Quick book reports

I busted through a couple of Horus Heresy novels the first Garro, which is a retelling of the audiobooks which I have stayed away from and the second was The Crimson King. A follow up to 2010 the A Thousand Sons novel.

Garro    

Captain Nathaniel Garro, one time loyal Death Guard has seen a bunch of stuff happen; his primarch and legion turn from the good to bad, the corruption of the chaos on his brethren and the whole Eisenstein escape bit and having to deal with the loyal Astartes when coming from a traitor legion.

He is now in service to Malcador the Sigilite, Regent of Terra. He has been tasked to gather like-minded or similar background Space Marines picked by Malcador for a mission.

Along the way you discover the fate of one Gavriel Loken, and Euphrati Keeler the rembrancer turned prophet, saint or whatever she is. This is leading to the foundation of the Imperial Cult which we all know about in the 40K history. The whole God Emperor bit and all that. You also get a bit of the build to Horus approaching Terra (because why not drag that out for several more books) how the Imperium is dealing with this fact. The idea that the Imperium of Man is on the verge of collapse or at best go through a radical change. You also get a look at a secret army and organization being built/founded by Malcador. They aren’t saying these are the Grey Knights and Inquisition, but they are not not saying it either.

Garro wasn’t a terrible read, but it wasn’t great either. Another filler novel to make the wait of the Horus vs. Emperor story drag out longer.

The Crimson King

A follow-up tale to the 2012 (holy crap snacks it has been that long) novel A Thousand Sons.
Ok-dokey. Here we catch up with the Thousand Sons on their planet of sorcerers. Magnus the Red has locked himself away from everyone sans his equerry Amon and Ahzek Ahriman. You learn Magnus’s soul was broken when Leman Russ broke his body. He has tasked Ahriman to gather the lost pieces and put humpty dumpty back together again. Now of course these pieces (only like two or three that they are looking for in this book his soul was really big, but only broke in a few chunks I guess) have been scattered through space and time.

Yup time travel and warp nonsense abounds in this story. It is to be expected with a novel about a legion of wizards and warlocks.

Anyhoo….Ahriman travels around space time looking for soul bits. A contingent of Space Wolves, Ultramarines, Raven Guard, Mechanicum and Sisters of Silence is on the loose trying to thwart Ahriman from collecting said soul chunks. Magnus does some crazy space magic stuff that was kind of boring and uninspiring. Lucius the Eternal is hanging around too for some reason so there is his strange story added to the tale as well.

Eventually Magnus is made almost complete with the soul bits of earth, wind, fire and water added back into him. He is still missing heart, but that is ok. He then decides to throw his legion into backing Horus and his assault (someday in like 10 more books) on Terra. Why? Well because that is where his heart soul shard is located, in the Imperial Palace.

For a Graham McNeill Space Marine story I was fairly unimpressed. He has written much better than this. Maybe it was the fact I could care less about how Magnus got his groove back. Maybe it was the drek space magic journey of Arhiman and his buddies. Maybe it was the space time shenanigans I don’t want in my 30K-40K tales. Maybe it is the fatigue of this series and its never ending drawn out action to keep it from ending with Horus fighting the Emperor while Sanguinius lies dying.