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.