Category Archives: Reviews

QUICK REVIEW: Savage – Guy Haley

Available in either Warriors and Warlords or the Black Library Events Anthology 2018/19, Guy Haley’s Imperial Guard short story Savage provides a quiet, thoughtful accompaniment to his novel Shadowsword. Alongside the rest of the Paragonian Seventh, the crew of the Cortein’s Honour are at rest, whiling away their time under the baking Omdurman sun. When whispers of redeployment begin circulating, Senior Loader Gollph is drawn into an illicit scheme which relies on the prejudicial views many of the Paragonians hold about his people, the Bosvodar, who hail from a feral world and are considered slow and primitive by many.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Sorcerer’s Tale – Guy Haley (At the Sign of the Brazen Claw Part Four)

Guy Haley’s multi-part Age of Sigmar story At the Sign of the Brazen Claw reaches its fourth and penultimate instalment with The Sorcerer’s Tale, in which Hyshian sorcerer Pludu Quasque tells a story of arrogance, envy and dread. He tells how, as a young man, he ignored his father’s advice, neglected his studies and let bitterness cloud his judgement until a final rash act saw him oath-bound to retrieve a long-lost jewel from the depths of the skaven underworld. As Prince Maesa, Shattercap and the other travellers listen to Quasque’s dour tale, the storm shaking the inn steadily grows in intensity.

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The Lost and the Damned – Guy Haley

Book two in Black Library’s Siege of Terra mini-series concluding the Horus Heresy, Guy Haley’s The Lost and the Damned picks up where The Solar War left off as Horus Lupercal launches his assault on Terra itself. Reinforced by thousands of conscripts and protected by ancient shield technology, the outer walls of the Imperial Palace bear the brunt of the initial attacks as the Warmaster tests the physical defences with brutal bombardments and assaults from the dregs of his forces. The loyalists know they need only endure until salvation arrives, but time is of the essence for the traitors. While the legions wait to take to the field on both sides, egos clash as the traitor primarchs vie for position, bickering amongst themselves in the name of pride, glory or their new gods.

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Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work by Guy Haley

Prolific Black Library author Guy Haley continues to explore the ‘Dark Imperium’ era of Warhammer 40,000 with Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work, tackling not just the titular Archmagos Dominus and his idiosyncratic adventures but also the fate of the remaining Scythes of the Emperor. On the dead world of Sotha, Cawl meets with Tetrach Felix of the Ultramarines and Chapter Master Thracian of the Scythes to uncover the secrets of the Pharos, searching for knowledge amidst the ruins of the Scythes’ homeworld. Between Cawl’s apparently reckless pursuit of information and Thracian’s secretive motive for being there, Felix has a hard time keeping the mission on track and ensuring the safety of all parties as the dead world proves to still contain considerable dangers.

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QUICK REVIEW: To Speak As One – Guy Haley

Guy Haley’s 40k short story To Speak As One is an unusual tale of conflicting Imperial jurisdiction, and the ongoing repercussions of Guilliman’s return and Belisarius Cawl’s unorthodox genius. Inquisitor Cehen-qui isn’t best pleased to receive orders to hand off a xenos prisoner to one of Cawl’s lieutenants, Magos Qvo-87, so refuses and hunkers down in an abandoned Ordo Xenos void station to defend his prize. To his mind, the Inquisition’s remit supersedes the authority of Cawl, or even Guilliman. Undeterred, Qvo deploys his forces – including Alpha Primus, a Space Marine of ambiguous origins and unusually dour demeanour – to press the issue.

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Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter – Guy Haley

The twelfth novel in Black Library’s The Horus Heresy Primarchs series, Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter is Guy Haley’s third contribution and by a comfortable margin his most unconventional one yet. A twitchy, jittery collection of characters and plot threads, it sees Curze – twisted, haunted, damaged – spending the final hours of his life reliving some of the key events which led him inevitably to a moment he’d long foreseen. Crouched in the darkness, talking in his madness to a (literally and figuratively) distant father, his only thoughts are to justify his monstrous actions and find vindication in light of the Emperor’s own cold contempt.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Prince’s Tale (At the Sign of the Brazen Claw Part Three) – Guy Haley

This story is currently only available within Inferno! Volume 3.

The third instalment of At the Sign of the Brazen Claw, Guy Haley’s serialised story of a group of strangers swapping stories while waiting out a storm, The Prince’s Tale sees aelven Prince Maesa tell the tale of how he met Shattercap. As the storm rages, Maesa relives a time of heartache and loneliness as he wandered the Mortal Realms aimlessly, haunted by the loss of his beloved Ellamar. Only when he finally encountered a match for his own grief did the exiled prince find himself drawn back into the lives of mortals, and set against the pitiless sylvaneth.

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QUICK REVIEW: Redeemer – Guy Haley

A short story examining one of the core aspects of the Blood Angels’ character in Warhammer 40,000, Guy Haley’s Redeemer sees High Chaplain Astorath the Grim on a mission to find a brother lost to the Black Rage, and end his suffering. Following a call that only he can hear, Astorath seeks out his lost brother on a world plagued by strange xenos creatures, where he finds the surviving Blood Angels, Primaris Marines who appear unaffected by the flaw yet troubled by what they’ve seen. Astorath’s duty is an onerous one, to preserve his Chapter’s secrets and save his brothers’ souls.

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Scions of the Emperor – Anthology

Continuing with the template (and naming convention) laid down with 2018’s Sons of the Emperor anthology, Scions of the Emperor is a Primarchs anthology featuring eight Horus Heresy short stories from eight different authors. Where it differs is that these stories are almost all from authors not normally associated with their chosen characters. There’s a mixture of stories from across the breadth of the Heresy timeline, from young Ferrus Manus and Roboute Guilliman on their respective home worlds to Rogal Dorn on Terra on the eve of the Siege, via the highs and lows of the Great Crusade and onwards.

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Corax: Lord of Shadows – Guy Haley

For Guy Haley’s second novel in the Horus Heresy Primarchs series, he’s tackled the conflict at the heart of the Raven Guard primarch in Corax: Lord of Shadows. The 27th Expedition has stalled attempting to bring the Carinae Sodality – a civilisation spanning a thousand artificial moons – to compliance. While the Expedition’s commander requested assistance from the Night Lords, Corax answers instead and is determined to succeed without resorting to Curze’s tactics. The Sodality’s stubborn resistance forces Corax into escalating levels of violence, while back on Kiavahr conflict is brewing as resentment towards the Guilders spills over into bloodshed.

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