Review of Garro: Knight of Grey by James Swallow

Note: If you are looking ahead in the Siege of Terra series, finding reviews of potential books to read, strongly consider reading Garro: Knight of Grey before Mortis. It is listed after Mortis due to publishing date, but exists prior in the internal chronology of the series.

In my lurking around Warhammer forums and Horus Heresy discussion, it seems Garro, the Death-Guard-warrior-turned-warning-beacon in The Flight of the Eisenstein, has clout among some readers. People seem to like him. He doesn't stand tall in my reading of 30k, however. He has been more of a flat, hardboiled stereotype not to mention incidental character—one who happened to be in the right place at the right time—rather than a character with proper agency worth developing in the series. Take this review of Garro: Knight in Grey (2022) with that in mind.

Garro: Knight in Grey is a novella featuring the eponymous character. Wandering the battlefields of Terra, he comes across a pair of las gunners trapped in the rubble. The weight of the war upon him, including his own traumatic wounds, Garro looks to the gunners to find meaning in the war. But the search for meaning is interrupted by his former Primarch, Mortarion. Mortarion tries to convince Garro to rejoin the Death Guard, or face the consequences.

I'm going to come out and say it: Garro: Knight of Grey is the poorest piece of fiction I've read in the HH series. It feels like a scene—not a short story, a scene—stretched into a novella. I understand the series' architects granted Garro a high enough place in the pantheon to warrant his own novella in the Siege, but there needed to be greater purpose built into the novella than just Garro trying to reconcile with his gene father. It needed at least one more major link to the series as a whole to defend its existence. It doesn't have that, it's value contained only in the climactic scene.

The issues continue. Garro is written in a tired, often cliche voice . Swallow works no prosaic wonders. There are few if any nice turns of phrase. And there isn't an underlying verve, something to make the story feel inspired. It's a dull read—and I rarely describe a book as such.

One other issue, though not Swallow's this time, is that Mortarion again lacks consistent characterization. Who is Mortarion? What is at his core? These are questions readers can ask given how many different ways these questions have been answered by authors in previous books and stories. Tossed around, Mortarion is mercurial at best. At worst, it's a kaleidoscope.

In the end, Garro: Knight of Grey should be read only by two types: readers who are invested in Garro's story and want to see it's next installment, and readers who are reading everything in the HH series. Everyone else can skip this—or just read the climactic chapter, and move on. A scene stretched into a novella, there is little of value beyond to warrant a full read.