DarkChaplain

Wait, are people actually upset that the Scouring is kicking off with the Primarchs picking up the pieces, politicking and trying to figure out what to even do with the Imperium from here? The politics are the best part, screw the action setpieces! :')

I know what he's referring to, as I've seen that specific "spoiler" on reddit. Considering the much cooler, actual spoilers, it's a bit sad that this thing will dominate the discourse for some people again, despite being seemingly entirely irrelevant to the rest of the book. That being said, we already have a containment thread for it, thanks to Roomsky.

Pretty much my view, too. There's a case to be made for it to be read after Legion, though I'd discount that one easily enough. But it should be read pretty much right after Fulgrim, if not squeezed in-between, after Fulgrim and Ferrus have their spat and part on bad terms. I might say it'd be very much worth reading After Desh'ea from Tales of Heresy before it, though, for an added bit of context to Angron and Khârn. The more I read of it, the more it feels like a pretty vital narrative piece that we should have had 15 years ago already. It's pointing towards so many things, backfilling some connections, introducing some later series characters by name, if not much in the way of content, like Artellus Numeon appearing for a little bit as Vulkan's equerry. You know, the guy from Vulkan Lives & Deathfire, whose sacrifice brings Vulkan back. Or a namedrop for an Iron Hand that appeared briefly in the Sisypheum arc. Characters we know were involved in some capacity from being told so, but never had the benefit of seeing them actually there. It's just glimpses, but they feel appropriate. There's some pointers at the simultaneously happening gathering at Calth, or Signus Prime, or the White Scars being scattered and unreachable, which you can jump off of to Know No Fear, Fear to Tread and Brotherhood of the Storm/Scars. And it's doing it in a way that makes sense, subtly, as part of the Warmaster's plans and the Loyalist strategizing and agonizing. Like, had we gotten this book, as is, 15 years ago, I'd wager a lot of flowcharting and new reader guidework would have been heavily simplified, while there'd have been more attachment to some aspects, characters or themes in more Legion-specific books down the line. It's doing a great service to the early series, anchoring that phase of the war in a way you probably could only do in hindsight, but it makes the whole thing richer for it.

What impresses me the most so far is that it actually manages to make Isstvan V much less of a sure thing for Horus. Like, it introduces elements and not least of all arguments as to how this really was the knife-edge moment we were told, but never actually felt like it was in the series. It was always an event that took place and devastated the Loyalists, always a bit on the nose with the backstabbing of the hidden Traitor Legions. But here? It's all super fragile. Horus and his forces are prepared. Assets are in place. Odds are stacked. But it's still unstable. Everything is, including Horus's allies. They all have their own views on what is unfolding, their own complaints. Horus needs Ferrus Manus to rush for him, because his brothers are growing increasingly hard to control. There's mistrust between the Traitor ranks, growing to a boiling point that only immediate action can cool back down for the moment. They're all depicted in a way that is fully in line with what we know of them, and they didn't leave their grievances behind with their Loyalty to the Throne. They're a risk to each other just as much as to the Loyalists, and inaction chafes, it makes them contemplate. They need the Loyalist response to arrive, and soon. But on the flipside, we have Ferrus Manus - who is being improved on a lot here. This is no longer a situation of Ferrus Manus being made to look silly, ignoring potential traps or pitfalls - it's him trying to account for too much, on the outset, and being blindsided by the further betrayal at a point when sheer disbelief of how any one Primarch, any one Legion can turn at all - while faced with the shock that four did so, fortifying right in front of them, was still raw, still something for everyone trying to come to terms with. This is a moment in time where none but the Traitors have even experienced actual Astartes vs Astartes war on a Legion scale. They're trying to cope. They're even trying to avoid calling Horus by his name. They're stunned by what is unfolding, but pressed for time and control of the situation. "Control" is the keyword here, I think. Isstvan V is the loss of control for the Imperium, for the Loyalists. But it's also the Traitors proving themselves uncontrollable in the long run. It's the tender moment in any revolution, any civil war, where the uprising could fall back into itself in disunity. It gives a lot of weight to Horus's lamentations in the Warmaster audio drama.

There's also another element that led to events at Isstvan V: That's very much my sentiment so far as well. I feel nothing of the frustration from the Siege of Terra reading this - just excitement at them doing it properly.

Alright, I've now read the first part of the book, which spans the first five chapters and just under 20% of the book. I'm very happy that this exists, now. It absolutely nails the level of gravitas of having to send word of Horus' betrayal from Terra out into the galaxy. The disbelief, the urgency, the sudden movement of the war effort in a different direction. But also harkens back to when the Traitor Legions and their Primarchs weren't yet utterly broken. It also clicks very nicely with the Warmaster audio drama, which French wrote so long ago now, alluding to his plans for Signus and Calth. But damn, that fifth chapter was fantastic in particular. I don't even want to spoil it, but damn, it had impact. I hope the novel continues in this way, because right now, it is bringing back a lot of the fondness I have and had for the early Heresy, when the scope seemed so big, the drama and tragedy was very human rather than utterly warped, and you can find yourself thinking "damn, if only this bloke hadn't taken a turn to the right instead of the left, in this situation, things might have been so grand". There's a sense of nobility to the way the Traitor Primarchs conduct themselves, even as they're contemplating absolute betrayal - they're still sane, and I didn't realize how much I missed that. But so far, I'd absolutely recommend reading this as part of the first 10ish books in the series, as if it was a mainline entry, because it does a lot to lift up and fill in the aspects that were sorely missing in the way Isstvan V was originally handled. I hope it holds up. I'm not that far in, mind you. All of this could go very rapidly south. But in these first few chapters, it's done a lot of work to make this feel right, and earned.

Surprisingly, I disagree that the Dropsite Massacre was "fine" before this. It was "good enough", but always a pain, particularly for people who didn't have the benefit of having been there from the beginning of the series, or extensive flowchart-esque knowledge. A lot about why the Dropsite Massacre works now is due to backfilling already. It took years before we got an audio drama dealing with Corax at the Massacre, and that only went into print in Shadows of Treachery, book 22, multiple novels after Deliverance Lost, book 18, built on it. Vulkan and the Salamanders got shafted til the Scorched Earth limited edition novella, which didn't drop until 2013 - we had Betrayer and Mark of Calth (books 24 & 25) by that point, and since it was a limited edition, there was, what, a 2 year window where it wasn't widely available? Even the limited edition didn't even make it to people in time before Vulkan Lives, book 26, if I remember the Warseer days properly. Scorched Earth wasn't collected until Born of Flame, book 50. A good bit of the aftermath of the Dropsite Massacre, namely the council of the traitor primarchs where Fulgrim gets found out to be daemonically possessed, happened in Aurelian - another limited edition novella, which didn't get a wide release for years and years, and was only collected for the common folk in book 35, Eye of Terra. The Iron Hands' trauma didn't get picked up til The Damnation of Pythos, book 30, and then the limited edition anthology Meduson, which got a second edition with another story added and then finally collected as Shattered Legions, book 43. Even if we look at when it originally got tackled in Fulgrim, book 5, there was a lengthy gap before it was told from other perspectives. Fallen Angels, book 11, ends with Perturabo being handed the big artillery by the Lion - that was it. The First Heretic, book 14, finally gave another good look at it, but that, too, was a limited view. From Fulgrim to the Raven's Flight audio drama, there was a 3-year gap, too. It's "good enough" now, that we have all the material on the table and available in anthologies. But even then, you're jumping around a lot, and those stories are part of other story arcs more than anything. It's "good enough" now that you can read about it in the Black Books, should you so choose (I don't). ....and we never even got an actual Sons of Horus view of the war. For the longest time, the way the Dropsite Massacre was handled has been of the major criticisms of the Heresy series, along with the lack of Sons of Horus representation (though you could make the same arguments there, with how Horus and some characters like the late-introduction Argonis show up here and there in other books, like Deliverance Lost, Fear to Tread and so forth). It being so fragmented, along with being boiled down to the Emperor's Children legion story in its major novel outing, which only late in the book even gets to Isstvan V, makes one of the biggest events in the HH background feel like an afterthought. You could accept and deal with that, but it was a major let-down back in the day, and it's still something new readers will likely be tripped up on on the regular. It's the first event in the series that I'd argue you need to flowchart out to really appreciate the impact of it all on the course of the war.

It's also up on Audible already, so I suppose the Saturday releases really are a thing of the past for digital. Gotta say, though, that I am sincerely disappointed that the book does not have the common Heresy novel chapter headings. It's just numbered chapters, no three key terms below that to set the mood.

Being out of the loop, I went to check his social media feed to see some of his controversial takes, but found nothing objectionable. Quite the opposite, really. On the flipside, I noticed he'd deleted his Twitter/X account, and the name is now being used by some really vile person as a "parody" account that pre-Elon would've been banned five times over. Extremely disgusting stuff, and that it's been run like that for over half a year already speaks volumes about the account holder's sad life. So yeah. I don't get it. I enjoy the books of his that I have read, so I probably should read Voidscarred at some point, too.

Spear of Ultramar also works as an extension of the Guilliman Primarchs novel, with the Destroyer theme and characters.

Two new novels and two anthologies on a single day. BL never ceases to amaze in their scheduling.

....and we're back to putting parts of the Cawl arc into short stories that are probably not going to be released outside of the special/limited edition release for years, if ever. There's still stories from the Dark Imperium trilogy era that have to find their way to a broader audience, as far as I am aware...

Keep in mind that oftentimes, early listings only feature the "headliner" author, even if it's an anthology.

I'm sort of miffed about him actually getting a preorder and seemingly sticking around, while the AoS Chaos Warrior guy is While Stocks Last and would seemingly have me visit a GW store in person for the first time in forever...

I just love that these are XV26 Stealth Suits, while the old kit are XV25 - and were an upgrade to the ancient XV15, which was a completely different design. This here seems like a logical evolution of the XV25, so the smaller step in series numbering makes sense, too.