Let's Read the Horus Heresy 36: Titandeath

The spires of the Phalanx formed a cityscape as glorious as any once boasted by Terra’s orbital plates, now all the more impressive for lack of suitable comparators.

 - The Horus Heresy: Titandeath, Guy Haley

As a diehard Adeptus Titanicus player, I'd actually been looking forward to this book. We already got some very good Titan action in Legacies of Betrayal and some glimpses of god-engines in Vengeful Spirit and Tallarn, so it's about time the Titan Legions get a novel of their own.

**

Luckily, Guy Haley doesn't disappoint, and Titandeath is a very competently written and entertaining Horus Heresy story. It follows Legio Solaria, a loyalist Titan Legion whose command crews are all-female, and their battles with the traitors of Legio Vulpa at Beta-Garmon. I liked the characters, and there's a good balance of battle and personal narratives.

Titanicus players take note, there are several named Titan classes that I think have never had models. There's a tiny Titan: "a Rapier class scout, a lighter, swifter machine than even a Warhound", and several medium ones:

The balance of their engines was of middling classes – Reavers, Nightgaunts and Carnivores – but the aggressive manner in which they deployed them made up for the relative paucity of heavier machines.

Lexicanum identifies a Nightgaunt as a sub-type of the Warlord, but it's clearly described as a Titan smaller than a Warlord in Titandeath. We want these in Titanicus and Legions!

I'm also entertained that they're fighting over Nyrcon City, which I invariably read as Nyrok City. I mean I suppose I can see Fulgrim having an Andy McCoy phase. Again, I have to be honest and say that I don't fully understand why the two sides are fighting over this particular star system, but then I rarely do, and real-world wars and battles don't always make sense either.

**

So I liked Titandeath, and shockingly, it's the last main series Horus Heresy novel I'm reading. It's kind of appropriate, too, as Horus and the gang are now ready to start their assault on the Sol system. I think I still want to read a couple of the Primarch novels, and then I'll do some kind of summing up before hitting the Siege of Terra books. It's been a journey.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 35: Slaves to Darkness

The cloaked figure walked across the plain that had been a mountain.

 - The Horus Heresy: Slaves to Darkness, John French

This is the last print book available in the Horus Heresy main series, so this part of the project is nearing an end. I just enjoyed John French's Tallarn, and his short story was one of the best bits of the otherwise boring Burden of Loyalty. So I was a little surprised to find that getting through Slaves to Darkness was a slog.

Seeing as how this is the thirty-fifth Horus Heresy book I've read, it may just be the case that I'm getting a little tired of them. But Slaves to Darkness felt like one of those middle volumes of trilogies, where everything is either setting up the finale, or some pointless fluff around it.

Slaves to Darkness follows several characters: the Iron Warrior Volk and Son of Horus Argonis, who are with Perturabo's fleet; Horus's equerry Maloghurst; and Zardu Layak, Dark Apostle of the Word Bearers. The bunch of them are trying to marshal the traitor Primarchs for the final assault on Terra, and get Horus to recover after he's been wounded by Russ. Lorgar and Layak go looking for Fulgrim through the Webway, and the Iron Warriors go find Angron.

The trouble is that none of these characters, or the quests they're on, are particularly interesting. The action sequences feel formulaic, repetitive and pointless, and nothing meaningful happens at any point. At the end of the story, the traitor Primarchs who are going to assault Terra are there, like we knew they would be, and the entire novel leading up to it has felt like a waste of time.

My thesis at this point is that a successful Horus Heresy novel has good battle scenes, interesting characters and an amount of power armor soap opera. For the battle scenes to feel meaningful, we have to care about the characters and what they're doing, and the power armor soap opera is there to make the action mean something. Slaves to Darkness is too much power armor soap opera, with very few interesting characters and battle scenes that aren't really tied in to the soap opera at all.

I don't know, maybe I'd feel different if I read this with fresher eyes, so to speak, but this was a very disappointing experience. Avoid.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 34: Burden of Loyalty

Gritty ochre dust clings to the dead warrior’s open eyes.

 - 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.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 33: Tallarn

The last Titan left on Tallarn bore the world’s new master across the dust plains.

 - The Horus Heresy: Tallarn, John French

I don't think it's a coincidence that some of my favorite Horus Heresy novels are the ones with barely a Space Marine in sight. Nemesis is the most prominent example, and I'd say I enjoyed Tallarn just as much, if not more. Or I mean technically this is an anthology, I think, but all the stories are by the same guy.

Later on in the book, some marines do show up, but at least they're interacting with non-marines a lot, and the Alpha Legion is also there, which is always fun. Tallarn is still mostly the story of people in tanks, on a planet turned to a toxic hell by virus bombardment, and that's what makes it so good.

The star of the show is definitely Tallarn itself. The sheer claustrophobia of driving tanks around a totally poisoned planet, where one tear in your protective suit means immediate, gruesome death, is powerfully conveyed and sticks with you. At first it's a mystery why anyone could possibly be bothered to fight over a place like this, but that gets turned into a plot point, which is satisfying.

If I'm honest, the plot itself isn't that great, but I was certainly entertained, and Tallarn goes on my Do Read list.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 32: Master of Mankind

"Father."

 - The Horus Heresy: The Master of Mankind, Aaron Dembski-Bowden

We've encountered something of a rarity on our journey through the Horus Heresy: a decidedly mediocre Aaron Dembski-Bowden joint.

Master of Mankind takes us to the Webway, where the Custodians, Sisters of Silence and Machine Cult are fighting an endless horde of faceless daemons. Our protagonists are a pair of Custodians, who are very stoic and loyal, and make Imperial Fists and even Smurfs seem like incredibly diverse and fascinating characters. The only bright spot is Arkhan Land, who actually seems like a person.

On the other side we have Drach'nyen, who is, well, quite boring. Beyond that, the only named opponents at any point are a couple of traitor Titans. It's an interesting choice to tell an epic civil war narrative with absolutely no personality at all on the other side, and it's by far the biggest problem with the story.

We also get some space-operatic visions from Emps which one of the Custodians is experiencing. Sadly, they're also not very interesting, and I can't help thinking that Dembski-Bowden's abilities are being misused quite badly here.

Master of Mankind takes place in the Webway, and we're pretty definitively told that the Emperor's "Great Work" was securing access to the Webway, but then Magnus shows up and inadvertently lets the daemons in. Once again, it begs the question: why on earth did Emps not tell Magnus what he was doing? I'm starting to be pretty strongly on team Magnus Did Nothing Wrong, because so far, I don't understand why Emps didn't tell Magnus, or for that matter Horus, about the whole thing.

Overall, I have to say this is a very disappointing novel. If it was anyone else, I'd say it was all right, but when it's the guy who wrote First Heretic and Betrayer, and I just finished his Night Lords trilogy, I was definitely expecting more. Miss this and you won't miss anything.

Let's Read Warhammer: The Night Lords

The First Heretic inspired me to read more Dembski-Bowden, and more about the Night Lords' Primarch, Konrad Curze; then Shadows of Treachery made it worse. To be honest, I knew next to nothing about the Night Lords before this reading project, except that their colors are dark blue and red, and they like skulls. They also have a potentially hilarious legion trait in Legions Imperialis where if they kill an enemy HQ unit, everyone close enough takes damage.

I started with the short story The Abyssal Edge. A grievously wounded Imperial Navy officer is assigned to the Night Lords as an archivist, and comes across some disturbing information about a clash between the Night Lords and the Thousand Sons and their Primarchs. It's a good little story, written well and effectively. There were also good Night Lords short stories in Eye of Terra, and a whole ADB novella in Shadows of Treachery, as well as a Graham McNeill story where Curze kicks Rogal Dorn's ass. Curze was also just about the only good thing about Unremembered Empire. So suffice to say that at this point, I'm becoming a fan.

**

The obvious next step was to pick up the Night Lords omnibus, and read it while waiting for my copy of Master of Mankind. However, in the foreword to the omnibus, Dembski-Bowden waxes lyrical on Simon Spurrier's Night Lords novel Lord of the Night (2005), which, it turns out, is available as an ebook. So I started there.

Lord of the Night follows two characters: Captain Zho Sahaal of the Night Lords, and Interrogator Mita Ashyn, a sanctioned psyker of the Ordo Xenos. Zho Sahaal drops out of the warp and crashes on a hive world where Ashyn is rooting out xenos cults, and all sorts of hijinks ensue.

It's an unexpectedly excellent book! Both protagonists are great characters. Sahaal is as insufferably emo as his primarch, but also does an excellent Predator impression. Ashyn's travails in her Inquisitor's entourage sometimes feel a bit too hackneyed, but overall it's a good story, and I like how on some level, I at least kept rooting for the Night Lord. So in that respect, this isn't helping. But I definitely recommend Lord of the Night.

**

The omnibus itself collects Dembski-Bowden's Night Lords trilogy and a couple of short stories. They're all good, and the trilogy itself is superb. I think it's probably the best 40k fiction I've read.

The Night Lords omnibus follows former Apothecary Talos, who's inherited his Primarch's gift and has visions of the future, and is therefore known as the Night Lords' prophet. At the start of the first novel, he's the de facto squad leader of First Claw, Tenth Company of the Night Lords, aboard the strike cruiser Covenant of Blood. The company and cruiser are commanded by the Exalted, who used to be Tenth Company's commander, captain Vandred, but is now a daemon of some kind.

Talos is the main character, but we're equally here for his human slaves, especially his long-suffering pilot Septimus, and the marines of First Claw. As new slaves are captured and new marines join the squad, there's a sort of found family vibe that's one of the main attractions of the story. The other is Talos, who's an excellent character.

The first novel follows Tenth Company as they join Abaddon's current project and participate in an assault on forge world of Crythe, while dealing with schemes and plots both outside and inside the company. Abaddon is still basically the same guy he was in Horus Rising: someone you'd be quite happy to have leading an assault, but not necessarily planning one. The story is great, with some special highlights like the Night Lords fighting a Warhound Titan and the flashbacks to the legion after the Heresy and the death of their Primarch.

The second part of the trilogy has Tenth Company join Huron Blackheart and his Red Corsairs for an attack on a loyalist fortress-monastery, and it's good stuff, with Talos and the gang going fully Night Lords on the Imperials, and trying to steal back a Night Lords cruiser from the Corsairs and still scheming and struggling for power among themselves.

While both of the first two novels are threaded through with flashbacks to the Night Lords' past after the Heresy, in the third they return to Tsagualsa, where Curze died, and fight some elves. It's high drama, and an appropriately epic ending to the trilogy.

Dembski-Bowden deserves particular respect for making Talos and his gang genuinely sympathetic characters whose adventures you want to follow, while never letting you forget that they're Night Lords Chaos Marines, and therefore utterly horrible monsters. It all adds up to a surprisingly wide range of emotions to feel for a Warhammer 40,000 story. So, y'know, highly recommended.

Let's Read the Horus Heresy 31: Praetorian of Dorn

The ghost image collapsed into smoke.

 - The Horus Heresy: Praetorian of Dorn, John French

This one's available in print, for some reason. Even though this project has taught me to appreciate ebooks, it's still nice to read an actual, physical book and not stare at a screen all the time.

We're back with the Alpha Legion, which is excellent, and with the Imperial Fists, which is not. The plot of Praetorian of Dorn is a ludicrously overcomplicated scheme by the Alpha Legion to attack Terra, but where Legion was 'Allo, 'Allo 40,000, this is a technothriller.

The book is not without its weaknesses. Clearly, in a story like this, the loyalists kinda do have to be Imperial Fists, but they and Dorn are just so, well, boring. Rogal Dorn doesn't come across as quite such a repulsive, violent bully as he's been in some of the previous installments, but he's just dull, as are all of his legionnaires. There's also a largely pointless interlude around the middle of the book that's more or less the battle of Helm's Deep, but with Imperial Fists.

For the most part, this is absolutely silly and quite enjoyable, and in that a worthy successor to Legion. It's actually better than Legion in that there's no sexism or other macho bullshit, apart from Dorn's buffoonery. But it's very badly let down by the ending, which feels rushed and unsatisfactory. I think I'm going to choose to believe that the events of the last three chapters are after-the-fact Imperial propaganda with only a tenuous relationship to reality.

Honestly, before the ending, I was going to recommend this, but it's actually so bad this doesn't make my "do read" list. So be advised.