"Echoes Of Ruin" (audio drama compilation, various authors)

This is an anthology of the short-form ‘advent calendar’ Horus Heresy audio dramas Black Library did in December 2012 and 2013, plus an extra short audio drama exclusive to this collection. I really like this idea, but I had already bought the dramas individually when they came out, so I just downloaded the exclusive one (I appreciate them giving us that option). I do think the £3, ten minute audio dramas are a fun idea and when well executed, they’re excellent additions to the canon. If they’re not well executed, well, they’re ten minutes. It ain’t exactly another ‘Battle For The Abyss’.

This cover is actually kind of spoiler-y.

Veritas Ferrum by David Annandale: When I heard the next Horus Heresy novel would be a continuation of ‘Veritas Ferrum’, I was not particularly psyched. For a while this was my least favourite of any of the HH ‘advent calendar’ releases. The setting for this drama is during the initial, confusing moments of betrayal on Isstvan V, more specifically the fleet battle that broke out above the planet’s surface. This story focuses on one Iron Hands vessel in that space battle, the Veritas Ferrum of the title. Our characters here are two X Legion soldiers, Captain Durun Atticus and Sergeant Galba. Hey, Ramon Tikraam is in this audio drama! Guess how many people sound like Chinese commies in some 50s Hollywood propaganda movie? None. So yeah, he doesn’t HAVE to do that voice. I guess I should stop going on about ‘Sword Of Truth’ and its voice acting problems. In fact the voice performances are good here. The Iron Hands sound like stereotypical East End thugs, I was expecting Ray Winstone to walk in. Interesting choice, but it fits with the character of their Legion I suppose. I kind of always pictured the Iron Hands as Scottish though, I don’t know why. Their dialogue is nicely written, and there are some really impressive moments of void warfare as well. The initial antagonists are the Night Lords and Alpha Legion, which leads to a line which left an AL groupie like me really annoyed: “So, the individual is unimportant, is it Alpharius? Then what we’re about to do won’t hurt you at all.” You don’t get it do you, you Medusan bastard? You can kill an XX Legion cruiser, but the Legion is forever. Hail Hydra.

Once this conflict is resolved, we get a difficult situation for the Ferrum: They can save two Thunderhawks full of Salamanders, Raven Guard and Iron Hands, but only at great risk to their ship. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say they do the noble thing, BUT AT WHAT COST?! The way things are left, Sergeant Khi’dem of the Salamanders will, I imagine, be a primary antagonist for Atticus in ‘The Damnation Of Pythos’. And I really like the characterisation of Atticus, especially this line from his musings: “He would not believe that Ferrus Manus had been killed. Not unless he saw the Primarch’s body before him. Perhaps not even then.” Could be a bit of foreshadowing for a character slipping into denial after this great trauma. I dunno, I’ll have to read ‘The Damnation Of Pythos’ and find out I guess. Like I said, I didn’t like this at first, but each time I re-listened to it, I enjoyed it more. I give this 8/10.

Warmaster by John French: In the aftermath of Isstvan V, Horus Lupercal broods alone on the bridge of the Vengeful Spirit. ‘Warmaster’ takes the form of a monologue (you might even say a soliloquy) from Horus, giving us some insight into his mental state at this fairly significant time of his rebellion. Horus muses on the title ‘Warmaster’, his father, the brothers who are standing with him and against him, and his dissatisfaction with the way things stand at the moment. (It’s not clear whether this is before or after his famous/mysterious speech to the entire traitor host on Isstvan V. Probably after.) I’m just going to geek out and throw in a bunch of my favourite quotes here.

On Guiliman: “Roboute with his scratching quills and his plans and his hope. Too understanding. Too strong. Too damned perfect. I wish he was with us.”

On Alpharius: “The Hydra does not see all, and now his blindness places a knife at his own back.”

On the Traitor Legions: “At my back are only the flawed and damaged. I am a master of broken monsters… With such creatures I must remake the future.”

Yikes. Emotions running pretty high there. John French is a really good writer for Horus. He knows how to convey how much of a monster the Warmaster is, yet still make him more than one-dimensional, perhaps even sympathetic at times. It would be a real shame if he didn’t get another crack at writing for Lupercal, perhaps this time with some Sons Of Horus in the frame as well? Though I guess the list of things I really want John to write in HH is growing fairly unrealistic: Horus and his Legion, some Thousand Sons stuff to tie in with his Ahriman books, more Loken, more Tallarn stuff, more Dorn, more Sigismund, more Luther… I would be surprised if he ends up doing even two of those.

Anyway, while many stories here feel like little offcuts from a higher story, ‘Warmaster’ is completely self-contained. I really like that stinger at the end of the story, as well. Fuck Fulgrim, right? Overall, I give ‘Warmaster’ 9/10, and if you listen to just one of these audio ‘ministories’ you should make it this one.

Strike And Fade by Guy Haley: Quite some time after the Dropsite Massacre, four Salamanders survivors of different companies form an ad-hoc resistance cell to harry the traitors who remained behind. (If you’ve read the Forge World book ‘Extinction’, or the book ‘Deliverance Lost’ for that matter, you’ll know this conflict continued for a long time after the Massacre was done.) With that title, I was sure the Raven Guard would be the primary force, but oh well. While it’s just over ten minutes, ‘Strike And Fade’ manages to create some compelling characters, and the interplay between them (or lack of interplay, when it comes to the Silent Bob Salamander) makes me really want to hear more from Jafur and his brothers. Good writing and good voice acting; they work a lot when you’re trying to make your characters interesting. I’ve been fairly neutral towards most of the Salamanders characters in the HH series so far, and these were probably the first I actually liked. Maybe Nick Kyme having a stranglehold on Nocturne’s sons isn’t such a good idea, though I guess if I’m totally honest they were never my favourite Legion, purely based on their lore.

The action of this story comes as the cell ambushes a group of Night Lords. I never really read a convincing ‘bikes versus infantry’ battle scene, except perhaps Chris Wraight’s White Scars books, and this is no exception – that’s really the only weak point of ‘Strike And Fade’. The battle is fairly short, at least. It even builds a bit on the character of the Night Lords Legion – I never thought about it before, but naturally, the aftermath of Isstvan V would be more their preferred combat environment than the actual pitched battle.

This is a great story and I should mention that the soundtrack is particularly good, especially during Jafur’s conversation with the dying Raven Guard Legionary. I give this 8/10.

Lucius: The Eternal Blade by Graham McNeill: Following the events of ‘Angel Exterminatus’, the Emperor’s Children splintered into warbands. Brooding on his defeat, death and unexplained rebirth, Lucius ends up on the Planet Of The Sorcerors (somehow?) in search of a Thousand Sons Athanaean swordsman named Sanakht. The XV aren’t really a Legion noted for bladecraft, but deep down I think Lucius wants to murder a few people with inferior skills to him, just to get back on that horse.

There are a few similarities with the audio drama ‘Thief Of Revelation’, even beyond the setting and the appearance of Ahriman. Graham McNeill continues to write very well about the strange, warp-influenced landscape of the Planet Of The Sorcerors, and the way it’s slowly twisting the nature of the XV Legion. I really look forward to him expanding on this in the next Thousand Sons book.

Voice acting of characters is generally pretty good here but this narrator is not great, fairly slurred and seeming to have a bit more trouble than usual with some of the more ridiculous 40K lingo. It’s a problem I’d expect to encounter way more, and the fact that this problem is only apparent in this audio drama (to my recollection of the HH audio drama library) is a credit to Black Library really, they tend to choose the narrators well.

The most obvious comparison between this and ‘Thief Of Revelation’ is that both stories are clearly intended to be ‘teasers’ for Graham’s upcoming Thousand Sons novel, apparently called ‘The Crimson King’. Since Lucius and Sanakht aren’t mentioned in ‘Thief Of Revelation’ I assume ‘Eternal Blade’ took place after that story (unless Lucius just left after this, which’d be lame). I’d be interested to see how that goes; also Sanakht seems to be set up as a character in John French’s new Ahriman book, so I’m interested to see if he ‘remembers’ this story at all. I give this 7/10.

Khârn: The Eightfold Path by Anthony Reynolds: Man, I love the Russian Khârn, he’s pretty cool. This performance of Khârn is much more aggressive than the almost melancholy dignity he showed in ‘The Butchers Nails’ audio drama, which definitely makes sense following the events of ‘Betrayer’. The Nails are troubling him even more than before, and he hopes that the fighting pits can offer some kind of salve to the pain. Although Khârn is becoming more and more of a beast, he’s lost none of his bleak humour (“Sword against axe. Such a fight never lasts long.”) After a tense fight, we see a disturbing manifestation involving blood. Possibly sent by some kind of… blood god? Or possibly caused by the presence of so many screaming, berserk warriors.

‘The Eightfold Path’ just shows an event on the World Eaters’ path towards full-blown Khorne worship. Perhaps an insignificant event, but if you’re a XII Legion fan, you should check this out. It’s a nice little snapshot that doesn’t fuck around with any elements of Aaron’s World Eaters background (like the ongoing contempt shown to the supposed Legion elite, the Devourers), but uses them as a springboard to keep progressing the story.

Unlike most of the other stories in ‘Echoes Of Ruin’, ‘The Eightfold Path’ doesn’t seem to be an extended ‘trailer’ for anything. I’m not aware of any World Eaters stuff coming up, but Anthony Reynolds would be a good choice for a novel or novella about these guys, I think he’s got right attitude towards the existing fluff (and he’s definitely got Kharn’s narrative voice). Also, I think the production on here is particularly good, the soundtrack and effects are used incredibly effective (especially that brief moment of silence, followed by the return of the crowd’s roar). 9/10, perhaps even better than 'Warmaster'...

Cypher: Guardian Of Order by Gav Thorpe: Well, here’s a good way to wind down your pulse-rate after that amazing story. Some bullshit about two jerks doing very little. Ahh, I need to be more mature than that… but damn. So this is a story about Zahariel and Cypher checking out a possible site for a new Dark Angels fortress. We find that the recruitment rate has continued to rise, to the extent that new fortresses may be needed – so obviously any Fallen/Lion faction scuffle coming up is not going to go easy for anyone. But wait, remember that creepy monster under the North Wilds? Yeah, remember that hype-ass action sequence in that hype-ass book ‘Fallen Angels’? Apparently it’s totally back, according to some creepy and ill-defined bad feelings Zahariel gets.

I am very interested in a Fallen Angels Horus Heresy novel (which Gav will almost certainly be writing) and I actually like the idea of that book adopting a “slow burn” approach with lots of intrigue and backstabbing amongst the Fallen. But a short audio drama is probably the wrong format for introducing this concept. And while I don’t hate the first two HH Dark Angels books, I’m dubious that anything can be gained by recycling plot elements from them. The possible threat of widespread rebellion among Caliban’s citizens? We did it. A disgusting daemonic creature lurking in the arcologies? We been had that.

All kinds of dark questions are raised by this story, namely how much do Cypher and Luther know, and what’s their agenda? Do they want the same thing or are they at cross purposes? And why Cypher seems completely self-assured, then suddenly shakes with fear and runs off LIKE A LIL BITCH. Why? Hints at future plot points? Or inconsistent writing? And is the over-the-top reading of the last few lines meant to convey Zahariel in immediate danger, or is the narrator just freaking out? As the drama states, “Too many questions without answers.”

I’m not too fond of this one. I’d say 6/10.

Wolf’s Claw by Chris Wraight: I read the prose version already in the ‘Wolves Of Fenris’ collection, but I think audio format might be better for this though, especially for the frantic action scenes that bookend the story.

Following the events of ‘Scars’, Bjorn and the Space Wolves are still fighting the Alpha Legion. Unfortunately, Bjorn has not been able to secure a replacement for his chopped-off arm. Despite his favour with the Wolf King, there’s no queue-jumping in the Space Wolf forges. Unless you’re just a dick about it and steal shit! There’s not much to say here. Chris Wraight hasn’t written any duds as far as I can see, and he’s second only to Dan for writing Space Wolves I think (yeah, I don’t like Bill King). Toby Longworth’s voice acting is good, apart from giving me serious Skyrim flashbacks at times. (Hjolda! Jarl Balgruf here!) I guess the only fault is that this story seems kind of inconsequential, especially considering how Bjorn overcomes his primary obstacle. 7/10.

Some of these stories were superb, some were sub-par. But they were all worth a listen. If you haven’t heard any of them you might want to consider the CD purchase, if you’re not completely committed to the HH line you might just want to buy the one which involves your favourite Legion or author. Overall, I’d give it 8/10 as a collection. I hope we see more of these short-form audio dramas (and I’m sure we will).

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