In a previous post we considered the mixed but pivotal Graham McNeil. Now we must cross an invisible barrier in quality for, if my usual response to a McNeil book is; “oh that’s, wait, what the fuck, what the fuck is that, why did you do that, oh wow, ok that was fun I suppose”
Then my usual expectation for a Swallow book is; “un hu un hu ah, yep yep, ok… well that happened..”
From a pretty good or at least always interesting writing with a lot of weird or bad elements to a generally very boring writer who surprisingly often pokes his head up above the parapet of quality, but is sadly blown away by a waiting sniper. Swallow has rambled all over the Heresy taking on a variety of subjects but not really having an emblematic series, Legion or character.
I think perhaps he was meant to be the main writer for Sanguinius and the Blood Angels, but he isn’t very good so those works don’t really stand out. Still he makes some good efforts! If wasn’t for the tragic dead weight of his last book, ‘The Buried Dagger’, a truly abominable disaster bringing the poorly-told story of Mortarion to an eve more poorly-told end, he might still rate above average.
But he does not. Follow me now into tragedy…
Assassins!
Nemesis
EXECUTION FORCE! The deadliest ever dudes with a very special set of skills! They all wear black and work alone! Now they team up to do a thing! Will they do the thing somehow? And how the fuck are there meant-to-be-used-alone weird as shit skillsets meant to actually work together? Its not like using a knife with a fork or a fork with a cheesegrater even, more like a fork and the colour blue.
Malcador being Malcador has a very bay-of-pigs concept of; hey we got literally piles of assassins around here why not just assassinate Horus?
So a rag tag team of the assasnoriums synth-skin wearing wierdoes are sent to do just that.
Meanwhile someone, (Maloghurst?) realises hey with all this warp gunk we can basically reshape reality and also with our Chaos Prime account we have access to the entire archive of demons dating back to the fucking old ones baby! Surely there is something in the back of the drawer that we can use to kill the Emperor?
And in fact they do have just such a demon - a shapechanging super-clever psychic leech/capacitor thingy that only gets stronger the more power its target has
High concept. Honestly not bad. Basically a meta-story shaping book; i.e. why not just assassinate horus/e-money. Think this actually invented the execution force, an idea which sounds cool AS SHIT but often works out to be a bit eh.
Ultimately neither E-Dawg or Horus want the other to be assassinated. They both want a Dramatic Last Scene. The Emperor in order to maybe redeem Horus and get him back? Horus so he can eat the Emperor and become double-strong, allowing him to take on the Chaos Gods probably/
What even happens in this?
They try to shoot a giant evangelion style sniper rifle at Horus. It’s so big it has to be hidden in a building. But they only shoot his double. This is one of two times I can recall that someone in the Heresy has dressed up as Horus and pretended to be him and one was Robute Guilliman… Insert your own “weird that its happened twice” joke here.
Good because it leads onto ‘Gunsight’ in which the Vindicare sniper left behind goes mad on the vengeful spirit
Gunsight (Short Story)
A good story! An assassin leftover from a previous book infiltrates the Vengeful Spirit and, while waiting to kill Horus, has a mental.
The Assassin bumps into a crewman who is still somewhat loyal. A neat look at what it might be like to be an almost-normal human who happened to be one of the hundreds of thousands aboard the Vengeful Spirit when Horus decided he was going to turn evil. Since then the ship has basically melted through reality and turned into a living nightmare, plus all of your colleagues are now big devotees of a scary new religion. It’s a rare sympathetic portrait of a normal human amidst the utter lunacy of the Heresy.
Ultimately Horus converts the Assassin to Chaos with the inference that he will turn up at the Siege of Terra. (He does not).
Angels!
Fear to Tread
A pivotal moment and sadly just not that well written.
This should be a major moment of the Heresy. Horus knows Sanguinius is super-dangerous and super-nice and super-loyal to the Emperor. So he sends him, and his entire Legion out to a distant world telling him; “Very dangerous Xenos here bro, take your guys and take em out.”
In fact the planet, and entire system, is and are a warp-drenched, demon-infected spiritual and military trap for Sanguinius designed to either reduce him to a berserk rage and make him a servant of chaos, or simply to kill him.
This does not work largely because the Demons are dumb as shit panto villains. Though that's a bit of a theme in the Heresy – the ruinous powers being basically crackheads and – regardless of the fact they can bleed through reality and travel through time affecting every moment of your life imperceptibly, other than that, they are actually often dinguses who faceplant at the last moment. I suppose being living psychic fatbergs is not a wonder for competence.
Imagine playing chess against an idiot who can see through time. Or to call back to me previous example, imagine if your arch-foe was a crackhead with a TARDIS. Very very dangerous, and in fact terrifying, but likely not competent and, once you have had the first encounter, (from your perspective), you can start to develop safeguards. The Crackhead might have theoretically incredible power but they are going to consistently mis-use it, or make foolish decisions, because they are on crack.
Demons in the Heresy are written a lot like this, which would make an elegant kind of sense if it were deliberate artifice, but in fact its just largely bad writing making the Demons look like the Chuckle Brothers.
What happened; Sanguinius is a super pure very great guy and both Khorne and Slaanesh really want him to be their particular murder/perv angel – in an unusual example of chaotic combined arms planning planning the evil joint chiefs of staff have gotten together and set the PERFECT TRAP for the Blood Angels. They have basically cum all over reality in the Signus sector and now the stains won’t come out
Horus will send Sangy and the Angels to Signus where they will have their first no-warnings experience of Chaos ; bad news its not aliens its LITERAL FUCKING DEMONS BABY
Remember the aim here is not just to separate the Blood Angels from the rest of Imperial Forces
But specifically to convert Sanguinius to the ruinous powers. Since he is a space vampire mutant with a near constant thirst for blood ruling over a legion of former blood drinking berserkers – shouldn’t be too hard right?
No because he is the best guy ever
It hard to write Sanguinius. I can think of only a few really good examples of him in the Heresy, one by Chris Wraight where he meets the Khan and ADB in ‘Echoes of Eternity’
As soon as the Blood Angels fleet arrives almost all of the standard humans go mad and/or die. Parts of the Blood Angels assault Signus Prime. Sanguinius crashes on the surface and has a fight in a Beksynski madscape against legions of demons as they try to drive him, and the Blood Angels. Maaad I tell you; “Unleash your beserker rage you nerds!”
Meanwhile a handful of humans have survived on the fleet – due to an unregistered psychic blank lady who protected them without realising.
This whole thing might have worked much better if we didn’t get actual scenes of the main demons plotting and scheming in their tower of bones and goop. If it was played straight as a horror movie, with reality literally melting and the Blood Angels going increasingly mad and even Sanguinius, best guy ever, slowly going nuts, being confronted by that which cannot be, it might have been pretty great.
Perhaps fortunately for humanity, the minions of the Chaos Gods are, during the Heresy, not particularly great at being unknowable horror-movie monsters, instead feeling more like very-knowable batman-villian arguing goons.
Some allowance should be given. They have just come off maternity leave after giving birth to Slaanesh and have not had to deal this directly with corrupting humanity before, at least on this scale, they are not always on their A-Game.
Sangy meets the main demons, fights them, Ka-Banda who is meant to be his nemesis fights him and does pretty well, going I am your doom! Your DOOM!
Then one of the Blood Angels Librarians sacrifices themselves in Sanguinius’ place and the good guys win. I think that’s what happens.
Future books will see the Blood Angels going off to hang out with Robute, where Sanguinius is made ‘Emperor’ of Imperium Secundus, before finally trying to make it through the Ruinstorm in ‘Ruinstorm’ and ending up in a massive catastrophe at Beta-Garmon in ‘Titandeath’ and finally zooming around the Siege and ultimately fighting at the Eternity Gate in ‘Echoes of Eternity’. All of these by different writers.
Garro !
Garro is boring. Shouldn’t be but is. Maybe he’s ok with that though.
We last saw him back in post 2 where we talked about the Flight of the Eisenstein. Then he ran through the bitz box posts as he fought a demon on the moon, largely didn’t go mad, though did get religion in a major way, then got recruited by Malcador and spent the mid-years of the Heresy wandering around usually on Grey-Knights sub-plot fetch quests saying ‘Come with me to Malcador’
All That Remains (Short Story)
Another in the ‘Grey Knights’ sub-arc as a bunch of imperial troops are diverted to Titan and thence out of the story.
Ghosts Speak Not (Short Story)
Hey random Death Guard left behind on the moooooon, come with me..
To Malcador?
No. But I am on a mission from Malcador. Also at the end of this story we blow up a planet. The Emperors Dream is dead!
Lost Sons (Short Story)
“Warden Arkad, Sangunius is deaaaaaad, (or missing), come with me to Malcador.”
Arkad - “Like fuck I will.”
“Ok well then we are taking all your stuff to Malcador!”
Arkad - “Noooooo fucking way.”
Random Messenger “Guys, text from the astropath, Sanguinius is alive.”
Arkad – “Leave.”
(Sanginius later dies)
Patience (Short Story)
A… a.. a.. good Garro story?
Garro turns up in this as a mysterious avenging monster slayer seen through the eyes of others who just poses meaningfully and is taciturn but who it turns out later actually had a plan.
…..
The curious frustration of Garros' story is that his fate is to be sent through a WARP HOLE by Malcador, leaving the Heresy story and turning up in the ‘future’ of 40k.
That’s it really, he goes through a hole.
Sick and Morty
James has a short story AND a major novel about the Death Guard. Ancient lore says the Death Guard were only totally finally corrupted on their way to the Siege of Terra. Caught in a timeless warp Sargasso they were all infected and, over who knows how long of subjective time, went MAAAAD.
How will this come over in text??
But first;
Exocytosis (short story)
Typhon comes down with a cold while chilling in Luthers micro-realm. Strangest friendship ever? Its weird that these guys know each other let alone that they get on. Admittedly they do both have somewhat anguished relationships with their Primarch but that’s literally every First Captain of every Legion.
The Buried Dagger
A genuinely bad book and really quite a disappointment.
Just very very very dull. Should be an absolute axial high point horror movie novel for the Heresy. So bad Chris Wraight took, and was allowed, an entire sub chapter in his Siege book in which a demon turns up and talks at length about these events to explain that actually morty is not functionally retarded.
The complete fall of the Death Guard to Nurgle takes place as their fleet is stranded in the warp and infected with a plague that slowly destroys even their fabled resistance. A timeless moment that only ends when Mortarian says ‘ok’ and sells both their souls and his to Nurgle
Dreams and visions fleet through the mind. An infinite time trapped in the warp. How long were they there for, subjectively? Ten years, a hundred, a thousand? Did we get time loops where they were forced to repeat the same horrors again and again? How about body horror- how does it feel to be forcibly transforming into a plague marine? Your body shifting and mind melting, and you can’t even die to stop it? EVEN DEATH IS NO ESCAPE. Time to enter the Ballardian dreamscape of your insane fungal reality! Dreams and truth intermix! What is real?? Does reality even mean anything in this hell? A crazed legion trapped in the dream of a mad god, poisoned with that madness until their personal reality melts and eventually, ultimately, they submit to the nightmare and emerge utterly changed! Sounds pretty great!
Well none of that happens in the books really. The only way it simulates the horror of Nurgles touch is in how long and dull it is.
Morty is extra-stupid in this, cucked worse than Josh Reynolds being cucked out of a series, by Calas Typhon who pulls some of the most pantomime-villain “it was chaos all along whoo hoo haa ha” bullshit
The poor bloody death guard, always mildly badly written.
Easy to Swallow
James Swallow did some things well. ‘Nemesis’ isn’t bad, bits of ‘Fear to Tread’ are interesting and many of his short stories are quite Good Actually.
The shorts are generally a much better bet than his longer tales since even if they are boring they are over fast and play well to his strengths of innovative pseudo-sci fi concepts mixed with 40k stuff
The Voice (short story)
A Black Ship straaaaands-oooff-ffaaaate story. Some Sisters of Silence board a Black Ship to uncover spooky doings, turns out they are mixed up with an attempt to use psykers to send a message back in time from the Future. There is this thing called a heresy and they need to stop it. One of the people sending the message back is a future version of someone on the ship now and….., I don’t remember the exact resolution but it ends badly.
Liars Due (short story)
A stranger comes to town on a small world, is he a villain? Yes. And he drives everyone mental with paranoia in order to collapse the society in preparation for team bad guy to arrive. IT’S THE ALPHA LEGION! Slightly notable for the end in which a farm boy chases him into space.
Hard to Swallow
However. For almost all the major elements he wrote about they were handled better by others
Or barely handled at all.
Sanguinius has never been done really WELL (except in ‘Echoes of Eternity)– though his appearances in other things have generally been better than Fear to Tread. Cool but shallow most of the time.
Sraight arrow-Garro outlived his core plot use and was a ping pong ball for most of the heresy until he was literally ping-ponged through a WARP HOLE to a MOON. His religiosity in a still-atheist culture is the most interesting thing about him but rarely comes up.
Morty and the Death Guard were written pretty consistently poorly throughout the Heresy and the book which covers their fall in detail is the WORST ONE. Christ Wraights embarrassing explanation chapter in ‘Warhawk’ is better than the entirety of ‘The Buried Dagger’. It might actually be one of the worst books of the series which is saying something, or would be if the sad tales of Nick Kyme were not there to take the top spot.
Think I said I was quite fond of Nemesis in an earlier series post. The stuff on Dagonet is 40k-standard but 30k-rare - I guess I miss it in other 30k material.
ReplyDelete(Also, now I'm thinking about it how many named 30k Rogue Traders are there? I mean, I don't need at least one Horus Heresy story per Imperial institution, but my recollection is that the Rogue Traders were one of those awkward the Auriphilous Anatolian set up and left around to eventually vex the High Lords of Terra. Be nice to have some 30k stuff on them, but I grant that they've got a bit too apocalyptic for Space Privateers by now.)
There was a Swallow-Morty short story called Lantern's Light that I only ever consumed as a fan reading on Youtube (it got taken down, I think by the narrator as a precaution, at some point). I remember it being fairly effective.
One called Sangrea turns up over the battle of Tallarn, shoots people, and flies away https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Battle_of_Tallarn#Golden_Fleet_Arrives
DeleteReally appreciate you reviewing these Death Guard works, especially consider how terribly they sound. Dammit.
ReplyDeleteOh no, the nick kyme books. The one about carrying vulkan's body back to nocturne is, I'm pretty sure, the subjectively longest book I've ever read.
ReplyDeleteLords of silence was my first death guard novel and it gave me a hugely incorrect expectation of how interesting the death guard would be in further BL fiction.