The Horus Heresy - A Retrospective?

[SpecialIssue]

After all these years - was it worth it?

 

To have this universe's foundational myth and legend so thoroughly calcified into a canon that will never please everyone, that is forever beholden to the inevitable imperfections with quality and writing and characters introduced by its various authors. To now have exhausted an IP and story that was only built up in its importance and gravitas through the lack of information about it over 20 years. Restraint on what is not shown is as important as the creativity guiding the IP. They are bankrupt without one another.

 

It has turned the setting into a story, one which will become bloated and/or diluted in the coming years as all IPs that are run this way are; drilling down to every level of mystery and intrigue (Dark Age of Technology mini-series anyone?) to various levels of quality till every single well is dry... and then is inevitably rebooted.  I have watched near-every single IP I enjoyed go down this pipeline, and I now force the same happening to 40k. It might take decades - but inevitably, the well will run dry.

 

The setting but not a story method was one of the greatest things about this universe that has ensured it's longevity and artistic integrity, and is one of the things that set it apart from all other scifi universes.

 

I have waiting to say this for many years, and this is perhaps the most relevant time to say it - but I believed from the beginning that the HH series was a mistake, told the way it was.

 

Angels of Darkness. Lord of the Night. The Night Lords series. Those are how the Heresy should have been viewed, as a lost time long ago remembered like shattered glass through different, unreliable viewpoints. When the lore revelations of AoD and LotN first came out, they provided fodder for discussion for years, as they provided a story window to that lost era, without losing any of the endless potential and mythic grandeur of the Heresy. They allowed you story and lore without taking away the agency of the readers of the setting. They threw more potential into the sandbox and threw up more lore questions rather than answering them.

 

Horus v the Emperor is now a step-by-step fight that you can read about - but what if that portrayal didn't live up to my expectations? I no longer have the latitude and authority to engage with others on equal footing, all contributing our own ideas to what 40k is in a very real, creative and central way. My and everyone else's views or imagination and extrapolation on this foundational lore tidbit have been overruled by Dan Abnett, codified as lore law on wikis that spoil the entire story in solid paragraph dumps, held as immutable by gatekeepers unwilling to engage with anything past the rules as written. This was all started as a hobby to collaboratively engage in with "your own army guys", not a fandom where we merely consume content shovelled out the door.

 

It feels like W40k was a sandbox that they have been filling with superglue. And the HH series was a major part of that.

[wecanhaveallthree]

I don't understand how you people always get these DM's or these arguments or just messages at all - nobody talks to me on Reddit, despite how approachable and friendly I am! It's ridiculous! I do my best, but it never happens... always a bridesmaid, never a target of unfettered vitriol and hate.

 

ADB tapping out of social media was 100% a good move. Just look at what happened to Parrott.

[DukeLeto69]

I have mostly enjoyed the HH books. Some not so much. Some were awful. They are all on my shelf but several remain unopened. HH fatigue certainly set in for me some time after The Unremembered Empire. For two reasons I think (my timing may be off slightly)...

 

1. The release pattern/format changes. I collected the HH in MMPB. When BL shifted to HB->TPB->MMPB delaying the release of the latter by a year, it stopped me being able to engage with other fans unless I accepted spoilers (which in the end I had to). But that sucked some joy from the experience.

 

2. Abnett so badly dropped the ball with TUE it was unbelievable. Abnett is my favourite BL author. IMHO HR, Legion, KNF, are some of the best HH novels (and KNF is probably my favourite). But with TUE it felt like Abnett had got his IPs mixed up and I was reading a superhero comic (I have never liked superheroes and have not watched a single Marvel film). Imperium Secundus had so much potential but it was wasted (and all those primarchs ending up in the same place was, to me, simply dumb and convenient).

 

I have never read Titandeath, Slaves to the Darkness or Buried Dagger. I gave up. I deliberately skipped the Kyme books except Deathfire which was a slog (not a diss at Kyme as some of his 40k/Horror/Crime stories have been great, but not so, for me, his HH).

 

It was the excitement around the EIGHT NOVELS for the Siege of Terra that rekindled my interest. The idea of a tightly controlled mini series with the six authors working really closely together to a tight brief made me (want to) believe BL had learned their lessons from the HH and TBA and cracked the code for how to put together a well designed multi-author series.

 

But TEN NOVELS & THREE NOVELLAS it turned out to be. Sigh!

 

As I said earlier, it was a real shame the HH just ended up reading like 40k with a few different names. Such a shame it didn’t remain more its’ own thing.

 

Saying all that, all in all it has been quite the journey. I like my black and gold spined books on my shelves. I like my collection.

 

But I also agree with @SpecialIssue that in many respects they should have left the HH alone. It was a foundational myth for the IoM from 10,000 years ago and we know so much knowledge has been lost yadda yadda. Part of me is glad they did, part of me wishes they had. However, my head canon is strong so I just pick the elements I like anyway!

[Astartes Consul]

Thinking about some of the points in this thread & how the first few books seem to cover a huge amount of ground in such a short space of time, it reinforces just how good Horus Rising is as a book.

 

It essentially establishes the character and status of Horus thoroughly enough to give his fall to Chaos and the subsequent 60+ books of narrative a proper emotional basis. All in the space of a few hundred pages.

[Felix Antipodes]

The loss of its own voice, as established in book one was, to me, one of the great missed chances of the series.  It occasionally popped up later on, but that horse had bolted fairly early in the piece.  That Istvaan V didn’t get a centrepiece novel of its own was also a head scratcher.

 

Someone earlier said something about each legion getting a trilogy outside a central spine of the HH itself.  I think that could have been interesting, with Vol 1 being the origins of that legion, Vol 2 set in the HH ‘present’ showing the highlights of their actions up to the start of the HH, and Vol 3 their role in the civil war itself and their Fall leading up to the Siege itself.

[Astartes Consul]

2 minutes ago, Felix Antipodes said:

The loss of its own voice, as established in book one was, to me, one of the great missed chances of the series.  It occasionally popped up later on, but that horse had bolted fairly early in the piece.  That Istvaan V didn’t get a centrepiece novel of its own was also a head scratcher.

 

Someone earlier said something about each legion getting a trilogy outside a central spine of the HH itself.  I think that could have been interesting, with Vol 1 being the origins of that legion, Vol 2 set in the HH ‘present’ showing the highlights of their actions up to the start of the HH, and Vol 3 their role in the civil war itself and their Fall leading up to the Siege itself.

 

I think this is an interesting idea, but just as the Primarch books have become quite formulaic at worst, I think this would have begun to grate by the end.

 

Also, that would have been 54 books. Which is just ten short of what the main series itself ended up being.

[Felix Antipodes]

You mean 60… you forgot to count the extra six (blank) books for the II & XI legions! 

[TheArtilleryman]

I liked the way the early novels were written, with the different plot lines interweaving, for example Tarvitz, Loken, Garro etc. and their different perspectives in different books.

 

I haven’t read much of the second half of the series, or any of the SoT books, mainly because my source for the novels was mainly second hand shops and eBay, and the prices for the books are now ridiculous since they went out of print. I didn’t want to read them in ebook format and really wanted that collection of black and gold books in my shelf, but looks like that will never happen now. Sucks.

 

I think different people will have different views about the novels and authors. Some people love McNeill, but I don’t really like his books much. Fulgrim, Mechanicum - they didn’t do it for me. Flight of the Eisenstein, Know No Fear and Scars are three of my favourites.

 

[Astartes Consul]

2 minutes ago, Felix Antipodes said:

You mean 60… you forgot to count the extra six (blank) books for the II & XI legions! 

 

GW could have published limited editions that were just 300ish redacted pages. Scalper's nightmare.

[WrathOfTheLion]

3 hours ago, Astartes Consul said:

Thinking about some of the points in this thread & how the first few books seem to cover a huge amount of ground in such a short space of time, it reinforces just how good Horus Rising is as a book.

 

It essentially establishes the character and status of Horus thoroughly enough to give his fall to Chaos and the subsequent 60+ books of narrative a proper emotional basis. All in the space of a few hundred pages.

Horus Rising also makes you really like Horus. He's very charismatic, and that character of him drives understanding why 9 Legions (and parts of others) may have joined him.

 

And then later, when he falls, you're like 'no, don't do it!' Even though obviously with the setting, of course he does.

Edited January 30 by WrathOfTheLion

[Brother Captain Arkley]

For me I never seen Abnett as some god of writing that's often parroted, imho he wrote 1 of the best books, (Horus Rising) and one of the worse (Know no Fear), but I have not heard great things about Prospero Burning.

 

I really enjoyed the first 5 books overall but after that its so hit and miss.

 

For me apart from ADB books the shining light for me was the White Scars stuff, I liked the Konrad book and Luther.

 

As for SoT... I gave up in book 2 of the last Trilogy. I just struggled to enjoy it. And I doubt I will ever complete it. Happy just to read spoilers of it..

Edited January 30 by Brother Captain Arkley

[TheArtilleryman]

2 minutes ago, Brother Captain Arkley said:

For me I never seen Abnett as some god of writing that's often parroted, imho he wrote 1 of the best books, (Horus Rising) and one of the worse (Know no Fear), but I have not heard great things about Prospero Burning.

 

For me apart from ADB books the shining light for me was the White Scars stuff, I liked the Konrad book and Luther.

 

As for SoT... I gave up in book 2 of the last Trilogy. I just struggled to enjoy it. And I doubt I will ever complete it. Happy just to read spoilers of it..

And there’s my point proven lol - I cite Know No Fear as one of my favourites and an hour later you say it’s one of the worst! I rest my case :)

[Astartes Consul]

50 minutes ago, WrathOfTheLion said:

Horus Rising also makes you really like Horus. He's very charismatic, and that character of him drives understanding why 9 Legions (and parts of others) may have joined him.

 

And then later, when he falls, you're like 'no, don't do it!' Even though obviously with the setting, of course he does.

 

Exactly! And also, rather than just having lots of characters saying 'We all love Horus! Isn't he great!', DA took the effort OF writing the character and making him likeable on his own terms. Much harder approach, but much better pay off.

[Brother Captain Arkley]

1 minute ago, TheArtilleryman said:

And there’s my point proven lol - I cite Know No Fear as one of my favourites and an hour later you say it’s one of the worst! I rest my case :)

I never read your post. So yay?

 

You are allowed to like stuff I don't. The other 2 you list I enjoyed. But because I dare to dislike an Abnett book?

[TheArtilleryman]

11 minutes ago, Brother Captain Arkley said:

I never read your post. So yay?

 

You are allowed to like stuff I don't. The other 2 you list I enjoyed. But because I dare to dislike an Abnett book?

What? I wasn’t having a go I was just laughing about it because my whole point was about it being subjective and you proved it for me. I don’t care who writes what and don’t have any particular love for DA

[TrawlingCleaner]

18 minutes ago, Brother Captain Arkley said:

I never read your post. So yay?

 

You are allowed to like stuff I don't. The other 2 you list I enjoyed. But because I dare to dislike an Abnett book?

 

If I understood correctly, they're not having a go just pointing out that you prove their point about how polarising a lot of the HH books are

 

1 hour ago, TheArtilleryman said:

I think different people will have different views about the novels and authors. Some people love McNeill, but I don’t really like his books much. Fulgrim, Mechanicum - they didn’t do it for me. Flight of the Eisenstein, Know No Fear and Scars are three of my favourites.

 

 

24 minutes ago, Brother Captain Arkley said:

For me I never seen Abnett as some god of writing that's often parroted, imho he wrote 1 of the best books, (Horus Rising) and one of the worse (Know no Fear), but I have not heard great things about Prospero Burning.

 

 

Edit: Ninja-ed

 

Edited January 30 by TrawlingCleaner

[TheArtilleryman]

100%. And it isn’t just HH, it’s lots of stuff. Ben Counter, for example, is always getting slagged off for Grey Knights and Soul Drinkers but I thought they were great.

 

Edit: Another that springs to mind is that since I loved Flight of the Eisenstein, I couldn’t wait to read the Garro anthology, but I ended up finding that a bit hit-and-miss. Same reader, same author… :shrug 

Edited January 30 by TheArtilleryman

[System Sound]

Damnation of Pythos is definitely polarising I'd dare say. While it's a good horror book, it has no place being a mainline book.

 

Crimson King was also been slammed as being bad, but I think it's a pretty great addition to TS arc.

[DukeLeto69]

All about subjectivity right?

 

But being objective (ish, I think) I reckon there is nobody out there who is a W40k fan who hasn’t really enjoyed at least one of the HH books. Anyone?

[Scribe]

I've been thinking about this now the last several days, and thank you all for the in depth responses and varied perspectives.

 

For me? This was probably the period that covers the peak of my time in The Hobby. Those days following The First Heretic, A Thousand Sons, the release of the various Black Books, the Primarchs models, fast forward and we are getting Knights!

 

My play group bought in on the HH train, and I was making the FW orders for everyone.

 

When taken as a whole? From the BL, to FW Models, to Black Books? I cannot say it was a poor addition to our Hobby. Was the series/setting done well? Well...

 

I've got my complaints.

 

There are probably more words on Salamanders, than Sons of Horus.

There are probably more retcons on the Raven Guard, than there are books on the Blood Angels.

The whole Perpetuals thing, that...just didnt need to be.

 

What we did get though that was good? The Scars arc. The First Heretic/Betrayer. The Black Books, and again, the whole of the HH Range/Game Line.

 

All of that came from the successes of the HH series.

 

Even now, it offers those of us who really dont care for the direction of 40K, a safe place to set up shop and exist in a setting, instead of a series or metaplot.

 

For those reasons, I think the HH was a success, even if they missed the point of the story (its the Emperor as a tragic figure in the Greek tradition!!). ;)

[Roomsky]

It's bizarre trying to decide whether the Heresy was a success or not. I don't really think it succeeded as a proper series or as a setting. It's too messy to be the former but still too closely intertwined to be the latter. I also agree with the sentiment that overall, it should have remained flashbacks and legends in 40k novels a la Lord of the Night and Angels of Darkness. But despite all that… I'll be damned if it isn't my favourite comfort series. For all the crap and mismanagement, we got some amazing stuff out of the Heresy. I dub it: "Ill-Advised Failure that was still somehow totally worth it."

 

Another angle I've oft reflected on: who got the short stick by appearing these novels? I'm not referring to lack of coverage, that's sort of a different issue, I mean: what chapter/legion's history has been made dumber by this series? My knowledge of 40k wasn't the best before I became a committed reader, so this is all very much from my "newcomer" perspective. Starting with loyalists because 18 is a lot for 1 post.

 

Dark Angels: HOOO BOY starting off right in it. I know they were to hell and back in Crusade, but I struggle to find much outside of that Forgeworld content I liked about the Dark Angels during the Heresy. They were inconsistent, they were inept, they were excessively secretive for no reason, and their single interesting campaign was strung out across novellas and short stories. Would have been better off with nothing.

 

White Scars: And now the polar opposite: the White Scars. Wraight swooped in and made anyone care about this legion, and somehow had them interact with a ton of other events and characters without feeling weird and contrived. It's not just because Wraight is a good author either; the legion genuinely got a fleshing out that made them not just cool, not just interesting, but culturally unique within the Emperor's Imperium. A good example of "less is more," more cooks in the kitchen would have diluted the quality. Improved!

 

Space Wolves: Many will disagree, but I think they benefitted. I'll admit this is from a personal angle; I hate "classic" Space Wolves. Emperor's Executioners or no, I love that the Wolves were set up as an extremely self-serious legion during the Heresy, who were then forced to deal with repeated failures that shatter their pride completely. Dealing with failure and adversity is what makes characters engaging, they just went about it… strangely, with the whole Horus assassination plot. The same arc could have happened with just: finding out they got duped into burning Prospero, getting absolutely smashed by the Alpha legion, and showing up too late to Terra. But I no longer dislike a legion I used to dislike, so I'll say the positive influence is balanced out by the stupid story decisions. Neutral

 

Fists: Basically exactly what I expected. No change.

 

Blood Angels: Worse off until Wraight and ADB came along in the home stretch. Swallow's Blood Angels were boring, and they were purely set-dressing in Imperium Secundus. Bringing their nature as a recovering Revenant Legion to the fore was a huge game-changer. Collective No Change as the great stuff and the poor stuff sort of equalize their arc.

 

Iron Hands: Again, probably unpopular, but besides Ferrus being boring and/or stupid, I LOVE what the Heresy did with the Iron Hands. Their desperation to stay relevant combined with their self-destructive identity crisis made them one of the most interesting legions to follow. I say, huge Improvement from a legion I thought was boring as hell, but maybe it's just because I enjoy melodramatic misery porn and shaggy dog stories.

 

Ultramarines: Know no Fear saved the Ultramarines from Mat Ward memes. Like, they went from the widely-mocked boring dudes to some of the more interesting badasses throughout. Abnett and, weirdly, Annandale both had a distinct vision for the legion that somehow played nice with each other without actually having to overlap much. Imperium Secundus was mostly goofy wasted potential, but the perfect son struggling whether to risk it all for the Emperor's dream, or for the Emperor himself, was a great angle. Improved!

 

Salamanders: Would have been better off with nothing. We all know why.

 

Raven Guard: Also crap. Thorpe's writing did the legion no favours, his Corax was somewhat distinct but his sons were just "those guys who follow Corax around." And the decision to make the Alpha Legion the secret masterminds behind the Raptor Project's failure was the kind of needless twist all the Heresy doomsayers were afraid of. Would have been better off with nothing.

 

Score so far:

Improved: 3

Neutral: 3

Worse: 3

 

This is what happens when I have Heresy on the brain but I haven't actually finished TEATD 3 yet.

Edited January 31 by TrawlingCleaner
Removal of profanity

[TheArtilleryman]

43 minutes ago, Roomsky said:

Salamanders: Would have been better off with nothing. We all know why.

I don’t … genuinely no idea why

[Roomsky]

53 minutes ago, TheArtilleryman said:

I don’t … genuinely no idea why

 

Nick Kyme had full control over the legion throughout the Heresy, and only became a passable writer by his third novel, in which they had basically nothing to do. Before then, we were subjected to 2 badly-written novels and 3 badly-written novellas, one of which is one of the actual worst things I have ever read. It made them bland at best and annoying at worst; anyone who read a summary of their fluff beforehand would be quite disappointed to find out what their actual stories looked like. IMO, they're cooler if you DON'T read Kyme's books and just build something in your head instead.

Edited January 30 by Roomsky

[Brother Captain Arkley]

16 hours ago, Roomsky said:

It's bizarre trying to decide whether the Heresy was a success or not. I don't really think it succeeded as a proper series or as a setting. It's too messy to be the former but still too closely intertwined to be the latter. I also agree with the sentiment that overall, it should have remained flashbacks and legends in 40k novels a la Lord of the Night and Angels of Darkness. But despite all that… I'll be damned if it isn't my favourite comfort series. For all the crap and mismanagement, we got some amazing stuff out of the Heresy. I dub it: "Ill-Advised Failure that was still somehow totally worth it."

 

Another angle I've oft reflected on: who got the short stick by appearing these novels? I'm not referring to lack of coverage, that's sort of a different issue, I mean: what chapter/legion's history has been made dumber by this series? My knowledge of 40k wasn't the best before I became a committed reader, so this is all very much from my "newcomer" perspective. Starting with loyalists because 18 is a lot for 1 post.

 

Dark Angels: HOOO BOY starting off right in it. I know they were to hell and back in Crusade, but I struggle to find much outside of that Forgeworld content I liked about the Dark Angels during the Heresy. They were inconsistent, they were inept, they were excessively secretive for no reason, and their single interesting campaign was strung out across novellas and short stories. Would have been better off with nothing.

 

Dark Angels like Salamanders ihmo got the short end of the stick so badly, Thing is Gav can actually write a good DA novel, I really enjoyed Luther.

 

White Scars: And now the polar opposite: the White Scars. Wraight swooped in and made anyone care about this legion, and somehow had them interact with a ton of other events and characters without feeling weird and contrived. It's not just because Wraight is a good author either; the legion genuinely got a fleshing out that made them not just cool, not just interesting, but culturally unique within the Emperor's Imperium. A good example of "less is more," more cooks in the kitchen would have diluted the quality. Improved!

 

Spoiler

Targutai Yesugei's Death is still one of the best parts of the HH for me as a whole.

 

Chris made me care for a Legion I had no interest in, I think overall apart from some of the most obvious book like the first 5, ADBs offering etc... The White Scars stuff was just so good for me.

 

Space Wolves: Many will disagree, but I think they benefitted. I'll admit this is from a personal angle; I hate "classic" Space Wolves. Emperor's Executioners or no, I love that the Wolves were set up as an extremely self-serious legion during the Heresy, who were then forced to deal with repeated failures that shatter their pride completely. Dealing with failure and adversity is what makes characters engaging, they just went about it… strangely, with the whole Horus assassination plot. The same arc could have happened with just: finding out they got duped into burning Prospero, getting absolutely smashed by the Alpha legion, and showing up too late to Terra. But I no longer dislike a legion I used to dislike, so I'll say the positive influence is balanced out by the stupid story decisions. Neutral

 

I think most of the writing didn't do the Wolves any lasting damage, you know Russ hated being played the fool. but overall I totally agree here.

 

 

Blood Angels: Worse off until Wraight and ADB came along in the home stretch. Swallow's Blood Angels were boring, and they were purely set-dressing in Imperium Secundus. Bringing their nature as a recovering Revenant Legion to the fore was a huge game-changer. Collective No Change as the great stuff and the poor stuff sort of equalize their arc.

 

I don't remember too much of the BA stuff, But I never really thought much overall which is sad as I really to like the Legion.

16 hours ago, Roomsky said:

 

Iron Hands: Again, probably unpopular, but besides Ferrus being boring and/or stupid, I LOVE what the Heresy did with the Iron Hands. Their desperation to stay relevant combined with their self-destructive identity crisis made them one of the most interesting legions to follow. I say, huge Improvement from a legion I thought was boring as hell, but maybe it's just because I enjoy melodramatic misery porn and shaggy dog stories.

 

I think the issue with Ferrus was they made him look utterly stupid, where was all the tactical acumen he had.

 

16 hours ago, Roomsky said:

 

Ultramarines: Know no Fear saved the Ultramarines from Mat Ward memes. Like, they went from the widely-mocked boring dudes to some of the more interesting badasses throughout. Abnett and, weirdly, Annandale both had a distinct vision for the legion that somehow played nice with each other without actually having to overlap much. Imperium Secundus was mostly goofy wasted potential, but the perfect son struggling whether to risk it all for the Emperor's dream, or for the Emperor himself, was a great angle. Improved!

 

I wish I could agree here, I felt that Know no Fear was not much better that before, maybe my bias of Abnett really clouded my judgement.

 

Salamanders: Would have been better off with nothing. We all know why.

 

100000000000000000000000% :P

 

16 hours ago, Roomsky said:

 

Raven Guard: Also crap. Thorpe's writing did the legion no favours, his Corax was somewhat distinct but his sons were just "those guys who follow Corax around." And the decision to make the Alpha Legion the secret masterminds behind the Raptor Project's failure was the kind of needless twist all the Heresy doomsayers were afraid of. Would have been better off with nothing.

 

Again I can't disagree and I tried to hard to like the Raven Guard stuff, Gav is so hit and miss its insane.

 

I think overall we agree on so much more than disagree which is good.

Edited January 31 by TrawlingCleaner
Removal of quoted profanity

[wecanhaveallthree]

I wholly agree on the Iron Hands. Just writing off Ferrus narratively was a bold choice but the right one: the Iron Hands dealing with their very complicated relationship with the man and his philosophy with absolutely zero guidance is great, and Meduson's arc - unfortunately stuck in anthologies and background guff - is up there as some of the best original content to come out of the Heresy. He comes so close to pulling them out of the fire. He is Ferrus, essentially, but without the natural authority. The Legion got kicked in the dick? Well, they're gonna kick back harder! Meduson turns what should have been a decisive victory for the Traitors into an agonising game of Rochambeau, pulling the Shattered Legions together, channelling their pain and anger into some of the most bastard holding actions that don't have the Iron Warriors attached to them. Meduson's forces gumming up the gears (with the Khan requiring the only other competent member of the Traitors in Mortarion to be dispatched, singularly, to deal with him) did an enormous amount of work for the Loyalist cause.

 

He could've done it. He was right there. He gives the Iron Hands a path forward, out of Ferrus' shadow, away from the utter despair and malaise they were reeling into. But, ultimately - sadly - they just can't follow him all the way there. Old Earth's mockery of Ferrus is so damn sad. It's a literal wireframe Primarch. It reminded me of (don't look this up) Harlow's 'surrogate mother' experiments with rhesus monkeys. They're so desperate for the comfort of spacedad, for not having to make their own hard choices, that they'll obey what's effectively a nodding duck. And when it's destroyed by Vulkan it really does look like they're finally breaking out of their funk. They introspect, they look within themselves, Meduson's finally breathing a sigh of relief...

 

...and then they feed him to Tybalt Marr, and let the Mechanicus run the Chapter for the next ten thousand years or so. It's great. It's perfect. They just can't deal with it. They can't process it. They can't let anything go - the Keys of Hel, f'ex - they never learn how to deal with loss. It's too painful. It's too sharp. Better to get rid of Meduson and all his hard questions. Better to let someone else, someone not flawed by Ferrus' blood make the choices for them. Beautiful. 10/10. 

 

On the subject of the Space Wolves, this largely contributes to why Wolfsbane is one of my favourite books in the series. I actually really liked how the Space Wolves are originally presented as honest-to-Emperor idiots: arrogant fools, all. Russ stands in two worlds and is master of neither. His indecision costs his Legion: costs it physically, costs it culturally. In trying to be what the Emperor wants, he can never be true to himself. In trying to be what Fenris asks, he can never be true to the Emperor. So he's awkward. His Legion is awkward. There's a distinct and nasty relationship with just about everyone else, when Russ - at his genuine heart - really does want to help his brothers, wants them to take him seriously, wants to be more than just a 'savage'. But it's easier to be that way to do what the Emperor expects. So he takes the easy path, and everyone suffers for it.

 

Wolfsbane is where Russ flat-out stops. He recognises he's been used to break Magnus. He recognises he's been used as a club to beat others into line. And while he's happy to say 'yeah, I'd do it again, Magnus had to be stopped', he is very clear that he will not be used again. He would confront Magnus, but he'd do it his way, on his reasoning - not because somebody told him to. This is where the Space Wolves go from being 'the Emperor's Executioners' to, well... not yet, but this is where they start on the path to becoming the genuine heroes of Warhammer 40,000. This is where Russ refuses to wear the mask any more, and his Legion responds to that. Russ goes to Fenris, he enters the Warp (OR DOES HE???) in a fashion that exactly mirrors his encounter with the Emperor. He loses every contest, he suffers embarrassing defeats, but he sticks in there - he displays humility, and humbleness, and embraces the gifts he so often denied before. This is what lets him wound Horus - and what stops him finishing the job. Because he won't be anyone's assassin again, if there's any chance at all Horus can be restored.

 

It's fantastic. It's Russ making a stand, making a choice. Yes, he suffers for it. The Legion suffers for it. But this is their Iron Cage: this is them deciding who they want to be going forward, and choosing to be true to themselves, to Fenris, to act on their heart(s). They come out the other side wounded badly - what Russ sees in his time below ultimately forces him out of the Imperium - but they heal. They're made truly whole again afterwards.