"Promethean Sun" by Nick Kyme

As the release date of ‘Deathfire’ drew ever closer, what better way to prepare than by re-reading Nick Kyme’s Vulkan arc? So last month, that’s just what I did. The logical place to start was here: a study of Vulkan and his Legion during the days of the Great Crusade.

Promethean Sun. Beacuse it's burning and fiery, like so much about the Salamanders. Also, homophones - because Vulkan is a Promethean Son. Eh? Eh? Geddit?

This was also the first stand-alone novella published as a Limited Edition for the Horus Heresy. It’s a parallel with ‘Feat of Iron’, the Iron Hands story in ‘The Primarchs’. We find the Salamanders on Ibsen, or One-Five-Four Four, with Heka’tan (yes, of ‘Forgotten Sons’) leading a massed action against the eldar forces opposing the Imperium. Of course, Vulkan himself (he of the burning scary eyes and big sweeping hammer) makes an appearance just when things are getting really bad, turning the tide of the battle. It’s the cool-guy/saviour moment you’d expect in a Primarch story, of course, but it’s a little rote and predictable. Perhaps that’s because we’ve seen so many of those kind of moments… but damn, contrast this to the entrance of Horus in ‘Horus Rising’; that shit really made you feel the immensity of a Primarch in battle and how awesome it was just to be present for it.

While it zips along at a good pace, the beginning chapter is cliché-riddled bolter porn of the type we rarely get in the Heresy. I think Kyme has improved dramatically since he wrote this, but opening with a fairly dull action sequence is one of the quickest ways to kill my interest in a story. The language is really familiar from tens (maybe hundreds) of similar stories at this point. Naturally the Salamanders being what they are, massive overuse of both literal and metaphorical fire can be found in these pages. I wonder, is Nick Kyme’s writing frequently boring because he’s writing about dull fucking Salamanders, or are the Salamanders deeply dull because so much about their culture and method of warmaking has been set down by Nick Kyme? Sort of a chicken or the egg situation.

It’s when the combat stops, and characters are built on, that it gets a bit more interesting; Kyme’s got a certain way with dialogue which – while not sounding within a million miles of what a real human would ever say – certainly seems appropriate coming from a staid, slightly pompous Primarch like Vulkan. The Primarch’s interactions with his close Pyre Guard champion Numeon (who will play a prominent role in ‘Vulkan Lives’ and ‘Deathfire’) are a nice way to establish the strengths and weaknesses of Vulkan as a character. For example, unlike many of his brothers, Vulkan seems to freely admit his faults, most notable being a lack of the burning (heh) self-confidence some of his more wildly conceited peers have been blessed with. If – as is implied here – the Emperor is putting on his human suit to do spot-check inspections of Vulkan to check his attitudes, it says some potentially interesting things about both Vulkan and his father, as well as making one think, erm, could you maybe not have done this with some of your other sons? Or maybe this attentiveness is a marker for just how significant Vulkan will end up being (like I keep saying, I got my suspicions).

(Let me just make an aside here: the antagonists for most of this story are eldar mounted on dinosaurs. I don’t know if this is a regular thing, I admit to a lack of familiarity with eldar fluff… but that’s pretty cool. I might’ve continued to be interested in those stick-up-the-ass space elves if they’d been riding fucking dinosaurs about. Milking this scenario for all it’s worth, Kyme has some fun with some classic Jurassic Park moments. It's a nice touch in a series that can sometimes be guilty of overdosing on the Grim Darkness.)

However, this is a Nick Kyme book, and while I think homeboy has written some great stuff for Black Library, he’s also often guilty of dropping some colon-destroying howlers in his prose. ‘Promethean Sun’ is no different. I hate myself for doing this, but I’m gonna get my ‘Battle for the Abyss’ on and recount some of the more dodgy writing in this slim volume.

-“My strength is our strength, Numeon. We are one, the Legion and I.” Despite his inner feelings of estrangement, this much Vulkan knew to be true. Save perhaps Horus, who had his Mournival, all the Primarchs trod a solitary path. It was simply that the Primarch of the Salamanders felt it more acutely than his brothers.

Huh? Am I misreading, or does this start with an affirmation of Vulkan’s unity with his Legion, then go on to imply he’s actually the loneliest of all the Primarchs? It reads like Nick got bored halfway through the paragraph and lost the thread.

-In the middle of a battle, Vulkan sees a young child in danger of being crushed by a falling pillar and he rushes forward, “knowing that to even witness the death of such an innocent would forever stain his immortal soul.” Well,

1) nice ‘teaser’ allusion to his Eternal status, but it makes him sound like he’s Catholic rather than Promethean

2) the moment of “No! Save the kid!” is one of the hackiest, shallowest ways of getting a character to appear sympathetic, especially a character who is designed to straight murder dudes and does it with some frequency in the established fiction

3) furthermore, Vulkan sees another young child’s corpse earlier in the novel, killed in a battle he fought in, possibly even killed by warriors under his command – and the sight merely haunts him for “a moment”. No eternal soul-staining.

-"Lord Vulkan would see our wounded self-esteem restored in the tempering flame of the forge." Yeah, I’ve heard that forges are perhaps the best tool for repairing wounded self-esteem, next to a trip to Mardi Gras.

-"The hellish kaleidoscope of close combat was almost upon them." I did not realise the Salamanders dosed themselves with LSD before battle. That’s some hardcore shit.

-“'We should pursue them, Lord. Varrun and I can ensure they do not return’ he promised with a feral look.” A feral look? Homie, I don't play that, yo. A feral smile, maybe. Even a feral snarl. But a feral look? I picture a ‘feral look’ as the Salamander whooping, licking his lips and doing a ‘don’t you know I’m loco?’ glare with his eyes.

-Describing eldar witches who have ridden lightning (METALLICAAAA OOH YEAH) to the battleground: “They embarked to set foot on the earth as any man would step from a ship”. Splitting hairs, but that really should be disembarked, shouldn’t it – especially if you’re comparing it to stepping off a ship. Words matter. Editors know this.

-There are moments in this book which are certainly… videogamey. Look, tie-in fiction for videogames might not be my thing, but I recognise those as actual books. This, however, sometimes reads like a half-crazed novelisation of a Call of Duty match. Just a mad, tactics-free rush to kill some eldar nubz; I’m not normally the kind of reader who gets hung up on “those tactics would never work” issues in these books, but at times this seems more World Eaters than Salamanders. At moments, it feels more like Dynasty Warriors (large horde of weaker enemies? Just mow them down with your AOE attacks!) or God of War (huge version of a previous enemy as an actual boss battle), but I’m not crazy about those games either.

Ahh, I’m a complete dick. I’ll stop it now – but I do genuinely find the sloppy moments of Nick’s writing quite frustrating, especially since he is capable of writing really well. Enough about that though.

There is a brio and enthusiasm to parts of ‘Promethean Sun’ which I really admire. But its overuse of cliché, its combat-heavy structure and some rather dull characterisation makes me wary to endorse it as a worthwhile purchase for any but the most dedicated Heresy fan. As time goes on, it seems like the best place to find good writing about pre-Heresy Legion culture and the highlights of the Great Crusade is in Forge World’s books. As a result, Crusade stories like this seem a little clumsy, since the authors often seem dead-set on putting in as much foreshadowing for the Age of Darkness as possible. ‘Promethean Sun’ is better than ‘Scions of the Storm’ or ‘Wolf at the Door’, but it’s still far from an essential read. It’s no ‘Battle for the Abyss’, but it’s certainly closer to that much-maligned book than most other Heresy offerings. While I hesitate to condemn a book for an ‘inconsequential’ story – some of the best Heresy fiction has focused on events far from the frontlines which may have little effect on the wider conflict – this just doesn’t seem to add much to the series. To top it off, the text here is noticeably larger and more spaced-out than any other HH novella I’ve got. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if this was the smallest novella yet in word count.

If you’ve not yet purchased the hardback novella or ebook, you may as well hold off until it inevitably appears in a mainline Horus Heresy story compilation. 6/10

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