Heresy Short Story Wranglin'

I have been going and collecting all of the various Horus Heresy and Primarchs short stories unavailable in anthologies lately, and reading those. The final novel of the Heresy series proper is coming up soon, and it's unclear whether or when Black Library themselves might gather these all up and publish them that way, so I elected to track them down piecemeal to catch myself up on the series before it transitions into the Siege of Terra sub-series to end the whole thing. Or at least wind it down to a dull roar.

Some of these have been Summer of Reading or Advent Calendar releases, from this year and last, and some have only seen light in Black Library event-exclusive anthologies, like Sons of the Emperor. 

I really would liked to have gotten Sons of the Emperor at the same time I was able to pick up this and last years' event anthologies, that is when a friend visited Warhammer World in Nottingham, but unfortunately they were sold out. I stumbled on another method of reading the stories contained therein, though. They were great. All of these were, in fact:

The Passing of Angels

The Abyssal Edge

Mercy of the Dragon

Shadow of the Past

The Emperor's Architect

Prince of Blood

The Ancient Awaits

Misbegotten

Grandfather's Gift

Restorer

Prologue to Nikaea

Two Metaphysical Blades

Old Wounds, New Scars

Abyssal

A Lesson in Iron

The Atonement of Fire

Champion of Oaths

Child of Chaos

The Last Council

I also read through one of the Tabletop 40K gaming books I bought recently:

Warhammer 40,000 Campaign - Crusade of Fire

This book was full of cool background and pictures of armies on tables as the GW team played through a long campaign made up of many separate battles, telling the story of one solar system being consumed by war. This kind of thing is more interesting as I get deeper into miniature painting.

The Khan in the Great Crusade

I read the eighth book in the Horus Heresy Primarchs series, Jaghatai Khan: Warhawk of Chogoris.

Like most in the sub-series, it explores the role of the titular primarch and his legion during the period of Imperial expansion before Horus fell, a period called the Great Crusade. The Khan was the fifteenth primarch to be found and reunited with the legion bred from his geneseed, the Star Hunters, which soon would be known as the White Scars, that moniker itself apparently a mis-hearing of their own term for themselves, Talskars.

Jaghatai and the Scars were always a group apart from the rest, preferring the wild and ragged edges of the Imperium, where they could be mostly left to themselves and their ways, some of which would come into conflict with those of their cousins in other legions. Chief among those was their use of Stormseers, those legionaries who were gifted and worked with psychic powers.

A good portion of the book deals with the early formation of the Librarius, a kind of joint venture between Jaghatai, Sanguinius, and Magnus the Red, to safeguard a place for psykers among the legions, which were scorned by some, Mortarion, Perturabo, and Leman Russ, especially. The Khan had been trying to sway Horus to their way of thinking on the matter, but the future Warmaster could not afford to take a side in the matter, maneuvering as he was for the promotion he knew was in the offing for one of the primarchs sooner or later.

The book also does a lot to set up the Khan's dilemma after the wider Heresy conflict has broken out--who to trust, the brother he admires and feels a tight kinship with, or the father he disagrees with but owes everything to? Who to side with?

Chris Wraight does a great job writing this one. He's quietly turned out some very good books and stories in the series, almost completely owning the White Scars, and doing a good amount of Space Wolves, as well.

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.

The Primarchs: The Second Batch

I'm finishing up the second trio of books I elected to read in the Horus Heresy: Primarchs series. These shorter length novels are pretty quick reads, and I get the sense they would be really adaptable to the screen, if anyone ever wanted to do such a thing, because of their generally smaller scope as compared to one of the Horus Heresy novels proper.

Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar - An interesting look into Guilliman's philosophy of war and legion building. We get to see the Ultramarines waging war against orks while trying to preserve the remnants of a long extinguished human civilization on the same planet. Some of the themes here are of the integration of the Terrans and Ultramarians in the legion, and when and where certain types of warfare are appropriate.

Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero - Magnus and Perturabo are sent to a compliant world in order to evacuate the population to save them from a natural disaster. All is not as it seems, of course, and the people may not be savable, after all. Magnus's thirst for knowledge and Perturabo's ends-justify-the-means pragmatism are both on display here.

Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix - It is early in the Great Crusade, and Fulgrim is just getting his legion up to its fighting strength, and getting out on his own with the 28th Expedition fleet. For his first compliance, he wants a quick, efficient, and bloodless settlement, if at all possible. To add a bit of flair to the challenge, he takes only a small handful of legionaries to the world, and sets himself a deadline of a single month to bring the world to heel. This book shows an interesting side of the Phoenician as he is yet to really fill out into his role as an arrogant perfectionist and aesthete.

The Primarchs: The First Batch

Between books of the Horus Heresy series proper, I've been dipping into the parallel Primarchs sub-series. It's six books strong as of now, with more coming out just about monthly, with audio dramas and short stories in tow as well, unfolding in the same manner as The Horus Heresy, Warhammer 40,000 fiction as a whole, and just about everything Black Library deals in these days.

Leman Russ: The Great Wolf - A tale of early on in the Great Crusade, with an episode after the siege of Terra, set within the framing device of an older Leman Russ telling a tale to the first Space Wolf to be raised, after the second founding, to the chapter of the same name rather than the legion. It's an interesting look into some internal dynamics of the legion, including how they view themselves in contrast to their cousins of the other legions. The Lion and the Dark Angels appear here too, and the storied duel of the primarchs is part of the tale.

Perturabo: The Hammer of Olympia - The origin story of Perturabo couched within the story of the Iron Warrors' grueling campaign against the alien Hrud and their return to Perturabo's home world to put down it's rebellion against the Imperium. This is where Perturabo breaks, and everything that comes after begins to make more sense having read this narrative.

Lorgar: Bearer of the Word - The intertwined stories of the emergence of Lorgar and Kor Phaeron, who, at least for a time, was closely associated with the primarch of the Word Bearers legion. We see how Lorgar, Aurelian, the Urizen, came to be the spiritual leader of the world of Colchis, and get some insight into what drives him to keep looking for truth in the galaxy and in the warp, even after being sanctioned by The Emperor for his habit of worship, which is contra to the Imperial Truth.

Book 48 of the main series is out now, and I'm going to read that next.