"The Lion" by Gav Thorpe

I suspect (though, of course, cannot confirm) that ‘The Lion’ was supposed to be immediately followed by ‘Prince of Crows’ to close out ‘The Primarchs’. Chronology-wise, the two stories are as firmly linked, in their way, as ‘Feat of Iron’ and ‘Promethean Sun’; arguably more so, as ‘Crows’ seems to follow ‘The Lion’ by a matter of days. But, of course, that’s not how the table of contents ended up. It’s not impossible to believe that Aaron was a little late with the story – but then, if this was the case, one looks at the sheer quality of ‘Prince of Crows’ and thinks “Well, I don’t mind waiting.”

Still one of the cooler Legion sigils.

‘The Lion’ is a sequel to ‘Savage Weapons’, and we join the First Legion as they continue to prosecute the Night Lords in the Thramas crusade. It’s also a sequel to ‘Fallen Angels’, as it picks up Nemiel’s storyline again. However, ‘The Lion’ goes to some places you might not expect from those two starting points. Mere pages in, we’re off to a planet called Perditus (Oh, Games Workshop, I do so enjoy your creatively named planets) as the Lion chooses to go and interfere in a conflict between the Iron Hands and Death Guard, leaving the bulk of his Legion to keep fighting in Thramas. Aside from a brief cameo, Kurze’s mob aren’t here, though by the novella’s close, the Lion has procured the device necessary to break the Thramas deadlock – hence tying this story in to the terrific drubbing the Angels give the Night Lords not once but twice in ‘Prince of Crows’, the impact of which would only have increased if ‘Crows’ had been the last novella here – but I’ve said enough about that already.

I don’t think I’m alone in considering AD-B’s ‘Savage Weapons’ the best Dark Angels Heresy fiction so far. Gav tries hard to follow up that compelling portrait of the secretive First Legion and their mercurial Primarch, but by making the Lion a viewpoint character, the mystery is dispelled a little. Historically I’ve been more in favour of Primarch viewpoints than Primarchs being shown as remote and unknowable (‘The First Heretic’, ‘Angel Exterminatus’ and ‘The Unremembered Empire’ being some prime examples), but I really feel that with his near-pathological aversion to showing his motivations, the Lion is incredibly poorly suited to being a narrator, perhaps only second to Alpharius. So what does Gav do? Shows the Lion’s motivations all over the place. Rather than building on Aaron’s compelling but (by necessity) rather sketched portrait of an arrogant, imperious templar-king in space, Gav takes it back to the end of ‘Fallen Angels’: the Lion’s motivation here seems to be little developed beyond “I’M P-NOID, MY HOMIES SAY I’M P-NOID!” (A bit of Clipse humour there.) He also has apparently unexplained swerves in temper – sure, he was always stern with his Legion, but going from slightly paranoid doubts about his subordinates to straight up executing one of them over a dispute of ethics? It seems a rather dramatic swerve, but more on that later. It feels like Gav wrote with the words ‘Mystery’ and ‘Reveal nothing’ above his desk but only looked up at them from time to time – during one period of soul-searching, the Lion notices a blade from Luther on the ship, but his inner monologue gives no indication of how he feels about that character; shortly after he kills Nemiel we’re privy to a moment of the Lion’s quiet reflection, but he doesn’t even vaguely consider the ramifications of what he just did.

The Lion is a patronising egotistical bastard with poorly hidden doubts as to the superiority he trumpets; he’s also a genius strategist and a superlative warrior even for a Primarch. It’s safe to say he’s a fascinating character and while I don’t think this is a bad portrayal of him, it’s a shame it took until ‘The Unremembered Empire’ for his character to reach three dimensions. (And even there, he was mostly shown from the outside – we weren’t given much insight into his thoughts.) Perhaps it would be best for us to NEVER be inside the Lion’s head. It’s still hard to read where his character is going in the Heresy-era – though his conversation with the Lord of Change during this story seems to offer some hints.

Sadly, the ‘little brothers’ take some hits as well. Corswain goes from one of the best Loyalist characters I’ve ever read (honourable, bleak-humoured but dour, someone whose heroism seems genuinely warranted rather than lazy SUPERCOOLGUY plot armour) to a generic, habitually-bowing Space Captain Man. The others, primarily created for this story, aren’t any better. And Nemiel – well, Nemiel was always kind of shite, so I can’t say this book is worse for him, but fuck, I’d hoped they would somehow improve on him before shuffling him off. In terms of making the Dark Angels an interesting Legion dramatically distinct from their 40k-era incarnation… nope. The only slightly interesting element in the dialogue here is the Dark Angels’ overuse of “my liege” in deference to the Lion. In fact, in one three-page scene, “my liege” is used no less than eight times. A clever lampoon of the Dark Angel’s pomposity and lack of imagination, or lazy writing? You decide. Am I just an asshole for wanting Dark Angels to always talk like gloomy monastic knights, possibly ones from France or Germany? It’s fluff-appropriate, but it’s also difficult to pull off without them sounding stilted and awkward.

The Night Lords do appear here, briefly. For a while I thought this was the worst Night Lords portrayal in the whole series, but that’s unfair. It’s too short to be called bad. It is, however, a bit of a plot failure. They track the Dark Angels through the warp in a way which should be impossible (barring warp trickery) before destroying their own ship in an apparent suicide attack which allows daemons to manifest on the Invincible Reason. Since it’s been established that the Eighth had a general disdain for magic and daemons during the Heresy, this seems unusual (and also – maybe this is the Legion least likely to mount a suicide attack?) but the Night Lords also had mad enough ‘fringe elements’ to make it far from impossible. What I resent is the complete lack of an attempt to even halfway explain it. Just a few sentences on how this Captain was a radical, crazy former psyker who went mad following Isstvan, or something like that, would be enough to shut me up on that regard. But no, just more navel-gazing from the Lion.

This plot point leads into a significant action in First Legion history, the first time they face daemons (well, I guess some of those monsters on Caliban were pretty suspicious) and a wonderful opportunity to explore the Legion’s their grip on the secular Imperial Truth – but that’s an opportunity Gav seems to ignore. In fact, the daemon fights in ‘The Lion’ have the same problems the majority of daemon fights have for me in the Heresy fiction:

1) No dialogue or possibility of the two sides relating in any way other than a full-on brawl. It’s tough to get too invested in a conflict where one side will remain voiceless and receive no viewpoint narration and the other side has no emotional response beyond shocked revulsion (as opposed to the myriad other reactions traitor v loyalist battles can play with).

2) There are only so many times I can read the same old rundown of the various daemon types and then get descriptions of their basic attack methods. Yep, those are Nurgle daemons doing Nurgle shit; yep, there’s some Daemonettes being all seductive; and look, a Lord of Change for the boss battle. Now, obviously GW’s product line restricts what the writers can do – but think about the variations and fresh character the writers can give to that old Tactical or Assault squad of Space Marines. Couldn’t daemons be similarly varied in their approach? Even the language used feels like each writer is cribbing from the same hopelessly understocked pool of adjectives; from my recall, only ‘Damnation of Pythos’, ‘First Heretic’ and, weirdly, ‘Battle for the Abyss’ have been remotely creative in their physical descriptions of daemons.

3) I feel like I’ve read ten or eleven “This is the first time we’ve fought daemons!” scenes and absolutely no “We’ve fought daemons before, so let’s use that knowledge” scenes. It’s getting real fucking old. I try to suspend my disbelief a lot with Heresy books, but with daemon fights, each time I read a “NEVER SEEN THIS SHIT BEFORE” statement, I think Guess what? I’ve seen this shit too many times.

Of course, the most memorable thing to come out of this sequence is the summary execution of Nemiel. After a forceful but brief argument about the Lion’s proposed breakage of the Nikean Edicts, El’Johnson karate-chops the Redemptor’s head off. Remember what I said in my last review about Graham’s brutal murder of high-ranked characters making the point that the Heresy was perilous and plot armour was in short supply? Well, this ain’t that. I don’t know what it is. For a while I thought this ‘interrupt’ of the Nemiel/Zadkiel arc was really clever and subversive – but now, in a wider context, it just looks horribly confused. Perhaps it was a way for Gav to distance himself from ‘Descent of Angels’ and ‘Fallen Angels’, which were not necessarily the best received books in the early Heresy. But by truncating this character’s storyline so dramatically, and then apparently leaving the drama to go stale (none of the Dark Angels work since this has referenced Nemiel’s execution), it feels like a flagrant waste of a character with a little bit of potential. As it stands, it looks like Nemiel’s murder is just going to give Zadkiel some motivation to rebel against the Imperium – but he’d kinda already done that by the time 'The Lion' was published, sooooooo... hm.

One thing I do really like about ‘The Lion’ is Calas Typhon popping up, and I think it’s the first time he’s been shown since ‘Flight of the Eisenstein’. While the character is a long way off being the best-developed equerry in the series, Gav’s portrayal of Typhon at this point of the Heresy made sense – he’s not full-on corrupted yet, but he’s openly vowing to ‘the Father’. I suppose that as he’s a former Librarian, it makes sense that he’d be gifted with some knowledge of the dark powers behind this war. The physical corruption and the gifts of Nurgle are beginning, as well – all in all, ‘The Lion’ is a nice development for Typhon following the initial impressions we got in ‘Flight of the Eisenstein’. Around the same time that Typhon shows up, we get some Iron Hand characters, but they’re of minimal interest, being fairly bland Loyalists rather than the psychotic sadomasochists the 10^th seem to always be portrayed as these days. One kind of cool thing about these guys: Midoa, the Iron Hand warrior, has extensive facial augmetics which make him speak in a “sing-song cadence”. I don’t know if Gav intended for me to hear all Midoa’s dialogue in the autotuned voice of T-Pain, but that’s what I did.

Gav is a little like Nick Kyme, in that he’s written stuff for the Heresy which I really like, and stuff I very nearly despise – and it’s difficult for me to articulate what the difference is between the two types of work. In both, you’ll find overblown battle scenes, fairly shallow characters, a healthy respect and knowledge for 40K’s ‘lore’, a willingness to disregard or revise that lore when it best serves the story, and the distinctive White Dwarf writing style. ‘The Lion’ is not a great novella, and it doesn’t leave me massively optimistic for Gav’s HH Dark Angels novel supposedly coming this year, ‘Angels of Caliban’. But it’s not terrible either. It’s exactly the standard I expect from the Black Library, and that’s a little depressing, but it’s not enough to make me give up forever. Yep, you guessed it: 6/10.

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

"Child Of Night" by John French / "Daemonology" by Chris Wraight

Well, my ‘Mechanicum’ review has stalled a bit. I’ve been distracted by other stuff the last couple months, most recently the World Of Fire And Ice ‘history’ book from George RR Martin but also Borderlands 2 – great video game, horrible writing – and listening to YG’s mixtape Just Re’d Up 2 an unhealthy number of times. THAT’S ON THE SET, HOMIE

Enough about NON BLACK LIBRARY LIFE! I know what people come to this blog for, when they come at all…

So as you might have gathered from a few comments in previous reviews, when I found out ‘Legacies Of Betrayal’ was no novella collection but an apparently randomly selected grab-bag of previously available material, with only two stories included that weren’t already out there in some form (‘Spirit Of The Conqueror’ by ADB and ‘Serpent’ by John French) I was… bitter. My resentment grew a little when I saw that ‘Spirit Of The Conqueror’ was included in ‘Death And Defiance’ as a teaser for ‘Legacies’, and it turned out to only be a few pages long. I’d like to believe that was just an extract from ‘Spirit’, not the full text, but… I’m not optimistic.

Yet my resentment has ebbed a bit in the last couple weeks. It’s been announced that the fourth Forge World Horus Heresy book, ‘Conquest’, dealing with the Sons Of Horus and Death Guard’s actions post-Isstvan V, has a ‘Winter 2014’ release date. We’ve also been told that Andy Smilie’s Flesh Tearers book, ‘Sons Of Wrath’, will deal with events surrounding the Chapter’s founding, meaning it’ll be immediately post-Heresy, a time period I’m extremely interested in. That’ll be out December as well (earlier, if you want the First Edition). Hell, the great audio drama ‘Parting Of The Ways’ released in October dealt memorably with the post-Heresy period for the Space Wolves, and their slow decline before and after Russ’ disappearance. In terms of the Heresy series proper, ‘Master Of The First’ was a (surprisingly) gripping Gav Thorpe audio drama about the Fallen Angels on Caliban, and Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s long-awaited continuation of the Sevatar story, ‘The Long Night’, will hopefully follow this month, also in audio form. The first Garro audio drama in well over a year, ‘Shield Of Lies’, is set to drop in early December. And no doubt the Black Library Weekender will see a bit more of 2015’s release schedule information announced, including confirmation of the 32^nd book in the HH series, and hopefully cover art too. All in all, Quarter 4 of 2014 is not looking as much a fallow field for HH enthusiasts as I worried it could be.

Anyway, I’m not here to talk about that. I’ve already reviewed ‘Death And Defiance’, and I’ll hopefully review ‘Master Of The First’ soon. This is about two ‘Digital Monday’ shorts Black Library released this week and last week, providing further reassurance that they still give a fuck about the HH series, and that they in fact have some of their best guys on it.

AWW MAN WE GOT DIFFERENT COLOURS AND ALSO SKULLS

“Child Of Night” by John French: Fel Zharost, First Librarian of the Night Lords, is a character we’ve not met before as far as I recall. And, well, there’s a reason for that: as this story starts, he’s been an outcast from his Legion for many years, and is hiding in the ‘sinks’ on Terra – the dark underground cities/prisons which the Night Lords originally took their recruits from, and where Fel Zharost’s life began. The Terran days of the Eighth were an element John French expanded on brilliantly with Alan Bligh in the Forge World book ‘Massacre’, and he flawlessly transposes that ‘fluff’ to a narrative setting here.

Child Of Night’ flashes back to key moments of his lengthy service, beginning with the first time he encounters Astartes and his psychic gift manifests – a memorable and excellent scene, which establishes the ambiguous nature of Zharost’s relationship with his Legion. We also touch on the period where the Eighth were the ‘watchdogs’ of Unity, bringing the Emperor’s retribution down on untrustworthy allies and traitors using torture, psychological warfare and terror tactics. Zharost fulfils these duties with aplomb, but no particular relish. We see Zharost’s disgust and disillusionment with the changing culture of the Eighth writ large in a tense confrontation between himself and Sevatar over the Edict of Nikea, a scene which shows both men letting their masks slip more than they would like. Last but not least, we see Zharost’s present: cornered by an Astartes from an unknown Legion in the prison sinks of his birth, the Librarian feels that the Emperor’s justice has come to him at last for his neglect of his duties. But COULD THINGS BE QUITE AS THEY APPEAR? Erm, well, no.

You know what makes a short story damn near classic? A compelling lead character, and Fel sure fits that bill. A Terran, and a psyker, we get the feeling he considered himself something of an unwelcome presence among the Nostramans, who have been known to distrust witches. (Anti-Terran feeling doesn’t seem to have been prominent in the Eighth, but not all of a Night Lord’s paranoia needs to be warranted.) He also seems to have been less gleeful than many of his Terran kin about the Legion’s shift into manic sadism. Event after this quite short story, I’m very eager to see where Zharost’s story goes – if the heavily-implied truth is that he’s going to be a new Knight Errant, I think he might be an excellent fit with Garro, Loken and co; as an older, Terran Legionary, he could be a replacement for Iacton Qruze (though of a darker hue). Due to his psychic gifts, Zharost also seems like a possible candidate for a founding Grey Knights Grandmaster as well – which would certainly upset the fan theory that Sevatar was one of the first heroes of the 666^th Chapter.

The writing is excellent throughtout; Frenchie really seems like one of the most reliable authors in BL right now – I’m really looking forward to whatever his next project is, and I hope he gets a crack at another Knights Errant story in the near future. With this, and ‘A Safe And Shadowed Place’, a cynical man might think BL are auditioning authors to take up ADB’s crown as King Of The Night Lords, considering that Aaron has implied he wants a break from HH (perhaps a long one) once ‘Master Of Mankind’ and hopefully ‘Nightfall’ are done. I’m not complaining; Aaron’s left a strong foundation for his colleagues to build on, and Guy Haley and John French have shown they are more than capable of working within the parameters of what’s come before. If what we get is this good – well, I say let the Dark King take his break.

I give this 9/10.

“Daemonology” by Chris Wraight: Oh shit, a MORTARION story! You know I was on it like a bonnet. This is a dual narrative, knocking back and forth between the Death Guard’s assault on the Library World called Terathalion, soon after the events of ‘Scars’, and a confrontation between Mortarion and the Sigillite during the Great Crusade, after he’s been recovered from Barbarus but before he takes command of the then-Dusk Raiders. As I’ve said, I was… dissatisfied by the change in Mortarion’s attitudes between ‘Scars’ and ‘Vengeful Spirit’ regarding sorcery… but I also understood there was room for more fiction between those books to tell us how it got this way. And… well, I was hoping for a whole book, at least a novella, but this story could be it. But guess what? That’s all I need, because ‘Daemonology’ is a perfect bridge between the hardline witch-hunter of ‘Scars’ and the cautious sorcerer of ‘Vengeful Spirit’. Sacking Terathalion to capture one daemonhost human (but also because he loves to destroy worlds, and the fact that this one was beloved of Magnus doesn’t hurt), Mortarion hopes the neverborn will be intimidated enough by his threats of physical pain that they’ll help him understand the horrors of the Warp. Not because he wants to use the Warp, of course; because he wants to be better armoured against its dangers. Is this dude naïve or what? The daemonhost is a great character and its own arrogance and smugness is nicely set against Mortarion’s aggressive ego.

A WALKIN STUDY INN A DAEMONOLOGY HAAAAAYYY

The only thing I’d complain about here is that there was no time to flesh out the Death Guard Legion’s character – great scene of their method of planetstrike, but no captains or line soldiers are given any lines to say, and there’s no indication of how the Death Guard feel about Mortarion’s defeat at Jaghathai’s hands, or his increasingly unstable behaviour. The focus is absolutely on the Death Lord. It's totally understandable, since this is a short story, and I’m really happy with the way he was portrayed, but I think his Legion desperately needs some non-Typhon characters. A shitload of them are going to have to die before or during the Siege, after all.

As for the flashback stem of the ebook, Wraight shows once again that he is the definitive writer for Malcador in the whole HH stable. These flashback scenes are much less action-packed than the ‘modern’ ones, but they contain some welcome fleshing-out of the Death Lord’s character. It shows nicely that Mortarion’s mental state was worrying to the Sigillite, especially considering his open hostility toward many aspects of the Imperium. The way he was placated by the prospect of one day having his day in the sun at Nikea is a great touch.

Mortarion is a wounded monster throughout the whole story, either recovering from his ordeal on Barbarus or his defeat on Prospero – the story catches him at two of his lowest ebbs. Sadly, we know it can only get worse for Morty. But that’s what makes him one of my favourite characters – his tragic fall, and his unbelievable arrogance; he’s utterly convinced he knows better than his father or any of his brothers. This slow and agonising journey into damnation is making up for the hash I think the BL authors made of Fulgrim and Horus’ initial descents. I am daring to hope that since his recent books and stories (both HH and not) have often featured the Death Guard heavily, Chris Wraight may be called to write the next HH Death Guard book which, well, hopefully exists in some form. As much as I enjoy James Swallow, I think Wraight would be the better fit. Mortarion barely featured in ‘Flight Of The Eisenstein’, after all, and Swallow didn’t leave much of a stamp on the 14^th Legion – that book was more about Garro’s journey than his past.

Enough speculation! I’m very happy to give this story 9/10 as well.

One last complaint: I use the Google Chrome free extension Magicscroll to read my Black Library ebooks and goddamn, they look like SHIT. I don’t know if this is a problem with the reader, or with Black Library’s formatting; neither would massively surprise me. Font sizes fluctuate wildly from page to page, the document clearly can barely handle bold and italic fonts being used, let alone both at the same time, and sometimes entire paragraphs – for no reason – are blue hyperlinks to nowhere. It almost – ALMOST – makes me want to buy a Kindle or something in hopes that the text might look a bit better. It’s not going to stop me reading these ebooks, of course, but it is one more reason why I personally favour printed over e-format. Maybe I should stop complaining and find a better ebook reader.

Anyway, apart from that little bit of whining, I’m extremely pleased at the high quality of these short stories. Here’s hoping Digital Monday is HH-focused at least a few times over the rest of this year.

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

"Book Two: Massacre" (Forge World publication)

To my surprise, I enjoyed the first Forge World Horus Heresy book, ‘Betrayal’, very much – arguably, more than I’ve enjoyed a few of the Black Library Horus Heresy novels. At the time, the only other book available in the series was ‘Massacre’, and I bought it as soon as I finished ‘Betrayal’. 

GET A LOAD OF THIS SHIT! Part II

As before, the first half is ‘fluff’ (lore) and the second half is ‘crunch’ (rules). I’ll be focusing on the first half, since I don’t care too much about tabletop gaming anymore (and for all the crazy money I’ve sunk into my HH fandom, I will NOT begin a Horus Heresy-era army – that is where I draw the line). Like with ‘Betrayal’, the ‘fluff’ part of this book is presented as a historical textbook. There are vague parts where it’s admitted that nobody really knows what happened, and also some stuff that directly contradicts Horus Heresy novels… but that’s because it’s a chronicle apparently collated by one unnamed scribe on Terra (well, it’s attributed to an ‘A.K.’, so I guess today was a good day… groan), apparently writing long after the Heresy, based on first-hand or second-hand accounts from the survivors of these events. I really, really appreciate the length that Alan Bligh and co. have gone to in order to make these books immersive and faithful to the tone of the novel series, as well as informative and ‘neutral’.

Funnily enough, this focuses on the Dropsite Massacre of Isstvan V. The first few pages are kind of a ‘previously in the Horus Heresy…’ recap. This was a little worthless in my eyes, because who’s gonna buy just ONE of these series? It’s safe to assume people who bought this have heard all they need to hear about the events on Isstvan III. A page for a recap would be fine, but this goes back to pre-Unity! Ahh well, I didn’t mind reading it again. Having said that though there is a nice bonus here: a timeline which definitively presents events of the tail end of the Great Crusade and the beginning of the Heresy in chronological order. (Did you know that Alpharius only assumed command of the Alpha Legion three years before Kurze destroyed Nostramo? I didn’t!)

Once this part of the background is done, there’s an exhaustive account of the Isstvan V engagement, beginning with the first Loyalist ship of the Retribution Force to enter the system (a Raven Guard vessel, incidentally) and ending with Ferrus Manus’ death and the cease of the ‘formal’ military engagement. If you think ‘Fulgrim’ and ‘The First Heretic’ told you all you need to know about this engagement, you can probably skip this section of the book. But if, like me, you feel those books’ accounts (while great) only scratched the surface of one of the most significant and brutal fights in Imperial history, you’ll enjoy reading this much more dry, ‘factual’ account. Just because it takes a different approach to narrative, doesn’t mean ‘Massacre’ isn’t just as good at building tension and describing the horror of Isstvan V.

TEXT FOR DAYS SON, TEXT AND TEXT AND TEXT

This account takes in the key moments of this action, through the initial forays into the system showing that the Traitor naval presence seems to have unaccountably disappeared, to discussing the pervading confusion and anger at the command level in the Loyalist forces trying to make sense of what was happening (Horus must be mad, or under the thrall of some horrible xenos parasite; Horus the prideful bastard is trying to carve out his own Empire), to the Loyalists’ fateful decision to not wait for the rest of their force and make planetfall immediately, through to the eventual horror of the Iron Hands as they encounter the ‘changed’ Emperor’s Children up close for the first time, taking in the way the Sons Of Horus literally treated the Army units in their command as cattle and drove them against the First Wave with long barbed whips, and more obscure stuff like the suicidal ‘grudgematch’ between the Legio Arturus and Legio Mortis Titans. Whew, what a long-ass sentence. I must have been reading a Forge World book.

Even beyond this there are some gorgeous illustrations, including a two-page system map of Isstvan, as well as extra bits that nicely play with the ‘historical textbook’ format: testimony from a Raven Guard on his experiences in landing in the First Wave and a transcript of the interrogation of a captured Word Bearer. You really get a feeling here of how catastrophically the Death Guard, Emperor’s Children, World Eaters and Sons Of Horus are mauled in the first part of the battle, something I feel hasn’t come across in the HH novels. The first wave may have died in droves but they gave back as good as they got. And then, of course, the horror of the Dropsite Massacre itself. I could read another ten novels set in/around this time; it feels like there are thousands more stories to be told. The final ‘butcher’s bill’ – over 200,000 Space Marines dead, including both Traitor and Loyalist. Pour some out.

SPACE MOTHERFUCKER

Before we get to the ‘meat’ of new Legion backgrounds, there’s a small section on each of the First Four Traitor Legions – an overview of their actions in the Dropsite Massacre, an account of a significant figure in their ranks and some nice background/illustration of some vehicles. I didn’t really find the Emperor’s Children or World Eaters sections too noteworthy, but I really liked the other two; for example, we learn that following the drastic weakening of their armoured divisions in the Isstvan III battle, the Death Guard were forced to deploy reserve armour for Isstvan V’s engagement. These reserve forces also took a severe beating, and as a result, the Legion’s overall ability to deploy armour during the Heresy was dramatically reduced. And what was the role of the former Luna Wolves in the battle? Horus was cautious with his own Legion, probably because of the huge casualties they took on Isstvan III – he knew he needed to preserve his Legion’s strength as much as possible for the upcoming long war. Therefore the 16^th mostly deployed on the defensive until the second wave revealed their allegiance and the outcome of the battle was clear, at which point Horus lead from the front and joined in the massacre.

With that out of the way, we move on to the four Legions covered here. Apologies, but for a lot of people (especially those who read the White Dwarf Index Astartes articles back in the day) you’ll already know a lot of this… but most of it was new to me.

The Iron Hands: I always held the Iron Hands as my least favourite Legion. They seemed to have the arrogance and perfectionism of the Emperor’s Children and the brutality and contempt for human life of the World Eaters, but while those Legions were damned for their weaknesses and suffered severely for them, the Hands always seemed to have their failings treated as virtues by GW and the fandom in general; I found Iron Hands evangelists irritating on a level that Ultramarines fans can only dream of reaching. I think perhaps not liking Ferrus Manus as a character in ‘Fulgrim’ or ‘Feat Of Iron’, or in fact most Iron Hands characters as they’ve been portrayed in HH fiction, may also have been a factor. (Shout out to John French’s ‘Riven’, though, that’s a really good one.)

In their early years of Terran campaigning, the Iron Hands recruited from all over the world, but most significantly from Old Albia, which was also a heavy recruiting ground for the Death Guard, and I am guessing is meant to be located in the region of the modern-day Britain (Albia, Albion… maybe?). They quickly gained a reputation for relentless, well-coordinated ground war with heavy armoured support. The reunification with their Primarch came quickly, but it was not a smooth one: the proud and intractable nature of both Manus and his new Legion meant that clashes were inevitable, but most of the ‘Iron Tenth’ quickly became fanatically loyal. As well as a firmness of ethos, another important aspect Manus brought with him to reshape the Legion was the resource of Medusa’s ancient and sophisticated technology. The Iron Hands culture became tightly interwoven with that of the Mechanicum, and the tech-literate but otherwise quite savage tribal culture of Medusa informed all aspects of what the Legion became – especially their unique makeup of nearly autonomous ‘Clans’ of Astartes, all of which competed for resources and the favour of their Primarch.

These hands be straight iron, yo

Probably my favourite part of this background was the ‘what if?’ questions raised by it. Manus was highly intolerant of any perceived failure and his punishments were harsh and absolute. Sounds bit like Perturabo, doesn’t it? His Legion gained a reputation for tactlessness and, sometimes, hostility towards its Imperial Army allies or even other Legions. To Manus’ closeness to Horus and Fulgrim, his apparent callousness and implied willingness to harshly punish or even kill his own sons, add the fact that there was at one time a growing Lodge presence in the Iron Hands, and consider how differently things could have gone. Maybe if the Lodges had been associated more strongly with Horus than Lorgar (who Manus apparently had little regard for; see ‘First Heretic’) or if Fulgrim’s overture hadn’t been so badly done, or the Isstvan betrayal had been delayed by a few years… maybe Ferrus would have come down on a different side.

This part of the book was basically all I needed to make a complete U-turn on my dislike for the Iron Hands. They are actually one of the most interesting Legions if approached in the right way. In fact there is material here for a good few very rewarding Horus Heresy short stories (or a pretty hefty novel): a pre-Heresy account of the bitter competition of Clan lords trying to excel, or an in-depth retelling of the council that took place on Medusa following Ferrus Manus’ death in an attempt to decide the Legion’s course of action. And after the great ‘Riven’ I’d love John French to write a book about the dark paths that the most unstable X Legion soldiers take following the death of their father. After all, there were apparently a significant amount of Iron Hands who never even mustered for Isstvan, maybe as many as 30,000 – and that doesn’t even take into account the broken survivors who managed to get off-world. In the past I’ve felt the last couple years of Horus Heresy books had featured the Iron Hands too prominently, but now I think they’re still a rich seam to mine for the HH series; I’m glad that this (and ‘The Damnation Of Pythos’) have opened my eyes to that.

(And I’ve got Chris Wraight’s ‘Wrath Of Iron’ waiting on my bookshelf – looking forward to diving into that one.)

The Night Lords: Following AD-B’s ‘Prince Of Crows’, and the flashback sequences in his Night Lords trilogy, I felt like I had more of a grasp on the Heresy-era Night Lords culture than almost any other Legion: their gallows humour, their casual (almost… entitled) attitude to cruelty and their strange pride in their awful shithole of a homeworld. Plus, I wasn’t too keen on re-reading Night Haunter’s origin story AGAIN. But I was being unfair – there is much more to the Night Lords that Aaron didn’t touch on.

The VIII Legion was born in the giant prison-sinks beneath Terra; subterranean cities of criminals which never saw natural light and with a fairly unpleasant way of life. Rather than drawing from the criminals, the Emperor instead took recruits from the children born in these prison cities; inmates who’d committed no crimes, children who’d grown up in a sunless world and a crime-filled environment where life was cheap. Probably the Terran and Nostraman Night Lords had the easiest ‘culture merge’ ever.

As we know, the Night Lords were something of a ‘terror weapon’; when an enemy (or ally) committed a crime that went beyond simple defiance, when the Emperor wanted to send a clear message of “that shit won’t be tolerated!”, he sent the VIII. This section talks about the Night Lords’ “tendency to moral absolutism”, something I think has been captured particularly well by Aaron. The Night Lords’ attitude to ‘guilt’ reminds me of Robot Santa from Futurama. “Thugs beating up a shopkeeper for not paying protection money… naughty! Shopkeeper not paying his protection money… equally naughty!” This early section about Legion ethos might be the best-written part of the book. Here’s my favourite quote: “Perhaps memory is too kind, perhaps we wish to believe that there is a nobility in such monsters, where in fact there is only horror. Perhaps we wish there to be a purpose behind atrocity, otherwise how could such creatures be suffered to live?”

I feel like I’ve read more than enough about Kurze’s rise to power, but I really appreciated the description of Nostraman society as it stood when the Primarch arrived on the world. I also really appreciate the discussion of how deeply Nostraman culture came to influence the Legion’s structure; it was probably a bad idea that control of these thousands of sadistic super-soldiers was given to bored foppish nobles and low-level Mafia ‘enforcers’ who’d watched Scarface too many times. (Well, basically grown up in ‘Scarface’ plus ‘The Sopranos’ times ‘Mad Max’, but, you catch my drift). The short but sweet characterisations of the Kyroptera (like Kurze’s Mournival, or maybe his consiglieres) and the Atrementar of the First Company (the Night Lords’ secret police and enforcers… but with Terminator armour) really added to the Legion flavour.

Unlike with the X Legion, I really liked the Night Lord character/vehicle gallery. Especially the one for Uros Kastax, just check this shit out: “Known to have participated… in the Yoggoth Genocides, the Fall Of The Lords Of Ephrath and… the Succoth Perfidy.” How much HP Lovecraft can you take? Plus, it’s heavily implied that this guy’s squadmates used the Dropsite Massacre as an opportunity to shoot Kastax in the back. That’s the Night Lords way, summed up in one character. (Also nicely embodied by Talon-Master Vibius, a sergeant who took advantage of the chaos of Isstvan V to kill those standing in the way of him assuming control of his entire company.)

Like I said before, I didn’t think there was any juice left to wring out of the Night Lords blood orange, but Forge World managed it. Damn.

Salamanders: For my first few years of fandom, my attitude to Vulkan’s sons was “who the fuck are the Salamanders?” Then during my last years of being a young, enthusiastic 40K fan, the Third War For Armageddon happened, where Games Workshop heavily pushed the Salamanders as an alternative to Blood Angels and Ultramarines. I was a big fan… initially. Since I started reading Horus Heresy stuff, the XVIII seemed a bit… dull. Dull as dishwater, in fact. Maybe it didn’t help that the writer who apparently has their writing privileges locked down is one I don’t really find enjoyable to read. I appreciated their altruistic outlook, and the noble attitude they had towards their role in the Imperium, but that was it. Once again, it fell to Forge World to show me the error of my ways.

The origin of all the Legions were shrouded in secrecy, but apparently that of the Salamanders was even more so; they were closely linked to the Space Wolves and the Alpha Legion in their early recruitment stages and initial deployments. One can assume that the Emperor had very specific skillset or task in mind for these three. Or maybe there was another reason. The XX Legion is involved, so we will probably never know.

But wait, the friendly and noble Salamanders aren’t anything like the savage, almost-mutant Space Wolves or the sneaky, multi-skilled Alpha Legion, right? Actually, before Vulkan was reunited with his Legion, there was a pretty heavy darkness to these guys. Even in 40K, Salamanders are known for their stubbornness and almost suicidal willingness to take on impossible odds to protect the Imperium. Back in the Great Crusade, though, this was less ‘suicidal bravery’ and more just ‘suicidal’. They were willing to spend their lives in thousands to complete their mission, and from this section, it looks like could have ended up with the fighting style of the Iron Warriors or even World Eaters if their Primarch hadn’t been a stabilising influence. Speaking of which, between the Emperor discovering Vulkan and Vulkan taking command of his Legion, there was apparently a gap of several years where Vulkan fought at the Emperor’s side. I’d love to see some more information about that, perhaps in an HH novel flashback. I really like the section on how Vulkan’s introduction of the Promethean Cult, in particular, grounded his Legion and gave them purpose and direction for their dangerous bravery, and also stopped them from falling prey to the Lodges.

Pretty amazing...

I want to mention that the ‘gallery’ section for the Salamanders is particularly nice; it’s in the nature of the Legion to create ornate, beautiful armour and Forge World really outdid themselves portraying that. And their exemplary battle is… fucking hell. If you like the Salamanders, you should read about that battle. If you don’t like the Salamanders, you should also read about that battle. Overall, I’m not as completely reversed in my position on the Salamanders as I am with the Iron Hands… but I do find them way more interesting after reading this. Almost enough to buy those Nick Kyme 40K Salamanders books. Almost.

The Word Bearers: With ‘The First Heretic’, ‘Betrayer’, ‘Aurelian’ and most recently ‘The Purge’ dealing extensively with the culture of the Word Bearers and their long road to Heresy, I went into this section with a fairly cynical attitude. After all, how much more could I learn about this Legion? Not to sound like a broken record, but more than I expected, as it turned out.

Argel Tal: "Screw you chumps and chumpettes, I'm catching the next pimpmobile out of here."

In the first days of the XVII Legion, they recruited solely from the sons of the Emperor’s defeated enemies, and were taught about the value of the Emperor’s mercy, the importance of redemption, and that one should go to any lengths to bring the Imperial Truth to the unenlightened. If the ‘Catholic Space Nazis’ meme about the Imperium holds true, the Word Bearers were the Catholic-est. But even the Church changes its doctrine when needs must. When Lorgar returned to his Legion, he began to convert the more iconoclastic Word Bearers to his belief that the Emperor was a God. Once these influential Legionaries fell, the path of the Legion was assured… until Monarchia, that is. While we know the background of this Legion well, Bligh writes elegantly about this period and gives us a fresh perspective rather than just rehashing Aaron.

I liked the way the role of the Chaplains in the Legion was fleshed out, and I enjoyed the dark hints that the Word Bearer Apothecaries were harvesting the gene-seed of any and all Legions at the Dropsite Massacre.

Those Word Bearer marine portraits are pretty beautiful (good luck painting the intricate extracts from the Book Of Lorgar onto your squads of Terminators, nerd). Hell, I don’t really have much to say because through my reviews, I feel like I’ve talked about the Word Bearers so much already… but this section of the book lives up to the standard set by the coverage of the previous three Legion.

HELL YEAH WE GOT TANKS

Then there’s a little bit of info on the Titan Legion, the Legio Atarus AKA the Firebrands, who held a resentment for the authority of Mars’ Fabricator-Genereal and a grudge against Horus for his poor use of them in one of his campaigns, and by these circumstances escaped becoming traitors. (That sells them a bit short, I guess, but I don’t really care for Titan Legions anyway.) Then we’re on to the rules, which I won’t spend much time on. First there’s a framework for a Dropsite Massacre campaign, which looks horrendously complicated. Like I said I didn’t care much about the rules as I knew I would probably never use them, but they’re worth a read anyway as there’s still some nice background information there like, especially in the unit descriptions. For example, it’s in the Rules section we learn that only the Sons Of Horus were able to field the Alpha Legion-designed ‘Banestrike’ ammunition (designed to pierce power armour) in any significant numbers. The rest went to Alpharius’ lot. We also get updates for the ‘Betrayal’ Legions, giving them new special rules, special characters, rites of war and units. The Red Butchers, a brilliantly dark World Eater unit of utterly insane warriors in Terminator armour that can be immobilised remotely by their comrades once battle is done – it’s the only way to get them to stop killing. The most significant in ‘fluff’ terms are the Kakophoni, the proto-Noise Marines of Marius Vairosean who the III Legion first fielded on Isstvan V... but by the time I got to the army lists for the four ‘Massacre’ Legions, I just couldn’t get very excited about any of it. I know some dudes buy these specifically to geek down over the Primarch stat-lines and resolve their long-running arguments over whether Ferrus Manus could have beaten Horus in single combat, but I find those people as baffling as, well, as baffling as most people find my own reasons for buying this.

You can also find rules for the VIII Legion Terror Squad, a unit headed up by a Big Punisher who's known to pack a Mac in the back of the Ac.

So how does ‘Massacre’ stack up to its predecessor? I honestly think it’s better in every way, and keep in mind that ‘Betrayal’ featured three of my favourite Legions – the Sons Of Horus, Emperor’s Children and Death Guard (not that I’m not fond of the World Eaters as well). My only real complaint from ‘Betrayal’ has been dealt with – no longer are there pages two-thirds dominated by images of Forge World vehicles and units with a faded sepia filter. There are still some of them in effect, but they’re much smaller and more judiciously deployed. (Well, the ‘giant space filler’ stuff does still happen a bit, but mainly in the rule section, where you’re going to get a fair amount of ‘dead space’ anyway due to the nature of stat/rule sheets.) Furthermore, the ‘staged’ images with Forge World models are overall of a much higher quality and tend to be in vivid colour rather than all bleached out. Just look at some of those Dropsite shots. On top of that, the introduction of black and white ‘sketches’ of Astartes units (generally special characters) in the Rule section is a brilliant idea; it’s suited perfectly to the rather dour monastic tone of the book. Jesus, look what an evil bastard Sevatar looks; with that sneer, I half-expect the picture to tell me to go get my fucking shinebox. The quality of these sketches got even higher in ‘Extinction’ – here there are a few questionable choices, but overall they’re pretty great. The illustrations of Legionaries have also been changed in format slightly. Unlike in Book 1 where you would get four pictures of Astartes per page and a few sentences about each, they’ve decided instead to have one, much larger, picture of a Legionary and his gear, and several paragraphs of background. The increased depth (and larger image size) are a great idea and while it doesn’t feel like you quite get the ridiculous scope that ‘Betrayal’ gave you (with, say, three Legionaries per Legion rather than sixteen), it’s overall a much better approach. While they look amazing some of these didn’t really live up to their potential for me. I feel like Bligh and co. have a gift for writing ‘big picture’ lore that doesn’t necessarily translate to inventing compelling characters (I really didn’t get anything from the Iron Hands heroes/vehicles section, for example).

Calas Typhon. He looks like a former Premier League footballer... Which one? ANY ONE.

And of course, we have the age-old Forge World/Black Library/Games Workshop question: does this seem to have been proof-read? In this case, yes. There are a few instances of typos, (“death-throws” rather than “death-throes”, “the remaining populous” rather than “remaining populace”) but less than I seem to recall in book 1.

‘Massacre’ is about as close to perfect as any book in this format is going to get. The only thing stopping it from being a perfect 10 is that, well, about half the book is much less interesting to me than the other half. I know it’s a little unfair to penalise it for that but I can’t help but wish there were 100 or so more pages of lore. I still feel it’s prohibitively expensive – publish it in paperback for £30, £70 is obscene – but I won’t factor that in to my score this time. And so I give this 9/10.

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

"The Unremembered Empire" by Dan Abnett

'The Unremembered Empire' is, on balance, probably the least impressive book Dan Abnett has contributed to the Horus Heresy series. It's arguably also an incredibly necessary one.

OMG SPOILERS.

Now, 'least impressive' seems like stark terms to describe a book by one of my favourite authors, but like my opinion of his short story 'Blood Games', just because I feel it's nowhere near as good as the others, doesn't make it bad, by any definition. Dan's the victim of his previous track record here. 'Horus Rising' started the ball rolling and we've probably all got very fond memories of it. 'Legion' is seen by many as the pinnacle of the entire series and I definitely agree that it's a masterpiece. 'Prospero Burns' is probably my favourite work of Space Marine fiction ever, in HH or outside of it. 'Know No Fear' is incredible and I doubt we'll see any subsequent book in the series able to sustain its intensity; even the Siege of Terra will probably be spread out across several books. In comparison, 'The Unremembered Empire' just doesn't stack up. Perhaps my expectations were too high but Dan was four-for-four until now, which might be why I pre-ordered this in hardback and finished reading it less than 24 hours after I ripped the cardboard packaging open.

Let me explain why I'm using the word 'necessary'. While many HH Abnett books (and also quite a few HH books from other authors) are better and more enjoyable than 'Unremembered Empire', they don't always give us this much narrative thrust. From 'Legion' and 'Prospero Rising' we got a shitload of incredibly interesting background, but in terms of plot points that were relevant to the larger series, only a few (OK, it was a BIG ONE for 'Legion'...). I know I've said in the past that people who want to shove the narrative forwards, and have no patience for 'world-building' interludes, are what is killing the Horus Heresy series. But sometimes it is a good thing for a book to be overcrowded with significant events - it won't necessarily be too great to read, but subsequent books will build on its revelations and, given more space, they'll be able to put more detail and art into what we first read. Like 'Galaxy In Flames'. I wouldn't say I enjoyed that book at all, but the events and characters have been used as a foundation for much more interesting stories by a lot of authors in HH series.

'The Unremembered Empire' is a follow-up to the events of 'Know No Fear', the 'Mark Of Calth' anthology, and 'Betrayer'. What transpired in those books shapes the story here, though don't expect to see a return of characters like Ventanus, Lorgar, Angron, Kharn, Kor Phaeron, Tetrarch Nicodemus, etc - it's more like, this centres on a Guilliman incredibly scarred by the monstrous events of Calth and the Shadow Crusade, and haunted by fears for the sons he left to fend for themselves in the Underworld War, which began over two years ago. However, in terms of stories and characters being picked up, 'Unremembered Empire' is a follow-up to... so many things. Most significantly, 'Vulkan Lives', but it also draws on 'The Lion', 'Rules Of Engagement', 'The Iron Within', 'Prince Of Crows', and 'The Crimson Fist'. And I'm not saying you get a brief glimpse of one character from each of these stories as 'fan service' and then they're never mentioned again. Dan does his best to integrate all these storylines naturally into his own. It's a massive task and he manages it very well; at no point was I thinking "You're here? But why?" A plot-heavy book, tying together a lot of the diverging storylines which have been left dangling or vanished in previous books, may well be exactly what the Horus Heresy series needs right now. However, the combination of all these different storylines comes at the expense of a lot of the things that made the previous Dan books so great: a clearly defined and fast-moving narrative, lashings of gallows humour, excellent dialogue, superb action sequences. All these things are THERE, certainly, but... less than I'd like. Power struggles and squabbling between Loyalist legions seems like a meaty topic Dan could really get his teeth into... so I'm not sure what happened.

My first, and most petty, complaint is that the cover of the book is misleading (this isn't exactly Dan's fault, I know). I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's Guilliman and Sanguinius, right? Yet Sanguinius makes no appearance until the end of the book, making this cover an actual spoiler (since it depicts an event which is literally a couple pages from the end of the book). DANG YOU BLACK LIBRARY! You made me think Sanguinius was going to be a major character here!

The lengthy introduction of this book is a bit of a slog, I won't dress it up. At first, I thought a novel entirely about Roboute Guilliman playing politician while slowly losing his mind would be a fun time. What can I say, sometimes I love it when series totally de-rail and also piss off their more inflexible fans. (For this reason, I also love the Star Wars Rogue Squadron book 'The Krytos Trap', which pauses a series about dramatic, high-stakes starfighter dogfights to... tell the story of a lengthy, politically motivated court case.) But this book drags a little. For a lot of the story setup, Guilliman and co. are just sitting around, going stir crazy, wondering what's going on at Terra, and arguing amongst themselves about the direction 'Imperium Secundus' will take. (The difficult second album, eh? It was doomed to be poorly received.) This is topped off by Guilliman seemingly having to convince himself constantly that he's not secretly hoping to usurp his Emprah, and thinking about the temptation to do that A LOT. This whole storyline does certainly shed light on his comments at the end of 'Rules Of Engagement' though. You can't accuse these HH dudes of not planning ahead!

While not every scene is gripping stuff, the actual writing is excellent; an early highlight is a brutal fight between Guilliman and a ten-strong kill squad of Astartes, one of the best action sequences in the series, outside, well, 'Know No Fear'. Guilliman's heightened reactions and superhuman ability to calculate the current 'practical' make this one of the best uses of on-page 'bullet time' (for want of a better phrase) I've ever read. But much of the first half of 'Unremembered Empire' is just... setup. Characters and events being manouvred into place, slightly clumsily, for when the plot can finally kick into gear. 'Vulkan Lives' felt like it followed the same school of thought - pages 0-200 set 'em up, pages 200-400 knock 'em down - and that wasn't my particular favourite book either. Having said that, around the time of the Lion's arrival, and the near-simultaneous arrival of John Grammaticus (and... some others) things do finally step up in pace. Sluggishly at first, but the feeling of quickly-increasing tension is very well done. It's just a shame we're nearly 200 pages in before the shit starts flyin'. And then, when the action starts, the problems don't exactly stop, though the book certainly becomes much more enjoyable.

SHIT JUST GOT REAL (pg. 200)

There were a few odd choices made in the writing of this book. In place of Abnett's trademark biting down-to-earth wit, the dialogue seems oddly stilted and... Shakespearean. Weirdly, it works very well. I wonder if it's because some people felt 'Know No Fear' showed the Ultramarines being too 'normal' in their speech? I'd much rather have that style as Dan is superb at it, but I can't deny that the more ornate language fits in with the 'family tragedy' theme the book has. Another strange thing is that Abnett sometimes refers to single Astartes as plural ("the Ultramarines sat with his feet up, eating an ice-cream sandwich" "the Dark Angels was an expert at karaoke"). Is this how they're meant to be referred to? Or a search-and-replace spellcheck gone wrong?

Also, there's a chronology issue I'm hella confused by. 'Vulkan Lives' ends with Vulkan escaping Kurze and teleporting to Macragge. This teleportation happens very near the beginning of 'Unremembered Empire'. 'Prince Of Crows' begins with Kurze in a coma after being badly wounded by the Lion; he's in a coma for most of the story, which ends with him teleporting onto the Lion's flagship. We're told in 'Unremembered Empire' that he ran amok on the flagship for around three months and is still loose down there when the Lion comes to Macragge. So... 'Vulkan Lives' takes us right up to the beginning of 'Unremembered Empire' in terms of Kurze's actions. And 'Prince Of Crows' and the Lion's exposition do the same... but the two timelines don't reconcile in my head. The only way I can understand it is if the entirety of 'Prince Of Crows' plus another 3 months transpired in the apparently split-second gap between Vulkan thumbing Dawnbringer's teleportation switch and Vulkan appearing in Macragge's atmosphere. I suppose that's not impossible, with the nature of time being famously fluid in the 40K universe... but I'd like a little bit more explanation on this... I'm sure they'll clear it up eventually (or maybe they'll just say "Ahriman is responsible"). Just like the timeline fuckery in 'The Outcast Dead', this didn't have any impact in my actual enjoyment of the story; in fact I only realised the weirdness after I'd finished the book. But you know, that's gonna make SOMEONE pretty angry... someone out there. 40K nerds seem VERY hot on this shit.

HH chronology confusion? The chickens are coming home to roost, y'all.

So the 'day-to-day running of a new Empire' aspect of the book is something of a non-starter. It sort of feels like Abnett could have dealt interestingly with the plot of the first third or so of this book as a novella, and then the high-octane action stuff could have been handed off to a Gav Thorpe or a James Swallow. However, that would cut out perhaps the most interesting plot point here: the troubled relationship between Guilliman and Lion El'Johnson. A Primarch groupie such as myself is always on the lookout for expansion of these characters and Abnett certainly delivers in that regard. Their rivalry is presented in a way that makes it easy to be sympathetic to both sides. Part of Guilliman's great unease at the Lion's presence is not knowing how his brother will react to the overturning of the edict of Nikaea. Yet we already know from the novella 'The Lion' that Johnson has gone far further in acting against their father's anti-psyker rule than Roboute had even dreamed of. This is just one of many plot points that reinforce the fact these two brothers just can't talk to each other maaaan. The increasingly tense confrontations that they have in this book make you wish that any other Loyalist Primarch had been the first to answer Macragge's call.

Does 'Unremembered Empire' feature the tragic infamy and mind-breakingly huge battles of 'Betrayer'? Is it a fast-paced page-turner like 'Angel Exterminatus'? Is it an edge-of-your-seat masterwork of storytelling like 'Know No Fear'? Is it an uncomplicated, ceramite-splintering romp that requires almost no effort to enjoy like 'Fear To Tread'? No fucking way. But it does seem a hell of a setup. With Kurze still at large on Macragge, with Vulkan... possibly... not being dead, with the three loyalist brothers here consolidating their power, and with John Grammaticus' story taking a new and strange turn, it definitely sets things up nicely for the next few books. But I'm hoping that for his next chapter in the HH saga, Abnett doesn't bite off more than he can chew.

In my ideal world, he'd return to writing about the Sons Of Horus ('Little Horus' really piqued my interest in Abnett writing about those dudes again) but if this book tells me anything, it's that it might be a good idea for Dan to be given a new Legion to write about every time he does a book, as this is the first time he's 'returned' to a Legion he's already written about and it sometimes seems like he's a little... bored. So... remnant Iron Hands, or perhaps the Death Guard, could be a nice idea... but hell, it's probably a little early for all this - I'm sure we've got several more volumes to come before we get another Dan HH novel. Since Gaunt's Ghosts and the Eisenhorn/Ravenor sagas are getting better and better, maybe he should focus on those for a while... and considering how good 'Embedded' was, non-Black Library fiction by him would be just as interesting to me.

I will give 'Unremembered Empire' 7/10 for now. 8/10 is a strong possibility the more I think about it, but we'll see. Depending on how the setup in this book is actually utilised, perhaps I'll look back on this as the foundation for something great. Or perhaps as another slightly disappointing HH book, from an author who can do much better.

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

"Shadows Of Treachery" (short story collection)

It's an odd one this; many nerds were furious when they realised this 'new' HH short story collection consisted mostly of audiobook transcriptions, some from as far back as 2007.

How DARE they?

I can see why you would get mad if you'd already shelled out full price for CDs of these stories, and you find out you're only getting two previously unreleased works (well, a lot of these were previously quite limited-edition apparently). However... aside from not really getting any opportunities to pick up limited edition Games Day chapbooks... I don't really dig BL audiobooks. I've bought a LOT of Horus Heresy ones - hell, I'm not prepared to miss out on any aspect of the storyline - but it seems like their voice actors are a fruity concoction of Richard Harris, Anthony Hopkins and Oliver Reed at their most bellowing. Nothing wrong with that, but add the ambient 'laser battle/yelling/chainsword' sound effects constantly working in the background, and it gets a bit hard to concentrate on the story. Guess I'm just a written word guy when it comes to stuff like this. So hell, BL, go for it. I for one can't wait for the Garro stories and The Butcher's Nails to come out in book form (I'm not talkin' bout that 'Scripts collection' bullshit, I mean proper prose versions). I'll buy that shit for real dawg.

The Crimson Fist: The first novella is about (maybe?) the first open conflict ever between the Imperial Fists and the Iron Warriors legions. Thus begins a feud that continues for millennia. John French, the author, wrote The Last Remembrancer, and there are a few themes that the stories have in common: the paranoia and dread building at Terra, the horror of the unfolding Heresy to its defenders... and Rogal Dorn being a colossal, gold-plated rectum.

I don't really know why but Rogal Dorn is that Primarch I don't like. He's been pretty assholish in the appearances he's made so far. I guess the Fists' main virtue - their stalwart intractability - is also their Primarch's failing. He's so arrogant and certain of himself, so stubborn, that I find it hard to see him as anything but vain. Perhaps a Know No Fear style character renaissance is in the works, which will make me revise my opinion of him... but probably not. (Though maybe the new Dembski-Bowden book, focusing on the Emperor, will bring a new dimension to Dorn?)

Dorn is kind of like the stalwart, intractable Annabel Veal. They call her "the Wall".

Anyway, most of the story does not focus on Dorn or Terra. It's about the commander Alexis Polux, who a cursory nerd-wiki search revealed as the founding father of the Crimson Fists. (I hope that's not a spoiler, in case the title of the story, the little flashback anecdote where Polux's hand gets all bloody, or the presence of Sigismund throughout the story didn't alert you that some Second Founding backstory might be going on.) Most of the story involves the Fists (currently Imperial, mind you) trapped in space in the arse-end of nowhere, girding their loins in anticipation of an ambush. I admit, coming into this right after Fear To Tread may have been a mistake, since I was right away hit with another situation where a big fleet of Loyalists are trapped by foul magicks/warp-disturbance and left to marinate. Still, I was like "allow it bruv" since I guess Horus was doing this shit everywhere around this time, just spamming the fuck out of it. Oh well. The latter half of the story is where things really pick up, with a great void battle, some breathtaking 'boarding actions', a daring plan and something of a Pyrrhic victory for one side.

There are a couple 'oh SNAP' moments very near the end, which were ably built on in subsequent HH books, namely 'Angel Exterminatus'. It turns out I was completely mistaken in my assumption about the fleet's final destination; I thought perhaps they'd been warp-tossed through time and arrived at Terra after its siege... but no, 'Unremembered Empire' proved me wrong. As for the Iron Warriors, we don't get much out of them except that their Primarch might be one of the most charisma-lacking of all the Emperor's sons (a few scenes aren't really a fair judgement of that, I guess) and seems to think nothing of killing his senior officers if they bring him bad news.

This is a pretty cool novella, but a slightly confusing writing style (most characters are third person, Polux is first person) and some scenes near the beginning which seemed superfluous, bring it down slightly. I think 7/10 is fair, as I know John French can do better...

The Dark King: Graham McNeill! Night Haunter! Rogal Dorn! To arms! A very promising scenario, and The Dark King certainly delivers. I love Conrad Kurze (uh, no homo), he is probably one of my favourite characters throughout the whole pantheon of the Heresy. While he's unquestionably a total piece of shit, a mass murdering authoritarian-yet-nihilistic quasi-fascist, he's also incredibly, fascinatingly damaged (the fits and convulsions, the horrible, gloomy visions, the self-hatred) and I think of all the Primarchs, he is the one who has the most accurate view of his father and his father's works. We get nothing but Kurze in this story, and McNeill portrays him very well: moribund, macabre and other Glenn Danzig song titles. There aren't many Night Lords appearing in The Dark King, though we do get some moments with Sheng (Shang in this story?) who isn't much more than a nodding head here, I'm glad Dembski-Bowden decided to make him Sevatar's foil in Savage Weapons. Despite my intro, Dorn doesn't actually appear that much barring the beginning of the story; he does at least refrain from acting like a total dogfucker (though anyone can wear the white hat when they're standing next to Kurze). Anyhow, after their gold-leaf wearin' sissy Primarch gets the taste slapped outta his mouth, the Imperial Fists get shook and it looks like Conrad is gonna be doin' a bid. Convinced that like two of his former brothers, he will be dismantled along with his legion, Kurze takes matters into his own claws. The story snaps along at a brisk pace and it doesn't take long before Kurze is dealing with some 'childhood issues' in a rather final way. Fuck, man. 8/10 for rillah.

It is necessary to follow any use of the phrase 'no homo' with a picture of Cam'Ron, the Dr. Frankenstein of 'no homo'.

The Lightning Tower: Well now I got to take back all the shit I said about Dorn, because this, the other side of the Dark King coin, makes me like him way more. At the risk of sounding even more like a groupie this is pretty much just down to Dan Abnett (or, for some reason, Vincenzo Abnetti, as I call him in my mind... why? I don't know, all I know is that Vincenzo is from Noo Joizey and often urges people to forget about it). Really, all it took for me to warm to Dorn was the guy talking like a human rather than a slab of beef with a mean face drawn on it. It's a smaller-scale version of the overhaul he gave Guilliman. And this is the problem with Abnett stuff buried amongst the other Heresy writers; his living, breathing characters just lose their lustre and shine when others handle them, so now next to The Lightning Tower, many Dorn stories look way shittier to me. Perhaps it's Abnett's fault and he's mad inconsistent with previously established characters. Perhaps he should just go ahead and have Dorn act like a cardboard Space Pope Hitler... but I hope it doesn't come to that.

Just like most of Dorn's appearances thus far, his role in this story is to fortify the Imperial Palace and brood about the Heresy. Still, while you could argue this little snippet doesn't really give us any mindbreaking events to push the HH arc forward, it does tell us quite a lot about Rogal's thought processes and his inner motivations, some of which aren't as hidden as he would like... Some may sniffle about Dorn openly showing his fear of Kurze to Malcador. After all, he doesn't seem to like or trust Malcador much in previous stories, and if the Astartes know no fear, Primarchs know negative a billion fear, riiiiiiight? I actually really liked this scene, and it kind of bothers me (on behalf of both Legions) that, as far as I know, there was no 'money shot' confrontation between the golden asshole and his poisonous brother at the Siege of Terra. Still, perhaps THAT was what Dorn was doing while the Horus/Sanguinius/Emperor 3-way was happening?

9/10, extremely close to 10/10. Only the ghost of Little Horus stops me from giving this the full 10, because I loved that fucking story so much.

The Kaban Project: This is sort of a 'prequel' to 'Mechanicum', which I've said a few times is probably one of my favourite Graham McNeill books. Since this was a more limited-issue story previously, McNeill obviously didn't want to bury in a short story any crucial details that would make the full book into something puzzling and incomplete. So this isn't really 'required reading' for 'Mechanicum' fans. This touches on a few key characters we saw gettin' down in the Martian power struggle. There is one interesting portrayal of a 'Mechanicum' character in a way VERY different from how we saw them in the full book. Also, a nice moment where we glimpse a certain set of Tactical Dreadnought armour which may have been featured on an HH book cover... Aside from those, the plot doesn't exactly yield any surprising moments (seriously, even if you haven't read 'Mechanicum', you're like "Don't fucking trust a guy who's named Malevolous, bro! His name is like the 40K version of being called Jerky McBastard!"). However, it is nice to read a bit more about this very fascinating subject. See, straying away from marines as the subject of HH books isn't ALL bad... I'm not sure exactly how to grade this; it's good, but it's no Lightning Tower and it doesn't exactly read like something that would have grossly improved 'Mechanicum', so I'm gonna give it 7/10.

Flight Of The Raven: Whoops, this is where chronology issues come in. Issued several years ago as an audio drama, 'Flight Of The Raven' is clearly meant to be read/heard before 'The Face Of Betrayal' and 'Deliverance Lost'. If you've already read those, it gets rid of much of the tension in the narrative, as you already know that Valerius will convince Branne his spooky dreams are a distress call from Corax on Isstvan.

Luckily, though, we also get some great stuff about Corax on Isstvan, which is what I BEEN waiting on. A nice line here about how Vulkan wanted to defend the dropsite and Corax, realising it was lost already, retreated as soon as possible, earning the Salamander's ire. I can't imagine that slight will be forgotten... Oh, this is, I guess, the first appearance of Vincente Sixx (as in, Vince Neill and Nikki Sixx's offspring... you see the Raven Guard are not the emo chapter, they're the hair-metal chapter), who does play a major role in 'Deliverance Lost'. We are given some first-hand demonstration of how the Raven Guard fight and what Corax's tactical preferences are. This guy is smart, disciplined, and cares about his Legion a lot. Straight up, Corax is probably my favourite loyalist Primarch so far, tied with Abnett's Guilliman. Even though there's a moment where he cries a bit, which is not very Primarch-esque (either a stalwart pretense showing no tears, or flopping down and weeping blood for months and months, seems like the more likely thing). Really, reading this made me want to read 'Face Of Treachery' and then 'Deliverance Lost' again right away. So no problems reading this out of order then. I give this an easy 8/10.

Death Of A Silversmith: Perhaps I wasn't fair to this, because I fairly ripped through it, so eager was I to read 'Prince Of Crows'. I didn't find it particularly useful, though it is very short. It tells the story of a Remembrancer silver-worker who is given the task of making rings of office for the Mournival, and also some lodge medallions. Shit pops off, and he gets dead. That's pretty much it. The appearance of Hastur Sejanus gives us a reminder that this heresy took root long before the events which began 'Horus Rising'. But we knew that already. Anyway, I didn't hate this, but it didn't leave much of an impression. Take my 6/10 rating with a pinch of salt.

Prince Of Crows: In the words of Waka Flocka, "Sevatar? That's my motherfuckin' Night Lord."

I've read some harsh criticism of Prince Of Crows. Talking about "Sevatar fucking surfs on a space-fighter during a void-battle, WTF?" Talking about "Sevatar is just some sassy little bitch, Kurze would have popped his head off like a bottlecap for talkin' greasy like that!" Talking about "We've had enough of Thramas, get us back to Calth/Terra/the 41st Milennium!!!" Well that's just haterspeak. Sevatar is certainly vicious with the wisecracks but he is also a handy audience stand-in - for example, when he calls Kurze on his genocidal, broken-window theory bullshit. Even though his Primarch slaps the taste outta his mouth for implying that maybe brutal murder for EVERY transgression isn't the best way to govern a world, it warms my heart that Sevatar spoke up. That's not to say he is the Legion's conscience; he can be as brutal and callous as any son of Kurze (those VIII Legion dudes sure like skinnin' folk).

As for the rocketship surfing, it isn't as dumb as it will sound if you try to make it sound dumb. It's not like Sevatar just does this shit casually like "OH HI HATERS, JUST CATCHIN' SOME WAVES". He barely survives. Keep in mind he's an incredibly tough son of a bitch with poorly-buried Librarius powers, has come through countless battlefields without being bested, and came up in life as a feral, creepy gangland kid. He ain't no Ignace Karkasy, but this little stunt punishes him, badly. So... haters will hate. But I honestly, for the life of me, can't think of another character like Sevatar in the HH storyline. Just a smooth, evil son of a bitch with punchlines for days; a 'smiling villain', and don't we all love those (peace to Richard III). He's like what Lucius could be if he wasn't buried in his own asshole, or Tarik if he had let his id control him completely.

This is a hell of a picture of Sev which kind of makes me think of GTAIII: Vice City.

Enough Sevatar dicklicking. What's the story of Prince Of Crows? Oooh, tough break, it's Sevatar's story! We're brought in some months after the events of 'Savage Weapons'. Following their straightforward knock-down drag-out fight on Tsagualsa, Lion'El Johnson and Kurze have continued the deadlock of the Thramas Crusade. Johnson, however, learns his lesson and his Angels ambush the Night Lords, beating them bloody and leaving Kurze in a near-death state. Into this power vacuum steps Sevatar, who isn't shy about reshaping the Legion in the image he feels is best for everyone, and the hell with the Primarch and Horus' wishes. While stating he himself plans to take the fight to Terra, he gives the other warlords the choice to do what they will with their slices of the pie... something they seem oddly, touchingly grateful for. Perhaps Sevatar's move is ultimately a selfish one (he doesn't want to compete with headbreakers and glory hunters who want the Atramentar at their own backs and Sev's helm on their trophy rack). Perhaps it's a realistic one (acknowledging that his Legion, gathered together, is not an unstoppable World Eating force, or an immovable Imperial Fist anvil; just a conglomerate of backstabbing dickheads - and ten Night Lords in a room will get you fifteen agendas.) Or perhaps it's entirely prescient: he is helping his Legion reach, ahead of time by several years (or milennia, depending on your perspective) the point that all the Traitor Legions will essentially arrive at: autonomous warbands whose only purpose is to maim the Imperium.

Or maybe he's just a dick. An insane dick. Who knows?

In what is probably a very wise move, Dembski-Bowden doesn't focus on characters from his highly lauded Night Lords trilogy, just teasing us with a brief mention of the Covenant Of Blood and a tantalising throwaway line that the comatose Primarch is tended by three apothecaries, one of which is from the 10th Company. But it makes sense: even Vandred would have been far beneath Sevatar's notice, and Talos was 'just' an Apothecary. If First Claw wandered into this shit all "OHHHH what up Jago? Ain't seen you in a minute son", that'd seem kind of forced and weird.

'Prince Of Crows' is a perfect mix of intense action, snappy dialogue, fleshing out the backstory of Kurze himself, and some introductions of further unsavoury 'persons of interest' in the shadowy Legion's upper echelons. Of these, I'm particularly fascinated by Alastor Rushal, a Raven Guard captain who for some reason is not only an honorary member of the Night Lords, but promoted to their ruling council by Sevatar. It gradually becomes clear that he has been 'with' the Legion since Isstvan (but was he captured or did he defect?) and has been extensively tortured and mutilated by Sevatar, including having his tongue removed (so why does he fight unflinchingly by Sev's side?). If nothing else from 'Prince Of Crows' is ever picked up, I only hope that Alastor gets a little bit more development of his story, whether it's his background or his ultimate fate. But I have faith that AD-B wouldn't put a character like this in without planning out a pretty extensive story arc for him.

And fuck man... that ending. That ending, bro. THAT ENDING. Just like with Fear To Tread, there's absolutely an 'Empire Strikes Back' feeling about this story's closing pages. The feeling of a Legion or a character raising up again slowly after taking some serious licks. Sevatar, like Han in carbonite, shouldn't be counted out. Damn right he'll rise again.

10/10, dog. 10/10 long and hard.

In summing up, I think 'Shadows Of Treachery' shows Black Library at their best and also their evillest. I guess making a 'new' story collection 75% old material is a little reprehensible, but it's also an extremely strong read, which rarely lets up, and provides some of the absolute best moments in the series so far. It feels like I say that about most of their story collections, but STILL, when there's stuff like 'Rebirth', 'Little Horus', 'After Des'hea', 'The Last Remembrancer' and 'Savage Weapons' out there, I can't help but feel a lot of the "proper" full-length Heresy novels come off poorly in comparison. I'll never understand the mindset that the story collections are "just filler"; there's so much more scope for exploration in a short story collection, you can deal with things that wouldn't stand up for an entire novel but can't be left out of the HH storyline. If you're worried a collection will lack focus, you should also note that a lot of these stories focus on fleshing out just a few Legions or events, ie Kurze and Dorn's pre-Heresy smackdown, and the character of the Imperial Fists themselves.

Overall I give Shadows 8/10.

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