Graham McNeill’s Horus Heresy novel Vengeful Spirit spun together a huge number of character threads, some of which were left crying out to be followed up in later stories. With Wolf Mother, McNeill picks up a few of those characters in the immediate wake of Vengeful Spirit’s conclusion, focusing on Alivia Sureka as she is forced to work alongside the Knight Errant Severian in order to rescue her adopted daughter from a resurgent fragment of Molech’s Serpent Cult.
Alongside their primarch Fulgrim, Apothecary Fabius is perhaps the most important member of the Emperor’s Children legion, his flesh-craft driving them ever onwards on their dark path. In Chirurgeon, Nick Kyme looks a little closer at what drives Fabius himself, and why. As he operates on a living legionary in order to understand the blight affecting his body, he thinks back to pivotal events that took place before Fulgrim had taken up his position at the head of the legion.
In a series the size and scale of the Horus Heresy, it’s inevitable that some characters’ involvement will wax and wane. Such has been the case with Maloghurst the Twisted; introduced at the beginning of the series, he was absent for much of the time up until his return in Vengeful Spirit. In Guy Haley’s Twisted, we look closer at Horus’ equerry as he sees the safety of his position crumble while the legion changes around him. Plagued by the whisperings of the Neverborn, he turns to a dangerous, unlikely source of support.
As a genre, Fantasy isn’t generally known for beautiful prose, generally focusing more on plot and worldbuilding. With his first two novels, The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss went some way towards reversing that trend, and now with his novella The Slow Regard of Silent Things he has proven once and for all that great Fantasy can be beautiful as well. Set within the world of his Kingkiller Chronicles, this explores the character of Auri, the shy, semi-feral woman who lives deep beneath the University in a place known only as the Underthing.
The Death Guard are still somewhat under-represented in the Horus Heresy series, but Rob Sanders’ Distant Echoes of Old Night goes some way to filling that gap. Here we see Death Guard Chaplain Morgax Murnau as he leads a Destroyer squad through a dying world to finish off a detachment of Imperial Fists from a downed ship. The brutal, implacable Death Guard will have to use every awful weapon at their disposal if they are to prise the dug-in Imperial Fists from their tenacious defences.
Ten million tanks! Or maybe one million tanks. Whatever the number, the Battle of Tallarn is famed for the vast numbers of armoured vehicles that were deployed. In his Horus Heresy novella Tallarn : Executioner, John French chronicles the opening sequence of this infamous battle, from the initial virus bombing of the once-verdant world to the early engagements that demonstrated to the Iron Warriors that Tallarn’s population wasn’t going to let them have their world without a fight. Originally available only as a Limited Edition novella, it’s now been re-issued in standard format to coincide with the release of Tallarn : Ironclad, the next in the Tallarn arc.
Nick Kyme’s ‘quick read’ The Gates of Terra follows Captain Arcadese of the Ultramarines as he stubbornly defends the Ardent Reef from the forces of the Warmaster, in spite of his growing confusion at what’s happening around him. To abuse a famous line : it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a Horus Heresy short story, even one apparently standing on its own, will in some way be linked to at least one other existing story. This story is a great example, as while fundamentally it stands as a single story it is in fact linked with Forgotten Sons from the Age of Darkness anthology, as well as the Garro arc, albeit loosely.
Black Library’s series of Space Marine Battles books started in 2010 with Steve Parker’s Rynn’s World, and since then has expanded to contain well over a dozen novels and more than twenty assorted novellas, short stories and audio dramas. 2014 saw two notable additions to the series, in the shape of Andy Smillie’s Sons of Wrath (initially released as a First Edition), and the art book Visions of War (also initially a First Edition). A beautifully-presented hardback filled with a range of artwork from the series so far, it showcases the incredible work of artists such as Jon Sullivan, Kai Lim and Clint Langley (amongst others), and includes short stories from LJ Goulding and Anthony Reynolds.
The accompanying novel to Games Workshop’s first Warhammer : End Times background book (see the review of Nagash here), The Return of Nagash comes from the prolific pen of Josh Reynolds. It follows Mannfred Von Carstein and Arhkhan the Black as the two rivals forge an uneasy alliance in order to bring about Nagash’s reincarnation, each of them for their own, wildly differing, reasons. Accompanying or opposing these two legends of undeath are some of the most famous characters in Warhammer, from Heinrich Kemmler and Krell to Ungrim Ironfist, Eltharion the Grim, Morgiana le Fay and Volkmar the (also) Grim; the stage is well and truly set for the first stages of the world-spanning, cataclysmic End Times.
It took a while for the Blood Angels to get involved in the Horus Heresy series, but when they did, in Fear To Tread, almost the entire legion got stuck in. In his ‘quick read’ story Lost Sons, James Swallow looks at what happened to those few legionaries who stayed behind on Baal, their home world. Denied the right to fight alongside their brothers, then cut off from the rest of the legion by the Ruinstorm, all they can do is wait and hope. When fateful news arrives with an agent of the Sigillite, it appears the worst may have happened.
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