With Horus's allegiance now sworn to Chaos but not yet revealed to the galaxy, the Warmaster begins putting his plans into action. When rebellion is discovered on the world of Isstvan III he is given a perfect opportunity. Gathering those legions already secretly sworn to his cause, Horus deploys an assault force made up of members of the four legions whose loyalty to the Emperor their primarchs have deemed too strong. When the loyalist Sons of Horus, Emperor's Children, World Eaters and Death Guard deploy on Isstvan III they have no idea that soon they will be battling but their former brothers-in-arms in the first, furious battle of the Horus Heresy.
While the previous two novels in the trilogy focused on the Sons of Horus, Galaxy in Flames has a broader scope. We spend as much time with Captains Saul Tarvitz and Lucius of the Emperor's Children (who we first met in Horus Rising) as we do with Loken and Torgaddon, and Nathaniel Garro gets his introduction in this book as well. Human remembrancers Kyril Sindermann and Mersadie Oliton have their own tense secondary plot as they go into hiding within the Vengeful Spirit as the protectors of the comatose Euphrati Keeler, who now has a cult following among the growing number of Lectitio Divinatatus faithful who believe she is a saint. Ben Counter's writing is crisp and well-paced in this novel, the action engaging from the first pages until the apocalyptic final battle scenes. Partly as a consequence of this novel's split focus Counter doesn't portray the characters as deeply as the previous novels, most notably Loken and Torgaddon who feel like little more than names, but given the amount of character development they've already received this doesn't matter too much and it doesn't interfere with the emotional stakes of the trilogy's final confrontations.
Unfortunately this is not a story where the good guys win. Warned of Horus's imminent virus-strike thanks to Tarvitz's heroism and Garro's faith, the loyalists make it into shelter and fight a protracted last stand amidst the ruins of the Choral City. Saul Tarvitz emerges as a prodigal leader who denies the enemy in order to buy time for Garro to bring a warning to the Emperor, but this is too much for Lucius who cannot handle his friend getting all the glory and sells out the loyalists for a place amongst his traitor kin. Their confrontation ends inconclusively with Lucius fleeing like the coward he is, and Tarvitz and the surviving loyalists go down in a blaze of glory as Horus finally loses patience and bombs the city from orbit. Absent from this last stand are Torgaddon and Loken, who go to confront their traitor Mournival 'brothers', Ezekyle Abaddon and Little Horus Aximand. In the climactic final fight of the trilogy our heroes become martyrs, Aximand's blade parting Torgaddon's head from his shoulders and Loken crushed beneath rubble as the building is brought down on top of him. The only bright note in the final chapters of this novel is the escape of Sindermann, Mersadie and the saint, who win the heart of Iacton Qruze and with his help escape to Garro's ship, leaving Ignace Karkasy's murderer dead on the hangar floor. Their's and Garro's story is continued in the next book in the series, James Swallow's The Flight of the Eisenstein.
Galaxy in Flames is a superb book, containing the highest emotional stakes and most climactic battle scene in the series until Dan Abnett's Know No Fear sixteen books later. It is a fitting end to the dramatic epic that is the Horus Heresy's opening trilogy.
If you haven't already, check out my reviews for the first two novels in the trilogy, Horus Rising and False Gods. To continue following the Sons of Horus as they wage war against the Imperium go to my review of Graham McNeill's Vengeful Spirit, but it is set a long way ahead so beware of spoilers.
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