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.
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| 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.
