The Primarchs (The Horus Heresy) [Paperback]

This is the first collection of novellas in the Horus Heresy series and its a bit of a mixed bag. The Primarchs featured are Fulgrim, Lion El'Jonson, Ferrus Manus, and the twins Alpharius and Omegon (not Kurze as Amazon seems to have suggested). Two of the stories are great, two are pretty forgettable.

The Reflection Crack'd, by Graham McNeill, is pretty awesome. People say Fulgrim was a pretty explicit and graphic tale - well, it gets even worse in this story. Essentially members of the Emperoro's Children suspect all is not as it seems with their 'Primarch' and decide to investigate. And the Emperoro's Children don't just want to talk t their leader. A great story which poses and answers questions that are quite important to the larger Heresy series.

Then you get two frankly weaker tales about the Ferrus and the Lion. Feat of Iron reminded me a lot of the last chapters of The Inquisition Wares, by Ian Watson. A promising start with what should be interesting characters turns into a lot of people walking through a desert, waiting for something to happen. Yes, there are a few fights, but the bare bones of it - that Ferrus had some warning of his impending doom - could have been handled in a short story.

The Lion is similarly overwritten. Somewhere in the the galaxy there is a secret planet with a secret project. Two Legions are fighting over it and The Lion steps in. Maybe that secret will have further bearing on the Heresy, maybe not. But again, there's not a lot revealed about the Lion or his Legion to make me feel this is essential reading for anyone but the most devoted fans of the First.

It does get interesting again with The Serpent Beneath though. The Alpha Legion live up to their reputation as the ultimate infiltrators and backstabbers as Alpharius leads a hand-picked squad to infiltrate and sabotage a top secret project being run by - the Alpha Legion! Many twists and turns, action and intrigue, all the best ingredients in a great story about the tricksiest Legion in the galaxy.

On balance then, this is a pretty good selection of tales. If you're a fan of the Legions within you will probably enjoy them nonetheless. If you're just reading it as part of the series though, don't expect to get as much from each novella.

It is sometimes amusing to see how two reviewers can feel more or less the same about a book, although disagreeing on its contents. This book includes four novellas on four different primarchs. some are great. Others, less so. To a large extent, whether you find them "good" or "bad" is up to personal preferences.

First of all, all of the novellas are "fillers" build around Isstvan V to some extent, although only one of them - the one abiout Ferrus Manus - deals with events before this massacre. This is, for me also, one of the weakest, despite being still interesting because you learn about the Iron Hands Legion (or, at least I learned a few things about them). This is largely because you expect something to happen but it doesn't, apart from a couple of unconclusive fights, so you may end up by being somewhat disappointed (at least I was). You also don't learn much more about Ferrus Manus himself than what you can find in other books of the HH series: he tends to be arrogant and somewhat rash, to put it mildly, and, to me, this novella did not really have anything new to add about him.

Contrary to the other reviewer, the novella that I liked the less was the novella on the Emperor's Children and on Fulgrim. I liked the fact that Graham McNeill gives center stage to Lucius and tells us more about him. I found that what happened to Eidolon and the way that the fight between Fulgrim and his daemon is resolved were both rather implausible, although I cannot say much more without spoiling the story for others.

I rather liked the novella on the Lion - a Primarch that has never been among my personal favorites. This is because the author shows how Lion's growing paranoïa clouds his judgement little by little to the effect that, in his view, Roboute is no better than Horus. It also shows Lion's tendency to "me toism" and his ambiguïty. Rather than taking sides in a fight opposing the Empire and the rebels and attacking a splinter group of the Death Guard while supporting a war band of the Iron Hands, he separates them and takes possession of the prize that they both were trying to grab for themselves. In addition, the author quite obviously, but also rather nicely, shows us how Lion's state of mind shifts as a result of the HH, preparing us for the future climax of the return of the Lion to Caliban...

The last novella on the Alpha Legion and Omegon (rather than Alpharius) was also interesting to hte extent that we get a few good glimpses of their infiltration and subversion tactics (for instance against the White Scars or the snatching of a Mechanicum official). However, the main piece of the story - and its end - are less plausible. I am still not convinced that the best way to protect a top secret project suffering from a leak is to infiltrate and attack one's own base. Omegon's ultimate deceptions were also rather far-fetched in my view. Where they really necessary?

So Fulgrim, Ferrus Manus, Lion and Omegon (and Alpharius but to a lesser extent), these are the four primarchs included in this book, which is good, overall. It's a pity, however, that we didn't learn more about the Khan or Sanguinius, for instance, although I understand that, in the latter's case, an HH novel is going to address this issue shortly...

The Serpent Beneath with its Alpha Legion back story is brilliant, yet takes the mystery and twisted allegiances too far.

The others? Terrible.

Feat Of Iron is so bad I stopped twice, The Reflection Crack'd is ... Dull, reversing the best story point of the Emperors Children (no spoilers, my favourite part anyway). The Lion is so by the numbers you can almost see the... Wait no I've already forgotten.

Anyway, some Horus Heresy is great, it's written almost entirely by Abnett with support from Dembski-Bokwden, some of the rest is passable, some is crap. This is towards the bottom of passable.

Better than Battle For The Abys. But so is a painfully car crash.

Stop milking the series Black Library.