"Brotherhood Of The Storm" by Chris Wraight

Ahh, I guess I’m on a roll with the Chris Wraight titles. Let’s look at ‘Brotherhood Of The Storm’. I warn you guys right off the bat - this review is hella long.

I don't know why, but I never had much regard for this cover art. I just think there's something slightly off about it.

First released as a limited edition novella in 2012, normally it would have been mid-2014 before this saw wider release; however, Black Library luckily broke with that weird, restrictive rule and put ‘Brotherhood’ out in late 2013 so readers could digest it before ‘Scars’ came out. I’m really glad they did, since I really view these two books as one long, unbroken story. It would be very hard to read one without the other.

I wasn’t even close to caught up with the Heresy series when this was first released, but I’m sure that anticipation must have been high. While not one of the big-draw ‘marquee’ Legions/Chapters in 40K, the White Scars still have their loyal fans, and this was the first in-depth look we were getting of them in the Heresy universe. Furthermore, the Scars’ actions in the Heresy had been shrouded in mystery; it was known that they stood with the Imperial Fists and the Blood Angels at Terra, but there was little concept of what they did before that. Would Wraight provide a satisfactory explanation? Would he add something new to the Legion, or would the 30K Scars be just like the 40K Scars, except with their Primarch still around?

Surprise, motherfucker!! Wraight capably delivers on every level. He can’t fuck with the central tenets of the Legion (well, he could, that’s a Heresy writer’s right – but he doesn’t). The main characteristic of the Scars is that they’re virtuoso riders, both of bikes and jetbikes, and they love going fast. Rather than portraying them as inattentive speed-freaks, Chris shows their bike-fetish to be a natural extension of the constantly roaming tribes of Chogoris, and their cultural emphasis on glory, competition and exhilarating feats. I’ve always thought combat bikes, and to a lesser extent jetbikes, are one of the stupidest things in the 40K universe, which obviously is an arena crowded by over-the-top stupidity. But Chris wrote action scenes of a jetbike-vs-ork convoy engagement which totally floored me. It’s graceful, yet utterly visceral writing. He also expands this tactical doctrine into a split in the philosophy of the Legion. The shortness of their attention span, and their difficulty with ‘take and hold’ missions, provides a bit of a schism in doctrine between the Scars of isolationist Chogoris and those more… centre-facing. And of course, the Scars were always based heavily on the culture of ancient Mongolian tribal warriors, notably the army of Genghis Khan; Wraight stays true to this, yet also gives Chogoris its own, original culture. There are bits of Chinese and Japanese culture in there as well, which obviously worked for a giant weeb like myself. (Especially since one of the plots can be summed up as “Jaghatai-sempai noticed me!!” It’s just like my motherfucking Japanese animes.)

As we open the story, the White Scars have been fighting hard against the orks on Chondax for some time. The time: some years after the Triumph at Ullanor, when several combined Legions, with Horus and the Emperor at their head, broke the back of the expanding ork empire; the Scars have been working since then to finish the job. They’re led by Jaghatai Khan, or the Great Khan, who they tend to call Khagan. The Khagan doesn’t lead in the manner of Horus or Sanguinius. He is elusive, hard to pin down, decentralised, giving his soldiers a minimum of guidance and a great deal of autonomy. I guess in a way, he could be the closest Primarch to Alpharius in this willingness to let his sons resolve their own issues. Despite this distance from the rank and file of his Legion, it’s clear that the Primarch/Astartes bond is just as strong as most other Legions, certainly stronger (and healthier) than some. It ain’t all good, though. As we know – and the Scars seem not to know – the Crusade, and the galaxy, changed drastically in the years after Ullanor.

‘Brotherhood Of The Storm’ is a seven-chapter novella which, each chapter, jumps between one of three first-person narrators. Our first character is Shiban, khan of the titular Brotherhood of the Storm. Shiban’s story gives the novella most of its action sequences, and they’re excellently paced – but it’s also a character study, a vital look at the Legion’s organisation (for people who geek out over that sort of thing), and also their soul. Shiban is one of the most likeable late-series Loyalists; as the books fill with psychotic Iron Hands, dour Knights Errant and nice-but-dull Salamanders, it’s cool to have a ‘good guy’ who is having fun. Of course, part of Shiban’s character arc is the cessation of fun, but that’s – for now – in the distant future. Shiban accepts that the Khan is unknowable and inscrutable, but has faith that he will not steer the Legion wrong. This kind of outlook definitely sets the Scars up as a slam-dunk for a staunch Loyalist Legion. The frequent Traitor gripe of “THE EMPEROR DOESN’T TELL US ANYTHING ANYMORE!” seems like it’d be met by a blank stare and a shrug by the Scars. However, things aren’t as simple as they seem on that score…

Our hero is joined by a force led by Torghun, another khan, from the Brotherhood of the Moon. As they prepare to assault the final ork fortress on this world, we see the difference between the Terran-born, Luna Wolf-worshipping Torghun, and the true son of Chogoris, Shiban. Their combat doctrine is different and leads to conflict. The Scars make frequent uses of feints and hit-and-run attacks to draw the enemy out – striking then retreating. Torghun, who has been seconded to the Sixteenth, appreciates the unrelenting ‘spearhead’: the direct thrust which never stops. Their disagreement is uncomfortable simply because they are both likeable characters, and Shiban is aghast at the discord between them. It reminded me a bit of that first confrontation between Lucius and Tarvitz on Murder; I cared about both characters and wanted them to be friends, but I knew the conflict was going to pay off in some awful way, somewhere down the line. Luckily, unlike the Emperor’s Children, the squabbling White Scars are not too proud to compromise. Yet Shiban’s attempt at half-measures results in the Brotherhood of the Storm being pinned down and encircled, a poor situation for a White Scar. (Or as he himself says, “I could not imagine us ever distinguishing ourselves in warfare of that sort – under siege, fighting with our backs to the wall as the sky burned above us.” Damn, foreshadow much?) As Shiban, Torghun and the other Brotherhoods on Chondax encircle and assault the last ork stronghold, Shiban’s joy at the thrill of combat is powerful. Yet even fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with his beloved brothers doesn’t match the feeling he gets when Jaghatai himself joins the fight, and Shiban fights at his side – a lifelong ambition for the warrior. Conclusion: This whole story was nothing but great. I don’t really like reading about battles against orks, I don’t really like reading about battles involving bikes, but Wraight made me enjoy both. Fucking stellar.

Our second ‘viewpoint character’ is Ilya Ravallion, a human General in the Departmento Munitorum. While she’s got a military rank, Ilya’s task is to oversee the materiel used by the Crusade, not batallions of men or war-engines. Even though she’s climbed high, Ilya’s kind of a glorified pencil-pusher in the grand scheme of things. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that she’s one of my favourite human characters in the series – I think because I found her so relatable; after all, of all the characters in the Heresy, this is the one whose job is not a million miles from my own. I know some have raised the complaint that Chris is doing female characters no favours by putting a woman into a ‘passive’ or ‘custodial’ role, but I have to disagree with that. Firstly, I think Ilya shows great courage and intelligence in this book and ‘Scars’, even in the direst of situations. She demonstrates that the bureaucrats and clerks can influence events in a sometimes surprising way. The character would be compelling in the same way if it were male, but I like that Chris has shown the Abnett approach of “hey, the character doesn’t have to be a man, so why make them one?” I do agree it would be nice if more human military officers were portrayed this way, but that’s a charge we can’t lay solely at Chris’ door. Next, the fact that Ilya is perhaps the first female character in the series who’s not sexualised in some way is quite refreshing. She’s an aging, slightly awkward, unspectacular-looking person. Just more reasons I find her relatable.

To be honest, Ilya is really well written and that’s all I want from my Horus Heresy female characters. If someone wants to write a weird caricature of their ex-girlfriend into their 40K or 30K fiction, and make them a promiscuous, shallow idiot who inadvertently causes huge catastrophe by their stupidity, I’ll only wave my flag and say THIS IS MISOGYNISTIC BULLSHIT if I feel it’s poorly written. (Look, I’m not saying that’s actually happened, though some of Graham’s characters come a bit close to it in some ways.)

Enough about the whys and wherefores of Ilya’s gender. What’s her actual story? Well, Ilya has been sent to Ullanor to seek an audience with the Great Khan himself. There she meets the Stormseer Yesugei, who we might remember from the Nikea scene of ‘A Thousand Sons’ (yall can peep what I said about him right here). This is the first time we get Wraight writing for a Scar speaking Gothic, and he calls attention to the weirdness of Yesugei’s broken English right away, with Ilya noting it and wondering what explanation there could be for a super-intelligent super-human warrior having difficulty learning another language. While Graham’s Nikea scene is a little uncomfortable, reading like – say – a well-meaning but hugely stereotyped Native American character from an 80s action movie, Chris seems to recognise this is an odd state of affairs and makes an effort to explain it. So Yesugei muses later that the Chogorian Scars have always struggled with Gothic, that the Terran members of the Legion learn their brothers’ language in order to integrate with them rather than the other way around, that perhaps the linguistic difficulties are a symptom of the Scars’ penchant for isolation. There are times where the stilted syntax is a bit much; in all, I’d rather this was retconned completely out of existence and that the Scars all spoke ‘normally’; I mean, it could end up as a canon conflict, but the White Scar in ‘Descent Of Angels’ seems to have no linguistic issues, so where’s the canon conflict for that? (He was Terran, I guess.) However, I think Chris put forward a convincing argument for continuing Graham’s treatment of the Legion which goes beyond “LAWWWWL BUT THEY AZN THO ^_^ pc nazi faget”

There’s a fairly excellent resolution to Ilya’s story here, as she eventually meets Jaghatai, which prompts one of the better scenes showing how difficult it is for mortals to interact with Primarchs. Even as a dissection of the Legion’s relationship with the Munitorum, with the Imperium as a whole, it’s great – but then Horus arrives, and Ilya is privy to a deeply significant moment which will resound in the White Scars’ history forever. Conclusion: While Shiban’s storyline is the meat of ‘Brotherhood Of The Storm’, Ilya gives the book its soul, and some of the best human-centred moments in the whole series.

Our last ‘viewpoint’ storyteller is Yesugei himself, who gives us a flashback to his childhood on Chogoris, back when the Khan was still fighting against his enemy, the Palatine. Yesugei has gone up into the mountains to undergo the “test of heaven”, a tribal rite for those who show signs of psychic power. Those who experience the visions of heaven will live the life of a zadyin arga, a tribal shaman of a kind. There’s a poetry to him as he discusses the nature of fate, the universe, and his love for the planet that was his home. Yet also we learn some things which may not set him in the best stead in the Imperium; he describes Imperials as ‘them’ and makes it clear he sees the people of Chogoris as outside the Imperium. He also describes, with an odd dispassion, the ‘visions of heaven’ – avatars of what are clearly the four Chaos gods and the Emperor himself appear to him. Conclusion: Yesugei’s story is light on actual ‘events’ – it’s more philosophical, a meditation on the nature of Chogoris and how significant it still is to the Scars – but that doesn’t mean the writing dips in quality or the chapters become less interesting. It stands toe-to-toe with the other strands; to know the Scars, you must know their homeworld.

At first, I was put off by the jumping narrative viewpoints for this book. What is Wraight trying to do, be all George RR Martin and shit? I may have thought. I was worried that including three distinct story strands would dilute the impact of all of them and leave no room for any plot to breathe. I needn’t have worried – Wraight knocked it out of the park, plotting the novella tightly and economically, while introducing three incredibly rewarding characters. Perhaps it’s even more developed than that – all our narrators, and their stories, present a different aspect to the White Scars. Yesugei shows the Legion’s past. Shiban shows the Legion’s present. Ilya shows the Legion’s future.

I really like the fact that each character’s narrative ends with them glimpsing the Khan, and that’s what unifies these story threads. To each, he comes across as a restrained yet deeply intimidating presence; a being whose nature is indefinable, and whose powers are unmeasured. One thing seems clear. Whether it’s in the midst of combat in a colossal ork fortress, in conference on his flagship regarding the Legion’s contact with the Imperium, or in his tent on Chogoris during a time when he hasn’t yet even conquered the whole planet, the Khagan is in control, always. In Gothic, Yesugei isn’t all halting sentences. He also drops this very perceptive gem about the Fifth Primarch:

“He is not elusive, he is at the centre. Wherever he is, that is the centre. He will seem to have broken the circle, drifted to the edge, right until the end, and then you will see that the world has come to him, and he has been waiting for it all along.”

Line of the book? It could very well be.

One repeated aphorism of the Khagan is “Laugh when you are killing”. A phrase that Shiban, and many other V Legion warriors hold close to their hearts. At first reading, that could make them seem sadistic or filled with love for violence, but it really underlines that unlike so many other Legions, their nature is not melancholy. They are cheerful, quick to see the humour and joy in a situation, even in the most desperate and awful situations. It’s not the bleak humour of the Sons of Horus or the Night Lords, either. Chris’ work at establishing this is what makes their descent into rage and sadness in ‘Scars’ so devastating.

Call me a wanker if you like, but as I finished ‘Brotherhood Of The Storm’, as Shiban’s elegy for now-lost times of laughter and joy brings the book to a close with a rueful glance to the future, I actually started to well up a bit. I didn’t actually cry, but I had a strong emotional reaction to, well, a piece of art. And that’s what I’m gonna call it. There are Black Library books which are pure commerce, and books which are good but flirt heavily with fan service laziness. This is not like those books. This is next to ‘The Emperor’s Gift’ or ‘Ahriman: Sorcerer’ or ‘Ravenor Returned’. It’s a goddamn beautiful masterpiece. This is all that’s needed to cement Chris Wraight in the ‘great BL writers’ canon, but luckily, he’s dropped quite a few gems since this came out. If it wasn’t for ‘Scars’ being even better, I’d call it perfect… as it is… 9/10