- Into Exile, Aaron Dembski-Bowden, in The Horus Heresy: The Burden of Loyalty
It's an anthology! The last one, as it happens; the Horus Heresy series is drawing to a close. It starts with a Gav Thorpe story starring Space Woofs, and I can't think of many things I'd like to read less, so I skip it. Aaron Dembski-Bowden's Into Exile was all right, but I have to say that I was disappointed by how boring Rob Sanders's Cybernetica was. Yes, it's got piles of fluff on Mars, but you can't help thinking that McNeill did all of this so much better in Mechanicum.
Luckily David Annandale's Binary Succession in this volume is much better, and the John French psi-titan story is so good that it demonstrated once again that he's the Black Library author who's made me miss the most subway stops. This is followed by Chris Wraight, and no matter how well he did with the White Scars, the Space Woofs are just as boring when he writes them. Finally, it's Dan Abnett with a decent enough short story starring his Perpetuals.
I have to say that this was a very poor quality anthology. I think the problem is the same one that's been present through the entire series: the loyalists are just really boring.
