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.