"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...

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