Sanguinius: The Great Angel (17) (The Horus Heresy: Primarchs)

[Lord_Caerolion]

The Priests at least appear to be more cultural, given the Swords of Haldroth weren’t ravening madmen by the time they were taught the ways of the Sanguinary Priests. They just know how to deal with it as Sanguinius did, but other options definitely work (as much as any can be said to). 

[Ubiquitous1984]

I’ve just finished this and had to come straight to this thread to see if others enjoyed it as much as I did.  It was just a bloody well put together story, and I found it such an easy read. 

 

I absolutely loved this book.  Someone commented earlier in the thread that the Primarchs series has taken a huge unturn in quality since Alpharius, and I fully agree.  I have enjoyed all of the releases in the past few years.  The remembrancers have been fine additions IMO. 

 

I don’t have much to add other than what Roomsky put in his excellent review on page one. Wraight knocked it out of the park again IMO, I can’t wait for his next release.  

 

The grimdark ending was similar to how he finished off The Dark City.  The ol’ Wraight gutpunch at the end is becoming his trademark.     

[byrd9999]

I don't think I posted a review when I finished this book, mostly because Roomsky said it all already.

But this was a superb read, a definite 10/10. Chris Wraight is a real gem for BL, just quietly improving (on already high standards) with each book and putting out some of the best BL fiction.

 

I read this shortly after Annandale's Mortarion Primarchs novel, and the contrast couldn't be more stark. All the complaints about the format/word-count limiting storytelling are red herrings. Wraight told a brilliant, self-contained story, with great characterisation and execution that adds something to Sanguinius and the Blood Angels. Annandale filled his book with bolter-porn and kept the focus away from the main character for long periods of time.

[Tymell]

Ripped through this one over the past couple of days and absolutely love it. I have some decidedly rambly thoughts on it, and apologise for that in advance. Some spoilers within, but mostly in terms of general tone or individual quotes.

 

The portrayal of Sanguinius himself is top-notch, and Horus too for the brief time he's there. Wraight has a good handle on them and a sense of how to get it across with the right words. I like that Sanguinius has never been a "king of healthy people", how his time on the rad-poisoned world of Baal made him all the more suitable to see the potential within the shunned Revenant Legion and try to inspire them to better themselves.

 

"I have always been the master of wretches, and have learned from that. I am a wretch myself, a non-standard. To purify and to transform - that has been our gift. We suck in the sickness, we embrace it, and within our souls, it changes into beauty." - I love this idea of not casting aside ugliness, but transforming it into something better. Sums up his viewpoint well.

 

The book also has a sense of mystery, even horror at times, that I really enjoy. There's obviously something up with the Legion, and we as an audience know what it is, but Wraight isn't heavy-handed about it. It's there, but not constantly played up, instead building as the book goes, the feeling of something darker under the surface of the Angels. There's a vibe of a Greek tragedy about it, as we, the audience, know the Ofanim are watching for the Red Thirst, we know what happened to Aelion, but we can only feel a sense of dread as the unknowning protagonist marches onward in blissful ignorance. And those horror vibes really amp up towards the end as he learns more. I also appreciate that a loyalist Primarchs novel can have this darkness to it, not just "it's a loyalist legion, so it's vanilla, here's them fighting some Orks".

 

Speaking of which, the central character is fantastic. Remembrancers have been a great device for this series from the beginning, and honestly I wouldn't have minded more non-Astartes viewpoints as the series went on. Kautenya is wonderfully fleshed out and relatable.

 

In fact (and here I may be reading far too much into it, but here we go anyway), at several points I wondered how much of himself Wraight may have been putting into Kautenya. Right from the start, he's a writer and struggles with the sort of doubts and observations someone in that profession probably would. Later, when Widera talks to him, we get some lines that certainly made me think:

 

'You have a great title,' she said. 'Write something worthy of it.' - Given that the in-universe title is the same as the real book, I have to wonder if Wraight's inner voice ever echoed these words as he wrote the book. Not much later we get this from Kautenya: "The more I discovered, the less I felt I understood. I admired this Legion so much," yet he struggles. He's awed by Sanguinius, but wants to do more than just portray his abilities in combat, and that sense of awe can also be daunting, leaving him feeling that there's something more he needs to articulate properly. Does this reflect any difficulties in writing the book for real? Could well be nothing, but it's a thought that struck me, and I think it's a testament to Wraight's writing even if I'm reading too much into it.

 

On perhaps less shaky ground, I also really like the parallel there seems to be between Kautenya and the Legion, emphasised again in a talk with Widera: 'Remember before? Your name was worth nothing. You were over. You have a chance to make amends now'. She's talking to him, but the theme applies just as well to the Legion. How they were previously disgraced and looked down on, and Sanguinius gives them a chance to change that. But just like so many of the Blood Angels have a lingering, morose self-doubt, he too isn't so convinced. And of course, that plays into that gloriously grimdark ending, as we see

Spoiler

that the new Imperium people like Widera are shaping has no place for those concerned with the truth.

 

Oh, and when it comes to the "what they were, he is" bit about Sanguinius: I take that as referring to him taking on their burden, so to speak. Before him, the Revenant Legion was chucked into fight after fight, forced to be the weapon the Emperor needed. Now they have Sanguinius to help them, but he himself has to bear the weight of their flaw. Just my take on it.

 

So yeah, fantastic work with both Sanguinius' character and that of the Legion, both new and old. One of the best Primarch novels, and one of the best of the whole HH series.

 

Oh and also: with this book, my full Dramatis Personnae of the entire HH series has just passed 5000 named characters!

 

Minor point, but I think there was a timeline error:

Spoiler

Qruze speaks to Kautenya during the war on Murder, which takes place in 31,002/31,003. He says he first saw Sanguinius (when the Angel joined the Luna Wolves for a while) 59 years ago, which would be 30,944. But Sanguinius was first discovered in 30,843, so I think this is supposed to be 159 years instead.

 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Tymell

[Fedor]

One part i thought was interesting was that after the events near the end, if you read between the lines of what he encounters, it seems to suggest there's become an element of instituationalised ritual with the red thirst. It's not just the occasional marine losing control and being hunted by the Ofanim, there's an active element of indulging in it that seems to be overseen/controlled to a degree. The less important deck workers on the ships certainly don't seem to be having a good time.

[Arkangilos]

On 2/15/2023 at 12:01 PM, Fedor said:

The less important deck workers on the ships certainly don't seem to be having a good time.

I don’t remember it being from deck workers, but Echoes of Eternity seems to hint there is a ritualized part to it, but makes it clear post Sanguinius serfs were better protected. It talks about how before Sanguinius it was just seen as regrettable.

[b1soul]

Hats off to Wraight...nails the portrayal of Sanguinius and skilfully draws from the FW background of the old IXth. For me, this is a gem up there with the Alpharius entry by Brooks.

[Knockagh]

Finally got round to reading this. What an excellent book! The  Remembrancers are some of my favourite characters from the heresy series and Chris has used them masterfully here. Great book, great characters. Added value to the setting

[Hergrmir]

Oof, just finished it. A great read, and one of the best of the Primarchs series in my estimation. I understand why some would be disappointed, because it is rather unlike the other ones - though I think a story of Sanguinius' youth on Baal would have been a bit too close to the Lorgar one. At least for me, he and the IXth are defined by that transition from monsters/mutants into something else, and this story really plays around with that an examines it in interesting ways.

 

I think we also do see the kind of bloodthirsty warlordism of Sanguinius too. They're certainly not the World Eaters or the Night Lords, but that whole compliance-that-becomes-annihilation thing shows how close they can get, and is a reminder that the 30k Imperium are also quite clearly terrible. Everything or nothing during the great crusade is the same sort of self-aggrandizing pseudobabble that Widera expresses in the Imperial Cult scene; there's the same sense of high handed smugness to it, and it's pretty on-brand I think. After all, all we as the audience have to go in is that Sanguinius believes it just must be the case that they can't accept that planet's surrender once they've committed. How very convenient, if you're tired of masking that a part of you delights in slaughter.

 

Particularly, I think it's an interesting book in light of Wraight's work with the White Scars. AK suggests near the end that Sanguinius must realize that the Imperial Truth isn't what it says it is, and that tension works very well for the tormented nobility/are they really beasts thing that vampire stories do. Conversely, you have the Scars, who know that the Imperial Truth is nonsense, but aren't particularly spiritually burdened by it all.

 

There's the arc in Wraight's Scars novels and that lovely little bit in Malevolence hinting that Jaghatai may have just bowed before the Emperor because he knew he couldn't win a war against him, and there are the sometimes poorly-served asides regarding Corax, Angron, and Mortarion nursing their own doubts about the whole endeavour. I think this, like Wraight's Scars work, really examines the question of how a primarch relates to the Imperial project, and that, to me, is really interesting.

[legoman]

I have also just finished and loved it. Just on the previous post on questioning the rationale behind the Great Crusade, I feel like

Spoiler

Sanguinius clearly says the only reason he is doing this at all and allowing his sons to be killed (and it emphasises earlier how much this effects him) is because he believes at the end of it the Emperor will help him find a cure (which i think is unlikely, even if the GC was ever finished, after all he is the one who made Sang in the first place).

 

I was also slightly confused over the 'he is what we were' part as I can see how they are what he used to be I.e. the rage inside but pushed below the surface through force of will (to simplify it). But I struggle to see how he is now what they used to be, as it seems to be saying that they have improved since they found him (which they have), but that he has become worse, which I can't see (other than maybe psychologically from the pressures of being a primarch and potential knowledge of his impending doom, but I don't think that relates to the early situation of the Revenants).

Edited March 2, 2023 by legoman
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[Sothalor]

I think the "he is what we were" line is more addressing the perception of what happened to the IXth Legion under Sanguinius, at least by the broader, propagandized Imperium at large. That prior to him they were the Revenant Legion, the Eaters of the Dead. Then comes the discovery of the miraculous, flawless, angelic Primarch, who uplifts and transforms this wayward, broken bunch of outcasts into a beautiful, fearsome host of angels.

 

That statement "he is what we were" is a quiet admission, a refutation of that narrative. It's saying that all of those darker impulses that were front and center on display in the Revenants are also present in Sanguinius - also a part of who he is.

 

The ferocious bloodthirst of the IXth isn't an aberrant, external imposition that Sanguinius "fixed"; it was always an inheritance from him. 

 

It's a statement that this trait of the Blood Angels has no easy fix, no magic solution, contrary to what the Imperium wants to believe.

[legoman]

Yep I agree. Maybe just a succinct way of repeating what had been said earlier in the conversation, that the flaw/trait comes from the gene seed which in turn comes from Sanguinius, with Sanguinius being both the cause and the only possible cure. 

[Hergrmir]

Yeah, I think that's a good note - AK, the audience, Iacton Qruze, and Sanguinius himself are probably a little ambivalent about the Emperor's plan for the 9th. After all, as is evident from Widera, Wraight understands that people might both know a true thing and also convince themselves otherwise. Sanguinius isn't a fool; I expect it has occurred to him that the Emperor did indeed create him and the ninth with that bloodlust in them.