Shadows of Treachery

Shadows of Treachery, edited by Nick Kyme and Christian Dunn, is the twenty-second installment in the Horus Heresy series. A mixed anthology, it contains five short stories previously released in other places and formats book-ended by two original novellas.

The Crimson Fist by John French is the first of the original novellas. Told from the first-person perspective of Alexis Polux, commander of the Imperial Fists Retribution Fleet sent to Isstvan III, it narrates the Battle of the Phall system after the Retribution Fleet is trapped by Warp storms and attacked by the Iron Warriors, led by Perturabo. The account of the fleet battle in this novella is one of the best in the Heresy series, French's writing making the action seem immediate and visceral, but the action is also tempered by character moments on Terra between Rogal Dorn and Sigismund that give the novella depth and pace. The climactic battle is gripping, the forced retreat of the Imperial Fists and the failure of the strike team sent to execute Perturabo lending real tragedy to what should have been Polux's triumph. The final twist is identical to the one from Fear to Tread, but nevertheless The Crimson Fist is an excellent novella and a great introduction to the anthology.

The Dark King by Graham McNeill is half of a duology originally published as The Horus Heresy Chapbook. It explores Konrad Curze's motivations for turning against the Imperium prior to the Heresy, kept in confinement after savagely beating Rogal Dorn when he came to chastise him for excessive bloodshed during the Cheraut compliance. Killing his guards and escaping, Curze leads the Night Lords to Nostramo and commands the destruction of his homeworld before going on the run from the Imperium. Though more a vignette than a narrative, this short story casts light on some of the most defining moments in Night Lords history.

The Lightning Tower by Dan Abnett is the other half of the duology originally published as The Horus Heresy Chapbook. It is a character study of Rogal Dorn as he prepares the Imperial Palace's defences, exploring the primarch's sadness at the necessity of converting the palace into a fortress and following his introspection as he tries to discover what it is about Horus's rebellion that truly scares him. A thoughtful piece that captures the atmosphere on Terra in the lead-up to the Siege, it overlaps with the Terran scenes in The Crimson Fist but is really just a curio when read in isolation.

The Kaban Project by Graham McNeill was originally published as bonus content in the Collected Visions Horus Heresy artbook. It provides the backstory of one of the more unusual characters in McNeill's novel Mechanicum, a sentient war-machine created by the traitor faction in defiance of the Emperor's edict against the creation of thinking machines. Following an everyday adept named Pallas Ravachol who befriends the machine, it chronicles his flight across Mars after circumstances make him a liability to the machine's powerful creators. The plot is fairly predictable, but this is made up for by the scintillating insight it provides into everyday life on the Red Planet .

Raven's Flight by Gav Thorpe was originally one the Heresy series' earliest audio-dramas, provided in print for the first time. It chronicles the events leading up the Raven Guard's escape from Isstvan V, following Commander Branne and Praefector Valerius on Deliverance and Corax and the surviving Raven Guard on Isstvan. The sections set on Isstvan are the best parts of this story, the highlight being a Raven Guard ambush on a column of Iron Warriors. The story is fairly engaging, but like The Dark King it is more of a vignette than a narrative, depicting a single important event in a Legion's history without exploring it in-depth.

Death of a Silversmith by Graham McNeill was originally published in the 2011/12 Games Day Anthology. It follows the reflections of a famous, unnamed silversmith as he lies dying on the Vengeful Spirit, thinking back over the course of his long life and the events that led to his sadistic murder. The age of the character allows for a historical perspective on the Great Crusade and the circumstances of his death reveal how early the corruption in the warrior lodges began, but I imagine many fans would have liked this story simply because it features Hastur Sejanus, a Luna Wolves character whose appearance has become something of an easter egg within the series.

Prince of Crows by Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the second original novella and the final part of the anthology. The first longer Heresy piece to feature the Night Lords, it follows First Captain Sevatar as he struggles to keep the legion alive in the wake of a devastating Dark Angels attack which leaves Konrad Curze comatose and near-death. After making some drastic changes to the Legion's command structure Sevatar implements his own plan for its future before using his long-suppressed psyker powers to delve into Curze's mind. What follows is a sequence of flashbacks that amount to Curze's origin story, adding credence rumours I once read that this novella was originally slated to be part of The Primarchs. Shit then hits the fan when the Dark Angels strike again, and Sevatar's escape plan is ruined when Curze awakens and commandeers the First Company for a suicidal attack on the Dark Angels' flagship. Sevatar ends the novella imprisoned, Curze on the run through the Invincible Reason's lower decks. If this drastic ending wasn't be enough to make Prince of Crows required reading, this is also the novella that altered fan perception of the Night Lords Legion and made Sevatar one of the most popular characters in the Heresy series. It is superb.

Limited-edition novella review: Ravenlord       

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. Ravenlord by Gav Thorpe was the seventh of these novellas to be released, and follows the Raven Guard Legion as they fight to liberate the prison world of Carandiru from traitor control. 

Ravenlord takes up the story of the Raven Guard after the events of Deliverance Lost and Corax: Soulforge. In this novella Gav Thorpe includes the full gamut of characters he introduced in Deliverance, making it feel more like a sequel than the narrowly focused Soulforge and illustrating the inclusive, rag-tag nature of the force Corax has built as he wages his shadow war against Horus. The action begins with the freedom fighters regrouping on the newly-liberated world of Scarato, where they are shocked by the arrival of Gherith Arendi, the commander of Corax's bodyguard who was thought dead at Isstvan. It is obvious that Arendi is hiding something, but information he provides leads the Raven Guard to Carandiru. The smaller actions fought in the build-up to the main offensive on the planet perfectly illustrate the Raven Guard method of war and the ways their allies have adapted to fighting alongside them, but final battle itself raises more questions that it answers.  

The Raven Guard discover a hellish facility where captured loyalists are experimented being run by a traitor from their own legion, and that this closely echoes Corax's own experience with the Raptors is not lost on him. He confronts Arendi with his suspicions about the whole sequence of events, but after Arendi reveals the shameful secret of his escape from Isstvan Corax decides to trust him, leaving a question mark over the ending of an otherwise solid and entertaining novella.         

Deliverance Lost

Deliverance Lost by Gav Thorpe is the eighteenth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It follows the Raven Guard Legion as they escape Isstvan V and attempt to rebuild, whilst Alpha Legion infiltrators plot to bring them down from within.

The Raven Guard are my favourite Legion. My liking for them dates all the way back to 2002, when I first read about the sons of Corax in a battered second-hand edition of White Dwarf. Something about these black-armoured underdogs who struck from the shadows resonated with me. I was consequently rather disappointed by Deliverance Lost.     

Deliverance Lost is the first Heresy novel written by Gav Thorpe, best known for his 40K Dark Angels fiction. In Deliverance Lost he tackles the Raven Guard at their lowest ebb, the vast majority of their Legion destroyed in the Dropsite Massacre and the survivors divided into those who were there and those who came to rescue them. The novel starts slowly with the rescue fleet's agonisingly tense flight from the Isstvan system and then takes the Raven Guard to Terra, where Corax seeks an audience with the Emperor and the means to rebuild his Legion. Much as the action is shown from the perspective of Alpha Legion marines who have infiltrated the Raven Guard, and since they all call themselves 'Alpharius' you have to pay close attention to realise there is more than one infiltrator narrating events. The best part of the book comes when the Raven Guard are forced to navigate a complex labyrinth beneath one of Terra's mountains in order to retrieve the gene-tech that created the primarchs, a gift to Corax from the Emperor so that he can rebuild his Legion. The Raven Guard then return to Deliverance and begin using the tech to create new Space Marines even more enhanced than the old kind, a project that the Alpha Legion operatives are soon required to sabotage.

The second half of Deliverance Lost is rather lackluster, and part of the reason is Gav Thorpe's basic and at times boring writing. It was this flaw that made Deliverance Lost the first Horus Heresy book I didn't finish on my first attempt. Furthermore, the Corax Thorpe creates is rather different from the one I read about all those years ago in White Dwarf, single-mindedly pursuing the creation of new super-marines even after one of the infiltrators poisons the gene-tech with daemon blood, mutating the next generation of Raptors into hideous monsters. Guilt over this act is what is supposed to have forced Corax to flee into the Eye of Terror after the Heresy, but in Deliverance Lost he stands by the project until his commanders convince him otherwise. The mutated Raptors are inspiring characters, loyal despite being monsters and defending the Raven Guard gene-seed store from the infiltrators during the final battle, but the final battle itself is full of illogical sequences like the revelation that commander Agapito, a red-herring who is implied throughout the book to be one of the infiltrators, has actually just been hunting them down himself rather than simply telling Corax what he suspects. Another move that makes no sense is Omegon engineering the entire battle so that he can steal the gene-tech himself, the same gene-tech that he had poisoned and is now presumably useless.

Deliverance Lost is not a bad story, but it suffers from being ordinarily written and having a few plot holes. This muddies up the Raven Guard's debut into the Heresy, meaning that no matter how much I love the boys in black Deliverance Lost will never be my favourite Heresy novel.

Limited-edition novella review:  Corax: Soulforge  

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. Corax: Soulforge by Gav Thorpe was the fourth of these novellas released, and follows the Raven Guard Legion as they seek to overthrow an alliance between Word Bearers and traitor Mechanicum on Constanix II. 

Corax: Soulforge continues the story of the Raven Guard where Deliverance Lost leaves off, putting them on the offensive for the first time as they take the fight to the traitors across the stars. Corax: Soulforge recounts just one of their battles, an action on the backwater Forge-world of Constanix II where a Word Bearers warband fleeing from Calth have entered into an alliance with the ruling Magos and by combining their Warp-sorcery with Mechanicum technology are creating the first Defilers. 

The action begins on a stricken Word Bearers vessel, where Agapito endangers the mission by hunting down Word Bearers instead of following orders and the brutalised Navigator agrees to help the Raven Guard for freeing her from her tormentors. She takes the ship to Constanix II, where Corax conveniently overhears a coven of tech-adepts providing exposition about their ruling Magos having sided with the traitors. Corax rallies their forces to his cause and takes over the city-barge Atlas, which he then uses to directly attack Constanix's capital Iapetus. The final battle sees Agapito manage to let go of his revenge and follow orders that help the Raven Guard win the day, whilst Corax kills the traitor Magos and the Word Bearers' leading sorcerer. The action is engaging and the outcome satisfying, but overall the final battle is rushed and bits are left out to fit the story into the novella page-count. Corax: Soulforge is a good novella, but I would recommend it only to Raven Guard fans or die-hard completionists.  

Legion

Legion by Dan Abnett is the seventh installment in the Horus Heresy series. Set on the desert planet Nurth, it follows two officers of the Imperial Army who become embroiled in the Alpha Legion's secret operations.

Dan Abnett never writes anything ordinary. Tell him he can write a book about an Imperial compliance action and he'll pit his protagonists against Chaos worshiping heathens that ride giant reptiles. Tell him he's got free reign to explain why the Alpha Legion chose to side with Horus and he'll invent a whole alien Cabal who are trying to defeat Chaos by engineering the extinction of humanity. Let him write a Heresy book at all and you'll get something like Legion: original, gripping, and containing secrets that profoundly alter the canon of the Warhammer universe.

Legion is the first (and so far, only) Heresy book to foreground the Imperial Army, the billions of fighting men and women organised into thousands of different regiments that fought alongside the Space Marine Legions in the Great Crusade. In Legion the most prominent regiment is the Geno Two-Five Chiliad, one of the hundred regiments from Old Terra allowed to continue under the Emperor's rule, and its two main characters are Chiliad hetmen (senior captains) Peto Soneka and Hurtado Bronzi, both of whom by twists of fate become covert operatives working for the Alpha Legion. Dan Abnett writes ordinary fighting men well, as testified by the immense success of his mind-blowingly fantastic 40K Imperial Guard series Gaunt's Ghosts, but in Legion he has less room to play and Soneka and Bronzi go unsupported by the plethora of minor characters that make Gaunt's Ghosts Black Library's best 40K series.

The other Imperial force focused on in Legion is Alpha Legion themselves, on Nurth to help the Imperial Army defeat the savage Nurthene. We only ever see them from an outsider's perspective, however, a deliberate approach that leaves their inner workings as inscrutable as you would expect for a legion of espionage agents. The Alpha Legion are the masters of secrets but in this book they they themselves are being manipulated, by the Cabal, Warhammer's version of the Illuminati, who have foreseen the galaxy's destruction by Chaos unless Horus wins the impending civil war. The Cabal's agent on Nurth is John Grammaticus, a universe-weary human psyker who poses as an Imperial Army intelligence agent in order to obtain the Alpha Legion's cooperation, but his mission is compromised when the real Army intelligence starts to pursue him and soon his fate becomes wound up with Soneka's. There are layers upon layers of deception and confusion within this book, and in places it becomes difficult to keep straight who everyone is suspicious of and why. The Cabal do eventually get an audience with the Alpha Legion, but only after the Nurthene commit cultural suicide with the activation of a doomsday device that brings the Imperial compliance effort to a catastrophic end.

Legion is essentially a spy vs spy tale set during the lead-up to the Heresy. The setting is interesting and the action is intense, but the plot is convoluted and hard to follow. It is a relief when everything finally comes together at the end and the Cabal reveal the future of the galaxy to the Alpha Legion, leading them to side with Horus in the imminent war while almost everyone else is killed. Legion is an intriguing and masterfully written book, but it is not vital to the plot of the overall series.