Review of Warhawk by Chris Wraight

And the Siege continues. Warhawk by Chris Wraight (2021) takes the conflict to the next level. In Mortis, traitor forces pushed hard on the walls of the Emperor's Palace and breached the Lion's Spaceport. Honoring an oath, Jaghatai Khan rallies the White Scars for a counter-strike; the port's role is critical to Loyalist plans for stopping Horus. But Horus has other plans.

Warhawk follows a handful of sub-plots. Primary is Khan honoring his promise—or at least trying. The second is a secret Loyalist plan to refurbish a destroyed space platform and use it as a battle station. In a third, Mortarion and the Death Guard close the open threads of The Buried Dagger—coming to terms with their bodily changes due to Chaos. Further plot points still, Imperial Fist Sigismund gets a new sword that seems to have power of its own, in turn becoming a focal point for Traitor forces. And lastly, we have Olli shenanigans; the Perpetuals' mission draws closer to ending, and in doing so he finds deeper questions than originally thought.

Upon completing Warhawk, the concerns I raised about presentation in Mortis persist: Loyalist forces continue winning battles yet the Traitors continue winning the war. To be a touch more quantitative without spoiling anything, two major victories for the Loyalists are featured in Warhawk, yet in the background the Traitors continue advancing, continue moving forward without many major scenes in support of that progress.

But those “two major victories” are the juice worth the book's squeeze. Most Horus Heresy books save their major plot inflection point til last, and Warhawk is no different. It's worth sticking around for as the Siege of Terra gets more serious. No longer pawns dying on the chess board, the bigger pieces—the knights and bishops and rooks—are starting to fall as well.

Taking all this into consideration, my opinion of Warhawk is going to likely differ from the average Horus Heresy reader. The White Scars are, after all, one of the most popular factions. For me this is one of the most “normal” Siege of Terra books. Aside from a massive White Scars counter-strike and a duel between primarchs, I struggled to remember anything else that happened—which I'm sure other readers feel about other Siege of Terra books, so take my comments on its banality as you will.