The Black Legion

[Roomsky]

Black Legion

 

                What’s this? Roomsky reviewing a new book in a timely manner? This is some grade-A heresy right here. Well, worry not, for I’ll fall into my other usual trappings starting right now with my usual obtuse prefacing.

 

                I read this immediately after The Talon of Horus. This, in combination with The Black Legion Series being very much its own beast compared to some of Aaron’s other works, is why it is the only ADB novel I’ll be comparing this to at length. The recency of that read will also make this something of a dual-review, as many of the issues I have with Black Legion are because of things from Talon.

 

                Also I didn’t read the thread before posting this to avoid spoilers, apologies for any stale points.

 

Right off the bat, I didn’t like this book as much as Talon. I want to codify this by saying that it’s still and ADB novel, an author some of you are probably tired of hearing me gush over, and he remains a cut above most of his peers. Most things I read nowadays I move through in 25-page increments, but I blew through this in 3 days. The prose, as always, is good and has that amazing flow to it Aaron does best. Page time rarely feels wasted, and while I think the climax might have dragged a little, none of it was bolter porn or some flavorless battle report. My biggest disappointment, though, is that while Talon was basically a discourse on The Eye of Terror, rich in candid philosophy of the workings of chaos, Black Legion is merely a good book about traitor marines.

 

                Too me, Black Legion lacks the amazing energy that Talon had. Both books are packed with Aaron performing damage control on things that have been misrepresented by the community at large, but Talon was just full of life that so many BL publications lack. All the main characters were memorable: Lheor, The Anamnesis, Khayon, Gyre, Sargon, Ashur-kai, Nefertari, Telemachon, Falkus (basically a non-character in the Heresy). We got to know them with surprising efficiency, and in tandem came a bombardment of interesting set pieces and situations. From the Sons of Horus being hunted to near-extinction to the Firetide and the brief meeting with a shard of the Emperor to simple things like the beast man culture on the Tlaloc, the world painted by Talon was alive and layered.

 

                Such things are not absent from Black Legion, but they come with less frequency. Beyond Davarek, there aren’t really any new characters of note (Sigismund is cheating, we already know him). Of course, such things are not the focus. Black Legion is Khayon’s story, and he gets a proper arc here. It’s a good one, and completely believable, even if his rise into passion against Davarek’s champion seemed a tad convenient (did Abbadon know Davarek was going to make such an act of disrespect?)

 

                That said, Khayon may have eaten up too much of the focus. His dispassionate, and later frustrated, mood permeate most of the book, which dampens some of the build-up. There isn’t much of a look into speculation about the Black Templars and Sigismund, which I feel is a bit of a missed opportunity to build tension.  Drachnyen, too, is on everyone’s minds, but they’re too superhuman to be truly affected by it. We never really get to see the sheer malevolence of the thing bleeding onto anyone vulnerable. Of course, it’s all from Khayon’s perspective and Abbadon is very much in the astartes elitism that permeated the traitor legions, but perhaps one of the opinions of one of the abhumans manning the ship would have put some of the big issues here into perspective.

 

                I maintain that Aaron writes the best astartes (at least, as characters), and this is no different. Unlike Talon, though, much of the personality here is from established character over new ones. The Sons of Horus apothecary has a great introduction, but I honestly can’t remember his name, he’s too neutral when bouncing off Khayon and Telemachon to make much of an impression. I can’t remember much about Ilyaster beyond his name. Nagual is a lacking replacement for Gyre both in and out of story. As I said, it’s all Khayon’s story, so much so that it smothers any chance new characters had to make an impression.

 

                 Something I have gleaned before writing this is that Davarek is seen as one of the story’s weak points, but I’d argue to the contrary. Nothing undermines the threat he poses, a rare example of an antagonist frequently on the back foot that never becomes difficult to take seriously, it’s hard to dismiss him after he makes Khayon grovel and kneel like that, in Abaddon’s presence no less. More importantly, he services the plot in that he highlights why Abaddon is unique. Davarek may come off as a little flat, but in that regard he’s no different than almost every other chaos lord in the fluff. He’s arrogant, powerful, ruthless, brimming with corruption, petty, and unforgiving. He’s your standard chaos space marine on steroids, and thus is the perfect foil in Abaddon’s quest for Drachnyen. Abbadon rose because he is unique, because his charisma, intelligence, and respect formed an atypical brotherhood. Davarek’s only distinction from his kin is that he’s a magnitude above them. He is the Black Legion to Abaddon's Talon of Horus.

 

Thagus Davarek, introducing himself to a rival chaos lord for the first time. (M31, colourized)

 

                The only characters I’m not big on are Ashur-Kai and Nefertari. I found the White Seer kind of annoying, too preoccupied with nebulous concerns that the reader can’t really get behind. For that reason, The Warp Ghosts eloping with him was unexpected but a tad emotionally hollow. As for Nefertari, she just feels too human for my tastes. While Aaron makes astartes relatable (which this forums auto-correct tried to replace with "relocatable"), they were after all once human, he makes xenos too relatable. And yes, I know she’s a sadistic monster, but it’s all human conceit and pride that seem to flow from her. Where’s the alien perspective of a being who may very well be ageless, who must constantly contend with the god, who ate most of her species, and is constantly trying to sap her soul. I would think that would yield a more unique personality than being an :cuss.

 

                Finally, while I appreciate the framing device of Khayon in an inquisitorial cell, but I can’t help but feel it might have benefitted the story to abandon it until the series wraps up. It’s difficult to have tension when Khayon reminds us that, for example, Lheor is fine until the distant future. One wonders the extent to which Davarek will savage the fleet, but we know the main cast and the Vengeful Spirit will be fine. One wonders how Abaddon will escape the eye, not if. Of course, the book itself is also a great sin:

 

My bookshelf is ruined.

 

                Yet, despite this laundry list of issues, Black Legion remains a good book. The lack of tension never made me frustrated like French’s Ahriman series, the influx of flat background characters didn’t annoy me like Gav’s Raven Guard, and the lack of elevation to something more than space marines at war hasn’t lead me to dismiss it like so many of Space Marine Battles. It speaks to Aaron’s skill as a writer that, much like Sigismund’s refusal to die, even in the midst of numerous problems, he simply refuses to produce anything other than a quality work. Speaking of Sigismund, that fight was fantastic. Only a thousand-year-old Fist could have the ceramite balls to nearly kill Abbadon like that.

 

My arbitrary numerical rating for this book is a 7/10.

[bluntblade]

I want some more of Vortigern. He doesn't really feature beyond being a straightforwardly capable and loyal officer, but I dig the idea of him.

[Vesper]

I have to say I'm surprised we haven't seen the ex Alpha Legion guy we've sorta heard about many months back. His time might come with the third book. I suppose the death of Daravek will see many flock to Abaddon and the Black Legion.

[bluntblade]

Now imagining a 30somethingth Millenium SMB story with the DA and/or some successors facing down a BL force under Vortigern.

 

It should really be a consideration with the BL that the defenders can never really know what they're going to get. Abaddon's coalition is so varied as to be deeply unpredictable.

[Phoebus]

Aaron,

 

In the event you're reading this, well done; I enjoyed Black Legion a great deal. As with The Talon of Horus, you did a wonderful job of not just telling a tale but expanding what so much of this setting is about. You're very humble when it comes to the shared nature of Warhammer 40k, but I'm sure you appreciate what it means to readers to get an idea of what the origins of such a signature faction looked like.

 

Several posters already hit on your novel's many positive points, most probably far more concisely than is possible for me. There are, however, two things I wanted to offer.

 

First, I understand that the nature of the story you're telling (it reflecting what Iskander Khayon has been witness to) precludes us from having a perspective on who Thagus Daravek was and what he was up to during the events of this novel. We thus have to take certain things for granted where his role in this story is concerned, first and foremost among those being his status among the Nine Legions. We can't know all Daravek's machinations, the alliances he's made behind the scenes, his efforts at amassing his armada and the hosts he is self-styled lord of. Even acknowledging all that, though, the power and influence Daravek wields throughout the novel never felt... real to me. There are certainly things said that qualify Daravek's status, but they feel hollow compared to the insight Khayon provides on the rise of Abaddon and his brothers. There is no pivotal event that shows us why Daravek is the Lord of Hosts the way that, e.g., Telemachon's actions on Terra inform us of his character. For lack of better words, Daravek feels like Abaddon's arch-rival in a vacuum.

 

Second, I think there is a tantalizing, untold story missing from Black Legion. More than once, Abaddon and Khayon make the point that their rebellion against the Imperium was justified because they were betrayed by their masters. On at least one occasion that point becomes even more powerful as the protagonists claim that, in fact, they rebelled for the sake of the Imperium. This touches on a theme that featured as early as 2002, in Graham McNeill's Storm of Iron. There, Forrix of the Iron Warriors references "the dream of Horus," of "unification of Humanity under the terrible Powers of Chaos”; he contrasts Honsou against Kroeger by noting the latter "had long since cast off any notions of the good of humanity." Honsou himself later opines that only in Chaos "could humanity find the strength to resist the implacable advance of the tyranids, the barbarity of the orks or the nascent peril of the ancient star-gods ... Only Chaos had the power to unite a fragmented race and defeat that which sought to destroy it."

 

There was, obviously, a difficult contradiction in that theme that had to be overcome. It's all well and good to talk about lofty ideals, but those same Chaos Space Marines were cruel, jaded, and murderous creatures; their vision had to be reconciled with their actual actions. Of course, the contradiction itself wasn't the problem; human beings contradict themselves all the time. The real issue is that the contradiction was never explored. No one spent any real time looking at the personal moral conflicts of the Chaos Space Marines. In fact, that very idea was largely ignored in subsequent novels. More often than not, Chaos Space Marines were shown as cardboard cut-out villains: nihilistic killers who existed to torture and kill humanity because the Ruinous Powers demanded it, to further their ambitions, and/or out of pleasure.

 

EDIT:

 

This is one of the reasons why I enjoyed The First Heretic so much: it resurrected the idea that corruption, heresy, and rebellion aside, there was something more to Chaos Space Marines than just being murderous bogeymen. When Argel Tal's lieutenants confront Aquillon at the end, they reveal motives that reflect how dystopian this universe is. They accuse the Emperor of challenging the gods and damning humanity, and when they say that only through allegiance, worship, and faith to Chaos "... will mankind endure the endless wars against the tides of blood that will drown [the] galaxy," we don't have a reason to doubt their sincerity. They recognize the reality of the Primordial Truth and what it demands of them: blood rituals, human sacrifice, murder, betrayal, even genocide. They nonetheless believe that only by giving obeisance to these awful gods can the species survive.

 

The contradiction, of course, continued to exist, and it was the only real complaint I had for your subsequent Heresy work. The Word Bearers would go on to do horrific things - worse than anything committed by the Imperium against which they were so fundamentally, morally opposed. I can't recall any of them so much as saying something like, "we do these things for a greater good," though. And if it is a function of Chaos that the Word Bearers can't realize they've become worse than the evil they sought to defeat, I'm not sure that it being merely understood suffices.

 

Still, the idea that there are higher ideals and reasons behind the actions of at least some Chaos Space Marines - Abaddon included! - is as powerful now as it was 15 years ago. I'm happy it sill resonates enough with you to feature in your stories; I selfishly hope it's something you decide to explore in future Black Legion novels.

 

Alright, rant over. Thanks again for a wonderful novel, man!

[b1soul]

I love the concept of CSM who believe sincerely that Chaos is the key to mankind's ascension...and that compared to the Imperium's soul-crushing totalitarianism, Chaos actually offers a more meaningful existence.

 

I too don't like it when CSM are limited only to selfish egomaniacs...

[Augustus]

Phoebus, nicely put as always. I remember reading a short story in some collection about a Chaos Space Marine and his enternal battle against an Imperial Fist (through his Gene seed). He had a companion that wept at the failure of the Imperium to realize the truth of Chaos.

[Phoebus]

I remember that one, Augustus. It was "Honour Among Fiends", by Dylan Owen. It was one of the short stories from the Heroes of the Space Marines anthology!

[Sulemain]

I love the concept of CSM who believe sincerely that Chaos is the key to mankind's ascension...and that compared to the Imperium's soul-crushing totalitarianism, Chaos actually offers a more meaningful existence.

 

I too don't like it when CSM are limited only to selfish egomaniacs...

 

True, but I did like Sigismund's counter to this argument, which cut through Abaddon's BS. 

[Bulwyf]

One of the reasons I love Death Guard is that their 30k mantra of saving humanity through attrition is warped into the 40k version of saving humanity through the only Chaos god that genuinely cares for its followers in Nurgle. If humanity can be redeemed in the 40k world it is not from a false god that the Mortarion and his veterans know was never a real god but through the only god that actually cares for its followers.

[bluntblade]

Even if Mortarion's stance has become ":cuss it, we'll make them :cuss their innards out their earholes"

[Calas Typhon]

One of the reasons I love Death Guard is that their 30k mantra of saving humanity through attrition is warped into the 40k version of saving humanity through the only Chaos god that genuinely cares for its followers in Nurgle. If humanity can be redeemed in the 40k world it is not from a false god that the Mortarion and his veterans know was never a real god but through the only god that actually cares for its followers.

 

From my point I don't think the Death Guard truly cared about saving humanity through their attrition, I don't even believe the Death Guard truly care about common humanity at all. They come across as a Legion who believe humanity should look out for themselves and push through any hardship thrown at them. In the end after all, they were a weapon rather than a builder legion such as the Ultramarines who built safe empires and the Salamanders who build strong bonds with humanity. I don't even think that they wish to enlighten humanity to Nurgle for the good of humanity but to just spread his influence out of a need for destruction. Mortarion is another thing though, he might want to save humanity due to the events on Barbarus. It would be interesting to see if the Death Guards relations with humanity is looked upon in the new HH book coming up and the Mortarion Primarch book.

 

I always believed the best stories with CSM involve those who genuinely believe chaos is the correct path for humanity, without trying to echo what has been said before. Its one of the reasons why I enjoy the Word Bearers.. although there is far too much daemon nonsense and possession!

[Scribe]

 

There was, obviously, a difficult contradiction in that theme that had to be overcome. It's all well and good to talk about lofty ideals, but those same Chaos Space Marines were cruel, jaded, and murderous creatures; their vision had to be reconciled with their actual actions. Of course, the contradiction itself wasn't the problem; human beings contradict themselves all the time. The real issue is that the contradiction was never explored. No one spent any real time looking at the personal moral conflicts of the Chaos Space Marines. In fact, that very idea was largely ignored in subsequent novels. More often than not, Chaos Space Marines were shown as cardboard cut-out villains: nihilistic killers who existed to torture and kill humanity because the Ruinous Powers demanded it, to further their ambitions, and/or out of pleasure.

 

EDIT:

 

This is one of the reasons why I enjoyed The First Heretic so much: it resurrected the idea that corruption, heresy, and rebellion aside, there was something more to Chaos Space Marines than just being murderous bogeymen. When Argel Tal's lieutenants confront Aquillon at the end, they reveal motives that reflect how dystopian this universe is. They accuse the Emperor of challenging the gods and damning humanity, and when they say that only through allegiance, worship, and faith to Chaos "... will mankind endure the endless wars against the tides of blood that will drown [the] galaxy," we don't have a reason to doubt their sincerity. They recognize the reality of the Primordial Truth and what it demands of them: blood rituals, human sacrifice, murder, betrayal, even genocide. They nonetheless believe that only by giving obeisance to these awful gods can the spirit survive.

 

The contradiction, of course, continued to exist, and it was the only real complaint I had for your subsequent Heresy work. The Word Bearers would go on to do horrific things - worse than anything committed by the Imperium against which they were so fundamentally, morally opposed. I can't recall any of them so much as saying something like, "we do these things for a greater good," though. And if it is a function of Chaos that the Word Bearers can't realize they've become worse than the evil they sought to defeat, I'm not sure that it being merely understood suffices.

 

Still, the idea that there are higher ideals and reasons behind the actions of at least some Chaos Space Marines - Abaddon included! - is as powerful now as it was 15 years ago. I'm happy it sill resonates enough with you to feature in your stories; I selfishly hope it's something you decide to explore in future Black Legion novels.

 

Alright, rant over. Thanks again for a wonderful novel, man!

 

This is the ultimate failure of the Studio over the last...what decade? Longer? ADB if anything, cleaves to those old bits of fluff, that many of us signed up for all those many years (almost 20 now for me) ago.

 

I hope to pick this up over the weekend, as I have never been let down and doubt I will be here. :]

[Chapter Master Valrak]

Something that confused me.

 

They took Sigismund body, I thought his body was entombed on the Eternal Crusade?

[Sete]

They sent it back with a message. Like a postcard.

[bluntblade]

There was a considerable amount of forwarding.

[Marshal Loss]

Random thought after re-reading Path of Heaven - one character I'd love to show up in the series, in some form, would be Eidolon of the Emperor's Children. His old Index Astartes entry mention that his death was never confirmed, and he was rumoured to be Lieutenant to Abaddon at some point. I'd love to see how ADB would handle him in whatever form he took after all this time.

 

Flipside here, I guess, is that half of the joy of this series is having a new set of characters. Still, just a thought

[Khornestar]

Finished the book earlier today, and I thought it was great. I didn't enjoy it as much as I did Talon, but I chalk that up to being a sequel to an outstanding first tale of a series. ADB is great at introducing the briefest tidbits about randomly mentioned characters, and then leaving those threads hanging. I'd love to read of the exploits of so many of them.

 

We need more stories about chaos protagonists.

[b1soul]

Path of Heaven made a extremely dangerous and credible villain out of Eidolon

 

He's the EC's answer to the likes of Sevatar, Sigismund, etc.

[bluntblade]

I now want Horus' book to be him and Dorn, with Abaddon and Sigismund kicking arse together.

[Ascanius]

Path of Heaven made a extremely dangerous and credible villain out of Eidolon

 

He's the EC's answer to the likes of Sevatar, Sigismund, etc.

 

Mmm, I think part of the reason why Eidolon doesn't quite rank with those characters is because, in reality, he splits that role with Fabius.

[bluntblade]

Don't you mean Lucius?

[Ascanius]

Nah, Lucius isn't anywhere near the major figure in his Legion that Sigismund, Sevatar, et cetera are, because he's too focused on his own "greatest swordsman ever" schtick.

[Felix Antipodes]

Eidolon could have been a contender in the post HH lore but never got the same level of spotlighting in either the fluff or the BL novels as those mentioned. His appearance in Path of Heaven was the first time that I can remember where he really shined. Let's hope that he is used just as well in the siege ot Terra and the Scouring (if he survives that long).

[Mellow]

I now want Horus' book to be him and Dorn, with Abaddon and Sigismund kicking arse together.

I'm hoping one of the Primarch books is going to be about Horus and Alpharius.

 

One would assume (and I know what they say about assuming) that the Horus one will be about his super special relationship with The Emperor.