The Burden of Loyalty

The Burden of Loyalty, edited by Laurie Goulding, is the forty-eighth installment in the Horus Heresy series. An anthology, it collects six short stories and two novellas previously published elsewhere.

I'd like to say first that The Burden of Loyalty is quite a good anthology. I enjoyed all of the short stories to varying degrees, skipping the novellas which I have read (and reviewed) before. The Thirteenth Wolf  was a fun inter-dimensional game of hide-and-seek between Space Wolves and Thousand Sons, Into Exile was a moderately interesting look at Arkan Land's flight from Mars, Ordo Sinister and The Heart of the Pharos examined little explored, more esoteric aspects of the universe, The Binary Succession was a surprisingly gripping political drama and Perpetual was a delicious sliver of Dan Abnett goodness.    

That said, there's really not a lot to discuss about this one. It feels like this book was thrown together for the sake of creating a home for Cybernetica and Wolf King, the last two previously limited-edition novellas not already republished or slated for other, more thematic anthologies. The six short stories seem like they were chosen at random and thrown in to bring the page count high enough that this book could be published as a full anthology. There's no overriding theme that holds everything together; more than any other book, The Burden of Loyalty feels like nothing more than the inevitable consequence of Black Library's drive to cram every piece of Horus Heresy material into the numbered series.

Which I'm fine with. I just hope they see the irony in charging as much for this as for a new novel, knowing die-hard collectors like me will buy it on principle, and calling it The Burden of Loyalty.