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.