Horus Heresy Series: Symptom or Substance?

Two-and-a-half years ago I started reading the Horus Heresy. Forty-eight books later, comprising dozens and dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories, I've reached the end. What a journey. What a story. Time for reflection.

This post will cover the following:

• Introduction

• Structure

  • The Missile's Arc

  • The Triangle

• Mode: Mythopoeism

• Theme

  • The Classics

  • Imperialism/Colonialism

  • Perennial Wisdom

  • Free Will

• Tone: Grimdark or “Grimdark”?

• Challenges

  • Technique

  • Permadeath

  • Structural Variability

• The End & thee Conslusion

• Bonus: Top 10

Review of Era of Ruin anthology

It took sixty-four books, but Dan Abnett's three-volume The End & the Death marked the end-end of the Horus Heresy. Humanity's stage had been set for the 40^th millennia. But had it? In 2025 along came a surprise anthology: Era of Ruin, leaving readers to wonder: epilogue or something more?

A mood piece kicks off the anthology. “Angels of Another Age” by John French features three Astartes who have been separated from their legions, wandering the outskirts of the siege of Terra. The story rings a touch false through French's overt emphasis on art (particularly after book after book of blaster porn), but the story ultimately accomplishes its mission by defining the stakes for the average Astartes in the wake of the Heresy: on which side of history will they fall? “Fulgurite” by Nick Kyme stars the Word Bearer sniper Narek who stealthily maneuvers the Terran battlefield, picking off Traitor Astartes (yes, Traitor). His goal is to use fulgurite weapons to take down one particular primarch. Fulgurite (in our world) is the hollow glass tubes formed by lightning strikes in the desert, and Kyme makes appropriate use of the metaphor.

Review of The Zenith Angle by Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling was one of the strongest and most unique voices in science fiction. He's taken a significant break from fiction, producing little the past decade+, and as a result has faded from the genre's eye. But there was a time in the 90s and 2000s when most every reader of sf would have known his name. A godfather of cyberpunk, collaborations with multiple other well writers, and award recognition, Sterling was a prominent figure. In the wake of 9-11, he published the novel The Zenith Angle (2004).

The Zenith Angle is the story of a man named Van. Uber-intelligent programmer, his talents took him to the top of the 90's internet boom. Leader of a multi-million dollar dot.com, he finds himself looking for new challenges. 9-11 happens, and Van is successfully recruited by the US government and tasked with tightening up homeland IT security. He accomplishes this through an ingenious invention, but at what cost? Van's family life, corporate tech, and government control all cross paths leading to a Bond-esque conclusion.

Review of Isle of the Dead by Roger Zelazny

If ever there were an author who enjoyed playing with and incorporating the world's mythologies in his speculative fiction, it was Roger Zelazny. Wikipedia has even devoted a section of his bibliography to a breakdown. Egyptian, Greek, Navajo, Norse, Indian—there is a list of origin lore that Zelazny found ways of weaving into science fiction tales (and a gruff, cigarette-smoking, world-weary male lead to boot). Looking to Hades is 1969's Isle of the Dead.

If the internets are to be believed, however, the inspiration for Isle of the Dead is actually a series of paintings by the artist Arnold Bocklin featuring, you guessed it, isles of the dead. The fantastical isles are captured in a surprisingly warm ambiance that possesses more hints of shadow than overt darkness. It leans toward the highs and lows of mortality more in tone than color.

Review of Shatterday & Other Stories: Voice from the Edge Vol. 5 by Harlan Ellison

I have greatly enjoyed the first four volumes of Voice From the Edge, an audiobook series collecting a large chunk of Harlan Ellison's short fiction. Most stories are read by Ellison himself, which is a treat considering the character Ellison was. Where some writer's prose feels awkward on the page, unnatural to the mind's ear, Ellison's flows in print and off his tongue. Fifth and final volume in Voice from the Edge is 2011's Shatterday & Other Stories.

A swathe of prosaic prose about sex and death kicks things off. “Delusion for a Dragon Slayer” tells of... well, there are a couple interpretations. One is a man in full, sweaty passion with a woman. Another is skirting the ecstatic edge of death. Title story and classic premise, “Shatterday” tells of a man and his unexpected doppelganger. Each sabotage the other's lives, and eventually things come to a head that satisfies plot concerns but likewise parallels any crisis of soul a person may have had. A story written in a six-hour sitting, “Flop Sweat” tells of a radio show host who invites a shadowy figure on air. Set in LA during the Ripper's heyday, Ellison introduces elements of horror that is good enough for a one-off read.

Review of Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon

How it must have been for a writer in the early 20th century. The world was your oyster—as long as you knew the right people, natch. There were no genre expectations, no market expectations, no massive reading culture to conform to, or rebel against. You could write what you want, and as long as you passed a basic eye test and knew the right people in publishing, then your story could see print. How else could an essentially plot-less, dialogue-less, character-less “novel” about the extreme, long-term evolution of humankind find book form? Enter Olaf Stapledon's debut novel Last and First Men (1930).

A plot summary of Last and First Men is therefore short and sweet. The book starts in modern history, at least as of Stapledon's time of writing, and moves forward, conveying the critical moments in human social and biological evolution over the next two billion years. Almost Lamarckian, it casually skips and jumps, taking advanced monkeys to the end of Earth, beyond bipedal, and into the wide universe afar. If anything, the book is a spot of intriguing imagination.

Review of The Wanderer by Fritz Leiber

I dislike cats. I don't hate them. I don't swerve toward them in the car. But I'd rather not live with them. They're alien. The lack of emotion—the twitchiness, the tweaker clawing, the killing of things just for fun then playing with it. I find it difficult to relate to such psychopaths. Fritz Leiber, on the other hand, thought it would make good sf material. Maybe. Let's see The Wanderer (1964).

The Wanderer tells the story of Earth's response to a weird, purple and yellow planet arriving in our atmosphere. Hippies in NYC, astronauts piloting ships at the lunar base, a smuggler in Vietnam, a trio on a cross-desert drive—Leiber gives a variety of viewpoints to the mysterious appearance. When it destroys the moon, however, Earth's tidal patterns are thrown into chaos, and the anthill of humanity is well and truly kicked.

Console Corner: Review of Warhammer Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters

Space Hulk: Tactics is a simple but solid turn-based experience in the Warhammer universe. Quintessential some would say, it features a 4-person squad of space marines exploring the derelict hulls of abandoned space ships, destroying the Tyranid enemies which emerge from the corridors and rooms. Classic Warhammer. It's an old game, however. In 2022 Complex Games decided to upgrade the experience for the fourth generation of consoles. Enter Warhammer Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters.

Like Space Hulk: Tactics, Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters is a turn-based experience featuring a small squad of space marines fighting evil. But it expands everything. Space travel between worlds becomes a game unto itself, not to mention directly links ship progression to marine upgrades. Combat missions are more varied, better fleshed out. There are significantly more options for interacting with the environment: statues to topple, nests to gain psyche points, explodables, etc., for example. The options for units, weapons, and armor are significantly, significantly expanded. And the nuances of combat offer more variety through the simple abandonment of tight corridors for open planetary terrain.

Second Look: A Reread of Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen

I read Steven Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen a decade ago. It took a year; the ten-book series has a lot of words. A lot. It's a massive-massive world and Erikson's story is not easy to read. Dozens upon dozens of locations, hundreds upon hundreds of characters, an extensive pantheon of gods, multiple layers of internal history, cultures, and lore—reading the series is an investment in time, concentration, memory, and, of course, money. I only keep books I intend to re-read, and looking at my bookshelf at the end of 2024 I asked myself: will I ever re-read Malazan? Should I free up some shelf-space? I decided to do a re-read to answer the question. Eight months later and I'm back from the journey, older and wiser.

The Magic Ruler

I'm not the most well-read epic fantasy reader, but I can't think of a fantasy world as large and complex as Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen. Ignoring Ian Esslemont's contributions to the setting, or even Erikson's Malazan short stories or adjacent novels, it's immense. The dramatis personae of one book is longer than the majority of other fantasy novels, let alone the sum of all ten books of the series. I assume the average pages-per-novel is around 1,000 (paperback). Each book juggles six or more different settings/character groups. There are around ten different sentient species, each with its own history, appearance, magic, lore, mannerisms, etc. The fantastic is a ubiquitous, hand-wavy affair, no system or structure to limit or keep it in check. Likewise, the idea of “gods” is nebulous at best, as mortals are capable of suddenly becoming gods, while gods are capable of dying and being killed. It's a massive milieu in which a million things are happening at one time, and a million things are possible.

Review of Limbo by Bernard Wolfe

One of the interesting mini-games in science fiction is tracing lineage. This author did this, another did that, another author picked up this, then still another author combined this with that and tweaked a little something here, and then... It's a sordid tale, so they say. I was somewhat taken aback by a novel, written in 1952, which acted not only as a node, but a proto-nexus for many of the ideas I find common in sf. Cyberpunk in rudimentary form. Concerns around invasive surgery. And psychologically edged dystopia. These three vectors cross paths in Bernard Wolfe's Limbo.

Limbo is a vignette of Earth post-WWIII. The nukes have fallen, and the global order is not what it once was. But neither is it stone age. Two core groups have emerged as nation states: the left over United States and the left over USSR. In the wake of such violence, the flag of pacifism flies high, so high, in fact, some people show support for the ideology by literally disarming themselves, voluntarily amputating limbs. These people are called Immobs. But most human existence is on the fringe, frontier and free. The novel centers on one such doctor living in the jungles of Africa, a man named Dr. Martine. He helps the local tribe implement mandunga, their version of pacifism via lobotomy. But when their jungle tribe sees its first group of Immobs visit, Dr. Martine knows he must leave his peaceful existence and return to his home in the US to do something about the phenomenon.