Short Fiction Round-Up Volume 3: "Vorax" (Matt Farrer), "Luna Mendax" (Graham McNeill), "The Gates of Terra" (Nick Kyme)

Coming to you this time, three stories with a unifying theme: they all take place within the yellow light of Sol, though none are on Terra’s holy ground (well, as far as I know… jury’s out on the last one) after the outbreak of the Heresy. While this theme unifies them, the stories, characters and quality are all varied. I thought it’d be cool to do this themed roundup as the recent Weekender featured an announcement that the HH narrative will be moving definitively into the Solar System Campaign which leads into the Siege of Terra. Seems premature to me, but BL know what they’re doing… right??

Vorax by Matthew Farrer: Before ‘Cybernetica’ delivered on the promise of more, it seemed for a while like the Horus Heresy series had straight up forgot about Mars. (Nowadays everybody wanna talk, like they got somethin’ to say…) All these stories of Space Marines (mostly from the Shattered Legions) having desperate battles in the far corners of the galaxy when there was already a Traitor stronghold on Terra’s doorstep apparently going ignored. ‘Vorax’ was no more than a tidbit – an Advent Calendar Quick Read that in some ways serves only as a glorified advert for an expensive resin model made by Forge World. Yet somehow, it manages to be one of the best Heresy stories BL has put out in recent years. I’d compare it to Farrer’s seminal ‘After Desh’ea’ in the way it arouses my interest in a faction I’ve often found boring and one-note. I don’t wanna say that in its few pages, ‘Vorax’ is “better” than Graham’s whole ‘Mechanicum’ book was at showing scrapcode corruption and the madness that reigns after Mars declares for Kelbor-Hal… but… Well, I seem to already have said it, don’t I?

The story of ‘Vorax’ is rather basic and in fact can be summed up in a sentence. On the Ring of Iron, the Mechanicum traitor Ratiomancer Rhaal torments loyalist Enginseer Arrys, but is interrupted by some Vorax automata, who horribly murder him. The end. (Spoilers.) But like most of these Quick Reads, the story isn’t the appeal, it’s the way the authors can deepen and augment the background to this huge conflict. Farrer is one of the best in BL at showing us a new side to old, boring scenarios. Plus, homeboy can write – his flashy yet somehow terse style, florid in dialogue but brutal in combat, is one of my favourites after Dan Abnett. Here, he excels in showing the details of physical change wrought in Mechanicum operatives by the Mars scrapcode and their embrace of Kelbor-Hal’s new regime. Disturbing and horror-influenced, but somehow more believable than a lot of the more ‘gross’ stuff in HH. He also manages to tell us the current state of the Mars conflict and its blockade in subtle ways, making me wish for more of this from Farrer – a novella at least, or several more Quick Reads – to flesh out the Ring of Iron conflict. Still, I think any stories on this subject would be welcome, regardless of the writer – it really seems like a rich area that the series hasn’t mined yet.

In a short story like this characterisation often has to be done using broad strokes and clichés. Yet Farrer gives Rhaal a distinct and convincingly unhinged voice – it’s a very different approach from the dispassionate, brusque canting of Rob Sanders’ Dark Mechanicum creations. I’ve grown to enjoy Rob’s work in that area but this is still my preferred portrayal of Martian insanity and evil. Importantly, the Vorax themselves are a terrifying force of nature, and it’s a shame that as far as I know they haven’t shown up in any other Heresy work to date.

Sadly, the main problem with Vorax is that it’s so bloody short, and that its nasty, brutish ending makes it seem more like a prelude to a longer work than a self-contained narrative. I can only hope… but considering how infrequently Matt’s stories appear, it seems unlikely. For those who want more evil Mechanicum stuff from Matt, his novella ‘The Inheritor King’ from the Sabbat Crusade anthology also deals with corrupt machines, though in a very different way. For those who just want more Heresy stories from this guy, well, I’m right there with you. 9/10

Luna Mendax by Graham McNeill: At first published only in an event-exclusive anthology (which I was lucky enough to get my hands on), ‘Luna Mendax’ is an important chapter in the Garviel Loken story. Luckily, BL have finally put it out as an eBook, something they probably should have done in tandem with the release of ‘Vengeful Spirit’, since it’s an explicit prequel to that book. But oh well, since it’s out, it seems petty to complain.

‘Luna Mendax’ sees Graham McNeill take over as the writer for Loken for the first time since ‘False Gods’. Ben Counter may not have changed Garvi too much, but James Swallow made him fully insane and delusional, giving him the mantle of ‘Cerberus’ for his rather unsurprising return from the grave in ‘Garro: Legion of One’. Then John French took Loken on with ‘Grey Angel’, writing his shattered confidence well but involving him in a rather strange Caliban-centred plot hole which may or may not ever get a satisfying resolution.

When we meet Loken he’s working to build a beautiful garden, in a deserted hab-dome on Luna. Yeah, it’s a bit of a cliché for an old warrior to be working in a garden and musing on the nature of peace, an easy shorthand for the fact Loken is tired of war and wants to, well, retire. But after that slightly annoying intro, ‘Luna Mendax’ becomes a nice curiosity, an enjoyable HH story for those who don’t insist on their BL material brimming with violence, ichor and innards. Not only does it fill in the gaps between ‘Grey Angel’ and ‘Vengeful Spirit’, it also fills in the gaps after ‘Legion of One’, and that’s appreciated. The mission to Caliban in ‘Grey Angel’ is discussed at length, but the wilfully obscure nature of Loken’s findings are passed over, which is probably a smart decision. Graham also dials back the mad frothing of the ‘Cerberus’ insanity to show a more realistic portrayal of a warrior recovering from a deeply traumatic event which left pretty much everyone he had ever known either dead or his sworn enemy.

Loken’s memories are a mess, which gives Graham an opportunity for several flashbacks. These emphasise one of the things I like most about Graham’s writing: he really loves ‘Horus Rising’ and is unashamed of showing it. This writing showed a marked improvement in characters established in that first novel. It also gives Graham a chance to press ‘reset’ on the character of Loken and have him revert to his pre-Isstvan III self as his memories come flooding back. No more screaming insaniac, no more borderline-catatonic PTSD victim. 

Perhaps that’s a little disingenuous, throwing away other authors’ work on this central character, but I think it worked well to have the ‘old’ Loken back for ‘Vengeful Spirit’. And, yeah, it helps that I like Loken a lot. While Garro has reacted to the upheaval of the Heresy with explorations of religion and worship of the Emperor, Loken seems to be walking a more difficult path with less certainty in the answers, and that’s part of what makes him the ‘Grey Knight’ I like most (well, after Varren).

Lastly, it also sets up one of the weirder arcs in ‘Vengeful Spirit’, if I recall right – Torgaddon’s soul is devoured or trapped by a daemon, which ends up inhabiting Grael Noctua’s body, and I guess this is him asking Loken for help? Man, I hope that once gets as crazy a payoff as the setup seems to promise.

If there’s any complain I can level at ‘Luna Mendax’ – apart from the kind of lame opening – is that I would certainly have appreciated more of an insight into how Loken sees Malcador and Garro. It’s odd how Garro and Loken weirdly never seem to be in the same place at the same time since the Heresy started (not while Loken’s sane, anyway). These two squaring off, or maybe just fighting back to back, is something I’m really looking forward to.

My favourite Heresy stories are often the ones which have little in the way of combat, focusing instead on exploration of characters. I’d take this moving, elegant story over the similarly structured – but in my opinion, hugely overrated – ‘Last Church’ any day. 8/10

The Gates of Terra by Nick Kyme: The last of our three Sol system stories begins strong with a Malcador/Dorn discussion that, well, doesn’t suck. Very mysterious; they’re discussing the inevitability of Horus reaching the walls, the Edict of Nikea, and the importance of using every weapon available to them, even ones they must keep from the Emperor himself. Impressive, eh? As it starts to get interesting, the narrative shifts to… Arcadese. Remember him? The Ultramarine from ‘Forgotten Sons’. As a heavily augmented wounded veteran, dealing with feelings of obsolescence and a creeping suspicion his Legion have abandoned him, I found Arcadese a fairly interesting character. We last saw him leaving the dying planet Bastion after the failure of his diplomatic mission there, swearing to avenge his friend Heka’tan of the Salamanders, and to kill as many Traitors as he could before death claimed him. So what’s he up to now?

Battling a strange, indefinable feeling of wrongness – as if recovering from a head wound – Arcadese finds himself in a besieged fortress helping to hold off the full vanguard of Horus’ armada, including the grim monolith of the Vengeful Spirit. To make matters worse, in the sky Arcadese can see… Terra. That’s right, the war has come to the heart of the Imperium already. Arcadese is on an orbital station in the Ardent Reef, and he must hold as many of these ships off as he can. The situation is hella grim and with World Eater drop-troops and their daemon allies right at the fortress door, the Ultramarine must prepare to make the ultimate sacrifice, knowing it will never be enough to stop Horus.

BUT WAIT. As Arcadese dies, it’s revealed the whole thing was a simulation, psychically implanted by Librarians working at the behest of Malcador and Dorn (hence the conversation in the beginning). The Siege isn’t happening yet, dummy! The war is definitely a little further along here than we’ve gotten in the main novels’ ‘timeline’, since the Warmaster’s attack is considered to be imminent and the Imperium has knowledge that daemonic opponents will most likely be faced.

Honestly, I sort of love this weird twist ending, though the justification for it is flimsy at best. The ridiculousness of using this kind of intensive training rather than traditional simulation runs is handwaved away (in fact Malcador literally says there’s “no time” for that discussion). It hardly seems the most efficient way for the Astartes of Terra to prepare. And putting it into practice for such a relatively small group of Marines, especially one including a warrior of dubious effectiveness and stability like Arcadese? I’d like to have a few of these plot holes filled in, but there are aspects to ‘Gates of Terra’ which make me think it’s a really cool idea. Maybe this ‘battle-conditioning’ will just be used for the leaders of the forces who will be sacrificed at the various ‘waypoints’ before Terra can be reached… or, maybe we’ll never fucking hear about it again, like so many cool ideas floated in short stories. (Remember when the World Eaters went to dig through the ruins of Prospero? Apparently BL wants to act like this never happened.)

Any Malcador story will give you a few juicy morsels of information about the future of his shadowy network of underlings, and this is no exception. Another of Malcador’s Astartes, the Librarian Umojen, could be another potential Grey Knight. Then again, it’s revealed here that there are hundreds of these loyal Astartes being run through the psyker-induced simulation runs, from many different Legions, and each of the ‘trainees’ are overseen by Librarians of diverse Legions as well. This puts Malcador’s pool of potential Grey Knights at levels so high that it seems pointless to even have a conversation about Grandmaster identities.

This was apparently first published in French as part of the French Games Day 2012 Chapbook and, well, at times it seems like there’s been some Babelfish use here in preparing the English version. One character is referred to as ‘Lieutenant’ throughout and I’m not sure if this is because Arcadese admits to not knowing the character’s name – though he feels he should – or if it’s just been translated BACK into English from French and some weird shit has gone on with the phrasing. “Lieutenant had vanished from sight in the hellstorm” surely would read better as “The lieutenant (or ‘The nameless lieutenant’, or ‘The mysterious lieutenant’) had vanished from sight in the hellstorm.” This shit does make a difference, people, and since Nick Kyme also works for Black Library as an editor, you’d expect it to be picked up. Likewise, some of the sentences seem very terse, even to the point that words seem to be missing, and again, I’m not sure if this is intended to show Arcadese’s brusque manner or just a fuckup in translation. And sometimes words are there which shouldn’t be: ie the “cracked view-screen screen” mentioned in passing.

On my first readthrough, I felt pretty enraged that the Siege of Terra, even the prelude to it, was being introduced in such an off-hand way, in a fairly mediocre story. I went into my second reading of the story knowing that the apparent Siege was really a red herring, which made it easier to swallow, though it doesn’t get any less bland. There are some moments of ‘pretty okay’, maybe even ‘great’ void combat here, but Kyme’s characterisation of Arcadese here doesn’t really add anything new to an UItramarine I’d actually found pretty interesting previously. Add to that the fact that most of the combat sequences had me close to yawning – well, I’m far from proclaiming this a classic. However, I really like the direction hinted at in the ending, and while I’m not particularly bothered with finding out what happens to Arcadese specifically, I do want to know where this particular storyline goes. And as a “Fuck what you just read, it was all a simulation” moment, I’d take this over ‘Rules of Engagement’ for sure. 6/10

So there you go. Three stories about the Sol system. I guess we'll be seeing stuff like this a lot more in the next few years as the Legions begin their march back to ‘where it all began’. We’ll see how that turns out.

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

"Tales Of Heresy" (short story compilation)

'Tales Of Heresy' is the first short story compendium of the Horus Heresy series. I actually like these a lot; they give you an opportunity to learn a bit more about a legion's pre-Heresy background, or a particular battle, or Dark Scheme, or Desperate Attempt At Defense, and then move on to something else. If an author's great, then that's a bonus; if they're indifferent, they don't have time to get dull - and if they're TERRIBLE, you don't feel like you've been cheated for the cost of the book. Since they're all different stories, I'm gonna do some different reviews. I'll just get right to it.

YEAH I ROCK THE AQUILA, FUCK Y'ALL

Blood Games: This is set on Terra, about a year after the events described in Flight Of The Eisenstein. It really has two halves: the mysterious, enigmatic intro where you're all "what is this character?" and "why is he doing this?", and then the slight letdown of the 'special diplomatic mission' scenario that makes up the rest of the story. This might be my least favourite contribution to the Horus Heresy made by Dan Abnett, The Dan Abnett (chosen of GW, anointed by the Four) but it says a lot about the quality of his writing that the 'least favourite' one is still very, very good. It gives us a bit more of a feeling for the Custodes, their slightly antagonistic relationship with the Astartes, and their 'background' role in the Heresy (they're like 30K era Terra's MI5 or Spectrum or something); a lot of this stuff was done better in later HH books featuring Custodes, but you can't build on foundations of nothing, can you? It's also nice to see some characters combining a nice mix of stealth, espionage, techno trickery and lettin' da gunz blow. What the fuck do you mean, "exactly like in 'Legion'"? Get out. I give Blood Games 7/10, and that's probably a little harsh.

Wolf At The Door: I could do with this being about half as long (I doubt this is the last time my inner editor, who is a spiteful cunt, gets a voice) but it isn't terrible. Much like Mike Lee's Dark Angels novel... or was that the bad one? I know I absolutely hated one of the 1st Legion books and didn't really care for the other... but which was which? I digress. In 'Wolf At The Door', Space Wolves battle foul debased xenos who are attempting to prey on an innocent planet of humans. But IS EVERYTHING AS IT SEEMS?!?! The story, again, feels like something that's been done better before and since, but has some great moments; the combat scenes in particular are well written. Additionally, there's a nice little sting in the tale that says a lot about the frustrating nature of the Great Crusade.

One criticism I've seen of this is that Abnett drastically changed the 'feel' of Heresy-era Space Wolves, and thus the 'honourable space-Viking' portrayal here feels... off. This is unfair, as it was written and published long before Prospero Burns - but yes, I too would rather have the Rout version than the mead-chugging Brian Blessed version. Really, though, this is a pretty entertaining story considering that usually my attitude is "pfft, Space Wolves? Fuck that shit." I'd give it 6/10 (ignoring the over-long intro which I'm not sure needs to be part of the story at all...). Oh, and hey, dark eldar, guess your units haven't changed in 10,000 years... nice to have the GW miniature line described so faithfully. SNARF.

Scions Of The Storm: A Word Bearers story. This deals with the period following the legion's censure, before they were all full-on jackin' off to Chaos. As you can tell, this is the period which was covered in the first period of The First Heretic. In terms of order of publication, I think this might be the HH debut of Lorgar and Kor Phaeron. Much like Wolf At The Door, I feel Scions Of The Storm suffers from a boring-as-shit intro and some pretty poor dialogue and characterisation... again like Wolf At The Door, it also has some crunchy fight scenes which are well-described, and some WHAT A TWIST!!!! moments. Unfortunately, this one suffers a bit more than the Mike Lee story because I feel that The First Heretic is a fucking masterpiece and Scions prominently features a mix of stuff First Heretic improved upon greatly (ie the forced compliance of a world which deploys 3-legged artificials) and stuff that First Heretic has rendered useless (the stuff about the Emperor telling Lorgar off privately on his 'battle barge' and the legion left to wonder "what was THAT aboot, eh?"). What also annoys me is that I just KNOW some asshole somewhere is reading First Heretic and sneering "All this shit was covered way better in Scions Of The Storm, GW need to pull their finger out and stop milkin' the cash cow!!!!" Oh well. I give it 5/10.

The Voice: I hated The Voice when I first read it, but mainly because I didn't have a clue what was fucking going on. Most stories in Tales Of Heresy need just a cursory knowledge of the Heresy storyline to pick up and appreciate, but that's not really so for The Voice. It concerns of one of the (fairly) minor characters from Flight Of The Eisenstein, and is set after that book finishes. It's full of allusions to vol. 4 of HH and while it's not technically mandatory for you to have read Flight Of The Eisenstein for you to understand The Voice, I'd really recommend it. Due to this it went from one of my least favourite short stories in the whole series, to one which has some of my favourite moments in Tales Of Heresy. Featuring a classic scenario - some iron-tough Silent Sisters battle through a Black Ship apparently claimed by THINGS from the warp - this tale has some great bone-crunching battle scenes and is rounded out with some fairly nifty Lovecraftian cosmic/body horror.

I'll be honest, I was utterly confused to death by the part near the end where it turns out the creature fucking with them is not in fact a daemonic critter of Horus but in fact a future version of one of the Sisters. Erm, or was it all a trick str8 outta Warpton? I admit, I don't have a fucking clue. First time I read this I was in so much of a hurry to get through this that I thought the Sisters were being contacted by the spirit of Garro, but reading it more closely, I'm barely the wiser. Anyway, the good thing about 40K fiction is, when you're a bit confused by shit, you can just go "well that sly motherfucker Tzeentch is probably behind the shit then". OH FUCK, I SHOULDN'T HAVE TYPED HIS NAME, MY HANDS ARE TURNING INTO FISH! I give The Voice a high 7/10.

Call Of The Lion: Siiiiiigh... the Dork Angels. These douches. I never really 'clicked' with any primogenitor loyalist chapter back in my days of being a full-on 40K player/fanboy, but probably Dark Angels were the ones I liked the least. Ahh, fuck it, I hated them all equally. Anyhow, let's just say they haven't been particularly well-served by the HH series so far in my opinion; it hasn't really challenged my view of them as pursed-mouth, uptight shitheads. But hist, what is this?! A good Dark Angels story?? Fucking hell!!!

I'm actually not sure if any of the guys in this tale are from the two full-length DA novels. Not that it matters. The story here on a basic level deals with tension between space marines from Terra and those from a primarch's homeworld. It's often hinted at in these books, but rarely shown in such explicit detail as it is here. Astelan is a battle hardened Terran Dark Angel; fairly intractable, but also conscious that even Space Marines need to build and not just destroy. Belath is a young Calibanite and he's ruthless, bloodthirsty and dogmatic... a true son of the Lion. Can these wacky, mismatched partners put aside their differences and show the Galaxy what they're made of????? When they encounter a human world with an apparently stable and non-debased society, they squabble over what exactly to do. (Yeah... another 'bring um to compliance nicca $$$' story! You sick of these yet?) I don't think it's a spoiler to say it doesn't really end well.

'Call Of The Lion' is a great story; it gives us a bit of insight into what's happening in the Dark Angels chapter and how not everyone is "on board" with their "new direction", it gives us some nice battle scenes, and even though The Lion himself doesn't appear, I think it tells us quite a bit about him. With the similarly entertaining story 'The Lion' in the Primarchs anthology, it could be that Gav is THE best choice to make those First Legion fuckboys seem a little bit less unbearable. (Still, 'Savage Weapons' is another great Lion story - an Aaron Dembski-Bowden study of 40K-era Cypher, or of Heresy-era Caliban could be superb.) This shit shows 'Wolf At The Door' and 'Scions Of The Storm' how to do it. Bow down to the OG. Imma give this 8/10.

The Last Church: I have mixed feelings about The Last Church. A lot of HH fanboys go crazy over it, and I kind of get it; if nothing else, The Last Church is different. It's one of the only stories in the canon so far where there's no combat, no warp shit, and no Astartes. Instead, it deals totally with a priest-bro just gabbin' bout God with The Emperor (yikes, spoilers - but anyone who doesn't realise withing a few pages of starting The Last Church that the mysterious stranger 'Revelation' is in fact The Emprah... well, they might actually be retarded). My first caveat here is I don't necessarily 'get' McNeill and why he's often seen as the Black Library's premier author, tied with Abnett. I love some of Graham's books - ie Outcast Dead and Mechanicum - but some I just find stodgy and uninteresting. (Dembski-Bowden, Swallow and maybe Thorpe are all BL/HH writers I prefer.) However, all his stuff seems to feature at least SOME excellent moments, and 'The Last Church' is no exception. The characters are pretty memorable and some of the dialogue is very well done. Unfortunately, a lot of this is just Cliff notes of various theories and arguments I remember from A-Level philosophy. And, man, I haaated A-Level philosophy.

The arguments aren't exactly measured, either; the priest just angrily jams his fingers in his ears whenever the Emprah makes reasonable points about negative aspects of religion, and the Emperor comes across as a smug Internet atheist with all the answers - someone who's dead set on belittling you and making you renounce your entire way of life simply through use of his massive intellect. The fact that we know the Emperor has the blood of millions on his hands, yet is still going on about how religion is super gay and makes mad wars brah, makes him seem like, well, a dick. The dickishness is reinforced by the knowledge that the Emperor is going to birth the Imperial Cult - the most harmful, joyless, restrictive religion of Mankind's history - and subjugate the entire race to it. Perhaps we can't say empirically (huh huh) that he planned it that way - but I take the Traitor Legions view that THAT was his intention all along. Ho hum, well, Tzeentch is a jolly rogue isn't he. "Snide teenage goth vs aspergic born again Christian" vibe aside, I have to admire this for really trying to fuck with the Big Questions. Some shit that the haters would not expect from BL/WH40K affiliated fiction, for sure. Also, I liked the glimpse we got of the Unification Age here; it makes sense that McNeill shoved some Thunder Warriors into Outcast Dead - he uses them very well here, and they're barely glimpsed. For the sake of argument, for trying something different, and for the memorable, great moments in here (the Emperor sniping "Finally, a spirit I can believe in" when given a glass of liquor is a real keeper). I'm giving this 8/10.

After Desh'ea: Well, THAT title sounds like a 90s R&B singer... haha. I love After Desh'ea, it's actually one of my favourite short stories in the whole series and probably the moment (since I read Tales Of Heresy pretty early on) that convinced me I was down for the HH long haul and wouldn't just pick up the Abnett books as they were released.

Let's face it, the World Eaters could be the most widely/easily stereotyped legion in all the Chaos lore. I'll admit I don't own ALL the fluff, but my second/third edition run of White Dwarfs and Codexes has a dearth of Khornates doing anything but howling "Blood for the Blood God!" and splitting a motherfucker's head with a chain-axe. (Apart from that weird Kharn story I read once where his entire troupe of Berserkers get corrupted by a Slaaneshi Chaos Lord and get a little bit fey before becoming extremely dead.) GW have kind of written themselves into a corner with these guys; they have no Librarians, no real 'ranged war' capacity, and no tactics beyond getting out of the drop pod, thumbing the 'on' switch on the chain-axe/sword/glaive/mace/gunblade and running towards the enemy while yelling "FUUUUUUUUUUCK YOUUUUUUU" in some form. And yet here we get Angron doing an impression of a sissy-ass nobleman, Angron discussing tactics and, goddamnit, Angron showing actual human emotions beyond RAGE. Admittedly, it is mostly rage - this guy was created 28,000 years too late to become the world's best 'tough guy hardcore band frontman'. But we also see extreme vulnerability here, and how the Emperor's retrieval of his 12th son may have completely damned him; not only did it result in everyone Angron cared about dying, but he has no real way of comprehending a being more powerful than himself and - if he wasn't critically fucked in the mental before this - he sure as shit is now. Guess I always pictured The Red Angel as constantly yelping monosyllabic KILL KILL SHOOT SHOOT BLOOD BLOOD WHOOP WHOOP like some gigantic superhuman Waka Flocka Flame... yet this story shows him as someone who could be articulate and poetic, but finds it horrendously difficult to follow the thread of his own thoughts since the Butchers' Nails implanted in his head won't give him peace. I remember reading an Amazon review that said this entire story was kind of pointless "since we all know Angron was crazy" - well, that's fair enough, but with that attitude why bother reading HH books at all? We all know what happened anyway, right, in vague terms, so why expand on them...?

'After Desh'ea' does what I never thought any story could do: it humanises Angron and Kharn. I was pretty much expecting a meeting of these guys to involve them smashing their foreheads together howling "SHHHYYYEAHHHH" while Pantera played in the background, and sure there is some of that, but there's also pathos, humour and, well, the tragedy of seeing Kharn when he was still partially sane.
Like 'The Last Church', 'After Desh'ea' also adds to the 'is the Emperor a giant chode?' query: when he met Angron face to face, why did he permit someone so powerful, yet clearly and irrevocably broken to not only continue existing but twist a whole fucking legion of superhuman warriors to his every whim...? Of all the primarchs save perhaps Night Haunter, Angron is the one who so clearly needed to be fucking euthanised, and the fact the Emperor (who is no fool) was cool with giving them this much power, just shows (IMO) that he wanted some 'deniable assets' he could wipe out quietly once they'd done his dirtiest work. But hey, I'm kind of glad that didn't happen, since we have this and Betrayer as a result (I still haven't read that one tbf, but "Angron + Lorgar + AD-B" is unlikely to = shitty; I kind of hope he's continued at least some of Farrer's ideas).

Unfortunately, author Matthew Farrer doesn't seem to have tackled any other HH stories, or be in line for any. I know that the Index Astartes dealt with a lot of the 'introduction moments' when a primarch met the Emperor and their legion - and they did it very well - but I want MORE STORIES LIKE THIS. Goddamn. I give this motherfucker 9/10, goddamnit, and ONLY BARELY does it escape 10/10. GRRRRRR!

A THRILLING CONCLUSION: So is there an overreaching theme to Tales Of Heresy? Well, not really, beyond the, well, heresy. There's not really a common time-period, Astartes legion, or scheme uniting these stories. Perhaps the 'a world needs to be brought to compliance, but some fuck shit occurs' motif could be called a "theme" if were were being generous. Some stories here are kind of shitty, some are great, some are like nothing that had come before (or sometimes since) in HH and some seem like just more of the same (Wolf At The Door and Scions Of The Storm really shouldn't have been right next to each other). In other words, it's your common/garden anthology. As a book, this gets 7/10 from me. I thoroughly recommend it; just don't make it your very first purchase unless you already know at least the basic 'overview' of the Horus Heresy.

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