The First Heretic

The First Heretic by Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the fourteenth installment in the Horus Heresy series. Spanning almost half a century, it chronicles the galaxy-shaking events that lead to the Word Bearers Legion embracing Chaos. Dembski-Bowden's debut Heresy novel, it became the third novel in the series to make the New York Times bestsellers list.

As highlighted in previous posts, the Horus Heresy series has its share of bad novels. What makes it a wildly successful franchise worth dedicating a blog to is novels like The First Heretic. These novels don't just chronicle certain events in the war, they take their characters on transformative journeys through crucibles of change and betrayal and leave us sympathising with their protagonists no matter their choices or allegiance. The First Heretic does all of this, as well as illuminating very beginnings of the Heresy.

The journey of Argel Tal, Captain of the Seventh Assault Company, Serrated Sun Chapter, begins in the ashes of Monarchia, a perfect city taught by the Word Bearers to worship the Emperor and destroyed by the Ultramarines for the selfsame blasphemy. This humiliation is the catalyst for the legion's primarch Lorgar to set out on a quest for new gods to worship, and despite all the atrocities the legion will later commit the sense that the Imperium brought its own doom upon itself echoes throughout this origin tale of the civil war. This is a story of the Word Bearers, the generic bad guys in so much of Black Library's fiction, but where Dembski-Bowden excels in telling this story is in creating characters that are likeable and whose choices we sympathise with. Lorgar's actions damn the entire Imperium, but are driven by feelings of betrayal and a simple desire for the truth. Argel Tal is a soldier with a conscience who damns himself in the name of a greater cause. His journey into the Eye of Terror is the passage that defines the book, the events he and his sergeants witness and the secrets they allude to sheer gold for any Heresy fan. Guided by the lies of the daemon Ingethel the Word Bearers turn against the Emperor, and in that moment it seems perfectly right that they do so. Such are the circumstances of their fall to Chaos that was do not lose sympathy for them even as Argel Tal and his men come to share their bodies with daemons that possess them.

After decades of keeping the truth hidden the Word Bearers finally reveal their true allegiance in the great betrayal at Isstvan V. By this time nearly half a century has passed since the Word Bearers were set on the path to Chaos by the destruction of Monarchia, and for the first time we see that the heresy is a tragedy for the traitors as well when Argel Tal thinks back on how far he has come since he was a little boy chosen by Erebus to join the legion and silently asks his long-dead human family for forgiveness, before ordering the Word Bearers to open fire. In the apocalyptic fury of the Dropsite Massacre Argel Tal almost meets his death, but in the end it is his human companion, a blind girl named Cyrene he rescued from Monarchia, who meets her end at the sword of a vengeful Custodian. The Gal Vorbak's final confrontation with the fleeing Custodes ends the book in the tone it has held throughout, equal parts violence and tragedy.

The First Heretic is the origin story of the heresy, which by itself makes it an essential read for fans of the series, but on top of this it is superbly written in its scope and depth. It is no wonder Aaron Dembski-Bowden has become one of Black Library's most popular authors.

The story of Argel Tal, Lorgar and the Word Bearers continues in Betrayer.

Limited-edition novella review: Aurelian

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. Aurelian by Aaron Dembski-Bowden was the second of these novellas released, and follows Word Bearers primarch Lorgar Aurelian as he journeys into the Eye of Terror and stares into the heart of Chaos. 

Lorgar Aurelian was never a badass primarch. He was leader of a shamed legion, the only one among his brothers who didn't want to be a warrior. All of that changed with his fall to Chaos, and this novella details just that. Journeying into the Eye of Terror with the daemon Ingethel as his guide, Lorgar walks the surface of Eldar worlds scoured lifeless by the greatest cataclysm the galaxy has ever known and comes to embrace the Chaos Pantheon that has had its eye on his since creation. In the ruins of an Eldar Craftworld he slays a dying avatar of Kaela Mensha Khaine. In the halls to the Imperial Palace he witnesses the final battle of the war he will unleash upon the galaxy. On the sands of a dead world he faces the mightiest Bloodthirster of Khorne and crushes its skull with his mace. Aurelian is pure and simple awesome from beginning to end, and though we don't see the actual moment Lorgar turns to Chaos, we see more than enough to know that he will be a force to be reckoned with in stories to come.