Vulkan Lives

Vulkan Lives by Nick Kyme is the twenty-sixth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It explores the fate of the Salamanders' primarch Vulkan after the Dropsite Massacre as a prisoner of his depraved brother Konrad Curze, and follows Cabal agent John Grammaticus as he seeks to keep a powerful weapon from the clutches of the Word Bearers with the aid of Shattered Legion survivors.

When the question of worst book in the Heresy series arises, some names are thrown out by rote: Battle for the Abyss, Descent of Angels. Though more recently published, Vulkan Lives commits levels of sin similar to these novels. The fascination of at long last discovering what happened to Vulkan by finding out he was taken prisoner by Konrad Curze is soon eclipsed by the grueling morbidity of being inside his head as he is subjected to horrific torture after horrific torture, and it becomes easy to wonder if reading these passages is another torment devised by Curze as a way of testing reader endurance. Crowning it all is the paradigm-shifting revelation that Vulkan is immortal. The concept of an immortal primarch is ridiculously OP and yet Vulkan spends most of the novel dying, making its title ironic at best. His sudden rescue by Corax and an elite team of Raven Guard is the best part of the novel, but the whole thing turns out to be a vision planted in Vulkan's head by Curze. With this plotline Nick Kyme knocks the Heresy series off-path and into the realms of reader bewilderment, killing any hope of the book's redemption with a fork to the heart.

Thankfully, there's more to this book than torture scenes. Frequent flashbacks take us to Kharaatan, a world brought to compliance by the Salamanders and Night Lords during the Great Crusade, and to Isstvan V, where Vulkan and his Pyre Guard vent their wrath against the traitors in the apocalyptic war-zone. A second major plot revolves around John Grammaticus, agent of the Cabal, last seen quite a while ago in Dan Abnett's Legion. He has come to the planet Traoris to recover a fulgurite, a spear of solidified lightning once cast by the Emperor, but the Word Bearers are after it too and his only hope lies with a group of Dropsite Massacre survivors led by Artellus Numeon, captain of the Pyre Guard, who have come to Traoris to assassinate the Word Bearers' leader. Neither side's plans work out, and by the end the survivors are seemingly dead to the last man. The action scenes from this plot are engaging but the characters are mostly two-dimensional, the only exceptions being the universe-weary Grammaticus and the surprisingly honourable Word Bearer huntsman Barthusa Narek. Nick Kyme's writing is flat throughout, and combined with the bleak story it makes Vulkan Lives a less than enjoyable experience for readers. Vulkan's final fight with the Night Haunter and escape from his ship almost end the book on an uplifting note, but then it finishes with an inexplicable scene of Vulkan plummeting through an atmosphere and dying, again. Vulkan Lives is a strong contender for the title of worst book in the Heresy series.

Limited-edition novella review: Promethean Sun 

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. Promethean Sun by Nick Kyme was the first of these novellas to be released, and follows the Salamanders Legion as they bring compliance to a feral world ruled by Eldar during the Great Crusade.

Promethean Sun drops readers straight into the action as the Salamanders fight dinosaur-riding Eldar in the midst of a steaming jungle. The battle scenes are intense and well-paced and don't leave much room for character development, but this is offset by flashbacks to Vulkan's time on Nocturne before the revelation of his true identity and the battles of his people against the dusk-wraiths. The pace doesn't falter as the Salamanders fight deeper into the jungle, destroying an alien node before learning of a greater one that it takes the combined forces of the Salamanders and Iron Hands to bring down. Vulkan in this novella is not the primarch we know, disconnected from his Legion and doubting the value of his compassion, but after his defeat of the leading Farseer aboard a monstrous pterodactyl he has made peace with himself and his followers enough to envision a new future for the planet. Promethean Sun fits into its shorter length without feeling rushed or incomplete and is filled with action from cover to cover, making it worth the effort to acquire and read.

Prospero Burns

Prospero Burns by Dan Abnett is the fifteenth installment in the Horus Heresy series. Released as the second part of a duology, it follows up on Graham McNeill's A Thousand Sons by showing the invasion of Prospero from the perspective of the Space Wolves, but is told through the eyes of human storyteller Kasper Ansbach Hawser.

When Black Library decided to produce two books centering on the Battle of Prospero, one each from the perspective of the two Legions involved, they approached their two highest-profile authors to write them: Dan Abnett and Graham McNeill. Abnett is on record as saying he's not a big fan of the Space Wolves and so he was originally slated to pen the Thousand Sons' side of the story, but fate intervened and Graham McNeill took the reins of the Fifteenth Legion instead. The result was the superb A Thousand Sons, one of my personal favourites and the first Heresy novel to make the New York Times bestsellers list, but as both a Dan Abnett and a Thousand Sons megafan I can't help but salivate over what might have been...    

Prospero Burns was written by an author less than in love with its core Legion, but ironically Abnett's ambivalence translates into a beneficial deepening of the Space Wolves' culture. Abnett endows the otherwise two-dimensional Legion with a greater sense of self-awareness than they have been granted before, and his choice to ground the novel in a human perspective, seemingly driven by a dislike for the Astartes themselves, allows them plenty of chances to explain their subtler side to the protagonist, though those who come to the novel hankering for some barbarians in power armour ripping out alien spines won't be disappointed. Kasper Ansbach Hawser arrives on Fenris an old man at the end of his career, seeking out the Space Wolves out of academic curiosity, and is promptly shot down. The novel's opening passages as the human tribes of Fenris battle over Hawser's fate are some of the best in the book, and the arrival of the story's first Space Marine sprinting across a frozen ocean at the head of a storm has to go down as one of the best character introductions in Heresy history.

As the rest of the story pans out Hawser joins the Space Wolves as a skjald, memorising and reciting their stories as he accompanies them on the Great Crusade. Hawser's past is given a lot of attention through frequent flashbacks; the novel is just as much about him as it is about the Space Wolves, and it is more about either than it is about the Battle of Prospero. Abnett's prose is masterful, rich in detail and sensation without ever seeming heavy or slow, but the plot revolves around things immaterial much more than your standard Heresy novel as it slowly comes to light that the Wolves believe Hawser is psychically imprinted spy sent by the Thousand Sons. The hand of Chaos in the suspicions between the Legions is only revealed at the very end, and the vast majority of the Battle of Prospero is skipped in favour of resolving this plot thread. The novel ends on a typically ambiguous but powerful note, closing a rich but left-of-field chapter in the Heresy series.

Fear to Tread

Fear to Tread by James Swallow is the twenty-first installment in the Horus Heresy series. It follows the Blood Angels Legion as they fall into a trap set by Warmaster Horus and find themselves fighting for their survival against daemons without and within in the blighted Signus Cluster.

The novel opens slowly as Swallow takes his time introducing each of the main characters and gathering them together, and the beginning feels like it could have been shorter. The prologue reveals that in the thirtieth millennium the Red Thirst is a dark secret among the Blood Angels that only Sanguinius and his closest advisers know of, a secret that Horus manages to discover and swears to keep. In the story proper, after Horus has fallen to Chaos, he uses the promise of a cure to lure Sanguinius and his Legion into the Signus Cluster, where the human population has been wiped out by daemons and the entire system turned into an enormous trap. The action picks up as the Blood Angels explore Signus, encountering such disturbing phenomena as the eight-pointed star forming in the crust of a burned planet and a living city that attacks the Astartes sent to investigate it. Hard-to-forget images of fiery canyons forming the Chaos sigil in the face of a planet, streets folding over on themselves to crush Space Marines and mountains hurled into space as projectiles mark the Blood Angel's progression through the system, but the marines themselves remain frustratingly ignorant of the nature of the threat until the last possible moment. The Blood Angels' unwillingness to recognise their attackers as daemons and ignorance of the Red Thirst mark this out as a Heresy story rather than a 40K one, but both beliefs are shattered by the novel's end as the Legion undergo a profound change on the hellish plains of Signus Prime.

One of the more interesting facets of this story is the disunity between the factions of traitors working against the Blood Angels. Erebus and the Slaaneshi daemon Kyriss have painstakingly set things up so that Sanguinius will fall to Chaos, but Horus sees Sanguinius as a potential threat to his leadership and colludes with the Bloodthirster Ka'Bandha to kill him instead. Thankfully for the loyalists neither of these things happen. The large amounts of set-up pay off in the final quarter of the novel, which is solid battle scenes as the Blood Angels succumb to the Red Thirst and slaughter an army of daemons, broken up slightly by one Librarian's journey into his comatose primarch's mind during which he, and we readers, are treated to glimpses of the future as it could possibly play out for Sanguinius. The best scene in a novel filled with great scenes comes when Sanguinius recovers and engages Ka'Bandha in single combat, tearing the Bloodthirster's wing off with the line 'only angels may fly' before casting the daemon into a pit of fire.

Fear to Tread is not easy going; it takes its time setting up then pays off in one of the longest most brutal battle scenes in the entire series. The novel has its problems, but they are outweighed by spectacular imagery, strong themes and an epic climax. Fear to Tread earned the 13th spot upon the New York Times bestseller's list upon its release and is an excellent contribution to the Heresy series.      

Fallen Angels

Fallen Angels by Mike Lee is the eleventh installment in the Horus Heresy series and the sequel to Descent of Angels. It follows two storylines involving the Dark Angels Legion, one on the forge-world Diamat as Lion El'Jonson learns of the heresy and attempts to prevent Horus's forces from obtaining powerful weapons, and another on Caliban as the Dark Angels garrison led by Luther face a rebellion among the populace and learn a dark secret about their homeworld.

Breaking this novel into two plotlines worked well. Suspense is maintained throughout as the setting alternates on a chapter-by-chapter basis, the high points of the Caliban plotline counteracting the slower phases of the Diamat story and vice versa. Zahariel and Nemiel provide strong and distinct viewpoints for their relative narratives and provide a sense of continuity for those who have read Descent of Angels. Unlike Descent of Angels, Fallen Angels is indisputably a Horus Heresy story, showing us the Lion's early reaction to the news of Horus's betrayal. The battle on Diamat isn't jaw-droppingly epic or vast in ramifications like the Dropsite Massacre, Calth or Tallarn, (the Dark Angels spend most of their time owning rebel humans and only fight traitor Astartes at the very end), but its level of action counteracts the slow build of the Caliban story and there's still plenty of betrayal and tragedy to go round, not in the least at the battle's end when the Lion's own hubris renders the heroic actions of his strike team entirely pointless.

The battle on Diamat is relatively straightforward, but the same cannot be said for events on Caliban where an entire manufacturing plant's workforce goes missing in the midst of a highly-organised uprising and the investigating Astartes uncover a twisted ritual designed to unleash the dark taint at the core of the planet. Mike Lee's gut-twistingly horrid depictions of humans reduced to grub-like incubators for parasitic worms, kept warm by a pile of corpses and guarded by the queen worm, make the battle beneath Sigma Five-One-Seven the most visceral and memorable part of the novel. The revelation that the Terran sorcerers who engineered the ritual were not acting for the reasons Luther assumes throws the entire plotline into a new light, but is easy to miss in the novel's final pages as Zahariel awakens from his coma a changed marine. By its end the Caliban plotline is far more engaging and significant than the events on Diamat, and those paying attention will find within it the revelation of Cypher's identity.

Fallen Angels is an improvement on its predecessor and a solid entry into the annals of the Horus Heresy, but it came around at a point just before the series made it big and so tends to get overlooked. The Lion's Angels have featured prominently in the rest of the series and their story continues in The Primarchs anthology and The Unremembered Empire, but the series does not return to Luther and the garrison on Caliban until Angels of Caliban. Thankfully, it was worth the wait.               

Descent of Angels

Descent of Angels by Mitchell Scanlon is the sixth installment in the Horus Heresy series. Published while the series was still finding its feet, it departed from the series' barely-established style by going back hundreds of years to the beginning of the Great Crusade to show us the formation of the Dark Angels Legion. Indeed, despite being a Horus Heresy novel Descent of Angels doesn't touch on the heresy at all. It is relevant to the overall series only because it shows us the beginning of the divide that will one day tear the Dark Angels Legion in two and make them the hooded, brooding figures of vengeance we know from 40K.

The main protagonist of the novel is Zahariel, a youth from the planet Caliban where knightly orders defend the people from the predations of Great Beasts. Zahariel joins The Order, Caliban's foremost knightly organisation, and trains as a knight-aspirant along with his cousin Nemiel. If this is sounding less like military science-fiction and more like high fantasy it only goes to show how different this novel is from the rest of the series. Life on pre-Imperial Caliban seems to have been lifted directly from the pages of 80s genre fiction and the only hint of this story's place in the world of 30K is the presence of Lion El'Jonson, the Order's superhuman commander who along with his second-in-command Luther coordinates a planet-wide campaign to exterminate the Great Beasts and free Caliban from their threat.

When a Great Beast takes the life of Zahariel's mentor Amadis our hero vows revenge and hunts the creature down, unlocking in the life-or-death struggle his latent psyker powers. These make him a person of interest when, two-thirds of the way through the book, the Imperium arrives on Caliban and the First Legion Astartes discover Jonson their gene-father. Caliban rapidly modernises and the novel switches from high fantasy to science fiction, finally taking us to the stars with the newly founded Dark Angels Legion. The final segment of the novel follows the Dark Angels including Zahariel and Nemiel as they oversee the transition of a human world named Sarosh into the Imperium. That the Saroshi are planning treachery is obvious and the climactic confrontation with a Chaos daemon inevitable.

Descent of Angels is an interesting story that takes in the grand sweep of Caliban's history both before and after the coming of the Imperium, but the changes of style within the novel and its dubious relevance to the overall series have left it one of the Heresy's least-regarded installments. For me the most compelling scene was when Zahariel wandered into an area of corrupted woodland and encountered the Watchers in the Dark, one of the most curious facets of the Dark Angels' mysterious lore. The Dark Angels are a faction made deliberately mysterious for the point of being mysterious by the loremasters of Games Workshop, and this novel manages to explain their history while still revealing very little about them; the Lion's decision to banish Luther and a chunk of his Legion back to Caliban remains as arbitrary and confounding as ever. This novel seems like a missed step in the triumphal march of the Heresy series, but twenty-six books later the series is still going from strength to strength so despite this little stumble the Heresy series, unlike the banished Dark Angels, has not fallen.

The story of the Dark Angels continues into the Heresy itself in Mike Lee's sequel Fallen Angels.