Talon of Horus book report!

The cover is 100% not accurate to the story.
Actually it is more like 2% accurate.

Aaron Dembski-Bowden, this dude has become my second favorite writer of 40K tales.

Talon of Horus is a tale staring a Thousand Son sorcerer, Khayon, who is a prisoner of the Inquisition. He has been tortured and bound and left alive to answer various question and tell his tales. Why? Well the Inquisition is interested in the founding of the Black Legion and its leader Ezekyle Abaddon.

Khayon takes us back to the time between the end of the Hersey and before the first Black Crusade. It is a time where the traitor marines are the “boogey men” the Imperium warns their children about. They are legend and no more believable than Bigfoot. Well that is outside the Eye of Terror.

Inside it is a different story with traitor warbands battling each other for glory, goods, lands or because they are bored. We get a good bit of description of life within the Eye o’ Terror and the powers of Chaos. It is a much different description than that of previous Eye o’ Terror cannon. A bit refreshing to see it isn’t just a place of angry Marines, demons and cultist loons 24/7.

Khayon and his little warband (which is full of demons, a Dark Eldar Scourge, a World Eater who is fantastic dry comic relief, a living space ship computer drive  (think Melfina from Outlaw Star anime )and an Emperor’s Children (or is it Child when only one guy?)are recruited to help stop a contingent of Emperor’s Children, led by Fabius Bile, from creating a clone of the long dead Horus. Along the way we get stories of; how Khayon became what he is, how he formed his warband, the death of the Sons of Horus and after 75% of the novel being over, the groundwork for the founding of the official Black Legion. Sprinkle in a bit of Eye o’ Terror travel silliness and the typical Space Marine action we all know too. This all comes together is a really damn fine and fun story.

It was great to see a bit of a look into the Traitor Legions post Hersey. It was even better to see the Eye as not some place of just madness and guys screaming at one another while crazy shit happens in and around them at all times. Plus the characters are all Chaos marines and they aren’t the typical a-holes like in most novels. They are actually pretty damn likeable even Abaddon isn’t the D-bag he is portrayed as in the Horus Hersey series and beyond. This was a good bit of refreshment. Then there is the epilogue. Well that was a bit of beauty, especially if the 40K tabletop game world is tied in anyway shape or form to the Black Library novels. This last bit could a great introduction to that new 8^th edition the interweb has been speaking about.

Some great action in here. Better characters than most 40K stuff. A damn tight story too. Go grab this and soak in the awesome!