"Fallen Angels" by Mike Lee

So after 'Descent Of Angels' turned out to be, erm, pretty OK, how does the second (and last, so far) HH Dark Angels novel stand up on its re-reading?

Apparently the dude with the big sword is Luther. Sick helm brah.

Well, there's no fucking around - the book picks up exactly where 'Descent Of Angels' left off - with Luther, Zahariel and hundreds of other out-of-favour Dark Angels landing back on Caliban, cut off from their Legion and out in the cold. Holding the fort are a load of green recruits they are supposed to train, as well as the ancient, sick and wounded who were unable to follow the Astartes off-world. We also see new Cypher - a young, mysterious knight with dual pistol skills. During this section there seems to be a lil ole Game Of Thrones reference - Luther jokes that they should raid "Master Luwin's kitchen". Hahaha you Winterfell-ass motherfuckers, you better not!!! Aldurukh remembers. Luther puts on a brave face, but has to admit privately that it looks like they'll never leave Caliban again. Quickly, it seems apparent that Mike Lee's writing is quite similar to Mitchel Scanlon's; perhaps a little better. His lack of overblown, wooden language makes the book a little easier (and quicker) to read than 'Descent Of Angels' was. The attempts at Space Marine banter here, obviously, ain't shit compared to First Claw's sniping or Torgaddon breakin' Marines' balls, but at least it makes a change from po-faced bellowing at all times.

The action quickly jumps 53 years forwards, right to the eve of the Heresy. It's here we'll stay for the rest of the book, jumping between the exiles on Caliban and the Lion's Crusade force. Soon after the book begins, we are told of the Isstvan III bombing, and the book ends with the Isstvan V betrayal yet to happen (but soon come, dread). So the timeframe is fairly short. No lengthy 'Time passed and these events happened' sequences like in its predecessor. The news of the Heresy sets up Nemiel's plot thread; the Lion can't take his Legion to Isstvan to bring Horus to book, as he's currently stuck in a dang quagmire... but he'll take a small strike-force to the rebel Forge World of Diamat, in the hopes of disrupting Horus' supply lines. (Man, Jonson is keen on leaving most of his Legion to sort shit out and just fucking off with a strike force - see also that novella 'The Lion'.)

Nemiel wasn't a 'viewpoint' character in 'Descent Of Angels' as that book was definitely focused on Zahariel. Here, we're inside Nemiel's head for around half the book. Both cousins feel pangs of loss for each other and wish the exile had not happened. Nemiel is now a Chaplain, "charged with maintaining the fighting spirit of (his) battle brothers and preserving the ancient traditions of their brotherhood". It's still very strange to me that the atheistic Empire would use a term like 'Chaplain'. It makes sense for the Word Bearers - who I think were the inventors of the role - and it kind of makes sense that many Legions would later use the position as an 'enforcer' of the Edict of Nikaea (which 'The Lion' seemed to retcon Nemiel as). But Nemiel's duties here, well - it possibly would have made more sense for him to be a well-loved Veteran Sergeant or a Company Captain or something. All I'm saying is: it's acceptable for the 30K Space Marine Legions to not always fit in perfectly with the 40K Chapters... we won't shit ourselves. On that subject, it's apparent that it was written before 'A Thousand Sons' and its ramifications were really planned out. The Edict of Nikaea isn't mentioned too much, and in fact Zahariel is constantly described as a Librarian, carries a force staff, uses his psychic powers without thinking "O NO THIS BAD" or having his brothers yell "wwwwwwwiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitchhhhh!!" I guess it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that the news of the Edict never reached Caliban, but the Edict being such a huge part of the First Legion's arc makes this a little problematic.

I'm just sayin' I don't think Nemiel should be baby Asmodai just yet...

Back on Caliban, Zahariel is preparing to send 4200 new Astartes to join the Legion - holy fuck! It seems they're about to begin their "19th training cycle", could they have sent 18 similar sized groups of Astartes in the last 53 years? Even if the first batches are implied to have been smaller, that's... still pretty huge. We also find that Luther has spent his years in exile 'civilising' Caliban - improving its infrastructure, boosting its population, making it more hospitable to life - basically turning it into a factory for the Imperial war machine. "I started this muthafuckin Caliban shit... and this the muthafuckin thanks I get??" Zahariel's continued psyker powers reveal to us that apparently the Winds of the Warp are strong on Caliban - possibly due to the proximity to the Eye of Terror? Oooh, this is an interesting turn for Caliban's backstory... well, if it hadn't been heavily signposted at every opportunity. Still, I was a little surprised by the revelation that the Watchers in the Dark are apparently xenos psykers tasked with protecting Caliban and containing its inherent corruption. I don't know if this is a new HH retcon, a secret finally revealed, or an established bit of Dark Angel lore since '94. Guess that's what comes of not giving a single shit about the Dark Angels until now... poor research, guys. I'm mad ashamed of myself.

One thing that made me cuss and realise my chronology of Dark Angels events was totally off is the fact that Astelan shows up as a fairly major character; he's been on Caliban for ages, which shows that 'Call Of The Lion' takes place 15 years after 'Descent Of Angels' and the ominous threat at the end of that book signified his exile, not his execution. Glad I finally realised that.

The Lion's parts of the story remind me of Guilliman's criticisms in 'Unremembered Empire'; that Jonson is too sly, secretive and private. That criticism's borne out here. Even with his favoured sons, the Lion isn't a leader who is in favour of transparency. He was born for royalty, like Guilliman was born for democracy and Kurze was born for totalitarianism. The arrogant control-freakery isn't necessarily a handicap, as he's a very good tactician, taking point in every aspect of the Legion's strategy and warfare.

The void war section Nemiel witnesses here is pretty dull and makes me wish ADB could have given some of his skillz to this bro. Not an auspicious start, as it's our first battle sequence. In fact, throughout the whole book, the action sequences aren't great. Arguably they're quite dull. As a result, Nemiel's chapters in the book are kind of a drag, as they include way more action - in fact, once you've got the setup out of the way, Nemiel's chapters seem like one long, continuous action sequence. (Despite my criticism, I can't deny that the section where Nemiel's insertion team finds the, erm, 'savage weapons' Horus seeks is brilliantly written and fucking cool.) With the creepy building foreboding of Zahariel's 'strand', Mike Lee is much more successful. Though the bit where Nemiel suspects the Lion is incapable of 'reading' his subordinates, then spends about half a page dissecting what this says about his character, is fucking great... and it also may be why Jonson KARATE CHOPPED NEMIEL'S FUCKING HEAD OFF. (I mean, we know Jonson had Watchers on deck, maybe they were reading minds and reporting back to him... xenos psykers be snitchin'.) Then again, later in the book it's implied that Jonson's motive could have been to silence anyone who could know of Caliban's taint (snarf); Nemiel and Zahariel were the last to speak to Lord Sartana, after all, and the Lion couldn't know what they discussed... so, they had to go.

Even Tony Jaa ain't do that shit Lion. Damn.

Zahariel investigates an apparently growing insurrection on the Lion's homeworld - his arc carries an interesting concept from 'Descent of Angels' - compliant worlds, even Primarch 'homeworlds', aren't sacrosanct - they get hecka plundered. You can see why the civilisations might revolt. Of course, I'd feel more sympathy if the rebellion didn't seem to be led by noblemen crying about how they got no feudal subjects anymore. But that's good, right? It'd be easy to paint the rebels as sainted crusaders the way the storyline is going. We also find that Luther is holding those thousands of new Astartes back from their deployment. I was kind of annoyed when Zahariel uncovered this information and gave in to the one of the worst HH cliches - positing the actual reason (that Luther is disillusioned with the Imperium and the Lion, and is unsure if they deserve his loyalty) then rejecting that, throwing his hand to his brow and swooning "No, NO, I must not think on't!" While this story line is far from unpredictable, I kind of like that some aspects of it at least are a bit shadowy. For most of the novel, it seems like the "accepted fluff" from 40k around this Legion - "half of 'em fell to Chaos because of Luther's selfish ways and bitter jealousy" - is just some bullshit Jonson made up after he Hulked out and blew up his homeworld for embarrassing him in front of his dad. But then, towards the end... Luther's fall to Chaos becomes much more possible.

The last third or so of 'Fallen Angels' is excellent, full of great moments - the Lion and Nemiel's suicidally brave (and arrogant) last stand against waves of Sons Of Horus, and Luther's 'declaration of independence' from the Imperium's affairs, as well as his big reveal of "Hey, I done got myself psychic powers through all my book learning!" While I'll still contend the Zahariel chapters of the book are superior and stay that way throughout, aspects of his plot strand's ending seemed stupid and rushed to me - the big reveal of the "Terran sorcerors" who serve as the book's antagonists is completely botched - who are they? what's their endgame? how did they infiltrate the arcology? THERE'S NO TIME!!! Just make 'em dicks with robes and wands and pointy hats, and fudge their motive confusingly.

This would have been way better.

By the end, Luther is certainly on the path to becoming the sinister magician we saw in 'Grey Angel'. It's kind of a cross-pollination of Lorgar and Magnus' stories - driven by bitterness and a public scorning by someone you intensely admire, you let your thirst for knowledge get the better of you. Unoriginal it may be, but Luther's arc has actually become one of my favourites in HH and I'm extremely interested in how it turns out. Speaking of 'Grey Angel', a central tenet of that audio drama was that Luther didn't know - or feigned a lack of knowledge - of the Heresy. Re-reading 'Fallen Angels', I realised this was falsehood. So did John French just forget (unlikely, but not impossible) or did the manipulative, psychically gifted Luther just read Loken's mind, realise the information he was looking for, and play dumb real good? I think I've answered my own question. But to what end? I'm assuming to buy time for his Legion...

It's still my opinion that Young Cypher is a big red herring. I believe Zahariel is the one who'll become the 40K Cypher. Still, this creepy young anonymous Cypher dude will have a big role to play in upcoming Dark Angels stories, I'll wager. We get a nice amount of backstory for him, it's just not that interesting. He's such a fucking one-dimensional chin-stroking evil puppetmaster that I can't believe they'd make him THE Cypher. Also, Zahariel is about the only Dark Angels Fallen character of note beside Luther (well, excepting Corswain, he's kind of the only surviving Dark Angels character of note, full stop). It seems unlikely that they'll waste him on death. Then again, my predictions have frequently been inaccurate, so we'll see what happens.

Here's the main problem with 'Fallen Angels'. You're switching back and forth, quite often, between two quite different stories - the slow burning political/mystery thriller on Caliban, and the straightforward BASH EM CRASH EM action movie featuring Jonson and his Crusade. But aside from its (many) minor flaws, I can't hate on 'Fallen Angels' anymore. Not when there's weirdo shit like 'False Gods' around still getting serious accolades. As a book, it reminded me more than a little of 'Vulkan Lives'. Sure I was bored at times, but I was also thinking "Oh, man, that makes that part in that book so much better!" I think reading the HH books in order of publication is a mistake, and the Dark Angels 'arc' illustrates this. Normally, introducing a Primarch would involve a big focus on description of their appearance, manner and general swagga. Sadly, you go through two whole books without ANY gripping descriptive work on The Lion. Then Dembski-Bowden's 'Savage Weapons' says more evocative shit about Jonson in its short length than both the full novels, and of course, 'Unremembered Empire', flawed as I think it is, was superb in its Lion coverage. (Then again the trip down 1st Legion Memory Lane wasn't all good; re-reading the novella 'The Lion' from 'The Primarchs' collection, which I've praised to the skies at every opportunity, I didn't find it significantly better than 'Fallen Angels' or 'Descent Of Angels' at all.)

Like 'Descent Of Angels', I'm giving this the 7/10 solution. Man, the books I was hatin' on before are actually pretty good. Seems like 'Fulgrim' and 'False Gods' are the only ones I can really summon up hate for these days...

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

"Tales Of Heresy" (short story compilation)

'Tales Of Heresy' is the first short story compendium of the Horus Heresy series. I actually like these a lot; they give you an opportunity to learn a bit more about a legion's pre-Heresy background, or a particular battle, or Dark Scheme, or Desperate Attempt At Defense, and then move on to something else. If an author's great, then that's a bonus; if they're indifferent, they don't have time to get dull - and if they're TERRIBLE, you don't feel like you've been cheated for the cost of the book. Since they're all different stories, I'm gonna do some different reviews. I'll just get right to it.

YEAH I ROCK THE AQUILA, FUCK Y'ALL

Blood Games: This is set on Terra, about a year after the events described in Flight Of The Eisenstein. It really has two halves: the mysterious, enigmatic intro where you're all "what is this character?" and "why is he doing this?", and then the slight letdown of the 'special diplomatic mission' scenario that makes up the rest of the story. This might be my least favourite contribution to the Horus Heresy made by Dan Abnett, The Dan Abnett (chosen of GW, anointed by the Four) but it says a lot about the quality of his writing that the 'least favourite' one is still very, very good. It gives us a bit more of a feeling for the Custodes, their slightly antagonistic relationship with the Astartes, and their 'background' role in the Heresy (they're like 30K era Terra's MI5 or Spectrum or something); a lot of this stuff was done better in later HH books featuring Custodes, but you can't build on foundations of nothing, can you? It's also nice to see some characters combining a nice mix of stealth, espionage, techno trickery and lettin' da gunz blow. What the fuck do you mean, "exactly like in 'Legion'"? Get out. I give Blood Games 7/10, and that's probably a little harsh.

Wolf At The Door: I could do with this being about half as long (I doubt this is the last time my inner editor, who is a spiteful cunt, gets a voice) but it isn't terrible. Much like Mike Lee's Dark Angels novel... or was that the bad one? I know I absolutely hated one of the 1st Legion books and didn't really care for the other... but which was which? I digress. In 'Wolf At The Door', Space Wolves battle foul debased xenos who are attempting to prey on an innocent planet of humans. But IS EVERYTHING AS IT SEEMS?!?! The story, again, feels like something that's been done better before and since, but has some great moments; the combat scenes in particular are well written. Additionally, there's a nice little sting in the tale that says a lot about the frustrating nature of the Great Crusade.

One criticism I've seen of this is that Abnett drastically changed the 'feel' of Heresy-era Space Wolves, and thus the 'honourable space-Viking' portrayal here feels... off. This is unfair, as it was written and published long before Prospero Burns - but yes, I too would rather have the Rout version than the mead-chugging Brian Blessed version. Really, though, this is a pretty entertaining story considering that usually my attitude is "pfft, Space Wolves? Fuck that shit." I'd give it 6/10 (ignoring the over-long intro which I'm not sure needs to be part of the story at all...). Oh, and hey, dark eldar, guess your units haven't changed in 10,000 years... nice to have the GW miniature line described so faithfully. SNARF.

Scions Of The Storm: A Word Bearers story. This deals with the period following the legion's censure, before they were all full-on jackin' off to Chaos. As you can tell, this is the period which was covered in the first period of The First Heretic. In terms of order of publication, I think this might be the HH debut of Lorgar and Kor Phaeron. Much like Wolf At The Door, I feel Scions Of The Storm suffers from a boring-as-shit intro and some pretty poor dialogue and characterisation... again like Wolf At The Door, it also has some crunchy fight scenes which are well-described, and some WHAT A TWIST!!!! moments. Unfortunately, this one suffers a bit more than the Mike Lee story because I feel that The First Heretic is a fucking masterpiece and Scions prominently features a mix of stuff First Heretic improved upon greatly (ie the forced compliance of a world which deploys 3-legged artificials) and stuff that First Heretic has rendered useless (the stuff about the Emperor telling Lorgar off privately on his 'battle barge' and the legion left to wonder "what was THAT aboot, eh?"). What also annoys me is that I just KNOW some asshole somewhere is reading First Heretic and sneering "All this shit was covered way better in Scions Of The Storm, GW need to pull their finger out and stop milkin' the cash cow!!!!" Oh well. I give it 5/10.

The Voice: I hated The Voice when I first read it, but mainly because I didn't have a clue what was fucking going on. Most stories in Tales Of Heresy need just a cursory knowledge of the Heresy storyline to pick up and appreciate, but that's not really so for The Voice. It concerns of one of the (fairly) minor characters from Flight Of The Eisenstein, and is set after that book finishes. It's full of allusions to vol. 4 of HH and while it's not technically mandatory for you to have read Flight Of The Eisenstein for you to understand The Voice, I'd really recommend it. Due to this it went from one of my least favourite short stories in the whole series, to one which has some of my favourite moments in Tales Of Heresy. Featuring a classic scenario - some iron-tough Silent Sisters battle through a Black Ship apparently claimed by THINGS from the warp - this tale has some great bone-crunching battle scenes and is rounded out with some fairly nifty Lovecraftian cosmic/body horror.

I'll be honest, I was utterly confused to death by the part near the end where it turns out the creature fucking with them is not in fact a daemonic critter of Horus but in fact a future version of one of the Sisters. Erm, or was it all a trick str8 outta Warpton? I admit, I don't have a fucking clue. First time I read this I was in so much of a hurry to get through this that I thought the Sisters were being contacted by the spirit of Garro, but reading it more closely, I'm barely the wiser. Anyway, the good thing about 40K fiction is, when you're a bit confused by shit, you can just go "well that sly motherfucker Tzeentch is probably behind the shit then". OH FUCK, I SHOULDN'T HAVE TYPED HIS NAME, MY HANDS ARE TURNING INTO FISH! I give The Voice a high 7/10.

Call Of The Lion: Siiiiiigh... the Dork Angels. These douches. I never really 'clicked' with any primogenitor loyalist chapter back in my days of being a full-on 40K player/fanboy, but probably Dark Angels were the ones I liked the least. Ahh, fuck it, I hated them all equally. Anyhow, let's just say they haven't been particularly well-served by the HH series so far in my opinion; it hasn't really challenged my view of them as pursed-mouth, uptight shitheads. But hist, what is this?! A good Dark Angels story?? Fucking hell!!!

I'm actually not sure if any of the guys in this tale are from the two full-length DA novels. Not that it matters. The story here on a basic level deals with tension between space marines from Terra and those from a primarch's homeworld. It's often hinted at in these books, but rarely shown in such explicit detail as it is here. Astelan is a battle hardened Terran Dark Angel; fairly intractable, but also conscious that even Space Marines need to build and not just destroy. Belath is a young Calibanite and he's ruthless, bloodthirsty and dogmatic... a true son of the Lion. Can these wacky, mismatched partners put aside their differences and show the Galaxy what they're made of????? When they encounter a human world with an apparently stable and non-debased society, they squabble over what exactly to do. (Yeah... another 'bring um to compliance nicca $$$' story! You sick of these yet?) I don't think it's a spoiler to say it doesn't really end well.

'Call Of The Lion' is a great story; it gives us a bit of insight into what's happening in the Dark Angels chapter and how not everyone is "on board" with their "new direction", it gives us some nice battle scenes, and even though The Lion himself doesn't appear, I think it tells us quite a bit about him. With the similarly entertaining story 'The Lion' in the Primarchs anthology, it could be that Gav is THE best choice to make those First Legion fuckboys seem a little bit less unbearable. (Still, 'Savage Weapons' is another great Lion story - an Aaron Dembski-Bowden study of 40K-era Cypher, or of Heresy-era Caliban could be superb.) This shit shows 'Wolf At The Door' and 'Scions Of The Storm' how to do it. Bow down to the OG. Imma give this 8/10.

The Last Church: I have mixed feelings about The Last Church. A lot of HH fanboys go crazy over it, and I kind of get it; if nothing else, The Last Church is different. It's one of the only stories in the canon so far where there's no combat, no warp shit, and no Astartes. Instead, it deals totally with a priest-bro just gabbin' bout God with The Emperor (yikes, spoilers - but anyone who doesn't realise withing a few pages of starting The Last Church that the mysterious stranger 'Revelation' is in fact The Emprah... well, they might actually be retarded). My first caveat here is I don't necessarily 'get' McNeill and why he's often seen as the Black Library's premier author, tied with Abnett. I love some of Graham's books - ie Outcast Dead and Mechanicum - but some I just find stodgy and uninteresting. (Dembski-Bowden, Swallow and maybe Thorpe are all BL/HH writers I prefer.) However, all his stuff seems to feature at least SOME excellent moments, and 'The Last Church' is no exception. The characters are pretty memorable and some of the dialogue is very well done. Unfortunately, a lot of this is just Cliff notes of various theories and arguments I remember from A-Level philosophy. And, man, I haaated A-Level philosophy.

The arguments aren't exactly measured, either; the priest just angrily jams his fingers in his ears whenever the Emprah makes reasonable points about negative aspects of religion, and the Emperor comes across as a smug Internet atheist with all the answers - someone who's dead set on belittling you and making you renounce your entire way of life simply through use of his massive intellect. The fact that we know the Emperor has the blood of millions on his hands, yet is still going on about how religion is super gay and makes mad wars brah, makes him seem like, well, a dick. The dickishness is reinforced by the knowledge that the Emperor is going to birth the Imperial Cult - the most harmful, joyless, restrictive religion of Mankind's history - and subjugate the entire race to it. Perhaps we can't say empirically (huh huh) that he planned it that way - but I take the Traitor Legions view that THAT was his intention all along. Ho hum, well, Tzeentch is a jolly rogue isn't he. "Snide teenage goth vs aspergic born again Christian" vibe aside, I have to admire this for really trying to fuck with the Big Questions. Some shit that the haters would not expect from BL/WH40K affiliated fiction, for sure. Also, I liked the glimpse we got of the Unification Age here; it makes sense that McNeill shoved some Thunder Warriors into Outcast Dead - he uses them very well here, and they're barely glimpsed. For the sake of argument, for trying something different, and for the memorable, great moments in here (the Emperor sniping "Finally, a spirit I can believe in" when given a glass of liquor is a real keeper). I'm giving this 8/10.

After Desh'ea: Well, THAT title sounds like a 90s R&B singer... haha. I love After Desh'ea, it's actually one of my favourite short stories in the whole series and probably the moment (since I read Tales Of Heresy pretty early on) that convinced me I was down for the HH long haul and wouldn't just pick up the Abnett books as they were released.

Let's face it, the World Eaters could be the most widely/easily stereotyped legion in all the Chaos lore. I'll admit I don't own ALL the fluff, but my second/third edition run of White Dwarfs and Codexes has a dearth of Khornates doing anything but howling "Blood for the Blood God!" and splitting a motherfucker's head with a chain-axe. (Apart from that weird Kharn story I read once where his entire troupe of Berserkers get corrupted by a Slaaneshi Chaos Lord and get a little bit fey before becoming extremely dead.) GW have kind of written themselves into a corner with these guys; they have no Librarians, no real 'ranged war' capacity, and no tactics beyond getting out of the drop pod, thumbing the 'on' switch on the chain-axe/sword/glaive/mace/gunblade and running towards the enemy while yelling "FUUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUU" in some form. And yet here we get Angron doing an impression of a sissy-ass nobleman, Angron discussing tactics and, goddamnit, Angron showing actual human emotions beyond RAGE. Admittedly, it is mostly rage - this guy was created 28,000 years too late to become the world's best 'tough guy hardcore band frontman'. But we also see extreme vulnerability here, and how the Emperor's retrieval of his 12th son may have completely damned him; not only did it result in everyone Angron cared about dying, but he has no real way of comprehending a being more powerful than himself and - if he wasn't critically fucked in the mental before this - he sure as shit is now. Guess I always pictured The Red Angel as constantly yelping monosyllabic KILL KILL SHOOT SHOOT BLOOD BLOOD WHOOP WHOOP like some gigantic superhuman Waka Flocka Flame... yet this story shows him as someone who could be articulate and poetic, but finds it horrendously difficult to follow the thread of his own thoughts since the Butchers' Nails implanted in his head won't give him peace. I remember reading an Amazon review that said this entire story was kind of pointless "since we all know Angron was crazy" - well, that's fair enough, but with that attitude why bother reading HH books at all? We all know what happened anyway, right, in vague terms, so why expand on them...?

'After Desh'ea' does what I never thought any story could do: it humanises Angron and Kharn. I was pretty much expecting a meeting of these guys to involve them smashing their foreheads together howling "SHHHYYYEAHHHH" while Pantera played in the background, and sure there is some of that, but there's also pathos, humour and, well, the tragedy of seeing Kharn when he was still partially sane.
Like 'The Last Church', 'After Desh'ea' also adds to the 'is the Emperor a giant chode?' query: when he met Angron face to face, why did he permit someone so powerful, yet clearly and irrevocably broken to not only continue existing but twist a whole fucking legion of superhuman warriors to his every whim...? Of all the primarchs save perhaps Night Haunter, Angron is the one who so clearly needed to be fucking euthanised, and the fact the Emperor (who is no fool) was cool with giving them this much power, just shows (IMO) that he wanted some 'deniable assets' he could wipe out quietly once they'd done his dirtiest work. But hey, I'm kind of glad that didn't happen, since we have this and Betrayer as a result (I still haven't read that one tbf, but "Angron + Lorgar + AD-B" is unlikely to = shitty; I kind of hope he's continued at least some of Farrer's ideas).

Unfortunately, author Matthew Farrer doesn't seem to have tackled any other HH stories, or be in line for any. I know that the Index Astartes dealt with a lot of the 'introduction moments' when a primarch met the Emperor and their legion - and they did it very well - but I want MORE STORIES LIKE THIS. Goddamn. I give this motherfucker 9/10, goddamnit, and ONLY BARELY does it escape 10/10. GRRRRRR!

A THRILLING CONCLUSION: So is there an overreaching theme to Tales Of Heresy? Well, not really, beyond the, well, heresy. There's not really a common time-period, Astartes legion, or scheme uniting these stories. Perhaps the 'a world needs to be brought to compliance, but some fuck shit occurs' motif could be called a "theme" if were were being generous. Some stories here are kind of shitty, some are great, some are like nothing that had come before (or sometimes since) in HH and some seem like just more of the same (Wolf At The Door and Scions Of The Storm really shouldn't have been right next to each other). In other words, it's your common/garden anthology. As a book, this gets 7/10 from me. I thoroughly recommend it; just don't make it your very first purchase unless you already know at least the basic 'overview' of the Horus Heresy.

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