Tuesday, May 29, 2018

The Iron Hand, Medusa's Gorgon Explained

Well, perhaps not fully explained. The Primarchs novel Ferrus Manus: Gorgon of Medusa explores a little of Ferrus' mindset in the later stages of the Great Crusade, as the Emperor mulls over deciding on someone to take command when he wants to retire to Terra for his next grand project.

Ferrus of course thinks it should be him given the honor and responsibility. At least, going into the Gardinaal compliance campaign, he does. By the end you get the sense that he doesn't really want to bother with command of more than one legion, and all the coordination and patience that goes with that kind of role.

Despite being a book centered around the primarch, there are a ton of other characters present here, several of which are from other legions, with a lot being Emperor's Children legionaries. We even get the rare POV of the enemy force, in this instance a not-yet-compliant branch of recently rediscovered humanity that has mastered it's own local star system, but nothing further. They are recalcitrant to join the Imperium, and are in general a real trial of Ferrus' temper.

It was a pretty decent story, but perhaps the least focused on its title character of the bunch so far, or perhaps sharing that distinction with the Guilliman book. These two are as much about the character of the legions present or the events of the campaign they take place during.

Next up, having come completely current with all of the released full numbered volumes of both the Horus Heresy and Primarchs series, I'm going to take a diversion over to 40K to read the two books currently released in the Black Legion series by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, who is without a doubt a top-tier author in 30K. I'm excited for these.

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