Let's Read the Horus Heresy 21: Shadows of Treachery

My scream woke me from the dream.

 - The Crimson Fist, John French; in The Horus Heresy: Shadows of Treachery

Next up it's yet another anthology. This one's good, though.

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John French gets us started with a whole novella about the Imperial Fists fighting the Iron Warriors. It's quite decently written, and I like an epic space battle, but the Fists are just kinda boring. Once again, Rogal Dorn is a complete buffoon, and he's clearly trained his legion to obey his orders stupidly literally to the point of suicide, but the more I read about him, the more sense that makes.

Because French writes pretty well, I have to say that the Iron Warriors were a bit of a disappointment here as they were just a pile of generic villain tropes with some hazard stripes painted on. My only impression of Perturabo at this point is that he's an uninteresting video game end boss.

Graham McNeill follows up with the Dark King, a short story on how the Primarch of the Night Lords, Conrad Kurze, starts his rebellion against the Imperium. It features Rogal Dorn being a buffoon, and I am a fan of Kurze kicking his ass.

Dan Abnett is next, and we're back on Terra in The Lightning Tower, with... Rogal Dorn. I didn't know this was an Imperial Fists anthology. This is kind of a follow-up story to the previous one, I guess, but it really doesn't add much and isn't very interesting. I can think of so many things I'd rather read than Dorn's internal monologue.

Graham McNeill then surprises us by heading back to Mars, without a suit of yellow power armor in sight. It's a good story, though: a prequel to Mechanicum, which I liked. There's a Gav Thorpe story, and I tried reading it for a bit, and then moved on. At least I think Rogal Dorn wasn't in it.

Next up is a third McNeill story, Death of a Silversmith. I'm slightly surprised that of all the Horus Heresy authors, he's quite good at these little vignettes far from the main action. Last but certainly not least is Aaron Dembski-Bowden's novella, the Prince of Crows, starring First Captain Sevatar of the Night Lords. This is Dembski-Bowden on top form: excellent entertainment that had me stay up too late because I didn't want to stop reading.

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So here we have a rare thing: a really good Horus Heresy short story anthology. I think Prince of Crows alone is worth the price of the whole thing, and Dark King's pretty good too, which I think makes this an almost compulsory volume for Night Lords fans.

Which I'm afraid I'm slightly becoming. I really liked Sevatar and the whole gang, and I think that if these books were my introduction to the Horus Heresy, I'd be seriously considering a Night Lords army. After all, the Punisher was my favorite Marvel character. I'm going to try to limit myself to maybe building a character model.