Review of Fulgrim by Graham McNeill

I consulted a handful of informed opinions online in looking to go deeper into the Horus Heresy series. All universally defined the first five books as foundational. Decisions on individual novels could be made after, but the first five were necessary. So I pushed ahead. Having now read the first three novels, they indeed contain critical story points. But only 50-60% of The Flight of the Eisenstein, the fourth novel, pushed the core story, leaving me a little skeptical going into the fifth, Fulgrim by Graham McNeill (2007). Are the internets to be trusted?

As the title suggests, Fulgrim focuses on the eponymous primarch. A golden child, Fulgrim leads the Emperor's Children with beauty and power. A perfectionist, he looks to compete for glory with the other Astartes legions by secretly enhancing the geneseed of his space marines. But things take a turn when, leading space marines into battle on a non-compliant planet, Fulgrim discovers an ancient weapon. Too beautiful to throw away, he adds it to his arsenal, and in doing so unwittingly charts a new course for himself into the future.

Fulgrim is a proper tragedy. A mix of Hector the golden boy and Achilles the flawed warrior, both experienced downfalls, as does Fulgrim. Not a spoiler, it's the journey not the destination that counts in the novel. McNeill understands this well. Fulgrim is a slow burn, things happening here, then there, major battles over there, personal conflict here, and ending in a place nobody, including Fulgrim, thought possible. And yet it's natural, organic. The denouement, for example, is appropriately small scale (rather than large scale bolter porn).

There are a couple of things to be critical of. First is that Fulgrim's journey mirrors Horus' a bit too strongly. I will not spoil things, except to say McNeill could have chosen a different inflection point for Fulgrim. This is, of course, unless there is some wider purpose for the similarity between Fulgrim and Horus' introduction to the dark side? Perhaps future primarchs will meet the same fate? Second is: the setup for Isstvan V. While the planet forms a large dot on the timeline of Horus Heresy events, relatively little time is spent setting it up and resolving it in the novel. Perhaps later books or stories will go further in depth, but as it stands in Fulgrim doesn't offer the consideration, and therefore weight, it perhaps deserved.

To close things, I will go back to the introduction: is Fulgrim a foundational Horus Heresy novel that is required reading for the series at large? From my limited viewpoint, the answer is: seems likely. Unlike The Flight of the Eisenstein, events are focused and the amount of spurious content is minimal in relation to Horus' rebellion. If anything, however, Fulgrim stands strongly on its own. Unlike Garros in Flight of the Eisenstein, Primarch Fulgrim is a gray character, and for that relatable and interesting. The deeper one gets, the more one wants to learn how his (inevitable) tragedy unfolds—a success likewise witnessed by the satisfactory manner in which the final chapters resolve.

The internets tell me to skip the next few Horus Heresy novels if I want core storyline only, and so on to A Thousand Sons I go.