Old Earth

Old Earth by Nick Kyme is the forty-seventh installment in the Horus Heresy series. The conclusion of Kyme's Salamanders trilogy within the series, it follows Vulkan's journey to Terra and the culmination of Shadrak Meduson's war against the Sons of Horus.

When I first heard that Nick Kyme's Salamanders-focused Heresy narrative was going to comprise a trilogy, I had my doubts. After all, Vulkan Lives was a dark mess whose few good moments couldn't redeem it. Deathfire lifted my expectations by telling an engaging story with relatively few bumps, but final judgement had to wait until the trilogy was complete. Reading Old Earth has given me the chance not just to judge the book on its own merits, but to reflect on Kyme's trilogy as a whole and how it fits into the wider series.

Old Earth itself is a very good novel, the best of Kyme's three. Vulkan's journey to Terra provides a strong central narrative that forms the bones of the story, but by itself it would not be beefy enough to carry a novel. The flesh of Old Earth is provided by Shadrak Meduson's Shattered Legions and their war against Tybalt Marr's Sons of Horus. Meduson is given as much page space as Vulkan for the first three-quarters of the book, the war narrative separated into three battles which escalate in size and importance. Meduson himself is a welcome presence after so long lurking in the shadows, but the Shattered Legions' secret weapon is the Iron Hand Lumak and his Salamander buddy Nuros, whose strong friendship and banter over naming Lumak's sword is the emotional heart of the novel. Kyme was handed a lot of good material by the Shattered Legions anthology, but he does a good job of building it up into a plot with consequence and gravitas.

Old Earth would have been good anyway had it just told the stories of Vulkan and Meduson, but Kyme also wraps up the subplots involving Eldrad Ulthran, the Cabal, Barthusa Narek and several of the Perpetuals that he has folded into his trilogy. Eldrad killing his way through the Cabal was deeply satisfying to read, and Kyme either ends or sets up the final chapter in the stories of each character. By the end of the novel he has completed two major plot arcs and moved several characters into their positions for the endgame, making Old Earth a successful exercise in advancing the series as well as an excellent story.

For these reasons, Kyme's Salamanders Heresy trilogy can be labelled a success. There have been some long stretches where the writing quality was uneven and overall there is too much ambiguity and not enough description for my taste, but the story told was a worthy one and Old Earth brings the cycle of the Salamanders to a very satisfying conclusion. It is both the capstone of Kyme's Heresy endeavour and the installment that proves it was worth undertaking. My doubts were assuaged, and I have no regrets.