Fulgrim - The Perfect Son

[Helias_Tancred]

1 hour ago, TheVoidDragon said:

 

but that's not really the same sort of thing as "This is in the novel because it's a hint of a big plan, it's foreshadowing!" that is being talked about with this book, that's not what they do; Novel inclusions aren't an indication of anything more happening beyond it, they're there for that specific books story.

 

I generally agree with that. 

 

I think in this novel with the Rogal Dorn dream sequence, it's been really blown out of proportion and if I had to wager it doesn't mean squat. It doesn't mean he's going to be re-introduced to the game range anytime soon, etc etc ... if anything GW would release the miniature in the game THEN there would be a novel about it, like with the Lion's novel for example. 

 

Edited May 5 by Helias_Tancred

[1ncarnadine]

It took me a little while to find time for the last 40 pages (busy weekend), but I finished this yesterday and have a few more thoughts.

 

This one is my definition of a 6/10, maybe a 6.5/10. It's fine! I'd generally recommend it, especially for anyone interested in the Emperor's Children or maybe the Black Templars. It suffers a bit for standing against some of what is probably the best BL fiction ever, Josh Reynolds's EC works (Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix and the Fabius books), and there are still a bunch of other great EC reads too.

 

Addressing the lack of focus on Fulgrim himself, there's something about Tamaris's journey that reminds me of a line from the Sanguinius Primarchs book where they basically say (paraphrasing) "he's just like us, but more so" when referring to Sanguinius vs the Blood Angels Legion, implying that despite his serene facade, Sanguinius does in fact struggle with the Red Thirst. Though we never see it explicitly, even when he has a perspective in a Heresy novel. As Fulgrim: The Perfect Son wrapped up, I think it did much the same. As Tamaris reflects on how hollow the victory felt and his father leans in to tell him he's a perfect son, one can imagine Fulgrim himself experiencing something very similar with the Emperor. It was a nice little ending. And I think Jude's own reply in the WarCom interview backs me up here:
 

Quote

No achievement is ever going to be enough for [Fulgrim] – no matter what he conquers, who he proves himself to, or how well he shows off his prowess. He’s never satisfied, never able to enjoy the fruits of his labours, and any victory he wins becomes worthless the moment he has it.

 

Regarding Berengar's vision at the start of the novel, how it repeats until he encounters the Emperor's Children, and how Fulgrim then seems aware of his dreams and eventually appears in one, I'm left wondering if his visions were a product of Fulgrim's powers the whole time. Fulgrim has been appearing in dreams and visions ever since his ascension in the Heresy, so it's possible. There's also a slightly tragic element to Fulgrim trying to sway Berengar over that recalls his similar attempts with Ferrus Manus, but tbh I'm kind of stretching for these themes because the novel itself doesn't make any of this explicit.

 

I do have a pretty big criticism. The Emperor's Children have such a rich and messed up history, with individual legionaries dealing with a complex mix of emotions, and the book doesn't really grapple with much of that past and how it continues to affect them. To be fair, it is standing alongside a bunch of novels that have already done so, so maybe having EC making comments on the Heresy, Legion Wars, Skalathrax, Harmony etc would be treading ground we've already seen them discuss in other books. For example, Lord of Excess just recently hit on how its main character is essentially repeating a self-indulgent cycle of petty empire building and has been in this cycle for 10,000 years. Still, feels like there could be more pathos grounded in that to give its characters a little more depth and make them more sympathetic. I think this one was a little too short, and maybe could have used another 40-50 pages to do that work. As it stands, the characters were mostly flat and one-dimensional (like the moustache twirling sorcerer, or the predictably treacherous apothecary). Tamaris does stand out a bit here, at least, but he should because he's the main character. Jude Reid did describe these characters as following "single-minded pursuits" in the WarCom promo piece on this, so that does track, but I think there could still be deeper characterization, and maybe a little more on Mauvais's relationship with Fulgrim, and what he was or has been.

 

And for that reason, I'm not sure the Black Templars were the best choice of antagonist/foil to this depiction of the EC? They are, by their nature, typically pretty one-dimensional and single minded, so when the EC are also given a somewhat shallow depiction, it's easy for the BT to seem like they were depicted "better" than the EC. I think that's the heart of the criticism I've seen from a lot of folks out there, but I don't personally find it particularly outrageous, because the EC often are shallow, narcissistic and downright evil. I don't think the depiction of the EC was inaccurate, even if it's flat at times. And the book does end with a Black Sword defiled by Chaos and the heads of every Templar on Crucible on spikes, so, it's hard for me to say the author was playing favorites with the BT.

 

I'd also echo that the PDF arc was pretty solid. Easily one of the best perspectives in the novel. This is my first Jude Reid book, and I probably won't go back and pick up the stuff on Cadia or Morvenn Vahl because my reading time is limited and those are subjects I'm just not as interested in, but I do look forward to seeing more work from her in the future. She's not an author I'd auto-buy the special edition version of a book for (and I didn't with Fulgrim: TPS despite being a huge EC fan), but if she's covering a faction or part of the setting I'm interested in then I'm down to keep giving her books a shot.

Edited May 5 by 1ncarnadine

[TrevorLoLz]

I read this book recently.

 

I would rate it 5/10 or so. It's fine to read over a few hours on the weekend.

 

It was an average Black Library book full of bolterporn, one dimensional characters etc. At times, it felt like a sales catalogue, with the repeated use of Games Workshop approved product names ("the Chaos Rhino"). Minor pick I know, but it was a bit jarring.

 

There were a lot of action scenes which just blurred into one for me. The most interesting parts of this book were the conversations with Fulgrim and the internal monologues of Tamaris. There simply were not enough of them and it feels like a missed opportunity. 

 

Spoiler

For example, the scene near the beginning where Tamaris clearly still sees himself as some kind of noble, exemplary knight when in reality he is a twisted mutant Astartes is a great thread. When the glamour wears off for a moment on the Vexation and he, for a moment, sees a glimpse of the true horror of the Emperor's Children, was well done... and then we do not see it any more (other than a brief scene towards the end where he realises he wears a mask of someone's face...). More of these scenes and introspections exploring the nature of the Emperor's Children's degeneracy would have been great. 

 

Spoiler

I was looking forward to perhaps an actual focus on the Noise Marines because, at the moment, they are quite one-dimensional. We did not see this. 

 

Fulgrim was used reasonably well, hanging like a shadow over the main characters' heads. 

 

The ending was odd. I may have just missed the point. I assumed the point to be made was that it does not matter what you do, Fulgrim will grow bored of you and move on eventually. Tamaris realising this and standing next to Fulgrim completely mute, probably aware he's just signed his own death warrant by winning Fulgrim's attentions, was fine but it did not hit home like I though it should. That's probably just me, though. 

 

Berengar was a one-dimensional Black Templar. I never felt for a moment that Fulgrim was ever going to tempt him over, and the couple of scenes in the book where I felt they were trying to lure the reader to that conclusion were again missed opportunities. 

 

The storyline concerning the militia and cultists was interesting, but again, it never felt like they really went into the depth necessary to just... you know... get there. This may be because of page limits, but it was a good idea that was sort of given ancillary treatment.

 

I think if this book focused less on action sequences and more on the insidious nature of Slaaneshi corruption and worship, it would have been a lot more captivating. There are obviously a few arcs to this that could have been explored more fully:

Spoiler

- Tamaris slowly realising over the course of the book that the illusion of grandeur and nobility is just that, an illusion, and he is a twisted, horrible being of mutant Chaos-stuff, leading to a complete mind-numbing shock and emotional surrender;

 

- The militia slowly understanding why, in the horror of an Imperial mining world, people turn to Chaos (like Slaanesh) and gradually coming around to the idea that something, anything, must be better than what they were dealing with day to day; and

 

- Berengar's mirroring need to prove himself to Dorn and the Emperor that he could defeat Fulgrim/Tamaris and showing signs of unravelling before standing firm in the face of corruption (something Fulgrim or his Legion could not).

 

Each of these could have benefitted from a (where appropriate) slower burn and deeper reflection drawn out by supporting characters. Instead, at times, I felt like I was being rushed to the next action scene.

Edited May 6 by TrevorLoLz

[theSpirea]

I enjoy short stories, especially as a starting point for authors. It's a pleasure to watch some of them grow, like Robert Rath. Rath is the perfect example. I wouldn't shut up about his very AoS short story, and everything he's published since has been exceptional. The same goes for other authors like Crowley, Flowers, and Fisher, who is also a very promising writer. I was hoping Jude Reid would join that group. Her Crime short stories were excellent, and her use of real medical/surgical knowledge added extra depth.

I was excited when BL announced her first novel Creed. Sadly, it wasn't great. The writing was solid, but the story was generic. A group of flat characters moving from point A to point B, getting ambushed, moving to point C, rinse and repeat. Morvenn Vahl wasn't any better, and Daemonbreaker was so forgettable and pointless that I can't recall anything from it, not even a single character. And that's a book I read relatively recently. I was already getting worried when they announced Fulgrim. I just finished it, and here's what I think.

It unfortunately follows a BL trend when it comes to these 'named character' novels, they are barely in it. Now, I understand why authors sometimes decide to frame the main characters through someone else's POV. This worked well in Kragnos, Ghaz novel, or even the Sanguinius Primarch novel. I don't expect or need the named character to be present 24/7. However, the story needs to be about that character, that character needs to be a foundation. If you take out Ghaz or Sanguinius from those novels, they fall apart. They simply wouldn't work without them.
This doesn't apply here. Take Fulgrim out, and nothing happens. You might not even notice. He's not in it, he's not necessary for the plot, and he's not central to the themes. This is not a story about Fulgrim at all. At best, it's a story set in a world shaped by Fulgrim's influence.
This completely and utterly failed to be a Fulgrim novel. Heck, the Bile trilogy is a better Fulgrim novel than this one.

 

Let's take Fulgrim out and see what we're left with. It's well-written, I give Reid that. Her prose is solid, a bit dense sometimes, but that's my preference. And her medical background adds nice details. Maybe the repetition and overuse of phrases like "a row of needles puncturing a vertical line down his vertebrae, flooding his spinal cord with fire" should have been caught by an editor. And that's about it. It's a generic bolter porn story with one-dimensional characters.
Tamaris is the only character with a bit of development. Venakhar is just there as a plot device to later betray Tamaris. Mauvais is a cliché villain, similarly to Berengar, who has absolutely no depth. All we get from him is constantly repeating "God-Emperor, be with me now, here at the end of all things" and similar mantras.
Then we have Sekunder, whose arc I don't understand at all. Was it to give us a parallel to Tamaris's story? Was it just there so we can get cliché lines like "there are monsters behind the walls but also within"?

 

This is the worst Fulgrim novel and the worst EC novel. Pick up anything else: Fulgrim by Reynolds or McNeill, Bile by Reynolds, Lord of Excess by McCormick. All of these are much better stories.
This is the fourth novel by Reid, the fourth receiving a LE treatment, and all have been fairly bad, average at best. She's not skilled enough to make these big stories/big characters work. She should keep writing short stories and low-key novels. Damn BL, commission her Crime novel!!, and hone her craft first. There's potential.
I'm sad this is the result, and I have to give it 3/10 as a Fulgrim novel and 5/10 as an Emperor's Children novel.

 

edit: chapter 18 was awesome, more of that. It's almost self-contained short story there and it worked
 

Edited May 7 by theSpirea

[Dalmyth]

1 hour ago, theSpirea said:

This is the fourth novel by Reid, the fourth receiving a LE treatment, and all have been fairly bad, average at best. She's not skilled enough to make these big stories/big characters work. She should keep writing short stories and low-key novels. Damn BL, commission her Crime novel!!, and hone her craft first. There's potential.
I'm sad this is the result, and I have to give it 3/10 as a Fulgrim novel and 5/10 as an Emperor's Children novel.
 

I have to agree with this. I feel like she has really good potential, but needs to hone her craft first. I really wish they would give her something with a much smaller scope to work on for a change instead of all these character novels.

[wecanhaveallthree]

Is it time for CULTURE WARS? Is it?

 

I think it is important to have a female author getting LEs and big books, particularly in the traditional boys club of Games Workshop. Not that there's zero representation - Ware is first that comes to mind, and I'd really love to see more from Harrison - but I feel like Reid is suffering the exact same problem Ware has. They write competently, but safely. Maybe that's the assignment. Maybe that's what they feel most comfortable with. Hell, maybe it's the subject matter (though obviously if you're handed Fulgrim, you're expected to get a little jiggy with it). The same critique I'm seeing here applies equally to both: It Just Feels Flat.

 

I'm not so sure I'd go straight to 'craft'. There's obviously been a decision to give Reid the push, which is fine, but the lack of improvement suggests - to me, at least - issues with direction and editorial (Harrison's Honourbound suffered massively from this, though is still an excellent book despite it). And maybe that's the boys club at work, too, with headlining female authors not as confident or established to push back on it. I don't know. But this seems a running theme with these authors in particular.

 

We all want to see success. I hope they can figure it out. Or just put a wig on Graham McNeill, that'll work for me.

[cheywood]

One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of female BL authors, Reid especially, lean quite heavily into action scenes and cliches. One wonders if this is a subconscious or conscious effort to appease the more troglodytic portions of the fanbase who feel that women ‘can’t write warhammer’ or whatever nonsense they mumble to themselves. There’s studies showing female leaders are more likely to start wars, primarily as an attempt to compensate for prejudices around women being afraid of conflict.

[Fedor]

This was the epitome of the throwaway tie-in novel.

 

There wasn't any big campaign background fluff to contextualise itself around like Sue of the Forest had to contend with, which in less restrictive times might have allowed the author to really dig in deep with their own ideas, but the stench of "you can't do anything important or personally impactful with this big name tabletop character" ended up stronger than ever.

 

tbh, I think I'm done with blind buying any 40k books that are centered around tabletop character model releases. The vast majority are conservative filler.

[wecanhaveallthree]

Quote

One wonders if...

 

The counterpoint is Honourbound, which is a deeply introspective healfic which has Abnett circa Ghosts levels of Chaos malfeasance going on and focuses much more on professional and personal relationships (and CRIMES (and HONOUR (AND DUTY))) with the occasional publisher-mandated bit wot where fightin' happens. The opening fight goes on too long, the fight at the end just feels completely out of place as the story arc has effectively finished by that point - the biggest flaws in Honourbound are exclusively the 'bolter porn'. 

 

Harrison was obviously punished for this. I thought she was a similarly rising star after Honourbound and Mark of Faith, but she has seemingly been locked away in the same vault Black Library keeps Black Legion 3.

[cheywood]

8 minutes ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

 

The counterpoint is Honourbound, which is a deeply introspective healfic which has Abnett circa Ghosts levels of Chaos malfeasance going on and focuses much more on professional and personal relationships (and CRIMES (and HONOUR (AND DUTY))) with the occasional publisher-mandated bit wot where fightin' happens. The opening fight goes on too long, the fight at the end just feels completely out of place as the story arc has effectively finished by that point - the biggest flaws in Honourbound are exclusively the 'bolter porn'. 

 

Harrison was obviously punished for this. I thought she was a similarly rising star after Honourbound and Mark of Faith, but she has seemingly been locked away in the same vault Black Library keeps Black Legion 3.

I completely agree about Honourbound, though I don’t know if BL’s punishing her for it. She was (is?) their art director after all, and they publicized Honourbound heavily when it came out. My instinct is she simply doesn’t want to write more at the moment. So many talented people find writing to be more of a challenge than it’s worth. Either way I just hope she comes back to it eventually, Honourbound was incredible and Mark of Faith very good.

[Krelious]

I think the novel was better than most people give it credit for. Sure it has some problems and really i found the novel was too short but overall I was highly engaged in the plot and motivated to read it while finding it entertaining. Id give it a 7.9/10. Solid B+ Hell of a lot better than the Morvenn Vahl novel.

[Bulwyf]

This book is a tough one for me to rate.

 

The problem that I cannot get past is this was supposed to be about FULGRIM. He's simply nothing but a McGuffin device to prod the narrative along. Why invade this world? Why pick that Emperor's Champion when the BT have several? Why? Who knows? Fulgrim just randomly picks it. He does nothing of any consequence in the novel. He is barely in HIS OWN NOVEL. I can't get past that. This book was supposed to be our introduction to current setting Fulgrim and we got...nothing. The only thing we can glean from this novel about Fulgrim is he somehow has come out of the warp wanting to be the new Emperor because...reasons? I never remember in any previous lore about Fulgrim that he expressly wanted to replace the Big E and take over. 

 

I don't have a problem with this change in direction but it would have been nice to have it more from Fulgrim's POV and not just throw away comments in the novel.

 

The positive: I did like the Tamaris character and his story. It is nice to see that there are still EC warriors that have some honor and want to still work on being perfect as warriors. 

[Krelious]

On 5/25/2025 at 11:06 PM, Bulwyf said:

This book is a tough one for me to rate.

 

The problem that I cannot get past is this was supposed to be about FULGRIM. He's simply nothing but a McGuffin device to prod the narrative along. Why invade this world? Why pick that Emperor's Champion when the BT have several? Why? Who knows? Fulgrim just randomly picks it. He does nothing of any consequence in the novel. He is barely in HIS OWN NOVEL. I can't get past that. This book was supposed to be our introduction to current setting Fulgrim and we got...nothing. The only thing we can glean from this novel about Fulgrim is he somehow has come out of the warp wanting to be the new Emperor because...reasons? I never remember in any previous lore about Fulgrim that he expressly wanted to replace the Big E and take over. 

 

I don't have a problem with this change in direction but it would have been nice to have it more from Fulgrim's POV and not just throw away comments in the novel.

 

The positive: I did like the Tamaris character and his story. It is nice to see that there are still EC warriors that have some honor and want to still work on being perfect as warriors. 

Fulgrim isnt "in" the novel very much because hes essentially acting like a god. Every vision or voice a character has is actually Fulgrim and I think the point of them going against the Black Templars is that Fulgrim wants to be like a more active version of his father but he manipulates other people to follow his whims rather than say loyalists praying to the Emperor and hoping he protects.   Unless you had like another major siege of Terra thing going on how would you even go about having Fulgrim being involved because he could just solo everything or act like a supremely powerful being and just kill everything. That would remove all tension from the plot and the story would go like "Fulgrim targets this Imperial world for conquest, and he wins because Fulgrim is a Deamon Primarch."

All in all I think its a decent introduction to allow him to enter the setting and its likely there will be stuff planned for him to interact with the Lion or Guilliman.

 

But id say I'd hope a more skilled author gets to do more interesting meaty bits with Fulgrim like Rath or Wraight