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.