Know No Fear

Know No Fear by Dan Abnett is the nineteenth installment in the Horus Heresy series. Told from the perspective of the Ultramarines Legion, it chronicles the apocalyptic Battle of Calth.

I'm just going to say this outright: Know No Fear is the best Horus Heresy book to date. The action is relentless, the writing superb. But the most successful aspect of this book is its scope: Abnett opens with a tour of Calth in the hours before the Word Bearers' surprise betrayal, introducing characters as varied as rough and ready Imperial Army troopers and half-machine Mechanicum adepts, ranging through the ranks from simple legionaries to Roboute Guilliman himself. This approach allows Abnett to introduce the setting and multiple plotlines at the same time, a tactic that pays dividends once the action starts. This is not the first time Abnett has deployed this technique in his writitng: the opening of Know No Fear is reminiscent of the opening of Necropolis, the third book in Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series. Necropolis is now a classic of Warhammer fiction, and Know No Fear has the potential to be the same. Frequent changes of perspective keep the action fresh and immediate, and a multitude of cliffhangers have readers on the edge of their seat from beginning to end. From the second the Word Bearers fleet opens fire on the unsuspecting Ultramarines you are swept up in the action. The account is presented as a story collated from Roboute Guilliman's notes, and to maintain this pace Abnett has kept the chapters short. There must be something about Guilliman and breaking big things up into smaller chapters. Nevertheless, it works.

The story of Know No Fear is essentially the story of one big battle. The action is split into two theatres, in space amongst the fleet and orbital stations, and down on the surface amongst the burning cities and wreckage plunging from orbit. While the battles are told from a multitude of different perspectives a few central stories come to form the heart of the narrative: the actions of 4th Captain Remus Ventanus as he and sergeant Selaton run a gauntlet of dangers on their way back to their company, the struggle aboard the Ultramarines flagship Macragge's Honour after daemons materialise on the bridge and Guilliman is carried off into space, and the trials of a simple farmer named Oll Persson who is revealed to be far more than he seems as he leads a rag-tag group of survivors through the warzone towards an unknown goal. The true genius of this story lies in the way the various story strands come together for the apocalyptic climax.

After surviving several desperate skirmishes in the ruins of Numinus City Ventanus and Selaton gather a sizeable force of Mechanicum, Imperial Army and Ultramarines troops and set themselves up in a palace outside the city, which they must defend from a Word Bearers siege whilst their adept uses the building's ancient data engine to collate information and help coordinate the global loyalist defence. Aeonid Thiel, a sergeant censored for theorising combat between Space Marines, becomes an unlikely hero as he leads the defense of the Macragge's Honour and gathers a force that retakes the ship using weapons from Guilliman's personal collection. Oll Persson is revealed to be none other than Ollanius Pious, patron saint of the Imperial Guard in a later age, and the man whose sacrifice motivates the Emperor to strike Horus down during their legendary confrontation at the Siege of Terra. The story of Oll and the survivors goes off in its own direction, but the other main story strands come together after Thiel leads a strike force out onto the hull of the ship and in one of the best action sequences ever is saved from an ambush by Guilliman himself, who has survived in the void without a helmet. Coordinating with the flagship, Ventanus and his force on the ground make their way back to the ruins of Numinus to install Magos Tawren into a data engine from which she can retake control of Calth's weapons grid, but only if the forces in space eliminate the Word Bearers under Kor Phaeron who have seized the grid's command station. The double climax in which each force relies on the success of the other is utterly gripping, and ultimately turns the tide of the battle.

Know No Fear is sheer pulse-pounding awesomeness. It combines all the best elements of the Heresy series into one flawless masterpiece. But perhaps more amazing than any of this is that it does this using the Ultramarines, turning the most generic and over-played faction in 40K into some of the best heroes of the Horus Heresy. Kudos, Dan Abnett. Kudos.

Limited-edition novella review: The Honoured

The Horus Heresy series has enjoyed enormous success since its inception, and that success has translated into its launching a new subset of the Warhammer tabletop game. To be clear, a series based on the lore of the tabletop game has inspired a tabletop game based on the lore of the series. The mainstream launch of the Horus Heresy tabletop game was marked with the release of the 'Battle at Calth' starter set, which featured a pair of novellas as well as miniatures and rulebooks. The Honoured by Rob Sanders and The Unburdened by David Annandale are both set during the Underworld War that followed the Battle of Calth, each showing the perspective of one of two mortal enemies, Ultramarine Captain Steloc Aethon and Word Bearers Chaplain Kurtha Sedd. 

The Honoured picks up just before Know No Fear left off, with Captain Aethon receiving Ventanus's warning to get underground whilst in the midst of the fighting at Lanshear. During a lull in the battle he spots a Word Bearers chaplain across the street. Their eyes meet, and Aethon becomes convinced that the chaplain is his old friend Kurtha Sedd because...reasons. The action then cuts to the Ultramarines and Word Bearers running for shelter as the Veridian star begins scorching Calth's surface clean of life. An Ultramarine named Arkan Dardanus seizes the shelter entrance from Word Bearers and lets the remnants of his squad in, but their sergeant is killed. The novella's other main character, Terminator Sergeant Orestrian Urcus, walks his way through the scorching fire and lifts the door Dardanus just closed in the novella's coolest passage. Aethon shows up, promotes Dardanus to acting sergeant and then leads the Ultramarines down into Calth's cave network. 

The rest of the novella is basically a series of confusing and disjointed fight scenes, gummed together by flashbacks to when Aethon and Kurtha Sedd were friends. The Ultramarines discover a teleport station and Aethon uses it to launch an attack on the main teleport hub from whence the Word Bearers came, suicidally charging blind into the middle of the enemy base because...reasons. The Ultramarines manage to win by releasing the teleport hub's hypercoolant reservoir into the tunnels. They then establish a base there, discovering from captured Word Bearers that their enemies are in fact led by Kurtha Sedd, and Aethon sends Dardanus on a mission to release the captives into the undertunnels so they can convey his offer of an honourable death to Sedd. The plan is also to link up with the forces of Tauro Nicodemus, fighting in the next cave system over. Aethon sends a now battered Urcus back up to their original territory on patrol, where he finds all the humans who took shelter with them butchered by the Word Bearers. Whoops, forgot about those helpless humans we were supposed to be defending. Oh well, we're not those sissy Salamanders with their actually caring about human beings. We are the Ultramarines, Legion of the reversed toilet-seat insignia! (Seriously, once you've sen it you can't unsee it). Cue another random fight scene for no reason. 

Down in the depths, Dardanus and his squad are ambushed by Sedd and go down like Imperial Guardsmen attacking a daemon prince with sticks. Dardanus lives long enough to drag his mortally wounded body partway back to base, and when the Word Bearers launch a full-scale attack Aethon turns the tables and drives them back, following Dardanus's blood trail into Sedd's lair. He and Sedd have the obligatory one-on-one, which ends with Aethon's death. Urcus and handful of others only survive thanks to Tauro Nicodemus's forces showing up and blitzing the daemons Sedd unleashed, though Sedd himself escapes, ready to take centre stage in his half of the novella duology. 

The Honoured is just bad. The plot is poorly articulated, the action makes little sense, and none of what happens matters. In fairness to Rob Sanders there are some cool scenes, such as Urcus determinedly walking through the firestorm on the surface and Dardanus dragging his body along leaving a blood trail for the others to follow, but the novella blatantly serves no purpose other than to inspire gamers pitting Sedd against Aethon on the tabletop. Here's hoping The Unburdened is better. 

That's all for now Heresy fans, but check back in a week or so as I continue my review of the books depicting the Battle of Calth and the Underworld War, examining the Mark of Calth anthology and The Unburdened, second half of the Underworld War duology. See you soon!               

Angel Exterminatus

Angel Exterminatus by Graham McNeill is the twenty-third installment in the Horus Heresy series. It follows the Emperor's Children and Iron Warriors legions as they undertake a joint mission into the Eye of Terror, dogged by vengeful survivors from the Shattered Legions.

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.        

Shadows of Treachery

Shadows of Treachery, edited by Nick Kyme and Christian Dunn, is the twenty-second installment in the Horus Heresy series. A mixed anthology, it contains five short stories previously released in other places and formats book-ended by two original novellas.

The Crimson Fist by John French is the first of the original novellas. Told from the first-person perspective of Alexis Polux, commander of the Imperial Fists Retribution Fleet sent to Isstvan III, it narrates the Battle of the Phall system after the Retribution Fleet is trapped by Warp storms and attacked by the Iron Warriors, led by Perturabo. The account of the fleet battle in this novella is one of the best in the Heresy series, French's writing making the action seem immediate and visceral, but the action is also tempered by character moments on Terra between Rogal Dorn and Sigismund that give the novella depth and pace. The climactic battle is gripping, the forced retreat of the Imperial Fists and the failure of the strike team sent to execute Perturabo lending real tragedy to what should have been Polux's triumph. The final twist is identical to the one from Fear to Tread, but nevertheless The Crimson Fist is an excellent novella and a great introduction to the anthology.

The Dark King by Graham McNeill is half of a duology originally published as The Horus Heresy Chapbook. It explores Konrad Curze's motivations for turning against the Imperium prior to the Heresy, kept in confinement after savagely beating Rogal Dorn when he came to chastise him for excessive bloodshed during the Cheraut compliance. Killing his guards and escaping, Curze leads the Night Lords to Nostramo and commands the destruction of his homeworld before going on the run from the Imperium. Though more a vignette than a narrative, this short story casts light on some of the most defining moments in Night Lords history.

The Lightning Tower by Dan Abnett is the other half of the duology originally published as The Horus Heresy Chapbook. It is a character study of Rogal Dorn as he prepares the Imperial Palace's defences, exploring the primarch's sadness at the necessity of converting the palace into a fortress and following his introspection as he tries to discover what it is about Horus's rebellion that truly scares him. A thoughtful piece that captures the atmosphere on Terra in the lead-up to the Siege, it overlaps with the Terran scenes in The Crimson Fist but is really just a curio when read in isolation.

The Kaban Project by Graham McNeill was originally published as bonus content in the Collected Visions Horus Heresy artbook. It provides the backstory of one of the more unusual characters in McNeill's novel Mechanicum, a sentient war-machine created by the traitor faction in defiance of the Emperor's edict against the creation of thinking machines. Following an everyday adept named Pallas Ravachol who befriends the machine, it chronicles his flight across Mars after circumstances make him a liability to the machine's powerful creators. The plot is fairly predictable, but this is made up for by the scintillating insight it provides into everyday life on the Red Planet .

Raven's Flight by Gav Thorpe was originally one the Heresy series' earliest audio-dramas, provided in print for the first time. It chronicles the events leading up the Raven Guard's escape from Isstvan V, following Commander Branne and Praefector Valerius on Deliverance and Corax and the surviving Raven Guard on Isstvan. The sections set on Isstvan are the best parts of this story, the highlight being a Raven Guard ambush on a column of Iron Warriors. The story is fairly engaging, but like The Dark King it is more of a vignette than a narrative, depicting a single important event in a Legion's history without exploring it in-depth.

Death of a Silversmith by Graham McNeill was originally published in the 2011/12 Games Day Anthology. It follows the reflections of a famous, unnamed silversmith as he lies dying on the Vengeful Spirit, thinking back over the course of his long life and the events that led to his sadistic murder. The age of the character allows for a historical perspective on the Great Crusade and the circumstances of his death reveal how early the corruption in the warrior lodges began, but I imagine many fans would have liked this story simply because it features Hastur Sejanus, a Luna Wolves character whose appearance has become something of an easter egg within the series.

Prince of Crows by Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the second original novella and the final part of the anthology. The first longer Heresy piece to feature the Night Lords, it follows First Captain Sevatar as he struggles to keep the legion alive in the wake of a devastating Dark Angels attack which leaves Konrad Curze comatose and near-death. After making some drastic changes to the Legion's command structure Sevatar implements his own plan for its future before using his long-suppressed psyker powers to delve into Curze's mind. What follows is a sequence of flashbacks that amount to Curze's origin story, adding credence rumours I once read that this novella was originally slated to be part of The Primarchs. Shit then hits the fan when the Dark Angels strike again, and Sevatar's escape plan is ruined when Curze awakens and commandeers the First Company for a suicidal attack on the Dark Angels' flagship. Sevatar ends the novella imprisoned, Curze on the run through the Invincible Reason's lower decks. If this drastic ending wasn't be enough to make Prince of Crows required reading, this is also the novella that altered fan perception of the Night Lords Legion and made Sevatar one of the most popular characters in the Heresy series. It is superb.

Limited-edition novella review: Ravenlord       

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. Ravenlord by Gav Thorpe was the seventh of these novellas to be released, and follows the Raven Guard Legion as they fight to liberate the prison world of Carandiru from traitor control. 

Ravenlord takes up the story of the Raven Guard after the events of Deliverance Lost and Corax: Soulforge. In this novella Gav Thorpe includes the full gamut of characters he introduced in Deliverance, making it feel more like a sequel than the narrowly focused Soulforge and illustrating the inclusive, rag-tag nature of the force Corax has built as he wages his shadow war against Horus. The action begins with the freedom fighters regrouping on the newly-liberated world of Scarato, where they are shocked by the arrival of Gherith Arendi, the commander of Corax's bodyguard who was thought dead at Isstvan. It is obvious that Arendi is hiding something, but information he provides leads the Raven Guard to Carandiru. The smaller actions fought in the build-up to the main offensive on the planet perfectly illustrate the Raven Guard method of war and the ways their allies have adapted to fighting alongside them, but final battle itself raises more questions that it answers.  

The Raven Guard discover a hellish facility where captured loyalists are experimented being run by a traitor from their own legion, and that this closely echoes Corax's own experience with the Raptors is not lost on him. He confronts Arendi with his suspicions about the whole sequence of events, but after Arendi reveals the shameful secret of his escape from Isstvan Corax decides to trust him, leaving a question mark over the ending of an otherwise solid and entertaining novella.         

Deliverance Lost

Deliverance Lost by Gav Thorpe is the eighteenth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It follows the Raven Guard Legion as they escape Isstvan V and attempt to rebuild, whilst Alpha Legion infiltrators plot to bring them down from within.

The Raven Guard are my favourite Legion. My liking for them dates all the way back to 2002, when I first read about the sons of Corax in a battered second-hand edition of White Dwarf. Something about these black-armoured underdogs who struck from the shadows resonated with me. I was consequently rather disappointed by Deliverance Lost.     

Deliverance Lost is the first Heresy novel written by Gav Thorpe, best known for his 40K Dark Angels fiction. In Deliverance Lost he tackles the Raven Guard at their lowest ebb, the vast majority of their Legion destroyed in the Dropsite Massacre and the survivors divided into those who were there and those who came to rescue them. The novel starts slowly with the rescue fleet's agonisingly tense flight from the Isstvan system and then takes the Raven Guard to Terra, where Corax seeks an audience with the Emperor and the means to rebuild his Legion. Much as the action is shown from the perspective of Alpha Legion marines who have infiltrated the Raven Guard, and since they all call themselves 'Alpharius' you have to pay close attention to realise there is more than one infiltrator narrating events. The best part of the book comes when the Raven Guard are forced to navigate a complex labyrinth beneath one of Terra's mountains in order to retrieve the gene-tech that created the primarchs, a gift to Corax from the Emperor so that he can rebuild his Legion. The Raven Guard then return to Deliverance and begin using the tech to create new Space Marines even more enhanced than the old kind, a project that the Alpha Legion operatives are soon required to sabotage.

The second half of Deliverance Lost is rather lackluster, and part of the reason is Gav Thorpe's basic and at times boring writing. It was this flaw that made Deliverance Lost the first Horus Heresy book I didn't finish on my first attempt. Furthermore, the Corax Thorpe creates is rather different from the one I read about all those years ago in White Dwarf, single-mindedly pursuing the creation of new super-marines even after one of the infiltrators poisons the gene-tech with daemon blood, mutating the next generation of Raptors into hideous monsters. Guilt over this act is what is supposed to have forced Corax to flee into the Eye of Terror after the Heresy, but in Deliverance Lost he stands by the project until his commanders convince him otherwise. The mutated Raptors are inspiring characters, loyal despite being monsters and defending the Raven Guard gene-seed store from the infiltrators during the final battle, but the final battle itself is full of illogical sequences like the revelation that commander Agapito, a red-herring who is implied throughout the book to be one of the infiltrators, has actually just been hunting them down himself rather than simply telling Corax what he suspects. Another move that makes no sense is Omegon engineering the entire battle so that he can steal the gene-tech himself, the same gene-tech that he had poisoned and is now presumably useless.

Deliverance Lost is not a bad story, but it suffers from being ordinarily written and having a few plot holes. This muddies up the Raven Guard's debut into the Heresy, meaning that no matter how much I love the boys in black Deliverance Lost will never be my favourite Heresy novel.

Limited-edition novella review:  Corax: Soulforge  

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. Corax: Soulforge by Gav Thorpe was the fourth of these novellas released, and follows the Raven Guard Legion as they seek to overthrow an alliance between Word Bearers and traitor Mechanicum on Constanix II. 

Corax: Soulforge continues the story of the Raven Guard where Deliverance Lost leaves off, putting them on the offensive for the first time as they take the fight to the traitors across the stars. Corax: Soulforge recounts just one of their battles, an action on the backwater Forge-world of Constanix II where a Word Bearers warband fleeing from Calth have entered into an alliance with the ruling Magos and by combining their Warp-sorcery with Mechanicum technology are creating the first Defilers. 

The action begins on a stricken Word Bearers vessel, where Agapito endangers the mission by hunting down Word Bearers instead of following orders and the brutalised Navigator agrees to help the Raven Guard for freeing her from her tormentors. She takes the ship to Constanix II, where Corax conveniently overhears a coven of tech-adepts providing exposition about their ruling Magos having sided with the traitors. Corax rallies their forces to his cause and takes over the city-barge Atlas, which he then uses to directly attack Constanix's capital Iapetus. The final battle sees Agapito manage to let go of his revenge and follow orders that help the Raven Guard win the day, whilst Corax kills the traitor Magos and the Word Bearers' leading sorcerer. The action is engaging and the outcome satisfying, but overall the final battle is rushed and bits are left out to fit the story into the novella page-count. Corax: Soulforge is a good novella, but I would recommend it only to Raven Guard fans or die-hard completionists.  

Legion

Legion by Dan Abnett is the seventh installment in the Horus Heresy series. Set on the desert planet Nurth, it follows two officers of the Imperial Army who become embroiled in the Alpha Legion's secret operations.

Dan Abnett never writes anything ordinary. Tell him he can write a book about an Imperial compliance action and he'll pit his protagonists against Chaos worshiping heathens that ride giant reptiles. Tell him he's got free reign to explain why the Alpha Legion chose to side with Horus and he'll invent a whole alien Cabal who are trying to defeat Chaos by engineering the extinction of humanity. Let him write a Heresy book at all and you'll get something like Legion: original, gripping, and containing secrets that profoundly alter the canon of the Warhammer universe.

Legion is the first (and so far, only) Heresy book to foreground the Imperial Army, the billions of fighting men and women organised into thousands of different regiments that fought alongside the Space Marine Legions in the Great Crusade. In Legion the most prominent regiment is the Geno Two-Five Chiliad, one of the hundred regiments from Old Terra allowed to continue under the Emperor's rule, and its two main characters are Chiliad hetmen (senior captains) Peto Soneka and Hurtado Bronzi, both of whom by twists of fate become covert operatives working for the Alpha Legion. Dan Abnett writes ordinary fighting men well, as testified by the immense success of his mind-blowingly fantastic 40K Imperial Guard series Gaunt's Ghosts, but in Legion he has less room to play and Soneka and Bronzi go unsupported by the plethora of minor characters that make Gaunt's Ghosts Black Library's best 40K series.

The other Imperial force focused on in Legion is Alpha Legion themselves, on Nurth to help the Imperial Army defeat the savage Nurthene. We only ever see them from an outsider's perspective, however, a deliberate approach that leaves their inner workings as inscrutable as you would expect for a legion of espionage agents. The Alpha Legion are the masters of secrets but in this book they they themselves are being manipulated, by the Cabal, Warhammer's version of the Illuminati, who have foreseen the galaxy's destruction by Chaos unless Horus wins the impending civil war. The Cabal's agent on Nurth is John Grammaticus, a universe-weary human psyker who poses as an Imperial Army intelligence agent in order to obtain the Alpha Legion's cooperation, but his mission is compromised when the real Army intelligence starts to pursue him and soon his fate becomes wound up with Soneka's. There are layers upon layers of deception and confusion within this book, and in places it becomes difficult to keep straight who everyone is suspicious of and why. The Cabal do eventually get an audience with the Alpha Legion, but only after the Nurthene commit cultural suicide with the activation of a doomsday device that brings the Imperial compliance effort to a catastrophic end.

Legion is essentially a spy vs spy tale set during the lead-up to the Heresy. The setting is interesting and the action is intense, but the plot is convoluted and hard to follow. It is a relief when everything finally comes together at the end and the Cabal reveal the future of the galaxy to the Alpha Legion, leading them to side with Horus in the imminent war while almost everyone else is killed. Legion is an intriguing and masterfully written book, but it is not vital to the plot of the overall series.  
 

Betrayer

Betrayer by Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the twenty-fourth installment in the Horus Heresy series. It documents the Shadow Crusade, following the World Eaters and Word Bearers legions as they invade the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar.

Betrayer is Aaron Dembski-Bowden's first Heresy novel since The First Heretic and here Argel Tal returns, prosecuting the Shadow Crusade at Lorgar's right hand. This time, however, Tal is not the main character. That distinction goes to Kharn, Captain of the World Eaters Eighth Assault Company and equerry to primarch Angron. Kharn is infamous in the fortieth millenium as an unstoppable Chaos beserker and champion of the Blood God Khorne, but in Betrayer we see him ten thousand years earlier, having turned against the Imperium with the rest of his legion but not yet fallen into blood-soaked madness. In fact, the Kharn Dembski-Bowden writes is the most human of the World Eaters, restrained and clear-thinking when not lost to the Butcher's Nails and concerned by the degeneration of his primarch and legion. His friendship with Argel Tal also serves to humanise both characters, making likeable, complex protagonists out of a butchering marauder and a Chaos champion sharing his soul with a daemon.

Dembski-Bowden also creates a batch of engaging secondary characters for Betrayer, from Lhorke, the Contemptor Dreadnaught who was once Legion Master when the World Eaters were still the War Hounds, to Lotara Sarrin, the fearless commander of the World Eaters' flagship Conqueror who is unafraid to shoot a Space Marine captain in the head for dereliction of duty. Dembski-Bowden is a genius at crafting engaging and, simply put, cool characters; he is to character creation what Dan Abnett is to world-building. The secondary characters in Betrayer help push the action along and deepen the plot, and this is fortunate because if there is one area in which Betrayer falls down, it is plot. It doesn't really have one.

The first half of Betrayer is taken up entirely by the Battle of Armatura, a heavily-defended Ultramarines world. The action is relentless and varied, making this part of the book an absorbing read, but the battle only seems to occur as a way to facilitate a few really cool scenes rather than to serve a larger purpose in the story. Angron emerging from the rubble of a fallen building to brace against a descending Titan leg about to squish Lorgar into paste is an unforgettable moment, but overall the first half of the book contains little plot development. The action slows down somewhat after this to allow us more time with the characters, but by the time the traitors reach Angron's previously unknown homeworld Nuceria little more has happened than Cyrene Valantion's resurrection, Kharn requisitioning Angron's old axe and Erebus manipulating Argel Tal with hints of a prophecy. The climactic battle on Nuceria brings the story to an apocalyptic finale with a duel between primarchs and the transformation of Angron into a daemon prince, but is underscored by the death of a excellent character as Erebus murders Argel Tal to further the Chaos Gods' agenda. As if we didn't hate him enough already.

Overall Betrayer is an excellent read, gripping and pulse-pounding with some of strongest characters ever written for the traitor legions. By the end we are left feeling that a lot of things have happened, but unfortunately there isn't much sense that those things mattered. Betrayer suffers a little bit from middle-of-the-trilogy syndrome, but like The Two Towers or The Empire Strikes Back it remains an excellent story.                

Pharos

Pharos by Guy Haley is the thirty-fourth installment in the Horus Heresy series. Set on Sotha at the edge of the Imperium Secundus, it follows the defenders of the Pharos as they seek to protect the beacon from a surprise assault by the Night Lords.

Pharos is the first novel-length foray into the world of the Heresy by Guy Haley, who has previously only written short fiction for the series. A relative newcomer to the Heresy Haley reveals both skills and shortcomings in Pharos, which is at times a gripping story of defiance and survival, at times a lukewarm siege narrative rendered down to a handful of action scenes. And do not be fooled by Alexis Polux posing dramatically on the cover - this is very much a story of Ultramarines versus Night Lords, with a smattering of other characters there to fill in the margins. Those who came hoping for the three loyalist legions of the Imperium Secundus teaming up to deal the traitors some pain will be disappointed. Those who came looking for interesting characters and a pivotal new chapter in the civil war will not.

Pharos is a story set well into the timeline, detailing events that have sprung out the series as it expands rather than anything mentioned in the background canon. This rollicking tale follows the varied defenders of the Pharos, an alien beacon used by Roboute Guilliman for communication and travel within his Imperium Secundus, as they defend the mountainous device against an opportunistic attack by a fleet of Night Lords led by Krukesh the Pale. Despite the Heresy series now being over thirty novels and anthologies long most of its installments need only a general understanding of the setting to read, but Pharos is set so far into the series those who have not read at least The Unremembered Empire would be lost. While many of the books in the series have short stories that set them up the shorts are usually not required reading, but in the case of Pharos I felt the absence of A Safe and Shadowed Place, The Laurel of Defiance and Heart of the Pharos, all of which provide background on important characters.     

Speaking of characters, Pharos is very much an ensemble story and this proves to be a double-edged sword. By providing us with point of view characters from every camp Haley is able to weave a multi-layered narrative that explores multiple perspectives, but also dilutes his plot and leaves less room for important scenes that glue the action together. The story of Oberdeii and the other Ultramarine neophytes who escape from the orbital station and are left stranded on Sotha has massive potential, but the scouts disappear into the forest partway through the story and do not play a large role in its conclusion. The unlikely friendship between Imperial Fists captain Alexis Polux and loyalist Iron Warriors Warsmith Barabas Dantioch is a similar goldmine, but we see little of their time together and less of their actions to defend the Pharos. Among the Night Lords the relationship between blood-brothers Kellenkir and Kellendvar and the tensions among their villainous commanders are both given enough page time, but sometimes distract from the siege of the Pharos, which is not covered in much detail. One of the few plotlines that does receive enough attention is that of the human soldiers led by Mericus Giraldus who get caught up in the invasion. Mericus is a likeable character who injects much needed humanity into the story, and his horrific death at the hands of the Night Lords left a bad taste in my mouth.

Overall Pharos is a good book, exciting and action-packed enough to carry the story through to its universe-damning conclusion. Issues with focus break up the narrative, but at the end of the day there is just enough here to satisfy.