Review of Corax by Gav Thorpe

I'm forty books deep in the Horus Heresy, and yet there are still legions and primarchs out there I have yet to encounter in any substantial fashion. Corax of the Raven Guard is one such primarch. A leader with special ops skills, Gav Thorpe's Corax (2016), a book somewhere between collection and novel, looks to shed more light on the enigmatic primarch and his legion.

From the truest nerd perspective, Corax is an interesting specimen of fiction: collection or unfinished novel? Containing six pieces of interconnected fiction, there is an argument to be made for both (though arguments for 'novel' need to preceded by 'unfinished'). The stories are discreet, some with chapters in them. The book's parts feels disparate. Yet a through-line is visible most of the time. Cohesion lingers on the periphery. Like I said, interesting.

Corax kicks off with “Soulforge”—both a tone setting novella and decent piece of space marine special ops fiction. Corax, taking with him the elements of his Legion which survived Isstvan V, looks to take indirect revenge on Horus through guerrilla warfare. They track down a bit of Chaos evil that the Word Bearers and Adeptus Mechanicus have been researching on a distant cloud planet, and attempt to take it through stealth. It's a classic tale, with the occasional cheesy line, but features a nice dynamic pace and escalates predictably but dependably. “Soulforge” is followed up by a five-page story that shows a parallel perspective to its events. About a specific squad tasked with creating a distraction, the reader could either see it as nice flavor or cutting room floor material.

“Ravenlord” is a straight forward short story intended to show Corax in battle glory—ripping out spines, blasting off heads, and smashing his way deeper into traitor territory. His blood boils when he learns of the horrors of Lorgar is unleashing on captured loyalists, leading to a bloody, chaotic (get it?) showdown. This story, more than “Soulforge”, is too classic. It's too on the nose, too predictable, to unsurprising. And, perhaps most importantly, too unrevealing of Corax—the titular primarch. “The Value of Fear” is a brief story telling of the Raven Guard's infiltration of a weapon smuggler's base. The story attempts to build mystique around Corax by making him a secondary character operating in the shadows, but it's an uphill climb without giving him personal conflictions. Regardless how he is represented on the battlefield, he still comes across as one-dimensional .

The final two stories in the collection are linked (as well as to the novel Wolfsbane). It tells of Corax's mutant squad—mutants he accidentally created but who do not have the Chaos taint. The squad locate a derelict ship abandoned planet-side and opt to investigate. They discover a few things, welcome and evil. “Weregeld”, the final story in the collection, is also its most ambitious. Thorpe attempts to put the Raven Guard and its primarch through the ringer by challenging its primary axiom: to be where the enemy least expects it. Likewise challenging the Legion's involvement in the Horus Heresy, it features primarchs, large-scale battles, and indeed, the closest the series has yet to getting to another dimension of Corax. Not sure Thorpe 100% succeeds, but it is the most satisfactory story in the collection. The conclusion is heartrending in a simple kind of way.

In the end, Corax attempts to find color in one of the Horus Heresy's most black and white primarchs. I think Thorpe achieves a sort of gray, particularly in the final story “Weregeld”, but most of the other content is standard bolter porn. An argument could be made that “Soulforge” at least moves in semi-predictable fashion, and indeed may be the most entertaining story included. Ultimately, however, Corax is blindly loyal, heroic on every page, and rarely if ever makes a mistake. He has a flaw, but it's not a flaw which permeates the stories (only one, in fact). This is not helped by the fact Thorpe's style is, at least in this anthology, too often unsophisticated. Little is left between the lines—something that was needed to develop Corax's character. I'm glad I read Corax. Now I know what's there. But I would recommend others who are picking and choosing their way through the HH series to think twice. Naturally, people who like the Raven Guard should have no qualms.

The following are the six stories collected in Corax:

Corax: Soulforge

The Shadowmasters

Ravenlord

The Value of Fear

Raptor

Weregeld