Monday, 23 February 2015

"Tallarn: Executioner" by John French

Prompted by the wide-scale re-release of this previously limited-edition novella, and the announcement of a full-length Tallarn novel coming soon (released before I finished the review), I decided to jump back in time and review this – absolutely one of the best Horus Heresy novellas so far. Better even than ‘Aurelian’ or ‘Prince Of Crows’? It’s not a competition… but yes, I think so. Let’s look at why.
PEW PEW PEWWWW

In 40K, Tallarn is a desert wasteland, homeworld of the Tallarn Desert Raiders, its surface near-uninhabitable. In 30K, despite Graham’s ‘False Gods’ line “My mouth’s as dry as a Tallarn’s sandal”, Tallarn is a temperate ‘jewel world’, prosperous and thriving in its economy and environment. All that will soon change. At the novella’s beginning, (which, thanks to ‘Black Oculus’, we pretty much know follows on from the events of ‘Angel Exterminatus’) we see the Iron Warriors fleet burst into existence, jumping from… elsewhere. They translate in disarray; Perturabo’s flagship, the Iron Blood, even smashes a lesser vessel out of the way, leaving it to die. It’s implied here that the Iron Warriors turn their deadly attention to Tallarn simply because it is the closest system to where they’ve ended up – yet there have been hints elsewhere that there is a deeper motivation to the actions of the IV in their stubborn persecution of the world. I suppose we’ll need to wait and find out. Once there, they virus-bomb the planet, leaving millions upon millions dead – but not managing to extinguish all life on the world, due to Tallarn’s extensive subterranean network of tunnels and installations.

The book has a rather interesting format. It’s split into six chapters, each one of which follows our group of characters for a short time period during the beginning of the Tallarn war. These chapters are very ‘ground level’, focusing on these soldiers’ experiences and rather narrow view of the planet-wide war. Between each chapter, there’s a page of wider context, telling you what happened in the weeks or months between these little moments. (This concept – personal narrative, then some macro-view inserts – is also used by John to great effect in his Tallarn audio drama ‘The Eagle’s Talon’.) In the Limited Edition novella there’s a helpful timeline insert to show you the exact timeframe of how long the war dragged on – but those of you buying the standard edition should have no difficulties following the chronology.

Our heroes here are a mix of people who, through various means, have avoided the terrible but quick death caused by virus-bombing. They have survived to become soldiers, whether they wanted to or not. Actually, Lieutenant Tahirah is already a soldier, an officer in the armoured formation the Jurnian 701st. She drives a Leman Russ Executioner (hence the novella’s name) called Lantern. When disaster comes, they are working far below the Sapphire City. Stranded on the world awaiting deployment for twenty-seven months, she and her unit are getting jumpy, bored and frustrated. They are about to get more than they bargained for. Sharing the underground complex are the Chalcisorian 1002nd, whose sergeant Brel is another primary character. Plagued by old war injuries which left him with debilitating headaches, Brel is a real piece of shit, sort of a cross between Joaquin Phoenix in ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ and the venal Meryn from Gaunt’s Ghosts, yet somehow surpassing them both in roguish scumbaggery (he makes quite a dramatic first impression). Lastly, Akil is a wealthy merchant prince who trades in the Sapphire City, whose most pressing concerns are that the end of the Great Crusade will impact negatively on Tallarn’s economy. Journeying home through a more proletarian area of the city, he intervenes in a brutal mugging, saving an (apparently) helpless old man from two thugs. Akil’s kindness will have a profound effect on Tallarn’s fate. While there are other significant characters, these three are the ones we spend the most time with, and John works excellently within this small cast at contrasting their character traits. Outside of his extra-legal shenanigans, Brel is like a hunter, relying on instinct and feeling out the battlefield to get the drop on his prey. The moment where he cuts his machines’ systems and lies in wait, using the other tanks in his squadron as bait, shows us just how cold a bastard he can be. Tahirah is more by-the-book, a promising soldier now doomed to an ugly, unwinnable war, and her frustration at this is a powerful motivator – not always in a good way Akil is a bit of an audience substitute, in that he is no solider: relatable reactions to the situation, like fear, guilt and anger, are mostly supplied by him. However, there is more to him than we can see at first glance.

Due to my misreading of key factors of the story background, and the way the timeline insert is laid out, I thought ‘Tallarn: Executioner’ took us through most of the battle for Tallarn. The novella actually finishes about a month after the hostilities commence; we have around a year of war left before the Iron Warriors withdraw. Chronologically, your next trip into Tallarn should be ‘Eagle’s Talon’ and ‘Iron Corpses’, in that order, followed by ‘Tallarn: Ironclad’ which deals with the last half of the war. ‘Tallarn: Executioner’ may be little use as an overview of the largest tank battle in galactic history, but it’s a superb introduction to the Tallarn arc – I’ll need to go back to the other stuff before I review it, but my feeling at this time is that it’s the best Tallarn fiction by a long, long way.

There are similarities here to ‘Know No Fear’ and ‘Legion’ – two fairly lofty comparison points. ‘Know No Fear’ in the brilliantly tense writing of the action sequences; while much more ‘low-stakes’ than the planet-spanning dust-up of Calth, the tank battles here are just as capable at keeping you on the edge of your seat. As for my beloved ‘Legion’, the similarity is in the book’s almost exclusive reliance on unaugmented human personnel. The Iron Warrior antagonists and the loyalist Space Marines who flock to Tallarn later in the conflict are not shown as characters. The Traitors are just represented by their sealed war machines. While the spectacular cover image of burning Terminators disembarking from a damaged Land Raider certainly happens, it’s not really a fair representation of the majority of the action. Notably, no Space Marine is given a single line of dialogue.

The Black Library book other than this I remember having great tank combat was Dan Abnett’s ‘Necropolis’, and Dan’s a pretty high benchmark for a Black Library author wanting to write a compelling action sequence which also builds on characters. To be honest, I don’t read much non-Black Library combat-heavy stuff, so there’s likely more mind-blowing sci-fi tank battles out there – but ‘Tallarn: Executioner’ certainly did it for me. However, the action almost feels more like submarine combat – tanks in thick fog, unable to see their opponents until they’re on top of them. The fact that these skirmishes are rather small scale (barring a slightly out-of-place, but utterly visceral, confrontation with a Titan) gives them a desperate intimacy we don’t see a lot in books from this publisher. I guess this leads to the only concern I had about ‘Tallarn: Ironclad’ once I’d finished ‘Executioner’: that if, as John had stated, it was going to take a much more ‘widescreen’ view of the Tallarn war, with a larger cast and larger battles, perhaps this intimacy would be lost. ‘Ironclad’ is fantastic, I’ll say that now – but it’s no ‘Executioner’.

The plot here is intriguing and well-layered considering the relatively sparse page count. The tension of that last denouement is handled masterfully, and to cap it all, there’s even a ‘post-credits scene’ to rival any Metal Gear Solid game. The fact it’s called ‘The Hydra’s Dream’ would seem to prove that the shadowy organisation operating from within the Imperial survivors’ camp is made up of operatives from the Alpha Legion – an assumption that John’s subsequent Tallarn work has borne out.

‘Tallarn: Executioner’ is beautifully written. I’d enjoyed ‘The Last Remembrancer’ quite a bit, but this was what convinced me John French was a top-tier Black Library writer to watch. He does not have the bleak humour of AD-B, but nor does he have that writer’s occasionally embarrassing fits of over-emoting. I doubt that, for example, Aaron could have handled the tragic-heroic ‘face turn’ of Brel without making it much more melodramatic. (Christ, I’m using wrestling terms to denote plot points. I listen to the Giant Bombcast too much.) John’s work is cold and clinical when it needs to be yet can also bring some poetic beauty to things. Whether it’s the description of the virus-bombing of Tallarn – in some ways, a more disturbing one than the ‘Galaxy In Flames’ murder of Isstvan, due to its matter-of fact brevity – or the relationship between the survivors, or the bittersweet moment of the poison fog clearing enough for Akil to see the moonlight over his dead world… Well, John’s got that quality that I will – while hating myself to use such a cliché – call cinematic. It certainly doesn’t pull its punches; many of the non-combat scenes leave you just as shaken as the high-stakes tank fights. By showing us the quality of the Sapphire City – not sci-fi beauty, but conceivable modern beauty – John gives its desolation that much more of an impact. When we were told that Isstvan III and the Choral City were once beautiful, did it really sink in? We only ever saw them as the backdrop to a war.

Finally, Silence and Lantern, the names of the two primary engines in the squadron for most of the book, correspond, oddly enough, to the weaponry of Mortarion: his huge scythe is called Silence, and he wields a large unidentified pistol called the Lantern. I’m not sure of the significance of this allusion, but since John French helped to write ‘The Horus Heresy: Betrayal’ where Mortarion’s wargear was named, I’m pretty confident it was intentional. The scout vehicle, Talon, might be a nod to John French’s buddy AD-B’s ‘Talon Of Horus’ book.


As I originally asserted, ‘Tallarn: Executioner’ is one of the very best Horus Heresy novellas so far. ‘Aurelian’ and ‘Brotherhood of the Storm’ are certainly on its level, but cut from their associated novels, could they stand alone? I strongly doubt it. And as much as I enjoy all the other novellas Black Library has produced for the Heresy, none of those come close. ‘Tallarn: Executioner’ is the complete package – ‘Ironclad’ is a great sequel, but ‘Executioner’ almost needs no continuation. 10/10

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

4 comments:

  1. Is it just me, or are the Iron Warriors a bit shit? The Phall system, the Schadenhold... okay, so they ultimately 'won' both battles, but they basically got whipped by a smaller (and in one case MUCH smaller) force on both occasions. Do they manage not to suck ass in Angel Exterminatus?

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    1. A bit shit... yes and no. There was a lot of Iron Warriors talk at the Weekender and I think (along with the background in 'Horus Heresy: Extermination) it helped me 'get' them a bit better. Their method of war involves dying in droves to a degree even the World Eaters might balk at, but they'd see it as all good as long as they secure a win. Phall is a good example. Shitload of Iron Warrior casualties, but they took out a huge chunk of the Fists' naval capacity and while they didn't wipe everyone out, they forced the enemy fleet into a semi-successful retreat.

      I think they're well-portrayed in Angel Exterminatus. They don't really do anything significant in military terms but the culture of the Legion is fleshed out a bit. To be honest, Perturabo makes some very suspect choices, but that's kind of one of the main points of the story.

      But if you see the Iron Warriors as mediocre - man, the Tallarn books are probably not going to change your mind. There is very little impressive stuff done by Iron Warriors in those books, I think. Partly because they're barely shown, but also because their ultimate goal is a little muddy until right near the end, and they're pretty bad at accomplishing it.

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  2. My recollection was that the Iron Warriors were about to get it handed to them at Phall, and then the Fists received the astro-telepathic message to return to Terra immediately, leading to a somewhat catastrophic withdrawal.

    Quite a good short story I thought; ditto The Iron Within. I notice that Dantioch pops up again in The Unremembered Empire. Pretty sure I'll give that one a crack (it's Dan the Man, after all), but I'm less certain about Angel Exterminatus. After slogging through Fulgrim, I'm not exactly champing at the bit to read more about the Emperors Children...

    Currently two-thirds of the way through The First Heretic. Will let you know my thoughts once I've polished it off. I'm slightly ambivalent about it at this point, but a strong finish would change that.

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    1. I think your recollection is probably more accurate than mine - quite a while since I've read 'Crimson Fist'. Iron Warriors have not had a great showing in combat so far. I think they may well be stars at the Siege of Terra, but until then it's possible they'll just be also-rans. Yeah, Dantioch's appearance in 'Unremembered Empire' is a treat - that whole book's great, really. The Iron Warrior Knight Errant in 'Vengeful Spirit' is also pretty cool - Loyalist Iron Warriors have been pretty great so far.

      I think 'Angel Exterminatus' is an illustration of how Graham's writing skills weren't set for 'Fulgrim'. Description of how a Legion/Primarch is slowly corrupted and decides to throw in with Horus' rebellion? It requires a bit more subtlety than he used in that book, leading to some really questionable character moments. On the other hand - description of the same Legion/Primarch "leaning in" to their damnation and being utter irredeemable assholes? In 'Angel Exterminatus' he writes that with an enthusiasm and creativity that's kind of worrying.

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