"Death And Defiance" (short story collection)

This is a bit of a first for Black Library. A Horus Heresy novella-length hardback which is available at a normal price from the beginning of its publishing cycle. No limited edition at double the cost and then it’s unavailable for two years. No ‘event only’ availability. As pissed off as I am about what I now know regarding 'Legacies Of Betrayal', I’m glad Black Library can pleasantly surprise me with stuff like ‘Death And Defiance’. 

Fulgrim looks like fucking shit! What is this, a Conan book?

Despite what I personally think is one of the worst pieces of HH cover art in years and years, I was fucking PUMPED to buy this collection right after Warhammer Fest finished and it went on sale on the BL site (with surprisingly little fanfare). There are five stories here, written by some old faces and some new. Let’s get right into them.

Imperfect by Nick Kyme: Nick is very uneven as a writer, in my opinion – but his audio drama ‘Censure’ is a firm favourite of mine, and the micro-story ‘Phoenician’, concerned with Fulgrim and Ferrus’ Isstvan showdown, impressed me a lot. So I was excited to find he would be tackling those characters again in this collection. Here, Fulgrim and Ferrus face off across a regicide board, but is their good-natured banter all that good-natured? Is this regicide game everything that it seems? Any time that question is posed, the answer’s going to be “no”, isn’t it? Man, at this stage of the storyline, I would kind of get a kick out of it if the regicide game was just some flashback to happier times (ending with a soft-focus montage of Ferrus and Fulgrim riding their bikes, laughing, while Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Glory Days’ plays). But that’s not what’s cooking here. Since this is Purple Heresy and not a site by actual professionals who put effort and journalistic ethics into making good reviews, I’m just gonna spoil the shit out of this. The ascended Daemon Prince Fulgrim has cloned Ferrus Manus many, many times and is playing a regicide game against each one – I believe the story implies that he is trying to see if there is some chain of events or line of reasoning he can put into play that would result in Ferrus’ loyalty switching to Fulgrim (and Horus) rather than the Emperor. Sadly, each attempt ends in failure, with each clone trying to kill Fulgrim and failing. You’d have to eventually say, could we not just play 2-player Halo or something?

I do really like some elements of this story. Nick’s Fulgrim is different to the preening, histrionic drama queen Graham sketched so entertainingly in ‘Angel Exterminatus’. Here, Fulgrim is more subdued, more guilty, and his actions – if not his internal monologue – seem to present him as deeply ashamed of his failure to turn Ferrus, and the fratricidal incident this led to. He seems desperate to right this wrong in some way. An interesting twist on the characterisation of Fulgrim so far; we’ll see if it’s taken further.

I feel there is meant to be some big, shocking implication to the fact Fabius has some cloned infant with a “Cthonian birthmark” in his laboratory, but I assume this is foreshadowing for the cloning of Horus – something Aaron already wrote about in ‘The Talon Of Horus’. Then again, it seems a little early in the HH timeline for that event hundreds of years in the future to start getting set up, which means maybe this is going to tie into a different Sons Of Horus cloning plot. I think it’s too early to really give a fuck. Maybe he’s cloned Loken so there can be an evil Loken in the Mournival? At this stage I would not be surprised if Fabius was growing cloned Cthonian babies so that he could eat them alive just for kicks. I like the III Legion a lot so whoever writes them, I’ll read it, but after my initial optimism, it doesn't look like Nick Kyme plus Emperor’s Children is guaranteed to always be good. That new 40k Salamanders book he wrote sounds kind of interesting, but I’m still not hugely into the idea of another Horus Heresy novel by him. I bet it’s coming whether I like it or not, though. This one I give 7/10.

Howl Of The Hearthworld by Aaron Dembski-Bowden: A pack of Space Wolves bitterly protests their assignment as ‘watchpack’ to Rogal Dorn, then eventually accepts it. They get on a ship and start on some poor clerk guy. That’s pretty much the events right there, though of course there’s more depth to it that I’m not doing justice to. I probably won’t write much on this (I think it’s the shortest story here). My gut reaction is that these seven warriors will end up being the only Space Wolves present on Terra for the Siege, and will probably play some significant/tragic role there. Maybe we’ll see more character development before then, maybe they’ll start a brawl with Bror Tyfingr and get murdered, maybe they’ll never even reach Terra. The Space Wolves here did seem interesting and I certainly want to find out more about them, but as in some moments of ‘The Talon Of Horus’, it feels like Aaron is over-writing some of this stuff. I’m not saying every 40K novel has to be bleak, hard-bitten Mike Hammer type shit, but – though I hate to say it – it means that Aaron’s Space Wolves are just not as enjoyable to me as Abnett’s or Wraight’s. This would be fine (as different portrayals of the same Chapter are equally valid in 40K) if I didn’t feel like he was aiming for the same exact area as those two but JUST missing it. It may grow on me over time, but at this point I’d say ‘Howl Of The Hearthworld’ is the least enjoyable Horus Heresy material Aaron’s ever produced. Still, I didn’t like ‘Betrayer’ at first either. For now, I give this 7/10.

A Safe And Shadowed Place by Guy Haley: With Aaron’s portrayal of the Night Lords perhaps one of the most widely loved explorations of a Legion, it’s not easy to step into the Horus Heresy with a Night Lords story. Guy Haley has written relatively little Heresy fiction, but with ‘Shards Of Erebus’ and ‘Strike And Fade’ he showed he could stand with the big boys. I also really enjoyed his ‘Hunter’s Moon’ audio drama. Fucking good thing I did, because less than a year later it will be taking up like 20 pages in the "new" story collection ‘Legacies Of Betrayal’. That’s a rant for a different time, though. It’s ballsy that Guy’s jumping in with a direct sequel to ‘Prince Of Crows’, one of the fan favourites of the HH canon. He doesn’t follow Sevatar’s arc, of course (apparently set to continue in audio drama format this year); if anyone but ADB handled that, there would be riots in the streets. Instead, ‘A Safe And Shadowed Place’ deals with Skraivok, a Night Lords officer whose badly damaged ship has limped to the borders of Ultramar following the Dark Angels’ battering of the Night Lords fleet. Abandoned by the few captains that were accompanying him, he struggles to deal with his fractious command and the frustratingly slow repair of his vessel. The waters are muddied by Krukesh the Pale (a minor but memorable presence in ‘Prince Of Crows’) showing up with a much larger Night Lords fleet and starting to throw his weight around.

Guy seems to have studied Aaron’s Night Lord characterisation very closely, but he puts a lot of ideas in there that are clearly his own as well. While I wouldn’t call any of the characters here staggeringly original, Guy is a good writer of both action and dialogue, and while Sev’s barbed witticisms are sorely missed, there is some bleak humour here. I can’t believe Black Library let him put in the moment where our VIII Legion hero idly thinks to himself that a female bridge officer “looked like a screamer”. Yeah, I know he was supposedly thinking it in the context of considering skinning her alive, but… I’m pretty sure the innuendo was intentional. Hilarious.This was the first story in the book where I didn’t feel a vague sense of disappointment after reading it. With a growing Night Lords fleet presence lurking near Sotha, and Kurze still apparently on Macragge intending to wreak yet more havoc on Imperium Secundus, I’d assume this story is a one-off intended as further VIII Legion antagonistic setup for Dan’s sequel to ‘The Unremembered Empire’ – but I’d certainly not object to more Guy Haley Night Lords stories. 8/10.

Virtues Of The Sons by Andy Smilie: I think this might be the first Andy Smilie Horus Heresy story. He’s more famous for writing a lot of 40K-era audio dramas and novels, most of which seem to be about the Flesh Tearers. Black Library’s frequent attitude of thinking someone is perfect for Horus Heresy books about a Legion because they write about that Chapter or its successors in 40K books has not always resulted in the highest quality books. Here, though, I reckon they’re on to something. Smilie obviously has a real ‘feel’ for this Chapter and is keen to get his teeth into their origin story. Of course, Amit, ‘the Flesh Tearer’, the possibly-Khornate Blood Angels warrior with anger management and impulse control issues, is a prominent character in this story, but it’s not all about him. Sanguinius and a Blood Angel called Azkaellon are also heavily featured. Primarch writing is always tough, I think, but Smilie writes Sanguinius possibly a little better than James Swallow did (yes, that is a compliment, I really liked ‘Fear To Tread’). As for Azkaellon, his juxtaposition with Amit makes me think he’s also going to be a Blood Angels Successor Chapter founder, but I can’t be sure about that. I could do some research, but I kind of prefer to be surprised in this case.

This kind of has the opposite problem to a lot of HH fiction: it’s very well written, but the events here, taken by themselves seem a little insignificant. The cynical side of me thinks this is a little bit of foundation-laying for ‘Sons Of Wrath’, the book about the first years of the Flesh Tearers Chapter following the end of the Heresy and Sanguinius’ death. I was planning to buy that book anyway, since immediately post-Heresy fiction interests me almost as much as the HH series itself, but knowing Smilie writes this well made me realise it’s going to be a mandatory purchase. Perhaps I’ll be grateful for ‘Virtues Of The Sons’ once ‘Sons Of Wrath’ is out, but for now, I’m giving this 7/10

Gunsight by James Swallow: My lengthy and quite whiny review of ‘Nemesis’ may have mentioned that this story was on the cards. I don’t know if anyone was after a ‘Nemesis’ sequel starring Kell the Vindicare Assassin; ‘Nemesis’ wasn’t super-well received and I get the impression most people thought Kell died at the end. But fuck me, this is really good. Kell is aboard the Vengeful Spirit, a lone gunman in the truest sense, consumed by an obsessive desire to finish his mission. The way that Horus’ shift in allegiances has changed the Spirit is really well captured; I liked what Graham did in his book, but I think Swallow just has a more evocative way with scene-setting. He also tackles one of my favourite themes in the 40K universe: the insidiousness of Chaos, and how easy it is to be corrupted especially when you believe yourself incorruptible. This is the other side of the coin shown in the Gaunt’s Ghosts series, where Gaunt and his men are able to overcome the darkness by clinging to their faith and their basic human decency. Kell is not so lucky. Still, there are some surprising twists along the way, and the door is very much open for a continuation of Kell’s ‘mission’ (in a way). I almost wanted a full-blown ‘Nemesis’ sequel after this… well, maybe just a novella, since this also reinforced my opinion that James Swallow is really good at short stories. Him becoming a near-exclusive audio drama/short story guy is a smart deployment of his talents. Against all odds, this is an excellent story; I give it 9/10.

So overall, this book didn’t have a collection of top-notch stories, but considering my least favourite was one of the shortest and my favourite was the longest, I can forgive a little inconsistency. I hope Black Library releases these a bit more frequently. It might take the sting off them apparently thinking a HH story anthology’s primary function is to be a fucking recycling dump. In the midst of all my bitter ranting I give this one 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.

"Hunter's Moon" by Guy Haley / "Thief Of Revelations" by Graham McNeill

Black Library released these two on the same CD, so I'll review them together, though they are completely separate stories.

YOU THOUGHT IT WAS AHRIMAN BUT IT WAS ME! DIO!!

'Hunter's Moon' is by Guy Haley and concerns the ongoing conflict between the Alpha Legion and Space Wolves touched on in ‘Scars’ and ‘Wolf’s Claw’. This time, events are witnessed by three fishermen on a planet called Pelago who find a crashed Astartes vessel and get more than they bargained for when they investigate: Torbjorn, a Space Wolf, the only remnant of the Watch-Pack sent to Alpharius’ side. The cast here are Gareth Armstrong, Angus King and Toby Longworth. I felt that the three fishermen were excellently acted; you have the callow, ignorant youth, the wise elder, and the sympathetic 'mid-point' who mediates and has a nice, reassuring Scottish accent. The Space Wolf is not as subtly performed – or subtly written – as the human characters (unsurprisingly, I guess), but still he was very good.

Pelago is like many Imperial worlds: dedicated to the secular Truth, but also not completely ‘enlightened’ or up-to-date with the state of the Imperium. Talk about “star giants” and “men sailing the night in ships of steel and fire” and “monsters swimming in the sky’s night” sounds like superstitious nonsense at times, but they are obviously talking about the Great Crusade, just in more poetic terms than we might be used to. I was reminded of ‘Prospero Burns’, which for me is never a bad thing. I’m also always fond of stories which show how the galaxy-wide Heresy affects the lives of the countless billions of normal people whose worlds are being fought over.

As HH fans we can easily surmise why this Space Wolf warrior has been left stranded and alone on a crashed Alpha Legion gunship, but the way the story slowly fills in the blanks leaves it very suspenseful and worthwhile... at least until the last part of the story. The ending was disappointing and felt a little abrupt. I feel like BL authors’ increasingly frequent portrayal of the Alpha Legion as actively cruel and sadistic is odd. ‘Legion’ set them up as an unknown quantity for the Heresy time-period, motivations not entirely clear, but possessed of a lot of likeable qualities (and a lot of terrifying ones) – overall more callous and unfeeling than malevolent. While some HH stuff is running with that ambiguity, like ‘Scars’ or ‘The Serpent Beneath’, I feel like there’s been a gradual slide towards “They’re just some assholes” (ie, this story, or the slightly disappointing background for them in the Forge World book ‘Extinction’). Mind you, keep in mind that we are seeing the sons of Alpharius through the eyes of a terrified fisherman who’s befriended their adversary, so it’s not like we’re going to get a measured exploration of the character of their Legion. Also, I guess there are going to be a wide range of personalities across the XXth Legion, and some of them are going to be, well, just some assholes. I guess when it comes down to it, I’m just bitter that Dan Abnett isn’t writing every Alpha Legion book and that the ‘Legion’ approach of “What even ARE the Alpha Legion? It is a mystery, dogg!” has been ditched somewhat.

Still, this is an engagingly told story, and I have a weakness for Scottish accents, so that pushes it back to 8/10. I really hope Guy Haley has some more Horus Heresy stories coming.

'Thief Of Revelations', by Graham McNeill, is concerned with the Thousand Sons Legion. As we know, not much has been written about them since Graham’s book ‘A Thousand Sons’ which left them shattered and bitter in the Warp, licking their wounds. So it’s kind of nice to see what the survivors from the Burning Of Prospero are up to on the Planet Of The Sorcerers… but this section doesn't really add anything to their characters. Amon is still a self-important know-it-all (in fact, so is Ahriman), Sobek does fuck-all, and Hathor Maat is still vain and flippant. There is a nice scene where Ahriman is taunted by a 'flesh-changed Astartes' (he seems not to fully grasp what it is, but the way it's described just sounds like a straight-up Possessed Space Marine). Still, this whole introduction felt a little... pointless to me. They're disturbed by the Flesh-Change, and frustrated by Magnus' refusal to do anything about it. Really it didn't seem to tell us anything that the ending moments of 'A Thousand Sons' or that scene from 'Aurelian' haven't told us already. Next, Ahriman seeks an audience with Magnus. This does present one of the best moments of the story: the description of Magnus’ tower. A very important element of the Crimson King’s myth even post-Heresy and Graham gives it the respect it deserves. We also get some great little details that I love, like how the Thunderhawk Ahriman uses has been changed by warp energy so that it is actually becoming similar to a hawk. You might think that’s hecka dumb but I love that idea.

While the description of Magus himself is also excellently done, I’m frustrated and unimpressed by a lot of the dialogue between Magnus and his wayward son. There’s a bunch more cryptic dick-waving about how Ahriman should definitely stop trying to find a way to stop the hideous mutations that are slowly destroying more and more Legionaries... but also a refusal to fully explain why Ahriman should stop, or what Magnus will do to remedy the shit situation they’re in. "No just do what I say though, powerful psyker who has shown clearly that he distrusts me and has a dangerous propensity for rebellion and free-thinking. DO IT THOUGH! SHUT UP!!!" Man, some of the Primarchs are complete assholes (or perhaps... slightly poorly written).

The ending of the drama is very entertaining, though, with Magnus showing Ahriman where some of the Primarchs are, and dropping dark hints about the roles they may play in the future. The conclusion of the Thramas Crusade between the Night Lords and Dark Angels is shown, as well as the dark fate of the Blood Angels at Signus Prime, and the sack of Guilliman's Five Hundred Worlds by Lorgar. Nice to get another dimension to these significant events… but while this seems intended to give a cryptic snapshot of Magnus' intentions and current mindset, it seems very clear which way the Thousand Sons’ Primarch is leaning. Despite an extremely confusing closing line which I still can’t really make sense of, it really feels like Magnus is 90% decided on throwing in with Horus. I’m a bit unsure on how, exactly, a novel’s worth of drama can be spun between this point and the point at which the Thousand Sons turn. But hell, Graham can often turn stuff that seems insignificant into a great story, IMO (see ‘Angel Exterminatus’ and ‘Vengeful Spirit’).

The actors for this drama are Gareth Armstrong, Martyn Ellis, Jonathan Keeble and Toby Longworth. It’s hard to portray a Primarch in an audio drama, since they are beings almost beyond human comprehension – Legionaries are hard enough. So I know that this was a real challenge to pull off – but in my opinion, the way they did Magnus’ voice sounds like SHIT. And Ahriman also sounds ancient and querulous where (I feel) he should sound strong and authoritative. The bitter musing of “Was it worth it, Russ?” is spoken in a tone more suited to “Get off my lawn you dang kids!” The narrator is very good, though - I'm pretty sure it's Toby Longworth. If it is Toby, he’s delivering a more restrained performance than he often does. The other Thousand Sons only appear relatively briefly, and their performances aren’t really worth discussing too much – not bad, not notably excellent.

I honestly question the wisdom of making this an audio drama. It feels like most of this would have served excellently as the first chapter of 'The Crimson King', the full-length Thousand Sons novel Graham is doubtless working on now. However, I bet 'Crimson King' isn't out for another year or two so I guess it's fair play that BL want to ensure the Thousand Sons are kept in our minds. Due to the issues I’ve outlined, this just misses being an 8, so I’ll give it 7/10. That Ahriman voice just puts me on edge.

This marks (probably) the last time I’ll buy a Black Library audio drama on CD. I was just doing it from some weird stubborn sense of obligation, but I never actually put any of them in a CD player – just ripped them to my PC and listened to them on that, since I find headphones the only way to go with this form of media. From ‘Templar’ onwards, I’m all about the MP3. Still not crazy about ebooks, though…

One thing I really feel is necessary to state is that the musical score is superb for both audio dramas. Generally an exercise in understated ambience... but there were moments where the musical accompaniment to the reading was so perfect, it gave me chills. The piano-heavy horror movie atmospherics in the last segment of ‘Thief Of Revelations’, in particular, seem like they might be the best soundtrack for a Horus Heresy audio drama so far. The sound effects are excellent as well. I really love the constant lapping of water in 'Hunter's Moon', and the howling winds on ‘Thief Of Revelations’. Christian Dunn produced both of these. I don’t know whether that means he helped with the soundtrack (probably not, this ain’t hip-hop) but simply from the excellent performances of most of the voice actors (especially in ‘Hunter’s Moon’) makes me hope he can produce more BL audio to this standard. If it takes him away from writing, it can only be a good thing...

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.

"Echoes Of Ruin" (audio drama compilation, various authors)

This is an anthology of the short-form ‘advent calendar’ Horus Heresy audio dramas Black Library did in December 2012 and 2013, plus an extra short audio drama exclusive to this collection. I really like this idea, but I had already bought the dramas individually when they came out, so I just downloaded the exclusive one (I appreciate them giving us that option). I do think the £3, ten minute audio dramas are a fun idea and when well executed, they’re excellent additions to the canon. If they’re not well executed, well, they’re ten minutes. It ain’t exactly another ‘Battle For The Abyss’.

This cover is actually kind of spoiler-y.

Veritas Ferrum by David Annandale: When I heard the next Horus Heresy novel would be a continuation of ‘Veritas Ferrum’, I was not particularly psyched. For a while this was my least favourite of any of the HH ‘advent calendar’ releases. The setting for this drama is during the initial, confusing moments of betrayal on Isstvan V, more specifically the fleet battle that broke out above the planet’s surface. This story focuses on one Iron Hands vessel in that space battle, the Veritas Ferrum of the title. Our characters here are two X Legion soldiers, Captain Durun Atticus and Sergeant Galba. Hey, Ramon Tikraam is in this audio drama! Guess how many people sound like Chinese commies in some 50s Hollywood propaganda movie? None. So yeah, he doesn’t HAVE to do that voice. I guess I should stop going on about ‘Sword Of Truth’ and its voice acting problems. In fact the voice performances are good here. The Iron Hands sound like stereotypical East End thugs, I was expecting Ray Winstone to walk in. Interesting choice, but it fits with the character of their Legion I suppose. I kind of always pictured the Iron Hands as Scottish though, I don’t know why. Their dialogue is nicely written, and there are some really impressive moments of void warfare as well. The initial antagonists are the Night Lords and Alpha Legion, which leads to a line which left an AL groupie like me really annoyed: “So, the individual is unimportant, is it Alpharius? Then what we’re about to do won’t hurt you at all.” You don’t get it do you, you Medusan bastard? You can kill an XX Legion cruiser, but the Legion is forever. Hail Hydra.

Once this conflict is resolved, we get a difficult situation for the Ferrum: They can save two Thunderhawks full of Salamanders, Raven Guard and Iron Hands, but only at great risk to their ship. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say they do the noble thing, BUT AT WHAT COST?! The way things are left, Sergeant Khi’dem of the Salamanders will, I imagine, be a primary antagonist for Atticus in ‘The Damnation Of Pythos’. And I really like the characterisation of Atticus, especially this line from his musings: “He would not believe that Ferrus Manus had been killed. Not unless he saw the Primarch’s body before him. Perhaps not even then.” Could be a bit of foreshadowing for a character slipping into denial after this great trauma. I dunno, I’ll have to read ‘The Damnation Of Pythos’ and find out I guess. Like I said, I didn’t like this at first, but each time I re-listened to it, I enjoyed it more. I give this 8/10.

Warmaster by John French: In the aftermath of Isstvan V, Horus Lupercal broods alone on the bridge of the Vengeful Spirit. ‘Warmaster’ takes the form of a monologue (you might even say a soliloquy) from Horus, giving us some insight into his mental state at this fairly significant time of his rebellion. Horus muses on the title ‘Warmaster’, his father, the brothers who are standing with him and against him, and his dissatisfaction with the way things stand at the moment. (It’s not clear whether this is before or after his famous/mysterious speech to the entire traitor host on Isstvan V. Probably after.) I’m just going to geek out and throw in a bunch of my favourite quotes here.

On Guiliman: “Roboute with his scratching quills and his plans and his hope. Too understanding. Too strong. Too damned perfect. I wish he was with us.”

On Alpharius: “The Hydra does not see all, and now his blindness places a knife at his own back.”

On the Traitor Legions: “At my back are only the flawed and damaged. I am a master of broken monsters… With such creatures I must remake the future.”

Yikes. Emotions running pretty high there. John French is a really good writer for Horus. He knows how to convey how much of a monster the Warmaster is, yet still make him more than one-dimensional, perhaps even sympathetic at times. It would be a real shame if he didn’t get another crack at writing for Lupercal, perhaps this time with some Sons Of Horus in the frame as well? Though I guess the list of things I really want John to write in HH is growing fairly unrealistic: Horus and his Legion, some Thousand Sons stuff to tie in with his Ahriman books, more Loken, more Tallarn stuff, more Dorn, more Sigismund, more Luther… I would be surprised if he ends up doing even two of those.

Anyway, while many stories here feel like little offcuts from a higher story, ‘Warmaster’ is completely self-contained. I really like that stinger at the end of the story, as well. Fuck Fulgrim, right? Overall, I give ‘Warmaster’ 9/10, and if you listen to just one of these audio ‘ministories’ you should make it this one.

Strike And Fade by Guy Haley: Quite some time after the Dropsite Massacre, four Salamanders survivors of different companies form an ad-hoc resistance cell to harry the traitors who remained behind. (If you’ve read the Forge World book ‘Extinction’, or the book ‘Deliverance Lost’ for that matter, you’ll know this conflict continued for a long time after the Massacre was done.) With that title, I was sure the Raven Guard would be the primary force, but oh well. While it’s just over ten minutes, ‘Strike And Fade’ manages to create some compelling characters, and the interplay between them (or lack of interplay, when it comes to the Silent Bob Salamander) makes me really want to hear more from Jafur and his brothers. Good writing and good voice acting; they work a lot when you’re trying to make your characters interesting. I’ve been fairly neutral towards most of the Salamanders characters in the HH series so far, and these were probably the first I actually liked. Maybe Nick Kyme having a stranglehold on Nocturne’s sons isn’t such a good idea, though I guess if I’m totally honest they were never my favourite Legion, purely based on their lore.

The action of this story comes as the cell ambushes a group of Night Lords. I never really read a convincing ‘bikes versus infantry’ battle scene, except perhaps Chris Wraight’s White Scars books, and this is no exception – that’s really the only weak point of ‘Strike And Fade’. The battle is fairly short, at least. It even builds a bit on the character of the Night Lords Legion – I never thought about it before, but naturally, the aftermath of Isstvan V would be more their preferred combat environment than the actual pitched battle.

This is a great story and I should mention that the soundtrack is particularly good, especially during Jafur’s conversation with the dying Raven Guard Legionary. I give this 8/10.

Lucius: The Eternal Blade by Graham McNeill: Following the events of ‘Angel Exterminatus’, the Emperor’s Children splintered into warbands. Brooding on his defeat, death and unexplained rebirth, Lucius ends up on the Planet Of The Sorcerors (somehow?) in search of a Thousand Sons Athanaean swordsman named Sanakht. The XV aren’t really a Legion noted for bladecraft, but deep down I think Lucius wants to murder a few people with inferior skills to him, just to get back on that horse.

There are a few similarities with the audio drama ‘Thief Of Revelation’, even beyond the setting and the appearance of Ahriman. Graham McNeill continues to write very well about the strange, warp-influenced landscape of the Planet Of The Sorcerors, and the way it’s slowly twisting the nature of the XV Legion. I really look forward to him expanding on this in the next Thousand Sons book.

Voice acting of characters is generally pretty good here but this narrator is not great, fairly slurred and seeming to have a bit more trouble than usual with some of the more ridiculous 40K lingo. It’s a problem I’d expect to encounter way more, and the fact that this problem is only apparent in this audio drama (to my recollection of the HH audio drama library) is a credit to Black Library really, they tend to choose the narrators well.

The most obvious comparison between this and ‘Thief Of Revelation’ is that both stories are clearly intended to be ‘teasers’ for Graham’s upcoming Thousand Sons novel, apparently called ‘The Crimson King’. Since Lucius and Sanakht aren’t mentioned in ‘Thief Of Revelation’ I assume ‘Eternal Blade’ took place after that story (unless Lucius just left after this, which’d be lame). I’d be interested to see how that goes; also Sanakht seems to be set up as a character in John French’s new Ahriman book, so I’m interested to see if he ‘remembers’ this story at all. I give this 7/10.

Khârn: The Eightfold Path by Anthony Reynolds: Man, I love the Russian Khârn, he’s pretty cool. This performance of Khârn is much more aggressive than the almost melancholy dignity he showed in ‘The Butchers Nails’ audio drama, which definitely makes sense following the events of ‘Betrayer’. The Nails are troubling him even more than before, and he hopes that the fighting pits can offer some kind of salve to the pain. Although Khârn is becoming more and more of a beast, he’s lost none of his bleak humour (“Sword against axe. Such a fight never lasts long.”) After a tense fight, we see a disturbing manifestation involving blood. Possibly sent by some kind of… blood god? Or possibly caused by the presence of so many screaming, berserk warriors.

‘The Eightfold Path’ just shows an event on the World Eaters’ path towards full-blown Khorne worship. Perhaps an insignificant event, but if you’re a XII Legion fan, you should check this out. It’s a nice little snapshot that doesn’t fuck around with any elements of Aaron’s World Eaters background (like the ongoing contempt shown to the supposed Legion elite, the Devourers), but uses them as a springboard to keep progressing the story.

Unlike most of the other stories in ‘Echoes Of Ruin’, ‘The Eightfold Path’ doesn’t seem to be an extended ‘trailer’ for anything. I’m not aware of any World Eaters stuff coming up, but Anthony Reynolds would be a good choice for a novel or novella about these guys, I think he’s got right attitude towards the existing fluff (and he’s definitely got Kharn’s narrative voice). Also, I think the production on here is particularly good, the soundtrack and effects are used incredibly effective (especially that brief moment of silence, followed by the return of the crowd’s roar). 9/10, perhaps even better than 'Warmaster'...

Cypher: Guardian Of Order by Gav Thorpe: Well, here’s a good way to wind down your pulse-rate after that amazing story. Some bullshit about two jerks doing very little. Ahh, I need to be more mature than that… but damn. So this is a story about Zahariel and Cypher checking out a possible site for a new Dark Angels fortress. We find that the recruitment rate has continued to rise, to the extent that new fortresses may be needed – so obviously any Fallen/Lion faction scuffle coming up is not going to go easy for anyone. But wait, remember that creepy monster under the North Wilds? Yeah, remember that hype-ass action sequence in that hype-ass book ‘Fallen Angels’? Apparently it’s totally back, according to some creepy and ill-defined bad feelings Zahariel gets.

I am very interested in a Fallen Angels Horus Heresy novel (which Gav will almost certainly be writing) and I actually like the idea of that book adopting a “slow burn” approach with lots of intrigue and backstabbing amongst the Fallen. But a short audio drama is probably the wrong format for introducing this concept. And while I don’t hate the first two HH Dark Angels books, I’m dubious that anything can be gained by recycling plot elements from them. The possible threat of widespread rebellion among Caliban’s citizens? We did it. A disgusting daemonic creature lurking in the arcologies? We been had that.

All kinds of dark questions are raised by this story, namely how much do Cypher and Luther know, and what’s their agenda? Do they want the same thing or are they at cross purposes? And why Cypher seems completely self-assured, then suddenly shakes with fear and runs off LIKE A LIL BITCH. Why? Hints at future plot points? Or inconsistent writing? And is the over-the-top reading of the last few lines meant to convey Zahariel in immediate danger, or is the narrator just freaking out? As the drama states, “Too many questions without answers.”

I’m not too fond of this one. I’d say 6/10.

Wolf’s Claw by Chris Wraight: I read the prose version already in the ‘Wolves Of Fenris’ collection, but I think audio format might be better for this though, especially for the frantic action scenes that bookend the story.

Following the events of ‘Scars’, Bjorn and the Space Wolves are still fighting the Alpha Legion. Unfortunately, Bjorn has not been able to secure a replacement for his chopped-off arm. Despite his favour with the Wolf King, there’s no queue-jumping in the Space Wolf forges. Unless you’re just a dick about it and steal shit! There’s not much to say here. Chris Wraight hasn’t written any duds as far as I can see, and he’s second only to Dan for writing Space Wolves I think (yeah, I don’t like Bill King). Toby Longworth’s voice acting is good, apart from giving me serious Skyrim flashbacks at times. (Hjolda! Jarl Balgruf here!) I guess the only fault is that this story seems kind of inconsequential, especially considering how Bjorn overcomes his primary obstacle. 7/10.

Some of these stories were superb, some were sub-par. But they were all worth a listen. If you haven’t heard any of them you might want to consider the CD purchase, if you’re not completely committed to the HH line you might just want to buy the one which involves your favourite Legion or author. Overall, I’d give it 8/10 as a collection. I hope we see more of these short-form audio dramas (and I’m sure we will).

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

"Nemesis" by James Swallow

Damn, it has taken me QUITE A WHILE to write this review...

Just noticed this book is dedicated to Aaron & Katie. Awww.

‘Nemesis’ opens “two years after the betrayal of Isstvan”, though whether that’s two years since the virus bombs fell on the Choral City or two years since the Urgall Depression became the galaxy’s largest graveyard isn’t really clear. In the ‘cold open’, we catch up with the Sons Of Horus, who’ve spent the past years rampaging through the Imperium, converting or crushing the planets they’ve found. Some poor jobber has been sent to kill Horus, a pretty poor choice for a novel’s opening gambit really, since we are automatically going to have zero stake in this assassin character. (I guess they could have said Horus was actually killed at this point, and ‘Horus’ for the rest of the war was just Alpharius.) Anyway, after that dumb mislead, we see the political manoeuvring that’s already rife in Horus’ high command, here summed up in a bitter argument between Erebus and Luc Sedirae. Since I know the, erm, developments in Sedirae's story later in the book, I read his sections with greater attentiveness than before, and I think Swallow rounds out the character very nicely, giving him an undercurrent of seething frustration at the slow pace the campaign is taking.

This turns out to be ANOTHER mislead and we’re off to the setting of one of our primary plot strands, Iesta Veracrux. Yosef Sabrat is our first protagonist, basically veteran cop-dude-man, having to investigate a series of horrific murders on this apparently unimportant world (which mainly exports wine). I do kind of like these sections as it’s nice to see a different side of the 30K Universe. This thread is a nice study of how a normal Imperial agri-world can be torn apart without an invasion force landing, all it takes is some dark suspicions from the general populace and fear, paranoia, misinformation does the work – it reminds me a bit of ‘Liar’s Due’ in that way. I kind of hoped Swallow would go all the way with this cop drama and make it into a real ‘whodunnit’ story. But less than 80 pages in, we find out who the culprit is – a malevolent entity called Spear. What do I mean? Well, it’s a little unclear what Spear really is, but more on that later: he can definitely change his identity to people who he’s killed (hey, just like the shittest ever Buffy villain).

Meanwhile, on Terra they’re setting up the other main plot strand of ‘Nemesis’. The leaders of the six ‘clades’ of the Officio Assassinorum are meeting in secret, with their faces masked, all weepy about their failure to get rid of Horus. Back when I played 40k there were 4 assassin types, but here there are also Vanus and Venenum, who are information-gatherers and poisoners respectively. (Unlikely to make an appearance in tabletop games, but I guess they’re probably popular with 40k roleplayers.) We also have the ‘classic’ clades: Vindicare (snipers), Eversor (berserkers), Culexus (psyker-killers) and Callidus (shape-shifting infiltrators). Quickly the clade leaders come up with a pretty obvious scheme: why not send one member of each clade to kill Horus, working together as a team, rather than individually? To which the reader might say, shit, why not send TWO of each team? Or three? Or in the immortal words of Gary Oldman, EVERRRRRYYYYOONNNE!!!!!!! Anyway, they’re certain that Dagonet, near to where the Sons Of Horus are fighting, is where The Archtraitor will pop his head up and boom bang bing, they’re gonna cap that fool.

The seventh operator here, the Master of Assassins, turns out to be Malcador, which pulls ‘Nemesis’ into the ‘Silent War’ category of HH novels I’m very fond of. I love all these surreptitious political shenanigans on Terra. Another important character in the Imperial thread is Constantin Valdor, the Chief Custodes. An important character, and I think this book is the first to flesh him out. In fact, he’s the one who gives the ‘kill order’ on Horus to the execution force. While apparently a major figure on Terra, I really don’t remember much about him – it doesn’t help that to my recollection he’s made only fairly minor appearances and cameos in books so far. I just want more Custodes lore, dammit! Only ones that really made an impression were Aaron’s in ‘First Heretic’, and, well, those guys won’t be back. I don’t know where Valdor’s arc is going, which is probably a good thing – but it’s more due to the vagueness of the character than any great mystery.

There’s a few brief Dorn scenes in the book. He takes the view that as long as Horus heads the rebellion, the traitor forces can be predicted in their actions, so an assassination would be disastrous. Unfortunately, this view makes the assumption that Horus is still the same guy as before. But I guess that’s what you get when you’re happy to stay blinkered on Terra with your head in the sand, only acknowledging things your daddy spoon-feeds you. (Yeah, I know none of that is fair. I’m just venting.) I really don’t understand how anyone can like Dorn, the way he’s been portrayed in the Heresy books at least. Basically, I think until Dan (or maybe John French) writes Dorn again, I will continue to hate on that guy, he’s probably still my least favourite Primarch. I mean Vulkan is dull, but he’s cool at least, and Ferrus is a much bigger asshole, but he’s more interesting than the Emperor’s Praetorian in my opinion… Meanwhile, on Ieasta Veracrux, the staff of a Rogue Trader show up to assist with the investigation into the occult murders. Kind of the equivalent of the FBI showing up in a cop drama and waving their dicks around over jurisdiction. There’s one brief mention here of the Contract of Trade being sealed with a drop of the Emperor’s Blood, and on my second readthrough, this struck me as almost painfully obvious. And here’s where another issue with the ‘detective’ narrative becomes more obvious. We start getting much more effective characterisation and fleshing out of the various investigators – but just as we start to like each of them a bit more, Spear shows up and kills them in short order. And then leaves the planet, so really none of it was too necessary, I guess?

The beginnings of our ‘execution force’ gathering are sort of interesting, as Valdor plays a prominent role. We first meet Vanus operative Fon Tarel. He’s established as a compulsive information-gatherer, which is apparently the main function of his clade – they do not kill directly, they plant misinformation and skilfully manipulate their targets into fatal positions. Right away, you realise Vanus operatives aren’t likely to have much place on a “kill-a-Primarch” mission, but the character doesn’t suck. I really like the brief glimpses we get of the ‘Atalantic Wilderness’ (sic) on Terra, a featureless desert dotted with scavenger gangs where there used to be an ocean, a long time ago. It adds another dimension to the seat of the Imperium and shows that Terra is far from a locked-down, 100% secure safe-haven.

I’m gonna skim over the rest of the Execution Force introductions. The sequences where they gather the team are pretty good, enjoyable action sequences where they show each assassin’s MO and a few of their character traits. The Callidus operative’s ‘groundwork’, wherein the target is psycho-conditioned subtly over a period of weeks, to fall in ‘love’ with the assassin’s cover identity – well, that’s pretty cool. And the setting of the Venenum operative’s introduction – some ancient temple on Terra that’s been reclaimed by the jungle and is being used as a “poison farm” – is also imaginative. Unfortunately the assassins can come across as quite shallow characters based on standard movie/fiction tropes. The Vanus is the nervous, high-strung hacker from any generic thriller or heist movie; if it was an anime he’d push his glasses up his nose all the fucking time. The Vindicare has the standard ‘doesn’t play nice with others’ sniper characteristic, as well as being the ‘conflicted leader’ whose arrogance conceals deeply hidden doubts in his own abilities. The Eversor is the ‘big angry dude’ who just wants to fight all the time and snarls at anyone who tries to assert authority. (So he’s like a Space Wolf from the bad times of Black Library.) I guess the Culexus isn’t hugely clichéd, though I guess an unkind reviewer could say that she’s meant to illustrate how unknowable, strange and cruel women are. (I definitely don’t hate the book enough to argue that, though.) Overall I think she acts a bit like a stereotypical ‘alien trying to learn the ways of humanity’ – socially awkward, emotionless, apart from everyone else. By the nature of her/his/its character, the Callidus is a bit of a cipher, though it’s consistently arrogant and smug. And Jenniker, the poisoner, is the doubting Imperial servant with a hidden conscience, who secretly follows the Imperial Cult. If you’re like me, you could think of a fair few movie characters that fit nicely with those descriptions. I mean, they’re not badly written. There are nice moments showing the tensions between the clades (usually when the Eversor opens his mouth). But I’d have personally preferred a much smaller team with more detailed characters.

So, when the execution squad actually gets to Dagonet, it’s almost fallen to pro-Horus forces already. They decide to prolong the resistance by joining the rebels; that way, Horus may present himself on the planet’s surface. Not a terrible plan, as Horus apparently won a decisive victory on Dagonet early in his military career, so there’s a chance his pride won’t let a prolonged war against him sully his memory of that easy first conquest. Of course, like Dorn’s viewpoint, this plan still hinges on Horus having the same personality as he did pre-rebellion… Meanwhile, Spear takes on the personality of Hyssos, an associate of the Rogue Trader baron, and finding that the Warrant of Trade is on Dagonet, he decides to go there, since if he can get the Emperor’s blood, he can kill the Emperor (apparently). The two storylines are neatly tied together, ready for the third act…

Around this time, Spear begins to lose his shit, as apparently the murdered shade of Josef Sabrat is still able to mess around in Spear’s psyche and occasionally cause him discomfort or even loss of control. This prompts us to flash back to Spear’s backstory, and this is the genesis of the most commonly raised complaint about ‘Nemesis’. Spear is a “Black Pariah”, some combination of a psyker and a psychic blank. Personally, I don’t really care about this botch of the fluff. Sure, it’s pretty broken but I find it easy to reason it away. Maybe Spear is incorrect about what he is. Maybe Erebus mislead him. It’s salvageable (as well as being a very, very small part of a 500+ page novel). But visit any forum discussion on HH and you’ll eventually see people holding the Black Pariah twist up as proof James Swallow has no regard for the fluff and should never write another BL book. This is one of the things I find most baffling about HH fans and also why I don’t hit the forums much. They’ll praise to the heavens books that I personally find mediocre as fuck, like ‘False Gods’ or ‘A Thousand Sons’. Hey, those books respect the fluff – no doubt there. But a book comes along which changes, or just tweaks a tiny aspect of, their beloved lore and it’s just the worst thing ever. See Oll Persson in ‘Know No Fear’, or when exactly the psychic backlash left the palace in ‘The Outcast Dead’, or the Black Pariah in ‘Nemesis’. Stuff I personally feel is of minimal importance in the context of the books (or a drastic improvement of established fluff, in some cases) but which had GW fanboys all but calling for these authors’ beheading. Eugh. Sometimes I really hate the fandom I’m part of.

Just one of the many drawbacks of caring about Warhammer 40,000 I guess.

Anyway, the last act builds the tension nicely, with the Venenum operative following her faith rather than her orders and helping the citizens of Dagonet defend a “holy relic” (which turns out to be the Warrant) from the evil force of Spear, while the Sons Of Horus make planetfall, expecting a fully compliant world. And thus, taken unawares, HORUS IS ASSASSINATED AND GETS HIS CABBAGE POPPED THA HELL OFF, KID! But no, wait, it was just Luc Sedirae wearing some Lupercal-calibre pimp threads. I don’t like this. Sure, the fake Horus is described as being ‘taller’ than his comrades, but shouldn’t Kell have realised “yo, this guy isn’t a fucking giant, so he’s unlikely to be a Primarch, maybe it’s a decoy”? Overall I guess I’m just kind of bummed out that a character I quite like (for no particular identifiable reason; he’s not hugely developed in any of the books) got shuffled off. Anyway, shit gets kind of South Central after that and Space Marines be firin’ into the crowd and shit. This makes the assassins scatter, their hopes of killing Horus pretty much crushed, and all that remains is for Jim to pretty much ‘Wild Bunch’ it, the way I kind of wish Graham did in ‘Vengeful Spirit’ – just kill all his main characters, one by one. While it felt obvious that this was the final destination, it didn’t stop the last battles from being well-written and tense (the Eversor doing a suicide-charge into a full squad of Sons Of Horus is a highlight). The book ends with Kell’s status unclear, possibly dead but apparently piloting his one-man ship directly at the Vengeful Spirit; it’s been rumoured he will feature in a forthcoming HH anthology, so maybe we’ll see him die ‘onscreen’ after all. I also really like the last scene between the clade leaders, with Dorn and Malcador duking it out for the Imperium’s soul before the Emperor has to come in and say “you’re both right but shut up though”. It’s nicely juxtaposed with the last moments with Horus and Erebus. Speaking of that, our time with Erebus certainly sets up his appearance in ‘Fear To Tread’ nicely. So yeah, for all my criticisms, I do commend ‘Nemesis’ for its particularly strong ending (though it gave me such SoH blueballs, I had to go read ‘Little Horus’ right away).

  

So, is this “OMG WORST HH BOOK EVER, MORE WORTHLESS THAN CATTLE FOR THE ABYSS!!!” ? Not really. I don’t think ‘Nemesis’ is a complete island. Even though the narrative thrust of ‘Nemesis’ seems standalone, there’s certainly evidence that Swallow has read the other HH books – he’ll drop allusions and hints in passing. I like the hint that Kell, the Vindicare, may have killed Astartes on assignment before this story (maybe even pre-Heresy…?). The allusions aren’t just to HH stuff. There’s a possible ‘Firefly’ reference when the Garantine, the Eversor assassin, is given his weapons and reacts with almost orgasmic joy; he gleefully says “I’ll be in my bunk” and walks off… Jayne? Jayne is that you? My days of taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle. What about the quality of the writing? Like I’ve said before, I think James Swallow is a good writer – not ‘great’, like AD-B with his well-rounded characters with subtle and broad emotional palettes, or Dan Abnett’s poetic and elegant style. But good. Solidly good. He writes briskly, the plot zips along, the dialogue has some sting to it, and if a cliché comes along, it’s usually a sci-fi cliché rather than a specific 40K cliché. Having said that, I don’t like all the choices he made here – the way the action cuts abruptly between Spear and the Execution force a few times in each chapter is something I find quite jarring. As for the actual content of the story…? Well…

Armchair BL Executive time: I’d have released ‘Nemesis’ in a vastly different way. I still think there’s a lot of worth to it… but powering through it as a novel, I found pretty tough going. Shit, you know I always try to be positive in my reviews and I have to say I found this much less readable than books like ‘Fulgrim’ or even ‘Vulkan Lives’, which I didn’t like at all. Personally, here’s what I might have pushed to be done with this material, if I was in the position where people actually gave a shit…

• The coming together of the assassin team? I’d have cut this down pretty drastically, pushed it together with the Valdor and clade leader stuff, and put it in an audio drama, probably concluding with the team learning who their target was. In a lot of ways this was a nice scene-setter, but I don’t think we need THIS much interaction between these, frankly, quite shallow characters.
• The detective story/Spear’s establishment? It was well-written, and I enjoyed it – but the oddly rushed conclusion to it, the surprisingly small importance it has to the later part of the book, makes me want to scrap this altogether. All I can say is that if James Swallow had used this as a basis for a non-BL novel, I’d have probably enjoyed it quite a lot more.
• Spear and the Execution Squad’s ultimate confrontation: Absolutely enough awesomeness here for a solid novella. You’d have to put a bit more explanation about Spear (or, to be honest, just make him a powerful warrior bound to a daemon, and forget the pariah/absorbed personalities angle) and add a paragraph about Eristede and Jenniker’s family ties, but you could pretty much publish, like, page 350 through to page 500 as they stand, and it’d probably be fine.

Anyway. I don’t think there’s a problem with HH self-contained books featuring casts who haven’t appeared before, and won’t appear again. I liked ‘Damnation Of Pythos’ a lot, after all, and that also kind of describes how Tallarn will most likely be handled in the HH line, and that’s fucking great so far. (And if we look at the opposite approach, remember how much people HATED Graham putting his 40K Iron Warriors into ‘Angel Exterminatus’). But… this was the wrong time to slot ‘Nemesis’ into the Heresy lineup, in my opinion. Not that it did any long-term damage to the series. I’m sure a few people thought ‘Oh man, the Horus Heresy series is fucked now’ and then the next novel was ‘The First Heretic’. Lastly, I think it’s worth mentioning that this probably has the most female-heavy cast of any Horus Heresy novel; maybe I should stop beating this particular drum, but it’s kind of shameful how few books have non-male characters, and for that, if little else, ‘Nemesis’ gets some real respect from me. But the INCREDIBLY overstuffed length, the rather dry first half of the book, and the sneaking suspicion that we don’t need an Assassinorum 30K book because apparently very little has changed in that organisation between 30K and 40K… well, all these things hurt ‘Nemesis’ badly. I am slapping it with a 6/10 for now (but ‘Fear To Tread’ is still really good, fuck all y’all haters).

Finally, here’s a song by Tom Waits called ‘Big Black Pariah’, about how much Tom hates James Swallow (?).

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