The Outcast Dead

The Outcast Dead by Graham McNeill is the seventeenth installment in the Horus Heresy series. Set entirely on Terra, it follows the ordeals of astropath Kai Zulane after he becomes privy to a secret that could alter the fate of the war. Hunted by Imperial forces, he falls in with an unlikely band of protectors: a group of condemned Space Marines dubbed 'the Outcast Dead'.

The Outcast Dead breaks the mould of the Heresy series in several ways. Firstly, its main viewpoint character is not a Space Marine or a primarch but a lowly Imperial servant thrust by fate into events beyond his control. Secondly, it features no pitched battles or fleet clashes, but rather a prison escape and hunt through the slums of the Petitioner's City. Thirdly, it is set entirely on Terra in districts in and around the Imperial Palace, providing a fascinating look at life in the Imperial capital during wartime. Lastly, it contains a massive continuity error.

The Outcast Dead opens with the arrival of Kai Zulane in the City of Sight, home of Terra's many and varied astropaths, but the plot itself begins before this with the off-page loss of the Argo, an Ultramarines vessel to which Kai was attached, to daemons of the Warp. One of just two survivors, Kai is left psychologically damaged by the trauma and is sent back to the City of Sight for retraining. The first part of the novel introduces various secondary characters over the course of Kai's rehabilitation until the action is triggered by Magnus the Red's hubristic breaching of the Imperial Palace's psychic shields in an attempt to warn the Emperor that Horus has fallen to Chaos. Graham McNeill is not above using up more than a hundred pages with leisurely introductions of his characters and themes, and while it worked in A Thousand Sons in this novel it simply wastes words. The characters introduced in the first section are the novel's least interesting, and the story would have been better served with an earlier introduction to the Outcast Dead. Poor pacing, however, takes a backseat to the novel's enormous continuity error.

In the events of the Horus Heresy, Magnus the Red broke the Edict of Nikaea banning psyker powers in order to intervene in Horus's fall to Chaos, and when this failed he broke the Edict a second time in order to warn the Emperor. Unfortunately his breaching of the Imperial Palace's psychic shields badly damaged the warp-portal connected to the Golden Throne, forcing the Emperor to spend the rest of the war holding back tidal waves of daemons and judge Magnus a traitor. He sends the Space Wolves to capture Magnus, but Horus uses his influence as Warmaster to alter Leman Russ's orders and the Space Wolves invade Prospero instead. In The Outcast Dead, however, word of the Dropsite Massacre on Isstvan V has already reached Terra when Magnus breaks in, meaning the entire Imperium is already painfully aware of Horus's betrayal and Magnus's warning is totally irrelevant. This completely contradicts the established timeline in which Magnus barely escapes Leman Russ's attack and is forced to side with Horus after the Dropsite Massacre. The Outcast Dead punches the series' continuity in the face, and this is its greatest flaw.

Thankfully things pick up in part two. As a repercussion of Magnus's psychic breaching a vision of how the heresy will end becomes lodged in Kai Zulane's mind. Servants of the Imperium perform invasive psychic interrogation in order to extract it, but the vision is hidden within Kai's guilt over the fate of the Argo and cannot be reached until he resolves his own feelings. The Outcast Dead, seven Space Marines from the Crusader Host imprisoned because of their parent legions' treachery, break out of a high-security prison and led by Atharva of the Thousand Sons rescue Kai. They then go on the run in the Petitioner's City, a slum that abuts the Imperial Palace, where a kill-team of Imperial hunters chase them down. The Outcast Dead's flight eventually brings their story together with that of the Argo's other survivor, its Navigator Roxanne, who is able to assuage Kai's guilt even as Imperial forces attack. All of the Outcast Dead bar one are killed, and Kai finally witnesses the vision stored in his mind and conveys it to the Emperor before taking his own life to prevent the Imperium from falling into despair over the knowledge that the Emperor will be killed in the final battle.

Despite some glaring flaws The Outcast Dead is an excellent novel. There was not enough space here to describe the gripping characters of the Outcast Dead or detail the sumptuous secondary plots that reveal hidden gems about the 30K universe. You may simply have to go read The Outcast Dead and find out for yourself.