The Path of Heaven

The Path of Heaven by Chris Wraight is the thirty-sixth installment in the Horus Heresy series. A sequel to Scars, it follows the White Scars Legion as they seek a way back through enemy lines to Terra.

In the afterword to the hardback edition of The Path of Heaven Chris Wraight admits that it was a difficult book to write, one that seemed to fight him every step of the way, as opposed to Scars which was relatively easy to finish. However, I think the struggle to write The Path of Heaven was beneficial in the end, because through it Chris has produced a fantastic novel. Thirty-five books in I thought that the Heresy series had lost its capacity to surprise me, but The Path of Heaven is an original, gripping Heresy classic in the making that defied my expectations.

The premise of The Path of Heaven is simple: the White Scars want to reach Terra, and have to find a way through enemy lines to get there. However, there is nothing simple about this in practice. The Path of Heaven is set deep in the blackest heart of the Heresy and the traitor forces have had years to slowly beat down and encircle the Scars, so by the time of the novel's opening they are forced into a desperate strategy, launching a costly frontal assault on an enemy-held space fort all as part of a distraction so that they can locate a Navigator called Achelieux, who is rumoured to be connected to a secret project that can open a passage through the Warp. Opposing the White Scars' endeavours are the Emperor's Children, led by the ever-loathsome Eidolon, who clash with the sons of Chogoris in some of the best battle scenes penned for the series. Until now I thought that no-one could rival Graham McNeill at writing the Emperor's Children, but Chris Wraight brings a dynamic new take to them with the inclusion of such characters as Ravasch Cario, an elite bladesman who denies mutation and holds to Fulgrim's original ideals of perfection. Wraight transforms the White Scars as well, showing how years of endless attritional war has caused them to regress into bitter, nihilistic shells of their former selves, no longer caring for personal survival or greater goals, only the deaths of traitors. This viewpoint is embodied by Shiban Khan, who in this book is an angry shadow of the warrior from Scars.    

Other fantastic elements of The Path of Heaven include the disgraced sagyar mazan led by Torghun Khan, who have sworn to seek death in battle to atone for their betrayal of the legion. Torghun was the villain in Scars, but his continued hope in face of the war lifts him above Shiban's nihilism and causes their positions to be reversed in The Path of Heaven. Thus it is fitting but sad that it is Torghun who sacrifices himself for the legion in the final battle of the book whilst Shiban survives to reach Terra. Still, Torghun's death is nothing compared to Targutai Yesugei's, as the wise old Stormseer sacrifices himself to power an ancient prototype of the Golden Throne that opens a link to the Webway and allows the White Scars to escape the closing traitor fleet and fly for Terra.

The Path of Heaven is a powerful book. It explores aspects of the Heresy never before considered and provides some of the best battle sequences in the series, as well as chronicling a vital step in the overall plot. It is unmissable.

Limited-edition novella review: Wolf King  

Every now and then Black Library decide to raise revenue by releasing a Horus Heresy story as a novella, printing a small number of copies and charging exorbitantly for each. These novellas are then given mainstream release years later, finally making them available to the vast majority of fans. Wolf King by Chris Wraight is the eleventh of these novellas to be released and picks up the story of the Space Wolves where Scars left off, trapped in the Alaxxes Nebula by the Alpha Legion. 

Space Wolves are not my favourite Legion, and consequently I didn't have huge expectations for Wolf King. The novella covers the battle of the Alaxxes Nebula, something that was necessary to resolve so that the Space Wolves could be in place to arrive late to the Siege of Terra. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it did more. Wolf King is an examination of the nature of the Rout, and sees Leman Russ shedding his presumption of superiority in the face of defeat.

Wolf King is essentially the story of two kinds of Space Wolves, wrapped up in a battle narrative. The first kind, embodied by Wolf Lord Gunnar Gunnhilt, is the ever boring and two-dimensional 'always fight everything' culture that sees Gunnhilt killed in a valiant sternguard action to buy the rest of the fleeing Space Wolf fleet time. The new kind sheds the vainglorious arrogance of the 'Emperor's Executioners' and adopts a more pragmatic approach in order to survive, and this is embodied by Russ himself as he thinks of a way out of the Wolves' predicament. The action ends with a surprise intervention by a Lutherite Dark Angels Star Fort hidden deep within the nebula that drives the Alpha Legion back, adding yet another layer to the complex web of loyalties unfolding through the Heresy.      

Scars

Scars by Chris Wraight is the twenty-eighth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It follows the White Scars Legion as they enter the war and are faced with the choice of who to side with: Horus or the Emperor?

Scars is Chris Wraight's first novel for the series, but that is slightly misleading as Scars was not originally published as a novel; it debuted as a downloadable serial told in twelve parts. Collected together into one story, those parts chronicle the emergence of the elusive and mysterious White Scars onto the Heresy stage. The first half of the novel also features the Space Wolves as they are set upon by the Alpha Legion whilst licking their wounds from Prospero, and it is this conflict around which the fate of the White Scars pivots. Faced with contradictory calls for aid, each side naming the other traitor whilst an Alpha Legion fleet silently confronts his own, primarch Jaghatai Khan chooses neither side and strikes out with his Legion to find the truth for themselves, leaving the Wolves to fight the Alpha Legion alone.

In terms of writing style, Scars is a novel much like its Legion: fast, flashy and shallow. The plot moves along nicely and the battle scenes are satisfyingly intense, but there is little in the way of detail or complexity. The main protagonist, Shiban Khan, is an archetypal White Scar captain, while more interesting is his opposite number, Torghun Khan, a wannabe Son of Horus who doesn't fit in to his assigned Legion. Chris Wraight creates other good characters, including Departmento Munitorium officer Ilya Ravallion who takes on the impossible task of organising the Legion, and the Scars' head Stormseer, Targutai Yesugei, who starts the novel in self-imposed exile on Chogoris but sets out to rejoin his legion with the aid of some Shattered Legions survivors. However, Scars only paints these people in broad strokes, preferring to move the plot along rather than linger over character development. This lowers the emotional stakes when Shiban and Torghun confront each other, each representing one side of a civil divide that splits the White Scars into pro-Horus and pro-Imperium camps. More interesting is the Legion's unexpected return to Prospero, whose ruined surface Jaghatai Khan walks and nearly dies on in order to discover the truth of the Heresy.

Overall Scars is a good novel that makes up in dynamism what it lacks in depth. The final scenes on Prospero and the civil war-torn Legion fleet are dramatic and engaging, leading to the predictable but satisfying conclusion of the loyalists triumphing and the White Scars remaining loyal to the Emperor.

Limited-edition novella review: Brotherhood of the Storm 

Every now and then Black Library decide to raise revenue by releasing a Horus Heresy story as a limited-edition novella, printing a small number of copies and charging exorbitantly for each. These novellas are then given mainstream release years later, finally making the available to the vast majority of fans. Brotherhood of the Storm by Chris Wraight was the third of these novellas released, and follows the White Scars as they wage war against Orks on the planet Chondax. 

Though ostensibly a chronicle of the final battle in the war for Chondax, Brotherhood of the Storm is actually a novella about four characters, and is all the better for it. Here we are introduced to Shiban of the White Scars, Chogorian native and Khan of the Brotherhood of the Storm, who leads his men in sumptuously flamboyant battle scenes as they hunt down retreating Orks. However, two cultures collide when they link up with the Brotherhood of the Moon, lead by Terran-born Torghun Khan. Shiban's relentless forward assaults gel badly with Torghun's methodical war making, but by the end of the novella both men learn something from each other. 

The other characters driving Brotherhood of the Storm are Ilya Ravallion, a logistics officer sent to organise the flaky Scars in the aftermath of Ullanor, and Targutai Yesugei, the Legion's wise master Stormseer. Ilya injects humanity into the narrative, and Targutai's flashback to his boyhood trials on Chogoris is the best scene in the novella. Each of these characters, however, revolves around the elusive majesty that is Jaghatai Khan, primarch of the White Scars, who leads his men to final victory in the Ork-infested canyons of Chondax. Brotherhood of the Storm is an excellent novella that packs riveting action and considered character development into a small page count, and it is also a fantastic introduction to Scars.   

Nemesis

Nemesis by James Swallow is the thirteenth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It follows two assassination missions, one by a strike team of Imperial Assassins sent to kill Horus, the other by a daemonic entity named Spear sent to kill the Emperor.

Nemesis is an interesting departure for the Heresy series, in that it features very few Space Marines, foregrounds human characters and tells the story of shadowy covert ops taking place far from the main theatres of war. It is also the closest the Heresy series comes to being a police drama; one of the early protagonists, Yosef Sabrat, is a law officer on the planet Iesta Veracrux who investigates a string of grisly murders. Nemesis's tone is bleak, even for the Heresy series, and in many ways its horrors foreshadow the grim darkness of the forty-first millenium. Its plot, while interesting, is ultimately a side-show to the main story, and for me this makes it one of the less notable Heresy novels.

The main plotline of Nemesis follows a team of Imperial Assassins put together and sent on a mission to assassinate Horus. The team's leader and novel's main protagonist is Eristede Kell, a grim Vindicare sniper, and he is joined by five others: Koyne, an arrogant Callidus shapeshifter; the Garantine, a brutal Eversor butcher; Iota, a cloned Culexus Pariah; Fon Tariel, an inexperienced Vanus Infocyte; and Jenniker Soalm, a Venenum poisoner and Eristede's sister. Each of the six is introduced in an extended recruitment montage, which is one of the book's most enjoyable sections. However, a large part of the book also follows Yosef Sabrat as he investigates a string of murders committed by Spear, a monstrous Black Pariah bonded to the skin of a daemon, and it here that the plot gets very dark. Spear's kills are gut-churningly gory and James Swallow doesn't shy away from the details, nor from brutally killing most of his characters as Spear murders and assimilates them one by one. Spear's ultimate mission is to kill the Emperor, but to do so he needs the drop of the Emperor's blood preserved on House Eurotas's Warrant of Trade. Throughout the book he works and kills his way towards this goal, ultimately becoming such a threat that the assassin team divert to take him down.

For the six assassins, their mission to kill Horus takes them to Dagonet, a planet neighbouring Iesta Veracrux that is in the throes of falling to the Warmaster. In order the complete their mission the team aid the loyalist resistance, forcing Horus to come to Dagonet in person, but are foiled when Horus sends Luc Sedirae to impersonate him and the they assassinate the Sons of Horus 13th Captain instead. Jenniker and Iota go off on their own mission to protect the Warrant of Trade and are both killed by Spear, while the Garantine sacrifices himself so that Eristede, Tariel and Koyne can escape. Tariel's own foolishness gets him killed by Spear and Koyne falls the monster as well, before Eristede finally puts him down and makes a suicide run at Horus's flagship in a desperate last bid to complete his mission. The two assassination missions cancel each other out and both end in failure, though stopping the sheer horror that is Spear seems like victory enough.

Nemesis is by no means a bad novel, it is well-written and tightly plotted, but the story is too bleak and convoluted for my taste and overall the events have little effect on the main series plot. Readers of the series can take it or leave it.

Eye of Terra

Eye of Terra, edited by Laurie Goulding, is the thirty-fifth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It is an anthology of fifteen previously published short stories by eleven authors, and also includes the novella Aurelian.

David Annandale's Iron Corpses is set in the aftermath of the Battle of Tallarn, and follows an Iron Warrior Warsmith as he hijacks a loyalist Titan in order to survive the irradiated wastelands.

Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Massacre was originally published in segments on the Black Library website, and follows the characters from his Night Lords series during the events of the Isstvan V Dropsite Massacre. The Long Night takes place during Sevatar's imprisonment aboard the Invincible Reason, and sees him befriend one of the ship's Navigators and escape in order to kill another Navigator who beat her.

Matthew Farrer's Vorax is his first story for the Heresy since After Desh'ea. It follows a traitor Mechanicum being who is killed by deadly Vorax constructs.

John French's The Eagle's Talon was originally paired as an audio drama with Iron Corpses. Told through a non-linear sequence of vox recordings, it follows a strike team of Imperial Fists as they infiltrate and bring down an enemy ship during the Battle of Tallarn.

Guy Haley's The Final Compliance of Sixty-Three Fourteen follows the Imperial Governor of a world brought to compliance by the Luna Wolves who is faced with Horus's return and his demands to join in his rebellion.

Nick Kyme's Red-Marked chronicles the founding of Aeonid Thiel's Red-Marked squadron, forged in battle as they foil a plot by Word Bearers and World Eaters dregs left over from the Shadow Crusade. Stratagem depicts Thiel's first meeting with Roboute Guilliman since Calth and reveals Thiel's influence on the proto Codex Astartes.

Graham McNeill's The Wolf of Ash and Fire features Horus and the Emperor fighting side-by-side against an Ork empire prior the Heresy, and a point-of-view from Hastur Sejanus as he leads his squad to Horus's rescue after he falls down a chasm at the heart of the Ork junk-asteroid.

Rob Sanders' Ironfire features the return of Idriss Krendl after his crippling in The Iron Within, as he tests a new siege tactic against a fortress of Emperor's Children using two of the siege cannons gifted to Perturabo by the Lion.

Andy Smillie's Sins of the Father features Sanguinius brooding on the fate and character of Amit and Azkaellon as they duel. The Herald of Sanguinius describes the selection ritual to decide the first Sanguinor during the time of the Imperium Secundus.

Gav Thorpe's Inheritor follows the actions of Eliphas the Inheritor on Kronus during the Shadow Crusade, linking to the Dawn of War game Dark Crusade. Master of the First was originally paired as an audio drama with The Long Night, and follows Astelan of the Dark Angels as he sets up and then turns against an anti-Luther uprising on Caliban.

Chris Wraight's Brotherhood of the Moon joins Allegiance in being a sequel to Scars, and follows Torghun Khan as he faces trial for his traitorous actions in that novel.

Angels of Caliban

Angels of Caliban by Gav Thorpe is the thirty-eighth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It follows two branches of the Dark Angels Legion, those in the Imperium Secundus as they go to extremes in the hunt for Konrad Curze, and those on Caliban as various factions manoeuvre for power.

Angels of Caliban is the Dark Angels novel I've been waiting for since Fallen Angels, and Gav Thorpe did not disappoint. The basics of the Imperium Secundus are well-established by this point in the series but Gav manages to present a new take on it, foregrounding the tensions between co-rulers Jonson, Guilliman and Sanguinius and writing Angels of Caliban as much like a political drama as a war novel. Caliban, on the other hand, has been out of the series' eye for a while now and Gav returns to it in triumph, weaving together a complex plot of scheme and counter-scheme as secret rebels Luther, Astelan and Zahariel pursue their separate agendas. Both plots are tense and engaging, but I found myself more drawn to the events on Caliban because they were a completely new segment of the story, revealing that there was much more to Caliban's rebellion than simply Luther's fall.

One of Angels of Caliban's biggest selling points was that it reveals hidden secrets about the history and traditions of the Dark Angels, and Gav Thorpe has done something very different in regards to this by exploring the ancient history of the Space Marines. Through Astelan's memories, readers learn that the Dark Angels Legion existed in a different form before any of the other Legions were made, as an army of the very first Space Marines that was divided into specialist battlegroups called 'wings' and commanded by the Emperor himself. These 'Angels of Death' became the First Legion after the other nineteen were created and then the Dark Angels after discovering Lion El'Jonson on Caliban, but the 'wings' system was preserved and continues to exist, marines from different wings scattered across the companies but ready to form into their battlegroup when the command is given. Most prominent in Angels of Caliban are the Dreadwing, who specialise in total war and have access to archaic and devastating weapons. Their methods prove to be the undoing of the Imperium Secundus, when with the Lion's sanction they breach a rule made by Sanguinius and go to extremes in order to hunt down Konrad Curze, who is loose on Macragge. The final battle sequence between the Lion and Curze is epic, and I derived great satisfaction from Jonson beating Curze into submission, but Angels of Caliban makes it clear that in his own way Jonson is just as bad a villain as Curze, and his actions destroy the alliance that held the Imperium Secundus together.

Events are no less drastic on Caliban, where the fist ever visit by loyalist Dark Angels throws the rebel Angels into a frenzy of scheming. The novel provides us with a welcome return to Zahariel, a character we haven't seen for twenty-seven books, who becomes enthralled to the Chaos power buried beneath Caliban and is well on the way to becoming a Chaos sorcerer by the story's end. Just as interesting is the character of Astelan, who sided with Luther's rebellion because he hates the Lion and the changes he has made the Legion but holds no loyalty to Luther and considers himself a loyal warrior of the Emperor, believing that the Dark Angels should return to the old days when they were the Angels of Death. All the scheming comes to fruition with Caliban formally declaring its rebellion, and the revelation of a long-held secret as one of the characters becomes the new Lord Cypher.

Angels of Caliban is a fantastic novel, full of intrigue, drama and revelations. and it has repercussions not just for the Horus Heresy but the entire 40K universe. It is absolutely essential reading.
     

The Unremembered Empire

The Unremembered Empire by Dan Abnett is the twenty-seventh installment in the Horus Heresy series. It documents the creation of the Imperium Secundus among the five-hundred worlds of Ultramar.

The first thing you need to know about The Unremembered Empire is that it is not really a story so much as a space where lots of unresolved plot threads come together and then are spun off in new directions. In broad terms, Unremembered Empire chronicles the beginning of the Imperium Secundus, a kind of backup Imperium created by Roboute Guilliman who, cut off from the rest of the galaxy by the Ruinstorm, believes that Terra has fallen and the Emperor is dead. Central to this undertaking is the Pharos, a xenos beacon on the planet Sotha that is able to pierce the warp storms and draw scattered loyalists to Macragge. This is where the first of our unresolved plot threads pops up, with loyalist Iron Warrior Warsmith Barabas Dantioch, last seen in The Iron Within, operating the beacon for Guilliman. The activation of the beacon draws in many scattered loyalists, including Alexis Polux and his contingent of Imperial Fists last seen in The Crimson Fist, and, eventually, half of the Dark Angels Legion led by the Lion himself. Guilliman and the Lion form an uneasy alliance, with the Lion more than prepared to annihilate Imperium Secundus if he thinks Guilliman is attempting to usurp the Emperor. However, it is not the Lion but his unwilling passenger who is the biggest threat, as Konrad Curze, trapped in the bowels of the Invincible Reason since Prince of Crows, escapes the ship and makes his way down to Macragge to cause havoc.

The Unremembered Empire is the sequel to many books, including Vulkan Lives. In one of the more bizarre plot threads that the Heresy writers have come up with, Vulkan's teleport at the end of that novel deposits him in the atmosphere above Macragge. His flesh seared away by the heat of re-entry, Vulkan dies again and his corpse crashes into Macragge Civitas. He returns to life in a medical centre but is now completely insane, mind unhinged by the torments he has endured. Other characters from Vulkan Lives arrive on Macragge as well, John Grammaticus sent there by the Cabal to kill Vulkan with the fulgurite and Barthusa Narek following him to steal the weapon for his plot to kill Lorgar. Damon Prytanis, Perpetual assassin last seen in Betrayer, rocks up to ensure John completes his mission, but everything is put on hold when Curze rampages through the Fortress of Hera in a night of blood and death.

The action sequence of Curze marauding through the fortress is the climax of the novel. He almost manages to kill the Lion and Guilliman, but they are saved by Pharos ex machina. A sequence in which he terrorises Guilliman's adoptive mother Euten is clearly inspired by horror movies, but she is saved first by the watch-pack of Space Wolves sent to observe Guilliman and second by insane Vulkan, who breaks out of containment to confront Curze. Their brawl across the rooftops is brutal and visceral, and of course Vulkan dies a few more times. By this point I think Vulkan is just the HH writing team's stress ball, constantly killed and revived for their gratification. Despite all the odds Curze manages to escape, and both he and Vulkan are present for the final scene with Grammaticus, Prytanis and Narek. Vulkan gets killed a few more times, Prytanis deals with Curze by chucking a daemon at him and Grammaticus stabs Vulkan in the heart with the fulgurite, seeming to permanently kill him but in fact sacrificing his immortality so that Vulkan will eventually be resurrected (see Deathfire). Narek, knocked out of the fight by Curze, is caught at the scene and imprisoned by the Ultramarines. Then, just as things are finally winding down, Sanguinius and the Blood Angels arrive and Guilliman and the Lion crown Sanguinius as the new Emperor.

The Unremembered Empire is a fantastic book, even if it stretches credulity at points. Functionally it is like a fist that gathers up a bunch of loose plot threads and clenches them together into a book, something which the Heresy series sorely needed. In terms of entertainment it is engrossing and like all of Dan's work superbly written. For both of these reasons, is it is an absolute must-read for any fans of the Heresy.

War Without End

War Without End, edited by Laurie Goulding, is the thirty-third installment in the Horus Heresy series. An anthology, it gathers together twenty-one short stories previously published in the event-exclusive anthologies The Imperial Truth, Sedition's Gate, Death and Defiance and Blades of the Traitor.

In this post I will review those stories from War Without End that were originally published in The Imperial Truth and Sedition's Gate. For a separate review of Death and Defiance and Blades of the Traitor, please go here.

From The Imperial Truth: 

Hands of the Emperor by Rob Sanders follows a day in the life of Enobar Stentonox, a Custodian Guard rotated to command of the Imperial Palace's security. A crisis arises when the Imperial Fists move an orbital station into the palace's airspace, the two sides working at cross-purposes in their separate attempts to keep the palace secure, and Stentonox ends up invading the station. This is an entertaining little vignette of a particular crisis, but it lacks the detail and dynamism that make some of Sanders' other stories great.

The Phoenician by Nick Kyme is a fluff piece, a few pages describing Ferrus Manus and Fulgrim's fateful duel from the point of view of a dying Iron Hand. The Iron Hand dies and that's it.

By the Lion's Command by Gav Thorpe follows Corswain of the Dark Angels after the events of The Lion, as he negotiates with a neutral planet whilst a Death Guard fleet bears down on him. There is a lot of potential to examine the motivations and allegiances of ordinary people in the face of the Heresy here, but instead the shades of grey are spoiled by a trite black and white ending when the planet comes to Corswain's aid just in time only for him to dismiss them as cowards for not siding with him from the start.

Lord of the Red Sands by Aaron Dembski-Bowden is another fluff piece, this time a few pages of Angron philosophising about war whilst he butchers loyalists on Isstvan III, but it is saved by ADB's writing which is excellent as ever and makes this an entertaining if brief read.  

The Devine Adoratrice by Graham McNeill introduces us to the corrupt Knight House Devine of Molech and its scions Raeven and Albard on the day of their ritualistic bonding with Knights. The manipulations of Raeven's sister Lyx and a terrorist attack provide some drama, but the climax of the piece is glossed over, with Raeven and Albard's bonding ceremony explained in exposition at the end instead of being shown on the page. Still, this is overall a well-written piece that enticingly sets up Vengeful Spirit.

All That Remains by James Swallow follows a handful of Imperial Army troopers, all shell-shocked veterans of encounters with daemons, as they investigate a mysterious power-outage on their refugee ship. Each of the men is interesting in their own way and the little we are shown of their diverse characters is what makes this story entertaining. The most intriguing part, however, is their encounter with a Knight-Errant formerly of the Thousand Sons, who reveals to them their futures as agents of Malcador and turns the ship towards Titan at the end of the story.

From Sedition's Gate: 

Artefacts by Nick Kyme follows a conversation between primarch Vulkan of the Salamanders and his forge-master T'kell just before Isstvan V. Vulkan, dismayed by Horus's treachery, determines to destroy his arsenal of weaponry so that their power won't fall into the wrong hands. T'kell, desperate to preserve these examples of Vulkan's craft, objects. In the end they compromise, and Vulkan allows T'kell to preserve just seven: the seven artefacts of Vulkan.

The Harrowing by Rob Sanders is a blow-by-blow description of an Alpha Legion strike force taking over a Mechanicum ship. Rob Sanders knows how to write Alpha Legion well and the action is excellent, though sometimes devolves into too much jargon. There is no real narrative significance to this story, but it is a great showcase of the Alpha Legion at their most duplicitous and lethal.

Allegiance by Chris Wraight is a short follow-up from Scars, focused on Revuel Arvida as he adjusts to life among the White Scars. As a healing and adjustment narrative it contains little action and Wraight shoehorns some in for the climax, but it is ultimately pointless and the story would probably have been better without it.

The Laurel of Defiance by Guy Haley follows Captain Lucretius Corvo of the Ultramarines 90th Company, who is due to be honoured for his role in taking down a Word Bearers Titan during the Shadow Crusade. The story moves back and forth between the preparations for the ceremony and the events for which Corvo is being rewarded, blending crisp action with introspective character development. Haley really makes this work, and The Laurel of Defiance is one of the best short stories in the anthology.

Sermon of Exodus by David Annandale is a prologue to The Damnation of Pythos, showing the events that led to the cultists of Davin undertaking their mass exodus. The piece is suitably creepy for a culture steeped in Chaos, and the quality of it reaffirms my suspicion that David Annandale is better at writing short fiction than novels.

Deathfire

Deathfire by Nick Kyme is the thirty-second installment in the Horus Heresy series. It follows a group of Salamanders led by Artellus Numeon as they brave the Ruinstorm in order to return Vulkan's body to Nocturne.

As Nick Kyme points out in this novel's afterword, the Heresy series began with a tightly linked trilogy and then expanded into the vast story we know. Recognising that this expansion was dragging at the momentum of the overall plot arc, the High Lords of Black Library decided to begin weaving their novels more closely together, establishing a stronger continuity and mapping out the route to the Siege of Terra. Key to this endeavour is the work of Nick Kyme, who has set about creating a new trilogy within the Heresy, a trilogy that provides continuity by chronicling the fate of the Salamanders within the wider war. This trilogy began in ignominy with Vulkan Lives, which introduced Artellus Numeon and revealed Vulkan's fate after the Dropsite Massacre on Isstvan V, but in Deathfire Kyme's writing lifts as he reveals Numeon's miraculous survival and places him at the head of sixty-six Salamanders attempting a deadly voyage through the Ruinstorm in order to return Vulkan's body to Nocturne.With a heavy focus on faith, Deathfire pits everything from Death Guard to daemons against the Salamanders as they cross the Warp to Nocturne, ending in a climactic battle and a fateful resurrection.

Deathfire is a novel of three parts. The first part is set in Imperium Secundus where Numeon, captured by Word Bearers and rescued by Aeonid Thiel's Red-Marked, comes to believe that Vulkan is not truly dead after his body disappears from its casket and mysteriously reappears in a memorial garden. Gathering a remnant of the Salamanders who have managed to escape Isstvan V and regroup in Ultramar, Numeon leads them on an epic quest to return Vulkan's body to Nocturne in the hope that the magma of Mount Deathfire will resurrect him. Part two takes up the bulk of the book as the Salamanders endure a harrowing journey through the Ruinstorm, plagued by daemons and hunted by Word Bearers and Death Guard. The theme of faith rises to the fore here as Numeon's near obsessive belief in Vulkan's resurrection creates friction among the others, strung along by a series of seemingly miraculous events. Part two is the slowest, and while I appreciate Nick Kyme slowing down to let us get to know his characters he drags the tension out too far, extending one action sequence over nearly a third of the book. However, the twist that Magnus the Red is somehow influencing the events around Vulkan was completely unexpected, and adds another intriguing facet to an already suspenseful series. Kyme's writing is at times vague, but is still a big step up from the monotonously austere Vulkan Lives. Unfortunately, the number of times he uses the phrase 'Vulkan lives' is simply excessive. It drove vulkan lives insane with vulkan lives constant repetition vulkan lives of the vulkan lives vulkan lives vulkan lives.

Deathfire ends satisfyingly enough with a battle on Nocturne itself that sees the end of the Word Bearers and Death Guard and (MAJOR SPOILERS) Numeon sacrificing himself to resurrect Vulkan. The final part seems rushed compared to the middle section and would have benefited from more time, but overall Deathfire is a satisfying read which sits somewhere above the middle of the scale of Heresy novel greatness.

Limited-edition novella review: Scorched Earth 

Every now and then Black Library decide to raise revenue by releasing a Horus Heresy story as a limited-edition novella, printing a small number of copies and charging exorbitantly for each. These novellas are then given a mainstream release years later, finally making them available to the vast majority of fans. Scorched Earth by Nick Kyme was the fifth such novella released, and follows a pair of Salamanders Dropsite Massacre survivors as they search the scarred battlefield for Vulkan. 

I bought my copy of Scorched Earth at the same time I bought Pharos, as proof against it going out of stock, but left it on the shelf until I could get my hands on Deathfire, thinking that a novella about Salamanders searching for their lost primarch would pair well with a novel about Salamanders bringing their primarch's body home. I read it expecting a fluff piece about the aftermath of the Dropsite Massacre. I did not expect it to be what it was: a superbly crafted tale of desperation, fallout and madness.

Scorched Earth is essentially the tale of two Salamanders, Ra'stan and Usabius, on a quest to find Vulkan in the aftermath of the Dropsite Massacre. Part of a desperate group of survivors based in a crashed Stormbird, they make regular forays into the traitor-haunted wastes. The novella is full of tense, dark moments as the pair do whatever it takes to fulfill their mission, such as crushing the throat of a delirious Raven Guard to prevent him from giving away their position and encountering a mad World Eater in a canyon made of skulls. Scorched Earth saves its best twist for the end, however, when Ra'stan discovers the cave Vulkan was teleported away from and his psyche collapses, revealing a twist straight from Fight Club that he and Usabius are one and the same, Ra'stan a Librarian who has succumbed to madness and Usabius his former captain who was killed. Scorched Earth is an excellent novella that epitomises the bleakness of post-Massacre Isstvan and makes me long for more fiction set there. Bravo, Nick Kyme.

Mark of Calth

Mark of Calth, edited by Laurie Goulding, is the twenty-fifth installment in the Horus Heresy series. An anthology of seven short stories and one novella it expands the story of the Battle of Calth begun in Know No Fear, taking the Ultramarines and Word Bearers into the darkness of the Underworld War.

The Shards of Erebus is Guy Haley's first contribution to the series. It follows Erebus as he breaks up the anathame that wounded Horus (see False Gods) and hands out the shards as smaller athames to a collection of Word Bearers commanders. The story also cuts to Erebus's time learning Warp teleportation from Akshub on Davin, before ending just prior to the attack on Calth. It is a nice little intro, but nothing of significance.

Calth That Was, a novella-length piece by Graham McNeill, is essentially the sequel to Know No Fear. following Remus Ventanus and his allies as they continue their battle against the Word Bearers. However, the real force behind the action is not Ventanus but Maloq Katho, Dark Apostle to Hol Beloth, whom we quickly learn cares nothing for the outcome of the Underworld War and is instead pursuing his own path to daemonhood. Kartho orchestrates the bombing of several underground civilian centres to provoke the Ultramarines into attacking Foedral Fell, but after leveling Fell's fortress Ventanus realises too late that he has fallen into a trap. Fell and his warriors are already dead, having committed ritual suicide, but then reanimate and attack. The Ultramarines manage to fight their way out, but Ventanus barely returns in time to stop Kartho and Beloth as they attack his base with a virus bomb. Ventanus kills Beloth but Kartho escapes into the Warp just before the bomb goes off, and the day is only saved when Ventanus uses a flying speeder to knock the bomb into the Warp portal Kartho created. This is a neat novella that ties off all the loose ends from Know No Fear but cannot match it for brilliance.

Dark Heart by Anthony Reynolds is the origin story of Dark Apostle Marduk from Reynolds' 40K novels. A rogue legionary with little respect for his superiors, Marduk is uses his Warp talents to mutate a fallen Ultramarine during the orbital battle above Calth, and kills his mentor when he attempts to execute Marduk for such a blasphemous use of his power. Brought before Kor Phaeron, Marduk convinces him of his worth and joins Phaeron's inner circle. Dark Heart is an interesting portrayal of conflict within the Word Bearers with enough twists and turns to hold interest until the end.

The Traveller is David Annandale's first contribution to the Heresy series. It follows a man named Blanchot living in one of Calth's underground refugee communities who begins to hear voices and becomes a messiah for the group, directing their murderous attention towards supposed Chaos collaborators whilst slowly going mad. Eventually Blanchot is the only one left alive, and it is revealed that he became possessed by a daemon during the orbital attack. Having used him to direct the slaughter of thousands of innocents, the daemon moves on to possess an Ultramarine when Blanchot is finally rescued. This is a nasty little tale that perfectly illustrates the dark side of religion in the Warhammer universe.

A Deeper Darkness by Rob Sanders follows Ultramarine 'Honorarius' Hylas Pelion as he fights under Tauro Nicodemus in the Underworld War. Learning of a hidden cave network which the Word Bearers are using as a base Pelion leads a scouting force through submerged tunnels to reach it, but once there they discover their foes turned to stone. They then begin to fall prey to a hideous daemon, the sight of which is so horrifying it petrifies its victims. Pelion ultimately defeats the creature by deliberately cutting his visual feed then using his suit lamps to show the creature its own reflection. The references to the Greek legends of Medusa and the Cretan Labyrinth work well, and A Deeper Darkness succeeds as a chilling footnote in the tale of the Underworld War.

The Underworld War by Aaron Dembski-Bowden follows Word Bearer sergeant Jerudai Kaurtal on a pilgrimage across the devastated surface of Calth several years after the initial battle. Kaurtal's desire to commemorate the Word Bearers that fell in the surface battle becomes self-destructive as the radiation riddles his body with cancer, but as one of the Gal Vorbak the daemon inside Kaurtal rouses to heal him. Ultimately, however, the daemon abandons Kaurtal to die. The whole sequence is then revealed to be a vision of the future Kaurtal received during a failed attempt to bond with the daemon prior to the Battle of Calth, an attempt which resulted in his ignominious death. The Underworld War is not what you'd expect from its name, but it is an interesting piece regardless.

Athame by John French traces the story of a single athame dagger through history, from its primordial creation through ownership by barbarian killers and dark scholars to its entry into the series as the ritual weapon of a cultist leader in Know No Fear. The journey of the athame and the tales of its successive owners are fascinating, and there are hints throughout of a greater purpose awaiting it in the future. The story ends with the athame in the hands of Oll Persson as he uses it to escape Calth with his band of refugees, leading straight into the final short in the anthology. Athame is a fascinating and unusual take on one of the Heresy's most fascinating and unusual sub-plots.

Unmarked by Dan Abnett picks up the story of Oll Persson and his ragtag band where Know No Fear left off, following them on a journey through time, space and Oll's own past. Using Warp portals cut by the athame to move between locations and following the mysterious winds of the aether, Oll and his band journey through swamps, woods and empty cities on their way towards an unknown goal, pursued by the malevolent daemon M'kar that is destined to join with Maloq Kartho. The story is replete with references to history, from Oll's journey as one of the Argonauts to his fighting in the battles of Verdun and 73 Easting. The conclusion of the story is rather too neat and cliche, but Abnett's writing makes this short so rich and engaging that it doesn't matter. Unmarked is all of Abnett's genius distilled into one short story.

Limited-edition novella review: The Unburdened 

The Horus Heresy series has enjoyed enormous success since its inception, and that success has translated into its launching a new subset of the Warhammer tabletop game. To be clear, a series based on the lore of a tabletop game has inspired a tabletop game based on the lore of the series. The mainstream launch of the Horus Heresy tabletop game was marked with the release of the 'Battle of Calth' starter set, which featured a pair of novellas as well as miniatures and rulebooks. The Honoured by Rob Sanders and The Unburdened by David Annandale are both set during the Underworld War that followed the Battle of Calth, each showing the perspective of one of two mortal enemies, Ultramarine Captain Steloc Aethon and Word Bearers Chaplain Kurtha Sedd. 

Those who have read my review of The Honoured (and if you haven't you should read it first) will know that I was counting on The Unburdened to save this duology. It did, just. 

I'm not a fan of David Annandale's writing (just wait for my review of The Damnation of Pythos) and so I came into this novella with low expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised by what I found. Annandale's Kurtha Sedd is far more complex than the moustache-twirling villain Rob Sanders portrayed him as in The Honoured, full of conflicting convictions and a desperate for vindication. His inner conflict can and does make him seem weak, at least in the eyes of some of his followers, but he still has the charisma and depth to pull off the role of main protagonist. The amount of internal agonising in this novella was a little high for me overall, but thankfully the inner conflict is matched by the outer as the battles from The Honoured play out through the Word Bearers' perspective. The match-up is not exact and there were a few times it took me a while to realise what I was reading, but overall it works and more importantly The Unburdened does a far better job of contextualising the conflict. Sedd's hatred for Aethon is explained (Aethon played in a role in the Word Bearers' humiliation on Monarchia, see The First Heretic), and yet Sedd shies away from killing him until the final realisation that only by symbolically casting off his ties to the past via murdering Aethon can he ascend into the waiting arms of Chaos. This, as we know, is exactly what he does. 

The Unburdened is not a perfect novella; it begins to lose cohesion at the end as Calth's arcologies come tumbling in, but it is an engaging read that succeeds in bringing some clarity to the jerky randomness of The Honoured. Furthermore it is proof that David Annandale can write well when given the proper subject matter, and I hope to see more like this from him in future.         

That's all for now, denizens of the thirtieth millenium. Apologies for the delay in getting this post up, a new job has come my way recently and gobbled up my free time. Check back in a week or two when I return to the Sons of Vulkan, with a review of Nick Kyme's novel Deathfire and novella Scorched Earth. Happy reading.   

Know No Fear

Know No Fear by Dan Abnett is the nineteenth installment in the Horus Heresy series. Told from the perspective of the Ultramarines Legion, it chronicles the apocalyptic Battle of Calth.

I'm just going to say this outright: Know No Fear is the best Horus Heresy book to date. The action is relentless, the writing superb. But the most successful aspect of this book is its scope: Abnett opens with a tour of Calth in the hours before the Word Bearers' surprise betrayal, introducing characters as varied as rough and ready Imperial Army troopers and half-machine Mechanicum adepts, ranging through the ranks from simple legionaries to Roboute Guilliman himself. This approach allows Abnett to introduce the setting and multiple plotlines at the same time, a tactic that pays dividends once the action starts. This is not the first time Abnett has deployed this technique in his writitng: the opening of Know No Fear is reminiscent of the opening of Necropolis, the third book in Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series. Necropolis is now a classic of Warhammer fiction, and Know No Fear has the potential to be the same. Frequent changes of perspective keep the action fresh and immediate, and a multitude of cliffhangers have readers on the edge of their seat from beginning to end. From the second the Word Bearers fleet opens fire on the unsuspecting Ultramarines you are swept up in the action. The account is presented as a story collated from Roboute Guilliman's notes, and to maintain this pace Abnett has kept the chapters short. There must be something about Guilliman and breaking big things up into smaller chapters. Nevertheless, it works.

The story of Know No Fear is essentially the story of one big battle. The action is split into two theatres, in space amongst the fleet and orbital stations, and down on the surface amongst the burning cities and wreckage plunging from orbit. While the battles are told from a multitude of different perspectives a few central stories come to form the heart of the narrative: the actions of 4th Captain Remus Ventanus as he and sergeant Selaton run a gauntlet of dangers on their way back to their company, the struggle aboard the Ultramarines flagship Macragge's Honour after daemons materialise on the bridge and Guilliman is carried off into space, and the trials of a simple farmer named Oll Persson who is revealed to be far more than he seems as he leads a rag-tag group of survivors through the warzone towards an unknown goal. The true genius of this story lies in the way the various story strands come together for the apocalyptic climax.

After surviving several desperate skirmishes in the ruins of Numinus City Ventanus and Selaton gather a sizeable force of Mechanicum, Imperial Army and Ultramarines troops and set themselves up in a palace outside the city, which they must defend from a Word Bearers siege whilst their adept uses the building's ancient data engine to collate information and help coordinate the global loyalist defence. Aeonid Thiel, a sergeant censored for theorising combat between Space Marines, becomes an unlikely hero as he leads the defense of the Macragge's Honour and gathers a force that retakes the ship using weapons from Guilliman's personal collection. Oll Persson is revealed to be none other than Ollanius Pious, patron saint of the Imperial Guard in a later age, and the man whose sacrifice motivates the Emperor to strike Horus down during their legendary confrontation at the Siege of Terra. The story of Oll and the survivors goes off in its own direction, but the other main story strands come together after Thiel leads a strike force out onto the hull of the ship and in one of the best action sequences ever is saved from an ambush by Guilliman himself, who has survived in the void without a helmet. Coordinating with the flagship, Ventanus and his force on the ground make their way back to the ruins of Numinus to install Magos Tawren into a data engine from which she can retake control of Calth's weapons grid, but only if the forces in space eliminate the Word Bearers under Kor Phaeron who have seized the grid's command station. The double climax in which each force relies on the success of the other is utterly gripping, and ultimately turns the tide of the battle.

Know No Fear is sheer pulse-pounding awesomeness. It combines all the best elements of the Heresy series into one flawless masterpiece. But perhaps more amazing than any of this is that it does this using the Ultramarines, turning the most generic and over-played faction in 40K into some of the best heroes of the Horus Heresy. Kudos, Dan Abnett. Kudos.

Limited-edition novella review: The Honoured

The Horus Heresy series has enjoyed enormous success since its inception, and that success has translated into its launching a new subset of the Warhammer tabletop game. To be clear, a series based on the lore of the tabletop game has inspired a tabletop game based on the lore of the series. The mainstream launch of the Horus Heresy tabletop game was marked with the release of the 'Battle at Calth' starter set, which featured a pair of novellas as well as miniatures and rulebooks. The Honoured by Rob Sanders and The Unburdened by David Annandale are both set during the Underworld War that followed the Battle of Calth, each showing the perspective of one of two mortal enemies, Ultramarine Captain Steloc Aethon and Word Bearers Chaplain Kurtha Sedd. 

The Honoured picks up just before Know No Fear left off, with Captain Aethon receiving Ventanus's warning to get underground whilst in the midst of the fighting at Lanshear. During a lull in the battle he spots a Word Bearers chaplain across the street. Their eyes meet, and Aethon becomes convinced that the chaplain is his old friend Kurtha Sedd because...reasons. The action then cuts to the Ultramarines and Word Bearers running for shelter as the Veridian star begins scorching Calth's surface clean of life. An Ultramarine named Arkan Dardanus seizes the shelter entrance from Word Bearers and lets the remnants of his squad in, but their sergeant is killed. The novella's other main character, Terminator Sergeant Orestrian Urcus, walks his way through the scorching fire and lifts the door Dardanus just closed in the novella's coolest passage. Aethon shows up, promotes Dardanus to acting sergeant and then leads the Ultramarines down into Calth's cave network. 

The rest of the novella is basically a series of confusing and disjointed fight scenes, gummed together by flashbacks to when Aethon and Kurtha Sedd were friends. The Ultramarines discover a teleport station and Aethon uses it to launch an attack on the main teleport hub from whence the Word Bearers came, suicidally charging blind into the middle of the enemy base because...reasons. The Ultramarines manage to win by releasing the teleport hub's hypercoolant reservoir into the tunnels. They then establish a base there, discovering from captured Word Bearers that their enemies are in fact led by Kurtha Sedd, and Aethon sends Dardanus on a mission to release the captives into the undertunnels so they can convey his offer of an honourable death to Sedd. The plan is also to link up with the forces of Tauro Nicodemus, fighting in the next cave system over. Aethon sends a now battered Urcus back up to their original territory on patrol, where he finds all the humans who took shelter with them butchered by the Word Bearers. Whoops, forgot about those helpless humans we were supposed to be defending. Oh well, we're not those sissy Salamanders with their actually caring about human beings. We are the Ultramarines, Legion of the reversed toilet-seat insignia! (Seriously, once you've sen it you can't unsee it). Cue another random fight scene for no reason. 

Down in the depths, Dardanus and his squad are ambushed by Sedd and go down like Imperial Guardsmen attacking a daemon prince with sticks. Dardanus lives long enough to drag his mortally wounded body partway back to base, and when the Word Bearers launch a full-scale attack Aethon turns the tables and drives them back, following Dardanus's blood trail into Sedd's lair. He and Sedd have the obligatory one-on-one, which ends with Aethon's death. Urcus and handful of others only survive thanks to Tauro Nicodemus's forces showing up and blitzing the daemons Sedd unleashed, though Sedd himself escapes, ready to take centre stage in his half of the novella duology. 

The Honoured is just bad. The plot is poorly articulated, the action makes little sense, and none of what happens matters. In fairness to Rob Sanders there are some cool scenes, such as Urcus determinedly walking through the firestorm on the surface and Dardanus dragging his body along leaving a blood trail for the others to follow, but the novella blatantly serves no purpose other than to inspire gamers pitting Sedd against Aethon on the tabletop. Here's hoping The Unburdened is better. 

That's all for now Heresy fans, but check back in a week or so as I continue my review of the books depicting the Battle of Calth and the Underworld War, examining the Mark of Calth anthology and The Unburdened, second half of the Underworld War duology. See you soon!               

Angel Exterminatus

Angel Exterminatus by Graham McNeill is the twenty-third installment in the Horus Heresy series. It follows the Emperor's Children and Iron Warriors legions as they undertake a joint mission into the Eye of Terror, dogged by vengeful survivors from the Shattered Legions.

Twenty-three books into the Horus Heresy, Angel Exterminatus is the first novel to feature the Iron Warriors as major characters. Graham McNeill is the author of the 40K Iron Warriors series and he hasn't strayed far from familiar territory here, using earlier versions of many of his 40K Iron Warrior characters as protagonists. The other half of his cast of course is made up of Emperor's Children, a legion McNeill has made his own within the Heresy series. Angel Exterminatus is an excellent book and thus I want to get my gripes out of the way first: it feels like half the scenes involving Iron Warriors in this novel are just sneaky winks at McNeill's 40K Iron Warriors fans. The origins of the feud between Toramino and the other captains, Kroeger's first steps down the path of Khorne and Barban Falk's transformation into 'The Warsmith' must be fascinating for those who have read the Iron Warriors series, but for those who haven't they are strange and random elements of the story. Authors jamming the origin stories of their 40K characters into the Heresy series is one of my pet hates. That said, if Dan Abnett were to include some ancestor of Ibram Gaunt in one of his Heresy novels I'd probably wet myself with excitement, so I suppose it really depends on what you like and what you have already read.

Right, onto the good stuff. The Emperor's Children in this novel are diabolically depraved, the sub-story of an Imperial Fists captain captured and turned into a monster by Fabius Bile being particularly repulsive to read, and Graham McNeill handles the Emperor's Children side of this novel with practiced excellence. The crew of the Sisypheum, loyalists who are attempting to prevent the traitors from obtaining the devastating weapons Fulgrim tells Perturabo are hidden in the Eye of Terror, are a motley crew of vengeful Iron Hands with a mortally wounded captain they keep in stasis, accompanied by a Salamanders Apothecary and a Raven Guard commando named Nykona Sharrowkyn, who is pure awesomeness concentrated into a character. Over the course of the novel Sharrowkyn puts a bullet through Fulgrim's head, rams two swords through Fabius Bile and becomes the first person ever to kill Lucius in a duel. He is my favourite Warhammer character, period.

The biggest star of the novel, though, is Perturabo himself. The Iron Warriors primarch is usually treated as badly by the fiction as he is by the in-universe Imperium, overlooked and ignored, but here McNeill makes him into a complex character with unsuspected redeeming features. Perturabo suspects that Fulgrim is playing him from the start, and he is proven right when the traitors reach Eldar Crone World Iydris and Fulgrim reveals that there are no weapons, just the location of his ascension to daemonhood, and abandons the Iron Warriors to fight undead Eldar. An attack by the crew of the Sisypheum gives the traitors a common foe, and the novel climaxes with Fulgrim's transformation into a daemon prince and the Iron Warriors plunging into the black hole at the heart of the Eye.

Angel Exterminatus has some faults, but overall it is an excellent novel with gripping fight scenes and memorable characters. If the entire premise seems weak then action is good enough that we can forgive it, and no novel that ends with a primarch becoming a daemon prince will ever be a wasted read.

Limited-edition novella review: The Seventh Serpent            

Every now and then Black Library decide to raise revenue by releasing a Horus Heresy story as a limited-edition novella, printing a small number of copies and charging exorbitantly for each. These novellas are then given a mainstream release years later, finally making them available to the vast majority of fans. The Seventh Serpent by Graham McNeill was the ninth of these novellas to be released, and follows the crew of the Sisypheum as they join a mission to assassinate Alpharius himself. 

The Seventh Serpent continues the story of the Sisypheum crew after the events of Angel Exterminatus. Launching an attack on an Alpha Legion ship they discover that it was on its way to rendezvous with Alpharius and are saved from the attack of a second ship by the sudden arrival of none other than Shadrak Meduson, legendary warleader of the Iron Hands. Meduson and the Sisypheum crew join forces to lay an ambush for the traitor primarch on an orbital fuel siphoning plant above Eirene Septimus, using Alpha Legion armour to take the traitors by surprise. But of course this is the Alpha Legion, so nothing is as it seems. 'Alpharius' is in fact a loyalist Alpha Legion commander on the run from his traitor brethren, one of the Sisypheum crew is a disguised Alpha Legion operative and 'Shadrak Meduson' is the real Alpharius, using the loyalists as pawns in his plan to neutralise the commander. It all ends predictably in fighting and death, but what makes the climax of The Seventh Serpent memorable is the loyalists' skin of their teeth escape and the unexpected revival of Ulrach Branthan who comes back from the brink of death to command the Sisypheum once more, though as a dark and monstrous version of himself. The Seventh Serpent is an excellent novella with a complex plot and gripping action, making it one of the best examples of its format.        

Shadows of Treachery

Shadows of Treachery, edited by Nick Kyme and Christian Dunn, is the twenty-second installment in the Horus Heresy series. A mixed anthology, it contains five short stories previously released in other places and formats book-ended by two original novellas.

The Crimson Fist by John French is the first of the original novellas. Told from the first-person perspective of Alexis Polux, commander of the Imperial Fists Retribution Fleet sent to Isstvan III, it narrates the Battle of the Phall system after the Retribution Fleet is trapped by Warp storms and attacked by the Iron Warriors, led by Perturabo. The account of the fleet battle in this novella is one of the best in the Heresy series, French's writing making the action seem immediate and visceral, but the action is also tempered by character moments on Terra between Rogal Dorn and Sigismund that give the novella depth and pace. The climactic battle is gripping, the forced retreat of the Imperial Fists and the failure of the strike team sent to execute Perturabo lending real tragedy to what should have been Polux's triumph. The final twist is identical to the one from Fear to Tread, but nevertheless The Crimson Fist is an excellent novella and a great introduction to the anthology.

The Dark King by Graham McNeill is half of a duology originally published as The Horus Heresy Chapbook. It explores Konrad Curze's motivations for turning against the Imperium prior to the Heresy, kept in confinement after savagely beating Rogal Dorn when he came to chastise him for excessive bloodshed during the Cheraut compliance. Killing his guards and escaping, Curze leads the Night Lords to Nostramo and commands the destruction of his homeworld before going on the run from the Imperium. Though more a vignette than a narrative, this short story casts light on some of the most defining moments in Night Lords history.

The Lightning Tower by Dan Abnett is the other half of the duology originally published as The Horus Heresy Chapbook. It is a character study of Rogal Dorn as he prepares the Imperial Palace's defences, exploring the primarch's sadness at the necessity of converting the palace into a fortress and following his introspection as he tries to discover what it is about Horus's rebellion that truly scares him. A thoughtful piece that captures the atmosphere on Terra in the lead-up to the Siege, it overlaps with the Terran scenes in The Crimson Fist but is really just a curio when read in isolation.

The Kaban Project by Graham McNeill was originally published as bonus content in the Collected Visions Horus Heresy artbook. It provides the backstory of one of the more unusual characters in McNeill's novel Mechanicum, a sentient war-machine created by the traitor faction in defiance of the Emperor's edict against the creation of thinking machines. Following an everyday adept named Pallas Ravachol who befriends the machine, it chronicles his flight across Mars after circumstances make him a liability to the machine's powerful creators. The plot is fairly predictable, but this is made up for by the scintillating insight it provides into everyday life on the Red Planet .

Raven's Flight by Gav Thorpe was originally one the Heresy series' earliest audio-dramas, provided in print for the first time. It chronicles the events leading up the Raven Guard's escape from Isstvan V, following Commander Branne and Praefector Valerius on Deliverance and Corax and the surviving Raven Guard on Isstvan. The sections set on Isstvan are the best parts of this story, the highlight being a Raven Guard ambush on a column of Iron Warriors. The story is fairly engaging, but like The Dark King it is more of a vignette than a narrative, depicting a single important event in a Legion's history without exploring it in-depth.

Death of a Silversmith by Graham McNeill was originally published in the 2011/12 Games Day Anthology. It follows the reflections of a famous, unnamed silversmith as he lies dying on the Vengeful Spirit, thinking back over the course of his long life and the events that led to his sadistic murder. The age of the character allows for a historical perspective on the Great Crusade and the circumstances of his death reveal how early the corruption in the warrior lodges began, but I imagine many fans would have liked this story simply because it features Hastur Sejanus, a Luna Wolves character whose appearance has become something of an easter egg within the series.

Prince of Crows by Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the second original novella and the final part of the anthology. The first longer Heresy piece to feature the Night Lords, it follows First Captain Sevatar as he struggles to keep the legion alive in the wake of a devastating Dark Angels attack which leaves Konrad Curze comatose and near-death. After making some drastic changes to the Legion's command structure Sevatar implements his own plan for its future before using his long-suppressed psyker powers to delve into Curze's mind. What follows is a sequence of flashbacks that amount to Curze's origin story, adding credence rumours I once read that this novella was originally slated to be part of The Primarchs. Shit then hits the fan when the Dark Angels strike again, and Sevatar's escape plan is ruined when Curze awakens and commandeers the First Company for a suicidal attack on the Dark Angels' flagship. Sevatar ends the novella imprisoned, Curze on the run through the Invincible Reason's lower decks. If this drastic ending wasn't be enough to make Prince of Crows required reading, this is also the novella that altered fan perception of the Night Lords Legion and made Sevatar one of the most popular characters in the Heresy series. It is superb.

Limited-edition novella review: Ravenlord       

Every now and then Black Library decide to raise revenue by releasing a Horus Heresy story as a limited-edition novella, printing a small number of copies and charging exorbitantly for each. These novellas are then given a mainstream release years later, finally making them available to the vast majority of fans. Ravenlord by Gav Thorpe was the seventh of these novellas to be released, and follows the Raven Guard Legion as they fight to liberate the prison world of Carandiru from traitor control. 

Ravenlord takes up the story of the Raven Guard after the events of Deliverance Lost and Corax: Soulforge. In this novella Gav Thorpe includes the full gamut of characters he introduced in Deliverance, making it feel more like a sequel than the narrowly focused Soulforge and illustrating the inclusive, rag-tag nature of the force Corax has built as he wages his shadow war against Horus. The action begins with the freedom fighters regrouping on the newly-liberated world of Scarato, where they are shocked by the arrival of Gherith Arendi, the commander of Corax's bodyguard who was thought dead at Isstvan. It is obvious that Arendi is hiding something, but information he provides leads the Raven Guard to Carandiru. The smaller actions fought in the build-up to the main offensive on the planet perfectly illustrate the Raven Guard method of war and the ways their allies have adapted to fighting alongside them, but final battle itself raises more questions that it answers.  

The Raven Guard discover a hellish facility where captured loyalists are experimented being run by a traitor from their own legion, and that this closely echoes Corax's own experience with the Raptors is not lost on him. He confronts Arendi with his suspicions about the whole sequence of events, but after Arendi reveals the shameful secret of his escape from Isstvan Corax decides to trust him, leaving a question mark over the ending of an otherwise solid and entertaining novella.         

Deliverance Lost

Deliverance Lost by Gav Thorpe is the eighteenth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It follows the Raven Guard Legion as they escape Isstvan V and attempt to rebuild, whilst Alpha Legion infiltrators plot to bring them down from within.

The Raven Guard are my favourite Legion. My liking for them dates all the way back to 2002, when I first read about the sons of Corax in a battered second-hand edition of White Dwarf. Something about these black-armoured underdogs who struck from the shadows resonated with me. I was consequently rather disappointed by Deliverance Lost.     

Deliverance Lost is the first Heresy novel written by Gav Thorpe, best known for his 40K Dark Angels fiction. In Deliverance Lost he tackles the Raven Guard at their lowest ebb, the vast majority of their Legion destroyed in the Dropsite Massacre and the survivors divided into those who were there and those who came to rescue them. The novel starts slowly with the rescue fleet's agonisingly tense flight from the Isstvan system and then takes the Raven Guard to Terra, where Corax seeks an audience with the Emperor and the means to rebuild his Legion. Much as the action is shown from the perspective of Alpha Legion marines who have infiltrated the Raven Guard, and since they all call themselves 'Alpharius' you have to pay close attention to realise there is more than one infiltrator narrating events. The best part of the book comes when the Raven Guard are forced to navigate a complex labyrinth beneath one of Terra's mountains in order to retrieve the gene-tech that created the primarchs, a gift to Corax from the Emperor so that he can rebuild his Legion. The Raven Guard then return to Deliverance and begin using the tech to create new Space Marines even more enhanced than the old kind, a project that the Alpha Legion operatives are soon required to sabotage.

The second half of Deliverance Lost is rather lackluster, and part of the reason is Gav Thorpe's basic and at times boring writing. It was this flaw that made Deliverance Lost the first Horus Heresy book I didn't finish on my first attempt. Furthermore, the Corax Thorpe creates is rather different from the one I read about all those years ago in White Dwarf, single-mindedly pursuing the creation of new super-marines even after one of the infiltrators poisons the gene-tech with daemon blood, mutating the next generation of Raptors into hideous monsters. Guilt over this act is what is supposed to have forced Corax to flee into the Eye of Terror after the Heresy, but in Deliverance Lost he stands by the project until his commanders convince him otherwise. The mutated Raptors are inspiring characters, loyal despite being monsters and defending the Raven Guard gene-seed store from the infiltrators during the final battle, but the final battle itself is full of illogical sequences like the revelation that commander Agapito, a red-herring who is implied throughout the book to be one of the infiltrators, has actually just been hunting them down himself rather than simply telling Corax what he suspects. Another move that makes no sense is Omegon engineering the entire battle so that he can steal the gene-tech himself, the same gene-tech that he had poisoned and is now presumably useless.

Deliverance Lost is not a bad story, but it suffers from being ordinarily written and having a few plot holes. This muddies up the Raven Guard's debut into the Heresy, meaning that no matter how much I love the boys in black Deliverance Lost will never be my favourite Heresy novel.

Limited-edition novella review:  Corax: Soulforge  

Every now and then Black Library decide to raise revenue by releasing a Horus Heresy story as a limited-edition novella, printing a small number of copies and charging exorbitantly for each. These novellas are then given a mainstream release years later, finally making them available to the vast majority of fans. Corax: Soulforge by Gav Thorpe was the fourth of these novellas released, and follows the Raven Guard Legion as they seek to overthrow an alliance between Word Bearers and traitor Mechanicum on Constanix II. 

Corax: Soulforge continues the story of the Raven Guard where Deliverance Lost leaves off, putting them on the offensive for the first time as they take the fight to the traitors across the stars. Corax: Soulforge recounts just one of their battles, an action on the backwater Forge-world of Constanix II where a Word Bearers warband fleeing from Calth have entered into an alliance with the ruling Magos and by combining their Warp-sorcery with Mechanicum technology are creating the first Defilers. 

The action begins on a stricken Word Bearers vessel, where Agapito endangers the mission by hunting down Word Bearers instead of following orders and the brutalised Navigator agrees to help the Raven Guard for freeing her from her tormentors. She takes the ship to Constanix II, where Corax conveniently overhears a coven of tech-adepts providing exposition about their ruling Magos having sided with the traitors. Corax rallies their forces to his cause and takes over the city-barge Atlas, which he then uses to directly attack Constanix's capital Iapetus. The final battle sees Agapito manage to let go of his revenge and follow orders that help the Raven Guard win the day, whilst Corax kills the traitor Magos and the Word Bearers' leading sorcerer. The action is engaging and the outcome satisfying, but overall the final battle is rushed and bits are left out to fit the story into the novella page-count. Corax: Soulforge is a good novella, but I would recommend it only to Raven Guard fans or die-hard completionists.  

Legion

Legion by Dan Abnett is the seventh installment in the Horus Heresy series. Set on the desert planet Nurth, it follows two officers of the Imperial Army who become embroiled in the Alpha Legion's secret operations.

Dan Abnett never writes anything ordinary. Tell him he can write a book about an Imperial compliance action and he'll pit his protagonists against Chaos worshiping heathens that ride giant reptiles. Tell him he's got free reign to explain why the Alpha Legion chose to side with Horus and he'll invent a whole alien Cabal who are trying to defeat Chaos by engineering the extinction of humanity. Let him write a Heresy book at all and you'll get something like Legion: original, gripping, and containing secrets that profoundly alter the canon of the Warhammer universe.

Legion is the first (and so far, only) Heresy book to foreground the Imperial Army, the billions of fighting men and women organised into thousands of different regiments that fought alongside the Space Marine Legions in the Great Crusade. In Legion the most prominent regiment is the Geno Two-Five Chiliad, one of the hundred regiments from Old Terra allowed to continue under the Emperor's rule, and its two main characters are Chiliad hetmen (senior captains) Peto Soneka and Hurtado Bronzi, both of whom by twists of fate become covert operatives working for the Alpha Legion. Dan Abnett writes ordinary fighting men well, as testified by the immense success of his mind-blowingly fantastic 40K Imperial Guard series Gaunt's Ghosts, but in Legion he has less room to play and Soneka and Bronzi go unsupported by the plethora of minor characters that make Gaunt's Ghosts Black Library's best 40K series.

The other Imperial force focused on in Legion is Alpha Legion themselves, on Nurth to help the Imperial Army defeat the savage Nurthene. We only ever see them from an outsider's perspective, however, a deliberate approach that leaves their inner workings as inscrutable as you would expect for a legion of espionage agents. The Alpha Legion are the masters of secrets but in this book they they themselves are being manipulated, by the Cabal, Warhammer's version of the Illuminati, who have foreseen the galaxy's destruction by Chaos unless Horus wins the impending civil war. The Cabal's agent on Nurth is John Grammaticus, a universe-weary human psyker who poses as an Imperial Army intelligence agent in order to obtain the Alpha Legion's cooperation, but his mission is compromised when the real Army intelligence starts to pursue him and soon his fate becomes wound up with Soneka's. There are layers upon layers of deception and confusion within this book, and in places it becomes difficult to keep straight who everyone is suspicious of and why. The Cabal do eventually get an audience with the Alpha Legion, but only after the Nurthene commit cultural suicide with the activation of a doomsday device that brings the Imperial compliance effort to a catastrophic end.

Legion is essentially a spy vs spy tale set during the lead-up to the Heresy. The setting is interesting and the action is intense, but the plot is convoluted and hard to follow. It is a relief when everything finally comes together at the end and the Cabal reveal the future of the galaxy to the Alpha Legion, leading them to side with Horus in the imminent war while almost everyone else is killed. Legion is an intriguing and masterfully written book, but it is not vital to the plot of the overall series.  
 

Betrayer

Betrayer by Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the twenty-fourth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It documents the Shadow Crusade, following the World Eaters and Word Bearers legions as they invade the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar.

Betrayer is Aaron Dembski-Bowden's first Heresy novel since The First Heretic and here Argel Tal returns, prosecuting the Shadow Crusade at Lorgar's right hand. This time, however, Tal is not the main character. That distinction goes to Kharn, Captain of the World Eaters Eighth Assault Company and equerry to primarch Angron. Kharn is infamous in the fortieth millenium as an unstoppable Chaos beserker and champion of the Blood God Khorne, but in Betrayer we see him ten thousand years earlier, having turned against the Imperium with the rest of his legion but not yet fallen into blood-soaked madness. In fact, the Kharn Dembski-Bowden writes is the most human of the World Eaters, restrained and clear-thinking when not lost to the Butcher's Nails and concerned by the degeneration of his primarch and legion. His friendship with Argel Tal also serves to humanise both characters, making likeable, complex protagonists out of a butchering marauder and a Chaos champion sharing his soul with a daemon.

Dembski-Bowden also creates a batch of engaging secondary characters for Betrayer, from Lhorke, the Contemptor Dreadnaught who was once Legion Master when the World Eaters were still the War Hounds, to Lotara Sarrin, the fearless commander of the World Eaters' flagship Conqueror who is unafraid to shoot a Space Marine captain in the head for dereliction of duty. Dembski-Bowden is a genius at crafting engaging and, simply put, cool characters; he is to character creation what Dan Abnett is to world-building. The secondary characters in Betrayer help push the action along and deepen the plot, and this is fortunate because if there is one area in which Betrayer falls down, it is plot. It doesn't really have one.

The first half of Betrayer is taken up entirely by the Battle of Armatura, a heavily-defended Ultramarines world. The action is relentless and varied, making this part of the book an absorbing read, but the battle only seems to occur as a way to facilitate a few really cool scenes rather than to serve a larger purpose in the story. Angron emerging from the rubble of a fallen building to brace against a descending Titan leg about to squish Lorgar into paste is an unforgettable moment, but overall the first half of the book contains little plot development. The action slows down somewhat after this to allow us more time with the characters, but by the time the traitors reach Angron's previously unknown homeworld Nuceria little more has happened than Cyrene Valantion's resurrection, Kharn requisitioning Angron's old axe and Erebus manipulating Argel Tal with hints of a prophecy. The climactic battle on Nuceria brings the story to an apocalyptic finale with a duel between primarchs and the transformation of Angron into a daemon prince, but is underscored by the death of a excellent character as Erebus murders Argel Tal to further the Chaos Gods' agenda. As if we didn't hate him enough already.

Overall Betrayer is an excellent read, gripping and pulse-pounding with some of strongest characters ever written for the traitor legions. By the end we are left feeling that a lot of things have happened, but unfortunately there isn't much sense that those things mattered. Betrayer suffers a little bit from middle-of-the-trilogy syndrome, but like The Two Towers or The Empire Strikes Back it remains an excellent story.