Scars

Scars by Chris Wraight is the twenty-eighth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It follows the White Scars Legion as they enter the war and are faced with the choice of who to side with: Horus or the Emperor?

Scars is Chris Wraight's first novel for the series, but that is slightly misleading as Scars was not originally published as a novel; it debuted as a downloadable serial told in twelve parts. Collected together into one story, those parts chronicle the emergence of the elusive and mysterious White Scars onto the Heresy stage. The first half of the novel also features the Space Wolves as they are set upon by the Alpha Legion whilst licking their wounds from Prospero, and it is this conflict around which the fate of the White Scars pivots. Faced with contradictory calls for aid, each side naming the other traitor whilst an Alpha Legion fleet silently confronts his own, primarch Jaghatai Khan chooses neither side and strikes out with his Legion to find the truth for themselves, leaving the Wolves to fight the Alpha Legion alone.

In terms of writing style, Scars is a novel much like its Legion: fast, flashy and shallow. The plot moves along nicely and the battle scenes are satisfyingly intense, but there is little in the way of detail or complexity. The main protagonist, Shiban Khan, is an archetypal White Scar captain, while more interesting is his opposite number, Torghun Khan, a wannabe Son of Horus who doesn't fit in to his assigned Legion. Chris Wraight creates other good characters, including Departmento Munitorium officer Ilya Ravallion who takes on the impossible task of organising the Legion, and the Scars' head Stormseer, Targutai Yesugei, who starts the novel in self-imposed exile on Chogoris but sets out to rejoin his legion with the aid of some Shattered Legions survivors. However, Scars only paints these people in broad strokes, preferring to move the plot along rather than linger over character development. This lowers the emotional stakes when Shiban and Torghun confront each other, each representing one side of a civil divide that splits the White Scars into pro-Horus and pro-Imperium camps. More interesting is the Legion's unexpected return to Prospero, whose ruined surface Jaghatai Khan walks and nearly dies on in order to discover the truth of the Heresy.

Overall Scars is a good novel that makes up in dynamism what it lacks in depth. The final scenes on Prospero and the civil war-torn Legion fleet are dramatic and engaging, leading to the predictable but satisfying conclusion of the loyalists triumphing and the White Scars remaining loyal to the Emperor.

Limited-edition novella review: Brotherhood of the Storm 

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 mainstream release years later, finally making the available to the vast majority of fans. Brotherhood of the Storm by Chris Wraight was the third of these novellas released, and follows the White Scars as they wage war against Orks on the planet Chondax. 

Though ostensibly a chronicle of the final battle in the war for Chondax, Brotherhood of the Storm is actually a novella about four characters, and is all the better for it. Here we are introduced to Shiban of the White Scars, Chogorian native and Khan of the Brotherhood of the Storm, who leads his men in sumptuously flamboyant battle scenes as they hunt down retreating Orks. However, two cultures collide when they link up with the Brotherhood of the Moon, lead by Terran-born Torghun Khan. Shiban's relentless forward assaults gel badly with Torghun's methodical war making, but by the end of the novella both men learn something from each other. 

The other characters driving Brotherhood of the Storm are Ilya Ravallion, a logistics officer sent to organise the flaky Scars in the aftermath of Ullanor, and Targutai Yesugei, the Legion's wise master Stormseer. Ilya injects humanity into the narrative, and Targutai's flashback to his boyhood trials on Chogoris is the best scene in the novella. Each of these characters, however, revolves around the elusive majesty that is Jaghatai Khan, primarch of the White Scars, who leads his men to final victory in the Ork-infested canyons of Chondax. Brotherhood of the Storm is an excellent novella that packs riveting action and considered character development into a small page count, and it is also a fantastic introduction to Scars.   

Nemesis

Nemesis by James Swallow is the thirteenth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It follows two assassination missions, one by a strike team of Imperial Assassins sent to kill Horus, the other by a daemonic entity named Spear sent to kill the Emperor.

Nemesis is an interesting departure for the Heresy series, in that it features very few Space Marines, foregrounds human characters and tells the story of shadowy covert ops taking place far from the main theatres of war. It is also the closest the Heresy series comes to being a police drama; one of the early protagonists, Yosef Sabrat, is a law officer on the planet Iesta Veracrux who investigates a string of grisly murders. Nemesis's tone is bleak, even for the Heresy series, and in many ways its horrors foreshadow the grim darkness of the forty-first millenium. Its plot, while interesting, is ultimately a side-show to the main story, and for me this makes it one of the less notable Heresy novels.

The main plotline of Nemesis follows a team of Imperial Assassins put together and sent on a mission to assassinate Horus. The team's leader and novel's main protagonist is Eristede Kell, a grim Vindicare sniper, and he is joined by five others: Koyne, an arrogant Callidus shapeshifter; the Garantine, a brutal Eversor butcher; Iota, a cloned Culexus Pariah; Fon Tariel, an inexperienced Vanus Infocyte; and Jenniker Soalm, a Venenum poisoner and Eristede's sister. Each of the six is introduced in an extended recruitment montage, which is one of the book's most enjoyable sections. However, a large part of the book also follows Yosef Sabrat as he investigates a string of murders committed by Spear, a monstrous Black Pariah bonded to the skin of a daemon, and it here that the plot gets very dark. Spear's kills are gut-churningly gory and James Swallow doesn't shy away from the details, nor from brutally killing most of his characters as Spear murders and assimilates them one by one. Spear's ultimate mission is to kill the Emperor, but to do so he needs the drop of the Emperor's blood preserved on House Eurotas's Warrant of Trade. Throughout the book he works and kills his way towards this goal, ultimately becoming such a threat that the assassin team divert to take him down.

For the six assassins, their mission to kill Horus takes them to Dagonet, a planet neighbouring Iesta Veracrux that is in the throes of falling to the Warmaster. In order the complete their mission the team aid the loyalist resistance, forcing Horus to come to Dagonet in person, but are foiled when Horus sends Luc Sedirae to impersonate him and the they assassinate the Sons of Horus 13th Captain instead. Jenniker and Iota go off on their own mission to protect the Warrant of Trade and are both killed by Spear, while the Garantine sacrifices himself so that Eristede, Tariel and Koyne can escape. Tariel's own foolishness gets him killed by Spear and Koyne falls the monster as well, before Eristede finally puts him down and makes a suicide run at Horus's flagship in a desperate last bid to complete his mission. The two assassination missions cancel each other out and both end in failure, though stopping the sheer horror that is Spear seems like victory enough.

Nemesis is by no means a bad novel, it is well-written and tightly plotted, but the story is too bleak and convoluted for my taste and overall the events have little effect on the main series plot. Readers of the series can take it or leave it.

Eye of Terra

Eye of Terra, edited by Laurie Goulding, is the thirty-fifth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It is an anthology of fifteen previously published short stories by eleven authors, and also includes the novella Aurelian.

David Annandale's Iron Corpses is set in the aftermath of the Battle of Tallarn, and follows an Iron Warrior Warsmith as he hijacks a loyalist Titan in order to survive the irradiated wastelands.

Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Massacre was originally published in segments on the Black Library website, and follows the characters from his Night Lords series during the events of the Isstvan V Dropsite Massacre. The Long Night takes place during Sevatar's imprisonment aboard the Invincible Reason, and sees him befriend one of the ship's Navigators and escape in order to kill another Navigator who beat her.

Matthew Farrer's Vorax is his first story for the Heresy since After Desh'ea. It follows a traitor Mechanicum being who is killed by deadly Vorax constructs.

John French's The Eagle's Talon was originally paired as an audio drama with Iron Corpses. Told through a non-linear sequence of vox recordings, it follows a strike team of Imperial Fists as they infiltrate and bring down an enemy ship during the Battle of Tallarn.

Guy Haley's The Final Compliance of Sixty-Three Fourteen follows the Imperial Governor of a world brought to compliance by the Luna Wolves who is faced with Horus's return and his demands to join in his rebellion.

Nick Kyme's Red-Marked chronicles the founding of Aeonid Thiel's Red-Marked squadron, forged in battle as they foil a plot by Word Bearers and World Eaters dregs left over from the Shadow Crusade. Stratagem depicts Thiel's first meeting with Roboute Guilliman since Calth and reveals Thiel's influence on the proto Codex Astartes.

Graham McNeill's The Wolf of Ash and Fire features Horus and the Emperor fighting side-by-side against an Ork empire prior the Heresy, and a point-of-view from Hastur Sejanus as he leads his squad to Horus's rescue after he falls down a chasm at the heart of the Ork junk-asteroid.

Rob Sanders' Ironfire features the return of Idriss Krendl after his crippling in The Iron Within, as he tests a new siege tactic against a fortress of Emperor's Children using two of the siege cannons gifted to Perturabo by the Lion.

Andy Smillie's Sins of the Father features Sanguinius brooding on the fate and character of Amit and Azkaellon as they duel. The Herald of Sanguinius describes the selection ritual to decide the first Sanguinor during the time of the Imperium Secundus.

Gav Thorpe's Inheritor follows the actions of Eliphas the Inheritor on Kronus during the Shadow Crusade, linking to the Dawn of War game Dark Crusade. Master of the First was originally paired as an audio drama with The Long Night, and follows Astelan of the Dark Angels as he sets up and then turns against an anti-Luther uprising on Caliban.

Chris Wraight's Brotherhood of the Moon joins Allegiance in being a sequel to Scars, and follows Torghun Khan as he faces trial for his traitorous actions in that novel.

Angels of Caliban

Angels of Caliban by Gav Thorpe is the thirty-eighth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It follows two branches of the Dark Angels Legion, those in the Imperium Secundus as they go to extremes in the hunt for Konrad Curze, and those on Caliban as various factions manoeuvre for power.

Angels of Caliban is the Dark Angels novel I've been waiting for since Fallen Angels, and Gav Thorpe did not disappoint. The basics of the Imperium Secundus are well-established by this point in the series but Gav manages to present a new take on it, foregrounding the tensions between co-rulers Jonson, Guilliman and Sanguinius and writing Angels of Caliban as much like a political drama as a war novel. Caliban, on the other hand, has been out of the series' eye for a while now and Gav returns to it in triumph, weaving together a complex plot of scheme and counter-scheme as secret rebels Luther, Astelan and Zahariel pursue their separate agendas. Both plots are tense and engaging, but I found myself more drawn to the events on Caliban because they were a completely new segment of the story, revealing that there was much more to Caliban's rebellion than simply Luther's fall.

One of Angels of Caliban's biggest selling points was that it reveals hidden secrets about the history and traditions of the Dark Angels, and Gav Thorpe has done something very different in regards to this by exploring the ancient history of the Space Marines. Through Astelan's memories, readers learn that the Dark Angels Legion existed in a different form before any of the other Legions were made, as an army of the very first Space Marines that was divided into specialist battlegroups called 'wings' and commanded by the Emperor himself. These 'Angels of Death' became the First Legion after the other nineteen were created and then the Dark Angels after discovering Lion El'Jonson on Caliban, but the 'wings' system was preserved and continues to exist, marines from different wings scattered across the companies but ready to form into their battlegroup when the command is given. Most prominent in Angels of Caliban are the Dreadwing, who specialise in total war and have access to archaic and devastating weapons. Their methods prove to be the undoing of the Imperium Secundus, when with the Lion's sanction they breach a rule made by Sanguinius and go to extremes in order to hunt down Konrad Curze, who is loose on Macragge. The final battle sequence between the Lion and Curze is epic, and I derived great satisfaction from Jonson beating Curze into submission, but Angels of Caliban makes it clear that in his own way Jonson is just as bad a villain as Curze, and his actions destroy the alliance that held the Imperium Secundus together.

Events are no less drastic on Caliban, where the fist ever visit by loyalist Dark Angels throws the rebel Angels into a frenzy of scheming. The novel provides us with a welcome return to Zahariel, a character we haven't seen for twenty-seven books, who becomes enthralled to the Chaos power buried beneath Caliban and is well on the way to becoming a Chaos sorcerer by the story's end. Just as interesting is the character of Astelan, who sided with Luther's rebellion because he hates the Lion and the changes he has made the Legion but holds no loyalty to Luther and considers himself a loyal warrior of the Emperor, believing that the Dark Angels should return to the old days when they were the Angels of Death. All the scheming comes to fruition with Caliban formally declaring its rebellion, and the revelation of a long-held secret as one of the characters becomes the new Lord Cypher.

Angels of Caliban is a fantastic novel, full of intrigue, drama and revelations. and it has repercussions not just for the Horus Heresy but the entire 40K universe. It is absolutely essential reading.