-naturalistic as McNeill's was in 'False Gods'. However, his book is less full of implausible or stupid character actions, that's for sure.

The book begins around a year after the events of 'False Gods'. (Horus is now wearing his Martian Terminator armour, so this book begins after the events of 'The Kaban Project', and probably takes place at the same time as 'Mechanicum'.) Horus' wicked plans set into motion at the end of 'False Gods' have had some time to marinate, undersmell me? In that time, the dude has gone fairly quickly from "Damn, I gotta stop the Emperor from proclaiming himself a God!" to "I am a God, so HURRY UP WITH THOSE DAMN CROISSAINTS!" In a marginally less plausible "LET'S ALL GET TRAPPED ON A CHAOS WORLD" plot than 'False Gods', the Gang head out to Isstvan with the Death Guard, World Eaters and Emperor's Children to sort out a creepy "uprising" on a "compliant world". (Is it just me, or is the distress signal from Isstvan very similar to the record of disaster they find on the Reaver homeworld in the classice nerd movie 'Serenity'?) While this gives us a chance to catch up with our favourite III Legion dudes, it also gives us a great introduction for Nathaniel (or Nathanial?) Garro, although we meet him while getting his ass kicked. I can't quite reconcile the 'rough around the edges' Four Yorkshiremen Garro with the stuffy, cultured-sounding dude in the audio books... but hell, who says characters can't change a bit...

'ey, we didn't have none o' this fookin' corruption in my day, lads.

One thing's for sure. You won't be seeing a downturn in chracterisation quality anywhere near as massive or widespread as the one from 'Horus Rising' to 'False Gods'. In fact I'd say most of the time the writing and plotting are much better than in McNeill's book... though not everyone gets away clean. The Remembrancer story arcs are one big L after another. Euphrati Keeler began life as a strong, independent, interesting female character - a big deal, as there have been VERY FEW of those in HH. And now... she's just 'Space Preacher With A Pussy'. Who cares? Definitely one of the lamer-handled character arcs in the whole series. Mersadie Oliton is just an observer at this point and Sindermann, well, he can't orate his way out of a paper bag anymore, so the rapturous applause he constantly gets is frankly bewildering.

The disintegrating relationships between the Mournival members are handled much better here than in 'False Gods', though we're a long way from the nuanced friendship/rivalry of 'Horus Rising'. And Counter's take on the Emperor's Children is definitely the most consistent with the Legion's backstory for the rest of the HH series. In fact, I kind of wish Ben had written 'Fulgrim' (though making it half as long as McNeill's version could have been a good start). I think I read 'Fulgrim' before I read this, so I can see why I found the III Legion parts here so frustrating first time round - I already knew the fleshed-out version, and I had no need for the overview. Reading it in the right order though, 'Galaxy In Flames' is a particularly excellent setup for 'Fulgrim'. Actually, of all the characters in the entire book, Lucius is probably the best-served. First off he's given a nice epiphany on the joys of the Glorious Cacophony of Slaanesh. The Warsingers' song which he is battered by on Isstvan III really changes him, in fact, this is probably one of the most pivotal moments in his narrative, and it's told extremely well. Then there's that unexpected twist of Lucius being earmarked for death along with the Loyalists. The way he slimes out of it may make you hate him, but I also felt a grudging respect. In fact, I'm surprised Tzeentch didn't claim him with that little scheme working out the way it did. Lucius is such a great, memorable HH character, and it's fitting that he would simultaneously embrace the gifts of Slaanesh and somehow retain the ethos of the III Legion: arrogance, ambition, and the relentless pursuit of perfection. Lucius always seemed better-drawn than Vairosean, Eidolon or even Fulgrim to me...

Ben takes the opportunity to give us a bit of foreshadowing on the directions some of these Legions are going to take. Loken's discovery of a creepy Chaos temple on the 'Vengeful Spirit' is a great sequence. And hey, right after that, Loken's the one who gets an acid trip this time out, though he shakes it off with a cry of "I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR YOUR ILLUSIONS!" Told you Loken was too straight up and down for that shit. On Isstvan Extremis and then Isstvan III, the Emperor's Children fight creepie opponents who take orgiastic glee in utilising sonic weaponry... foreshadow much? Eidolon's already killing enemies by screamin' on 'em, too. But how?? Well, STAY TUNED FOR 'FULGRIM', KIDS! Horus' fall is a tiny bit more nuanced here, but he's still 99% evil dick, so it's not too huge a surprise when he closes the book by carrying out George W. Bush's lifelong dream: massacring pesky dissident journalists. "Call me a warmonger, would you? Well would a warmonger HELLA MASSACRE YOU JUST LIKE THIIIIIIIS? Warmonger this, motherfuckers. Callin' me all types of shit."

Horus does his hilarious Magnus The Red impression.

Counter's action sequences, while a little unimaginitive, are certainly readable. The general lack of Astartes carrying on an internal monologue while they're in the thick of the fighting makes that aspect of the book superior to 'False Gods' in my opinion. For example, the virus bombing description is masterful - I doubt even Dan Abnett could have done it better, as the tension of the buildup, and then the sheer horror of the atrocity are superbly captured. But... sadly, this is around the time that the Three Remembrancer Amigos story arc becomes soooooo boring. Their escape from the Vengeful Spirit is kinda ill, but that but with the fumble of Qruze's origins makes me wince, as does every time Sindermann or Keeler open their fuckin' holes. The fact that so much incredible shit is happening planetside makes it even harder, I mean, you cut away from Angron beating the crap out of his own Legion for THIS? Even that wiener Titan moderati gets a badass showdown on the bridge of the Dies Irae ("OK ... I'M RELOADING!!").

Along with the ongoing simplification of dialogue and (to some degree) characterisation, the question of religion also continues to be simplified. 'Horus Rising' took this as a multifaceted issue and there were several conflicting views of religion expressed without a clear narrative side being taken. Here, all the 'goodies' are starting to fall down and genuflect whenever the EMPRAH is mentioned. Likewise, anyone who doubts the necessity or inherent goodness of religious institutions is guaranteed to turn out to be a ten-gallon shit. You know, I remembered the series as being pretty mature and open-ended on the subject of religion... but now, I think I was just so shocked BL were tackling such an unexpected subject that I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Because when I read it now, most of it is just "if you don't have a God, you don't have a purpose" or "monotheism good, atheism bad, polytheism worse!!" or "no faith in higher powers? YOU ARE A BAD PERSON MY FRIEND!"

The final section of 'False Gods' follows Tarvitz, Lucius, Torgaddon and Loken as they carry out their guerilla war against their final brothers. After a virus-bombing followed by a fiery planet-wide deathstorm, the remaining loyalists are quite few, and they're in a bad way. Despite the unrelenting combat and the pervading brutality, there's a lovely, elegaic tone to parts of this section. The loyalists have accepted their fate, and while they're determined to sell their lives dearly to stall Horus' consolidation of power, they know No One Here Gets Out Alive.

Yo, THIS is Ben Counter? Looks like he should be in Neurosis.

Ah, or DO they? As much as it seemed unlikely at the time, Loken lived, and the only major Loyalist character we KNOW to have died is Tarik. Vipus, Ancient Rylanor, Tarvitz... we don't actually SEE them croak. Sure, given the situation they're in at the end of the book, they probably SHOULD have died, and it'd take some convincing twists to bring them back (I don't want a repeat of the Loken "oh yeah I hid under a building to escape the brutal saturation bombing which totally worked and then I went crazy for probably several months and I may have eaten Torgaddon's remains" scenario) but I can't help feeling that the fact we weren't SHOWED their deaths in detail means BL has something up their sleeve for these guys. Anyway, if 'Galaxy In Flames' Part Three, 'Brothers', was its own self-contained novella, I'd probably give it 9/10 or even 10/10; it's easily the best part of the book. By the way, guess how many Remembrancers are in that last part? None.

Well, OK, there is one flaw to that section. After the intense, emotional showdown between Lucius and Saul Tarvitz, the extremely verbose intro to the Mournival Reunion Tag-Team Grudge Match Showdown seems very unnecessary. Loken's passionate arguments are nothing all the loyalists haven't all thought in their internal monologues, and Abaddon does little more than sneer U ARE BLIND FOOL LOKEN, I AM MAIN WINNAR, HORUS WAY BEST WAY! If Ezekyle had actually been given an opportunity to put forward his own viewpoint at this point of the Heresy, in detail - damn, that could have been fascinating.

As is customary for a lot of these books, the last pages set up the Big Plans for the next few. Isstvan V is a-callin', and that can't end well. A brief mention is made of the fact that Perturabo is about to destroy Olympia - and this kind of annoys me, as it seems such a colossal part of his character and his motivation, and it seems like the HH series is just going to gloss over it. The first time we really spend time with Perturabo ('The Crimson Fist', 'Angel Exterminatus'), Olympia is a bit of a distant memory and he doesn't think about it much. Still, that's hardly Counter's fault; I think everyone assumed at this point that it would be dealt with in detail before long. The only real annoyance I can point to in the last few pages is the troubling line near the end about Targhost and his "darker skin" making him look "more at home... on a murdered world". WTF? WHAT YOU SAYIN' THOUGH SON?? There's also a scene where Sedirae rallies the troops which is probably the only scene, EVER, IN ALL OF THE SERIES which supports the "Sedirae was a dangerously ambitious dude and Horus had to get him bumped off" theory that James Swallow busted out near the end of 'Nemesis'. I never bought that shit at all, though... Sedirae seemed like a real Horus ass-kisser to me. But, yeah, that's not an axe that would be appropriate to grind with Ben Counter.

It's very tempting to give this book 8/10, which would place it in the top tier of Heresy novels. But... the remembrancer stuff (broken record alert!) really drags the book down, and the dialogue (particularly the non-Astartes dialogue) is often clunky. I'm going with 7/10, though it's a high 7; definitely more enjoyable than some HH books I've rated 7/10. For instance, it's got much more enjoyable elements than 'Vulkan Lives', but it's also much more uneven than that book.

I was wrong about 'Galaxy In Flames', I'm glad to admit that. Was I wrong about 'Battle For The Abyss' as well? Hmmm, we'll see...

New to PurpleHeresy? Head on over to the index page to see a more chronological list of the Horus Heresy reviews on this blog.

"False Gods" by Graham McNeill

After the classic opener 'Horus Rising', Black Library set the stage for the rest of the Horus Heresy series: authors would change with each book, and very often, a classic would be followed up with mediocrity. Uh oh! That doesn't bode well eh?

I'm not impressed by the 'fat marine' armour on the cover, either. The sideways crests are pretty boss though.

I'll say one thing for McNeill. There's no throat-clearing and fucking around here. As it's book two, characters have already been establishes and he sidesteps the 're-introduce people painstakingly' trap that Ben Counter fell into. Instead, we're off to Davin right away. Only weeks have passed since the last page of 'Horus Rising', but hella shit's changed. But... not always for the better. Our first narrative encounter with Horus takes the agression and the ambition that was always bubbling just beneath the surface, and shows it nakedly. It's a bit of a jarring shift - Lupercal was certainly headed in this direction towards the end of 'Horus Rising', but the beginnings of his fall were gradual and well-handled. Now he's a sullen tyrant? It doesn't make sense. We've jumped a fair few miles along the Dick Road down to Space Hitler Town. Additionally, the decision to make Horus one of the 'viewpoint' characters robs him of some of his mystique - this book is the end of Horus The Enigma, since we know what the guy is thinking most of the time. And what Horus is cookin' don't smell too good. He was a great leader, someone well-established in so many aspects of humanity. A political animal with a Machiavellian mind... now he's a chump who gets taken in by an intrigue that shouldn't fool a 12-year-old.

The rot doesn't stop with Horus. Loken. McNeill tries to capture the phlegmatic restraint of Loken as portrayed by Dan, but he just ends up sounding like a bit of a halfwit. When I finished 'Horus Rising', I couldn't call which side of the Heresy Loken would end up on. Not with certainty. I figured there was still a little room for him to go over to the Dark Side. After about one Loken scene in 'False Gods', I knew Loken was just gonna be an uncomplicated Good Guy. Then, Abaddon goes from a complex - though hot tempered - character, to a bloodthirsty, aggressive puppet of Erebus. And Erebus... that's a whole 'nother problem. Before, Erebus was a well-loved and highly respected emissary from a Legion extremely close to the Sons Of Horus' hearts. Now he's just a cartoon dog that makes shifty 'evil eyes' when it thinks nobody's looking. The hidden evil shows its face, and its face is... dumb. Meanwhile, Tarik's barbed witticisms have become a lot more... goofy. The character was described as a 'joker', in that he was a ball-buster; someone who liked jerking people around and making them uncomfortable. McNeill has made him a lot more conventionally 'funny' and seems pressured to have him make straight-up jokes as often as possible.

LOL WHY U HATIN ON EREBUS THO??

It's not just individual characters who get fucked with, the demeanour of whole groups which were established in 'Horus Rising' changes rapidly. Just look at the Lodge meetings in 'Horus Rising' and compare them to the ones here. Subtlety's gone out the fuckin' windah. It used to be dudes just rapping about "Wow, my company commander's a dick, eh?" Now it's goons jumping out of coffins and dancing with skeletons and all manner of goofy shit.

I've been doing all this bitching and whining, but the changes made to characters aren't always for the worse. It's nice that the character of Iacton Qruze starts to be fleshed out, and the slow change of his portrayal from pompous blowhard to one of the last Luna Wolf heroes is nicely done. Though it does lend itself to some problems... like Qruze saying he remembers fighting in the Legion before the Warmaster was returned to them, which would certainly make him a Terran... and then in the next book, there's a big song and dance made of him being "the last true Cthonian". Whoops! Ehh, it doesn't really end up being too relevant to the character. There's some nice Maloghurst stuff too - he has to tackle some thorny political issues that set him up as Horus' own Alistair Campbell (watch your back, Malcador - WE KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE). And while he generally shits all over the character, Graham gives Ignace Karkasy some nice lines - ie, when asked at one point "Do you want to go to bed with me or not?", he responds "I'm a man; of course I do." Roger Moore's jaw drops open, Rogal Dorn high-fives Ignace for being a 'basic legend', and the world explodes...

You'll notice quickly that McNeill's writing is very plain and unadorned in comparison to Dan's. Which can be cool, I guess, if you're on some Raymond Carver shit. This'll probably sound ridiculous, but I really thought his comma use was quite poor in this novel. It sometimes feels like it wasn't given much of a proof-read. Not exactly something that affects the story, but it did... distract me. And there are certainly a few too many moments where someone ponders "Will X come to pass? But no, he knew that X certainly could never come to pass." X is always something that absolutely happened in the Horus Heresy or in the 40K timeline. Mind you, that's pretty fucking annoying when ANYONE does it (Abnett does it a bit too much as well). Graham has an undeserved reputation for gaffes and plot holes with the Heresy timeline and the fluff surrounding it, but... lines like this don't help: "My mouth's as dry as a Tallarn's sandal!" What? No!! NOT YET!!

McNeill certainly writes a kickass action sequence once the (frequently agonising) exposition is out of the way - the 'Plague Moon' sequence is a winner with the Spearhead battling fell legions of Nurgle's creatures, and it features several surprising plot twists, even for those of us who knew the general overview of what would happen on Davin. A nice touch is that we're given a glimpse of the titan Dies Irae (which McNeill killed in 'Storm Of Iron'. He loves putting stuff he killed in 'Storm Of Iron' into HH books!). Like always, there are wince-inducingly violent sequences but a lack of any real graphic sexuality or bad language. (Can't have the 12 year olds cussing or learning about fucking! Butchering thousands is fine though!) But Graham earns my, I'd have to say, cautious respect for including a passing allusion to a Davinite cultist FUCKING A DISEASED PIG. Yeah, IT HAPPENED. Page 247 in my edition. IT HAPPENED, BLACK LIBRARY. Y'all some Bret Easton Ellis type motherfuckers at heart. I know it. That shit's ADULT, man. A DISEASED PIG! Crazy.

As I re-read this, I was pleasantly surprised to realise I'd totally forgotten about Magnus' involvement in Horus' little acid trip/spirit journey. Unfortunately he's too late to make much of a difference (and also Horus is too much of a chode by this point) so Erebus plays the Warmaster like a flute, stroking his ego and giving a lot of misleading information. He fucks up a lot for someone who is supposedly a big puppetmaster genius, though.

EREBUS: Horus, don't be a sucka. Don't listen to Magnus, uhhh, I-I-I mean, because... it's not Magnus, yeah, that's right! It's just a creepy ghost pretending to be him!
EREBUS: (aside, to Magnus) So fuck off, Magnus, go back to Prospero, your brother doesn't need you!
HORUS: Yo, wait a minute, I thought you said that ain't Magnus dogg?
EREBUS: Shut up, slut, Chaos sent me to piss the world off.

How Erebus sees himself. But he didn't see the end of the movie.

The sad thing is, there's a lot of truth to the Dork Apostle's words. Under the EMPRAH's Godhood, the Imperium is a dark, shitty place; the description of a 'modern' (41st milennium) shrine world is very creepy and evocative. The creepy new dimension to the Primarch 'origins' story is well-handled, too. It really adds to the whole 'shades of grey' feeling that the HH series sometimes does so well. (Also nicely hinted at when Loken loses his mind at one point and gets racist as fuck, freaking out over the swarthy Davinites with their wide-spaced eyes and totally wanting to kill them on sight. Yo Loken chiiiill they just tryin' to live... but it's certainly a little foreshadowing for the fascistic direction the Imperium takes at the first opportunity.)

Once Horus' Blue Sunshine Trip draws to a close, we jump forwards in time once again to see the Sons of Horus wage war alongside the World Eaters and Angron. While McNeill's brief description and treatment of Angron and the 12th Legion was never gonna beat Aaron Dembski-Bowden's 'Betrayer', it's still effective and it serves as a nice foundation for the World Eaters in the Horus Heresy series. By now, Horus has swum much deeper into murky waters and his behaviour is troubling to the more 'starch-arsed' of his Legion. Meanwhile, those sinister deathrock Lodges have grown significantly in membership. You do get the feeling of increasing pressure on all the characters as they're forced into uncomfortable situations, but nowhere near as much as in 'Galaxy In Flames'.

This book's downbeat ending is... well, OK... but feels like a bit of an anticlimax. I suppose that's to be expected at the end of book 2 of a trilogy, but for a guy who was plotting to devastate four whole legions JUST FOR STARTERS, killing a couple inconvenient journalists and a 'dove' general ain't quite the diabolical Night Of The Long Knives shit you might expect. I suppose you don't need to finish EVERY book on a hugely dramatic note... The last few pages of 'False Gods' are superb, even though you could accuse HH of recycling this formula a few times for book endings - Horus outlines his evil plans, Erebus chuckles in the background, looming like a big fucking eagle. Still, it's a pretty damn great ending, and I'd imagine it was even better before 'Nemesis' or 'Fear To Tread' did it again in a slightly more interesting way. If you want a bit more closure, a nice little postscript to this book is the 'Mark Of Calth' story 'Shards Of Erebus'. The portrayal of Erebus has certainly evolved since 'False Gods' was released, but it's nice to get some more information on what Erebus did after Davin and how the ritual there affected him.

When I first read 'False Gods', I came to it with prejudice. "Pfft, let's see how this random asshole stacks up against my spiritual liege Dan Abnett!" And so of course, I didn't love it. Now that I've really enjoyed several Graham HH books - including 'Angel Exterminatus', which is a masterpiece in my opinion - and even bought 'Storm Of Iron', I feel better-disposed towards him... But... my prejudice was borne out on this re-read. I'm not saying that 'False Gods' isn't incredibly readable. In fact, I'd forgotten how good McNeill is at zipping along through plot at great speeds, yet never leaving you wondering what's going on. He's a good, clear writer and a lot of the stuff here is excellent. 'Horus Rising' never delved into so many different aspects of the Imperial war machine. I definitely made a bit more of an effort to like 'False Gods' this time around... and that may be why I'm being so hard on it.

I give this 6/10. I found it quite challenging to get through this book, though it's full of very necessary plot points and character development... but that doesn't make it easier to read. I can see why I didn't think much of Graham McNeill at first, but, well, 'Angel Exterminatus' buys a lot of goodwill...

New to PurpleHeresy? Head on over to the index page to see a more chronological list of the Horus Heresy reviews on this blog.

"Horus Rising" by Dan Abnett

The Horus Heresy series started as a trilogy, and the trilogy started with Dan Abnett's smash hit 'Horus Rising'.

As much as I fucked around with the chronology of the Heresy series the first time I read it through, my experiences with HH began with this book. If I wanted to start reading the series with the book which covered the time period before the 'Heresy' started, perhaps I could have gone with 'Fallen Angels', 'The First Heretic' or 'Legion', but I'm glad it was 'Horus Rising'. (Though a few pages into 'Horus Rising', I put it down and re-read 'Death Of A Silversmith', which seemed like a much better story in its proper context.)

Following the traditional 'trilogy' structure, 'Horus Rising' doesn't feature more than a few hints at Horus' fall. This book is about setting up a cast of characters, establishing the background and setting for what will follow. The whole objective is to get us to care about these characters so that their fall - or even death - in the next few books will actually mean something. As we all know from Star Wars, the sequel is where the REAL darkness begins. Yet, unlike 'Unremembered Empire' (another 'jigsaw falling into place' book by Abnett), it feels like 'Horus Rising' can stand easily as a novel in its own right. It feels like a self-contained book, which just happens to be setting up two more books (and an entire series, as well). I remember reading something, somewhere, for some reason, about the structure of storytelling (paraphrased due to my poor memory): "The purpose is to create a likeable character whose life is in good order, someone the reader would invite into their own home, and then poke that character with a sharp stick." A silly and reductive aphorism, when put up against the concept of "FICTION" as a whole. Yet it works perfectly with 'Horus Rising'. Dan makes Horus - who is essentially Space-Lucifer Times A Billion Hitlers With Giant Spiky Claws - into a pretty nice guy, all told, someone who's happy to be caretaker for his father's Empire until he's no longer needed. Then Dan waves at him threateningly with a sharp stick made of HERESY AND CHAOS.

The problem with the portrayal of Horus is, it may have been... too nice. It doesn't completely jibe with the swiftness of Horus' fall into Chaos nastiness and, worse, lack of politeness, in books 2 and 3. It also doesn't fit with the portrayals of Horus as ALWAYS being a bloodthirsty, power-hungry thug, which is how he's being remembered with increasing frequency by his Loyalist brothers in recent Horus Heresy books. In fact, in the first few pages, we hear about how Horus will always try his best to avert conflict when dealing with human revenants he meets on the Great Crusade. I guess the later "Horus was always a wrong'un" descriptions could be the HH version of people who find out someone's a child molester and then swear blind they always knew there was something funny about him... AND YET. As the book goes on, we get more and more hints that the 'nice guy' persona is just a necessary facade. I'm not saying Horus is a mad, barely-on-the-leash killer deep down, even at this stage... but he's certainly more of a political animal than many of his brothers. Sometimes it's odd going back this far and looking at the HH world while the paint was still wet (like the mention of the "hulking Astartes in gold custodes armour" guarding Horus - well, what the fuck?!) but to me, it's never more than a momentary distraction when we hit things that don't quite gel with later HH novels.

You may have Chaos madness, but that's no excuse for Chaos rudeness.

One of the biggest surprises in the book is the nature of Imperial society in the 31st Millennium. While far from utopian, it's a shitload better than how things stand in the 41st Millennium. The Guard isn't ruled over by insane, trigger-happy commissars who are more interested in shooting their own soldiers in the head for not praying hard enough, than shooting the enemy. The Empire isn't driven by insane fundamentalists motivated by religious intolerance to suppress, torture and murder millions of millions for thinking WRONGTHOUGHT. (Actually, as we see in 'The Last Church', this Empire is founded on religious intolerance, of a kind, but c'mon, there are no Inquisitors around yet.) Every single machine doesn't seem to be build around a heretic's decaying corpse. ("Hey Alan, you didn't get my text?" "Nahh dude, the phone I made from an apostate's still-living brain has been getting spotty reception recently.") As a symptom of the more 'hey, everything's groovy' attitude of the times, the Crusade Fleets are accompanied by 'embedded' war reporters called Remembrancers. But these guys don't just stand in front of a pict-feed with a mic; their reporting can take the form of painting, sculptuing, poetry, free-jazz, or rap battles.

Can I be real for a second? I kind of hate the Remembrancers. Their inclusion in an HH novel didn't exactly GUARANTEE it being shitty, but it did lead to some extremely unnecessary and lengthy sequences wherein the point was belaboured again and again that THE ASTARTES ARE SO DIFFERENT FROM US REG'LAR JOES, MAAAAAN. I'm very glad that they seem to have been kicked permanently to the wayside as a concept (though I'm sure we'll get them popping back up again before the series runs its course). It's like Abnett had a great concept in his head for where he was gonna go with these subplots about art's relationship to war, and modern-day 'realer than real' journalism, but he just couldn't fit it in with all the other badass stuff going on in 'Horus Rising'. He had a much more thorough crack at it in 'Prospero Burns', and then wrote the amazing non-BL novel 'Embedded', which uses that as the central theme. In 'Horus Rising' though, it's not hugely well-integrated with the rest of the plot. We obviously had to have a more 'human' viewpoint to show how, well, inhuman the Astartes can be, and to point out the things that poor loyal, straight-up-n-down Loken can't bring himself to see... but the Remembrancers seem to be there solely for that purpose - they're a plot device and little else. The worst thing is, this has WAY better Remembrancer moments and characters than nearly any other HH book (Christ, I remember the Remembrancer subplots in 'Fulgrim' being agony).

The place of religion in this Old Imperium is much better-dealt with. We're told that the Great Crusade is the product of a strongly atheistic society - determined to bring a secular truth across all the known universe, rejecting superstitions and enlightening humanity with the logic of science. Yet the first time we see Horus, he's unambiguously described as "a god". (There was a great blog entry by Aaron Dembski-Bowden where he said he was incredibly intimidated by the task of matching the intensity of Horus' introduction here when dealing with Lorgar. I think he managed well, but you can see why he was stressed. The Warmaster's entrance here is quite amazing.) And of course, the very origin of the word Crusade is obviously religious. Unfortunately, the enlightened/science-centric worldview prescribed by the Emperor a) is a massive sham perpetuated by His Golden Loveliness to make himself into the fifth Chaos God (*BLAM* HERESY!!) and b) leaves his armies totally unprepared for enemies who use laughable 'superstitious' magic, rituals and worship as incredibly potent weapons. Early on, we get an exploration of how easy it is for even the upright and honourable among the Astartes to fall to the lure of Chaos.

Imagine a culture where the leading theologians are stuck on the 'Flying Spaghetti Monster' argument for eternity. That's the Imperium at the time of the Heresy.

In the second part of the novel, we meet the Emperor's Children - not Fulgrim yet, but some of his high-ranking officers. Lucius and Eidolon certainly fit the Third Legion's archetype: haughty, selfish, glory-hungry. In theory, Saul Tarvitz seems a bit of an outcast. He's more of a 'standard soldier' not gifted with his Legion's more 'specialist' characteristics, which will prove to be his saving grace rather than a disadvantage. Yet he's perfectly integrated with the other Emperor's Children; we're told convincingly how the same credo has managed to result in such wildly differing personalities. Dan Abnett's Tarvitz definitely sets the precedent for most of the stoic 'Traitor Loyalist' characters we've seen introduced since this book such as Nathaniel Garro or Warsmith Barabas. Lucius, on the other hand, is a 'love to hate him' proposition. An extremely promising and interesting character, the experience of battle and of being tested seems to be the most important thing for him. Like Rae and Ghost he's just striving for perfection. I love this line best: "Lucius's brand of courage admitted no reality."

Dream casting for Lucius? Michael Fassbender. But how inappropriate is it that the most Lucius picture of Fassbender on Google Images is from 'alwaysgirls.com'?

I complain a fair amount (and will probably complain further) about the swiftness of the Emperor's Children's fall from grace when Graham McNeill writes it - Fabius Bile in particular, dude is undisguised evil from the minute we meet him. But Dan's not blameless in their characterisation: it's quite clear his brief was to create a few 3rd Legionaries who were going to be corrupted by Slaanesh's seductive whisperings, and a few who were going to stay loyal to their EMPRAH's ideals... and it's not hard to guess (correctly) on which side everyone will fall, unlike with the Luna Wolves characters here. Still, at least Dan managed the EMPRAH'S CHILDREN with a little more subtlety than those who dealt with these characters after him. The scenes with Fulgrim's lot are actually a joy to read; we've spent enough time with the Luna Wolves to think of them as 'normal' Heresy-era Marines, so seeing them interact with a very different legion leads to some great 'mismatched cop partners' buddy comedy. I WANT YOUR BADGE AND YOUR GUN ON MY DESK RIGHT NOW TORGADDON! In part two we also briefly see the Blood Angels Chapter Master Raldoron, who is something of a red herring (heh), in that he's one of the only characters here who has almost no effect on the rest of the events in the opening trilogy (he did eventually have a more significant part to play, but he didn't get back to us until the 21st book in the HH series!).

In the third and final part, we get a little more set-up and then the punchline. Horus, for perhaps the last time in his life, makes a genuine (though perhaps not completely ingenuous) attempt to resolve a deadlock without lethal force. Thanks to the machinations of Chaos - and Erebus - and some Ricky Gervais type misunderstandings, diplomacy fails and bloodshed results. It's a downbeat, dark ending to the book, but an appropriate one, as it ushers in the resulting age of, well, darkness.

This book isn't really a book about the Primarchs; it's about Horus and the Luna Wolves on their road to becoming the Sons Of Horus. Therefore, frustrated Primarch groupie that I am, I regret to say there are very few scenes where two Primarchs interact. What we do get is tantalising, though, including a small cameo from Rogal Dorn (Abnett is still the only one who's written him as even a slightly bearable character, to my mind) and some tidbits on the ruffled feathers caused by Horus's elevation to Warmaster. It's nice to see a role for Sanguinius, who I'd forgotten was featured so prominently - his scenes with Horus really make 'Fear To Tread' all the more gut-wrenching. You can't believe that two friends who love each other that much could end up like... that. Nice that the book at the start of the series heavily features Sani-chan and Hori-chan in the thick of an epic battle - but on the same side... *feverishly masturbates to climax while composing Sanguinius/Ferrus fanfiction*

There are only a couple nit-picks with 'Horus Rising'. One of the characters gets into a little bit of a tangle and gets his head kicked in by a bunch of Guardsmen for talkin' bad 'bout da EMPRAH. We're told that by the time their officer was able to stop their assault, the victim was "no longer pontificating. Or breathing." Chapter ends. Yet a little while later, we're told the guy was savagely beaten, but not killed by any means. It just seems like a cheap tactic to me and it's a part of the book that always bothered me. Similarly, another character faces down a rampaging daemon-thing at the end of a chapter - we're told "she accepted her fate... in the final moments of her life." Once again, a bullshit mislead, because she doesn't die. I understand the need to build dramatic tension with stuff like this, but two cheap tricks of this nature in one book? Fuckouttahere... you ain't writing Goosebumps, Abnett!

They pulled that shit in Goosebumps all the time. Also, this looks like actual official Warhammer art. It just needs a couple more skulls, and for the sunrise to be replaced with a mushroom cloud.

Also, a couple of the 'nudge-wink' moments - like the Luna Wolves referring to one upstart human leader as the "false Emperor", or the moment where our hero frets at the prospect that one day the Imperium won't remember Abbadon's bloody victories - are a little too 'on the nose'. I can forgive Sigismund's grim prediction that "in the far future, there will be only war", since Abnett is basically taking the piss with that tagline (he loves throwing it in to his books), but there's such a thing as having too many knowing smirks at the camera. Still, I can't exactly complain too much. Like with 'Legion', I'm not completely discounting the flaws - but they aren't enough to dock even one point from 'Horus Rising's score.

When reading 'Horus Rising', I'm sometimes saddened by how poorly these concepts were served later in the series. The religious debates on the nature of the Emperor and the Crusade, or the Remembrancers' 'civilian' perspective on the Astartes, are done well here, but were really run into the ground over the first part of the HH series (say, the first fifteen or so). Meanwhile, some pretty great ideas - like the ostensibly high-tech, progressive Astartes using the Middle Ages' 'Four Humours' theory when describing their moods - were pretty much abandoned and not used very much at all in the series. Furthermore, characters I genuinely love in the pages of this book - Tarik, Loken, Horus, Tarvitz, hell, even Lucius - were ill-used in the next couple books. At least, that's the way I remember it; I'm going to try to go into my second reading of 'False Gods' with an open mind.

And for Saul Tarvitz, I would cast Channing Tatum, because I looooove hiiiiiim. Straight up.

I was expecting to find 'Horus Rising' disappointing - at least slightly so - on my third read-through. But it's arguably MORE enjoyable the third time around; knowledge of later events in the series gives 'Horus Rising' a cornucopia of 'easter eggs'. Like the seemingly insignificant Targost being the murderer in 'Death Of A Silversmith', or knowing We Haven't Seen The Last Of Samus, or wondering what serpentine plan the Alpha Legion are following when they propose Horus help them with a five-year offensive against orks in the Kayvas Belt which 'requires ten times the manpower that Horus could muster'. (I mean, the dude was never gonna go for THAT obvious a trap... WAS HE??) And Abnett writes masterfully throughout, whether describing the sullen ambience of a 'pacified' city, unleashing the daemonic horrors of the Warp, or showing the dispassionate yet brutal way the Astartes wage their efficient war.

This book is a solid 10/10. An unrealistically high benchmark had been set...

New to PurpleHeresy? Head on over to the index page to see a more chronological list of the Horus Heresy reviews on this blog.