"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...

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