"Nemesis" by James Swallow

Damn, it has taken me QUITE A WHILE to write this review...

Just noticed this book is dedicated to Aaron & Katie. Awww.

‘Nemesis’ opens “two years after the betrayal of Isstvan”, though whether that’s two years since the virus bombs fell on the Choral City or two years since the Urgall Depression became the galaxy’s largest graveyard isn’t really clear. In the ‘cold open’, we catch up with the Sons Of Horus, who’ve spent the past years rampaging through the Imperium, converting or crushing the planets they’ve found. Some poor jobber has been sent to kill Horus, a pretty poor choice for a novel’s opening gambit really, since we are automatically going to have zero stake in this assassin character. (I guess they could have said Horus was actually killed at this point, and ‘Horus’ for the rest of the war was just Alpharius.) Anyway, after that dumb mislead, we see the political manoeuvring that’s already rife in Horus’ high command, here summed up in a bitter argument between Erebus and Luc Sedirae. Since I know the, erm, developments in Sedirae's story later in the book, I read his sections with greater attentiveness than before, and I think Swallow rounds out the character very nicely, giving him an undercurrent of seething frustration at the slow pace the campaign is taking.

This turns out to be ANOTHER mislead and we’re off to the setting of one of our primary plot strands, Iesta Veracrux. Yosef Sabrat is our first protagonist, basically veteran cop-dude-man, having to investigate a series of horrific murders on this apparently unimportant world (which mainly exports wine). I do kind of like these sections as it’s nice to see a different side of the 30K Universe. This thread is a nice study of how a normal Imperial agri-world can be torn apart without an invasion force landing, all it takes is some dark suspicions from the general populace and fear, paranoia, misinformation does the work – it reminds me a bit of ‘Liar’s Due’ in that way. I kind of hoped Swallow would go all the way with this cop drama and make it into a real ‘whodunnit’ story. But less than 80 pages in, we find out who the culprit is – a malevolent entity called Spear. What do I mean? Well, it’s a little unclear what Spear really is, but more on that later: he can definitely change his identity to people who he’s killed (hey, just like the shittest ever Buffy villain).

Meanwhile, on Terra they’re setting up the other main plot strand of ‘Nemesis’. The leaders of the six ‘clades’ of the Officio Assassinorum are meeting in secret, with their faces masked, all weepy about their failure to get rid of Horus. Back when I played 40k there were 4 assassin types, but here there are also Vanus and Venenum, who are information-gatherers and poisoners respectively. (Unlikely to make an appearance in tabletop games, but I guess they’re probably popular with 40k roleplayers.) We also have the ‘classic’ clades: Vindicare (snipers), Eversor (berserkers), Culexus (psyker-killers) and Callidus (shape-shifting infiltrators). Quickly the clade leaders come up with a pretty obvious scheme: why not send one member of each clade to kill Horus, working together as a team, rather than individually? To which the reader might say, shit, why not send TWO of each team? Or three? Or in the immortal words of Gary Oldman, EVERRRRRYYYYOONNNE!!!!!!! Anyway, they’re certain that Dagonet, near to where the Sons Of Horus are fighting, is where The Archtraitor will pop his head up and boom bang bing, they’re gonna cap that fool.

The seventh operator here, the Master of Assassins, turns out to be Malcador, which pulls ‘Nemesis’ into the ‘Silent War’ category of HH novels I’m very fond of. I love all these surreptitious political shenanigans on Terra. Another important character in the Imperial thread is Constantin Valdor, the Chief Custodes. An important character, and I think this book is the first to flesh him out. In fact, he’s the one who gives the ‘kill order’ on Horus to the execution force. While apparently a major figure on Terra, I really don’t remember much about him – it doesn’t help that to my recollection he’s made only fairly minor appearances and cameos in books so far. I just want more Custodes lore, dammit! Only ones that really made an impression were Aaron’s in ‘First Heretic’, and, well, those guys won’t be back. I don’t know where Valdor’s arc is going, which is probably a good thing – but it’s more due to the vagueness of the character than any great mystery.

There’s a few brief Dorn scenes in the book. He takes the view that as long as Horus heads the rebellion, the traitor forces can be predicted in their actions, so an assassination would be disastrous. Unfortunately, this view makes the assumption that Horus is still the same guy as before. But I guess that’s what you get when you’re happy to stay blinkered on Terra with your head in the sand, only acknowledging things your daddy spoon-feeds you. (Yeah, I know none of that is fair. I’m just venting.) I really don’t understand how anyone can like Dorn, the way he’s been portrayed in the Heresy books at least. Basically, I think until Dan (or maybe John French) writes Dorn again, I will continue to hate on that guy, he’s probably still my least favourite Primarch. I mean Vulkan is dull, but he’s cool at least, and Ferrus is a much bigger asshole, but he’s more interesting than the Emperor’s Praetorian in my opinion… Meanwhile, on Ieasta Veracrux, the staff of a Rogue Trader show up to assist with the investigation into the occult murders. Kind of the equivalent of the FBI showing up in a cop drama and waving their dicks around over jurisdiction. There’s one brief mention here of the Contract of Trade being sealed with a drop of the Emperor’s Blood, and on my second readthrough, this struck me as almost painfully obvious. And here’s where another issue with the ‘detective’ narrative becomes more obvious. We start getting much more effective characterisation and fleshing out of the various investigators – but just as we start to like each of them a bit more, Spear shows up and kills them in short order. And then leaves the planet, so really none of it was too necessary, I guess?

The beginnings of our ‘execution force’ gathering are sort of interesting, as Valdor plays a prominent role. We first meet Vanus operative Fon Tarel. He’s established as a compulsive information-gatherer, which is apparently the main function of his clade – they do not kill directly, they plant misinformation and skilfully manipulate their targets into fatal positions. Right away, you realise Vanus operatives aren’t likely to have much place on a “kill-a-Primarch” mission, but the character doesn’t suck. I really like the brief glimpses we get of the ‘Atalantic Wilderness’ (sic) on Terra, a featureless desert dotted with scavenger gangs where there used to be an ocean, a long time ago. It adds another dimension to the seat of the Imperium and shows that Terra is far from a locked-down, 100% secure safe-haven.

I’m gonna skim over the rest of the Execution Force introductions. The sequences where they gather the team are pretty good, enjoyable action sequences where they show each assassin’s MO and a few of their character traits. The Callidus operative’s ‘groundwork’, wherein the target is psycho-conditioned subtly over a period of weeks, to fall in ‘love’ with the assassin’s cover identity – well, that’s pretty cool. And the setting of the Venenum operative’s introduction – some ancient temple on Terra that’s been reclaimed by the jungle and is being used as a “poison farm” – is also imaginative. Unfortunately the assassins can come across as quite shallow characters based on standard movie/fiction tropes. The Vanus is the nervous, high-strung hacker from any generic thriller or heist movie; if it was an anime he’d push his glasses up his nose all the fucking time. The Vindicare has the standard ‘doesn’t play nice with others’ sniper characteristic, as well as being the ‘conflicted leader’ whose arrogance conceals deeply hidden doubts in his own abilities. The Eversor is the ‘big angry dude’ who just wants to fight all the time and snarls at anyone who tries to assert authority. (So he’s like a Space Wolf from the bad times of Black Library.) I guess the Culexus isn’t hugely clichéd, though I guess an unkind reviewer could say that she’s meant to illustrate how unknowable, strange and cruel women are. (I definitely don’t hate the book enough to argue that, though.) Overall I think she acts a bit like a stereotypical ‘alien trying to learn the ways of humanity’ – socially awkward, emotionless, apart from everyone else. By the nature of her/his/its character, the Callidus is a bit of a cipher, though it’s consistently arrogant and smug. And Jenniker, the poisoner, is the doubting Imperial servant with a hidden conscience, who secretly follows the Imperial Cult. If you’re like me, you could think of a fair few movie characters that fit nicely with those descriptions. I mean, they’re not badly written. There are nice moments showing the tensions between the clades (usually when the Eversor opens his mouth). But I’d have personally preferred a much smaller team with more detailed characters.

So, when the execution squad actually gets to Dagonet, it’s almost fallen to pro-Horus forces already. They decide to prolong the resistance by joining the rebels; that way, Horus may present himself on the planet’s surface. Not a terrible plan, as Horus apparently won a decisive victory on Dagonet early in his military career, so there’s a chance his pride won’t let a prolonged war against him sully his memory of that easy first conquest. Of course, like Dorn’s viewpoint, this plan still hinges on Horus having the same personality as he did pre-rebellion… Meanwhile, Spear takes on the personality of Hyssos, an associate of the Rogue Trader baron, and finding that the Warrant of Trade is on Dagonet, he decides to go there, since if he can get the Emperor’s blood, he can kill the Emperor (apparently). The two storylines are neatly tied together, ready for the third act…

Around this time, Spear begins to lose his shit, as apparently the murdered shade of Josef Sabrat is still able to mess around in Spear’s psyche and occasionally cause him discomfort or even loss of control. This prompts us to flash back to Spear’s backstory, and this is the genesis of the most commonly raised complaint about ‘Nemesis’. Spear is a “Black Pariah”, some combination of a psyker and a psychic blank. Personally, I don’t really care about this botch of the fluff. Sure, it’s pretty broken but I find it easy to reason it away. Maybe Spear is incorrect about what he is. Maybe Erebus mislead him. It’s salvageable (as well as being a very, very small part of a 500+ page novel). But visit any forum discussion on HH and you’ll eventually see people holding the Black Pariah twist up as proof James Swallow has no regard for the fluff and should never write another BL book. This is one of the things I find most baffling about HH fans and also why I don’t hit the forums much. They’ll praise to the heavens books that I personally find mediocre as fuck, like ‘False Gods’ or ‘A Thousand Sons’. Hey, those books respect the fluff – no doubt there. But a book comes along which changes, or just tweaks a tiny aspect of, their beloved lore and it’s just the worst thing ever. See Oll Persson in ‘Know No Fear’, or when exactly the psychic backlash left the palace in ‘The Outcast Dead’, or the Black Pariah in ‘Nemesis’. Stuff I personally feel is of minimal importance in the context of the books (or a drastic improvement of established fluff, in some cases) but which had GW fanboys all but calling for these authors’ beheading. Eugh. Sometimes I really hate the fandom I’m part of.

Just one of the many drawbacks of caring about Warhammer 40,000 I guess.

Anyway, the last act builds the tension nicely, with the Venenum operative following her faith rather than her orders and helping the citizens of Dagonet defend a “holy relic” (which turns out to be the Warrant) from the evil force of Spear, while the Sons Of Horus make planetfall, expecting a fully compliant world. And thus, taken unawares, HORUS IS ASSASSINATED AND GETS HIS CABBAGE POPPED THA HELL OFF, KID! But no, wait, it was just Luc Sedirae wearing some Lupercal-calibre pimp threads. I don’t like this. Sure, the fake Horus is described as being ‘taller’ than his comrades, but shouldn’t Kell have realised “yo, this guy isn’t a fucking giant, so he’s unlikely to be a Primarch, maybe it’s a decoy”? Overall I guess I’m just kind of bummed out that a character I quite like (for no particular identifiable reason; he’s not hugely developed in any of the books) got shuffled off. Anyway, shit gets kind of South Central after that and Space Marines be firin’ into the crowd and shit. This makes the assassins scatter, their hopes of killing Horus pretty much crushed, and all that remains is for Jim to pretty much ‘Wild Bunch’ it, the way I kind of wish Graham did in ‘Vengeful Spirit’ – just kill all his main characters, one by one. While it felt obvious that this was the final destination, it didn’t stop the last battles from being well-written and tense (the Eversor doing a suicide-charge into a full squad of Sons Of Horus is a highlight). The book ends with Kell’s status unclear, possibly dead but apparently piloting his one-man ship directly at the Vengeful Spirit; it’s been rumoured he will feature in a forthcoming HH anthology, so maybe we’ll see him die ‘onscreen’ after all. I also really like the last scene between the clade leaders, with Dorn and Malcador duking it out for the Imperium’s soul before the Emperor has to come in and say “you’re both right but shut up though”. It’s nicely juxtaposed with the last moments with Horus and Erebus. Speaking of that, our time with Erebus certainly sets up his appearance in ‘Fear To Tread’ nicely. So yeah, for all my criticisms, I do commend ‘Nemesis’ for its particularly strong ending (though it gave me such SoH blueballs, I had to go read ‘Little Horus’ right away).

  

So, is this “OMG WORST HH BOOK EVER, MORE WORTHLESS THAN CATTLE FOR THE ABYSS!!!” ? Not really. I don’t think ‘Nemesis’ is a complete island. Even though the narrative thrust of ‘Nemesis’ seems standalone, there’s certainly evidence that Swallow has read the other HH books – he’ll drop allusions and hints in passing. I like the hint that Kell, the Vindicare, may have killed Astartes on assignment before this story (maybe even pre-Heresy…?). The allusions aren’t just to HH stuff. There’s a possible ‘Firefly’ reference when the Garantine, the Eversor assassin, is given his weapons and reacts with almost orgasmic joy; he gleefully says “I’ll be in my bunk” and walks off… Jayne? Jayne is that you? My days of taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle. What about the quality of the writing? Like I’ve said before, I think James Swallow is a good writer – not ‘great’, like AD-B with his well-rounded characters with subtle and broad emotional palettes, or Dan Abnett’s poetic and elegant style. But good. Solidly good. He writes briskly, the plot zips along, the dialogue has some sting to it, and if a cliché comes along, it’s usually a sci-fi cliché rather than a specific 40K cliché. Having said that, I don’t like all the choices he made here – the way the action cuts abruptly between Spear and the Execution force a few times in each chapter is something I find quite jarring. As for the actual content of the story…? Well…

Armchair BL Executive time: I’d have released ‘Nemesis’ in a vastly different way. I still think there’s a lot of worth to it… but powering through it as a novel, I found pretty tough going. Shit, you know I always try to be positive in my reviews and I have to say I found this much less readable than books like ‘Fulgrim’ or even ‘Vulkan Lives’, which I didn’t like at all. Personally, here’s what I might have pushed to be done with this material, if I was in the position where people actually gave a shit…

• The coming together of the assassin team? I’d have cut this down pretty drastically, pushed it together with the Valdor and clade leader stuff, and put it in an audio drama, probably concluding with the team learning who their target was. In a lot of ways this was a nice scene-setter, but I don’t think we need THIS much interaction between these, frankly, quite shallow characters.
• The detective story/Spear’s establishment? It was well-written, and I enjoyed it – but the oddly rushed conclusion to it, the surprisingly small importance it has to the later part of the book, makes me want to scrap this altogether. All I can say is that if James Swallow had used this as a basis for a non-BL novel, I’d have probably enjoyed it quite a lot more.
• Spear and the Execution Squad’s ultimate confrontation: Absolutely enough awesomeness here for a solid novella. You’d have to put a bit more explanation about Spear (or, to be honest, just make him a powerful warrior bound to a daemon, and forget the pariah/absorbed personalities angle) and add a paragraph about Eristede and Jenniker’s family ties, but you could pretty much publish, like, page 350 through to page 500 as they stand, and it’d probably be fine.

Anyway. I don’t think there’s a problem with HH self-contained books featuring casts who haven’t appeared before, and won’t appear again. I liked ‘Damnation Of Pythos’ a lot, after all, and that also kind of describes how Tallarn will most likely be handled in the HH line, and that’s fucking great so far. (And if we look at the opposite approach, remember how much people HATED Graham putting his 40K Iron Warriors into ‘Angel Exterminatus’). But… this was the wrong time to slot ‘Nemesis’ into the Heresy lineup, in my opinion. Not that it did any long-term damage to the series. I’m sure a few people thought ‘Oh man, the Horus Heresy series is fucked now’ and then the next novel was ‘The First Heretic’. Lastly, I think it’s worth mentioning that this probably has the most female-heavy cast of any Horus Heresy novel; maybe I should stop beating this particular drum, but it’s kind of shameful how few books have non-male characters, and for that, if little else, ‘Nemesis’ gets some real respect from me. But the INCREDIBLY overstuffed length, the rather dry first half of the book, and the sneaking suspicion that we don’t need an Assassinorum 30K book because apparently very little has changed in that organisation between 30K and 40K… well, all these things hurt ‘Nemesis’ badly. I am slapping it with a 6/10 for now (but ‘Fear To Tread’ is still really good, fuck all y’all haters).

Finally, here’s a song by Tom Waits called ‘Big Black Pariah’, about how much Tom hates James Swallow (?).

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