Twenty-three books into the Horus Heresy, Angel Exterminatus is the first novel to feature the Iron Warriors as major characters. Graham McNeill is the author of the 40K Iron Warriors series and he hasn't strayed far from familiar territory here, using earlier versions of many of his 40K Iron Warrior characters as protagonists. The other half of his cast of course is made up of Emperor's Children, a legion McNeill has made his own within the Heresy series. Angel Exterminatus is an excellent book and thus I want to get my gripes out of the way first: it feels like half the scenes involving Iron Warriors in this novel are just sneaky winks at McNeill's 40K Iron Warriors fans. The origins of the feud between Toramino and the other captains, Kroeger's first steps down the path of Khorne and Barban Falk's transformation into 'The Warsmith' must be fascinating for those who have read the Iron Warriors series, but for those who haven't they are strange and random elements of the story. Authors jamming the origin stories of their 40K characters into the Heresy series is one of my pet hates. That said, if Dan Abnett were to include some ancestor of Ibram Gaunt in one of his Heresy novels I'd probably wet myself with excitement, so I suppose it really depends on what you like and what you have already read.
Right, onto the good stuff. The Emperor's Children in this novel are diabolically depraved, the sub-story of an Imperial Fists captain captured and turned into a monster by Fabius Bile being particularly repulsive to read, and Graham McNeill handles the Emperor's Children side of this novel with practiced excellence. The crew of the Sisypheum, loyalists who are attempting to prevent the traitors from obtaining the devastating weapons Fulgrim tells Perturabo are hidden in the Eye of Terror, are a motley crew of vengeful Iron Hands with a mortally wounded captain they keep in stasis, accompanied by a Salamanders Apothecary and a Raven Guard commando named Nykona Sharrowkyn, who is pure awesomeness concentrated into a character. Over the course of the novel Sharrowkyn puts a bullet through Fulgrim's head, rams two swords through Fabius Bile and becomes the first person ever to kill Lucius in a duel. He is my favourite Warhammer character, period.
The biggest star of the novel, though, is Perturabo himself. The Iron Warriors primarch is usually treated as badly by the fiction as he is by the in-universe Imperium, overlooked and ignored, but here McNeill makes him into a complex character with unsuspected redeeming features. Perturabo suspects that Fulgrim is playing him from the start, and he is proven right when the traitors reach Eldar Crone World Iydris and Fulgrim reveals that there are no weapons, just the location of his ascension to daemonhood, and abandons the Iron Warriors to fight undead Eldar. An attack by the crew of the Sisypheum gives the traitors a common foe, and the novel climaxes with Fulgrim's transformation into a daemon prince and the Iron Warriors plunging into the black hole at the heart of the Eye.
Angel Exterminatus has some faults, but overall it is an excellent novel with gripping fight scenes and memorable characters. If the entire premise seems weak then action is good enough that we can forgive it, and no novel that ends with a primarch becoming a daemon prince will ever be a wasted read.
Limited-edition novella review: The Seventh Serpent
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. The Seventh Serpent by Graham McNeill was the ninth of these novellas to be released, and follows the crew of the Sisypheum as they join a mission to assassinate Alpharius himself.
The Seventh Serpent continues the story of the Sisypheum crew after the events of Angel Exterminatus. Launching an attack on an Alpha Legion ship they discover that it was on its way to rendezvous with Alpharius and are saved from the attack of a second ship by the sudden arrival of none other than Shadrak Meduson, legendary warleader of the Iron Hands. Meduson and the Sisypheum crew join forces to lay an ambush for the traitor primarch on an orbital fuel siphoning plant above Eirene Septimus, using Alpha Legion armour to take the traitors by surprise. But of course this is the Alpha Legion, so nothing is as it seems. 'Alpharius' is in fact a loyalist Alpha Legion commander on the run from his traitor brethren, one of the Sisypheum crew is a disguised Alpha Legion operative and 'Shadrak Meduson' is the real Alpharius, using the loyalists as pawns in his plan to neutralise the commander. It all ends predictably in fighting and death, but what makes the climax of The Seventh Serpent memorable is the loyalists' skin of their teeth escape and the unexpected revival of Ulrach Branthan who comes back from the brink of death to command the Sisypheum once more, though as a dark and monstrous version of himself. The Seventh Serpent is an excellent novella with a complex plot and gripping action, making it one of the best examples of its format.
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