“I was there,” he would say afterwards, until afterwards became a time quite devoid of laughter. “I was there, the day Horus slew the Emperor.” It was a delicious conceit, and his comrades would chuckle at the sheer treason of it.

-Opening line of “Horus Rising”, Book 1 of 54.

In spring of 2017, I found a Humble Bundle with eBooks of the first fifteen titles of the Horus Heresy series. I was intrigued; I knew the series was being written, but I hadn’t thought to read it. I’d read one book in the 40K setting, and I’d enjoyed it, but I thought that would be it. So, when this came up, I decided to grab it. I mean, it was a dollar an eBook. That’s a great deal.

I didn’t realize I would be starting a journey that would take seven years and 54 books to finish. But in spring of 2024 I did so. And I want to share some thoughts.

This will be the first of several blog posts.

I’ve got a lot of thoughts.

What is the Horus Heresy Series?

The answer could be a whole blog post by itself, so I’ll try to be succinct.

There exists a tabletop wargame called Warhammer 40,000. This science fiction universe takes place in tens of thousands of years in the future. Humanity fights against wonderous aliens, monstrous gods, and their own fractious nature.

It is not a happy universe, but it’s based off a wargame, so what can you expect?

The Horus Hersey is an even that occurs around the year 30,000, (10,000 years before the wargame) when the resurgent Imperium of Mankind suffered a schism. Some followed the God-Emperor, while others followed his favorite son, Horus Lupercal. The war broke the golden age of humanity that could have been, and plunged mankind into millennia of darkness.

Though long referenced in 40K literature, it happened so far in the past that it was considered mythology. But in 2006, Games Workshop (the company that runs 40K) started the book series. It ended in 2019 with book 54. After that, the narrative shifts from the greater heresy to the massive fight in the Sol system.

But I haven’t started that series.

Yet.

What did I think about the series?

I’ve spent several passes at this blog post trying to figure out how to answer this question. I like most of it, I hated some of it. I liked some characters, hated others. Some events I was looking forward to reading about were worth it, others were disappointing.

It was worth reading. Some of the books I would read again. Some of them I wouldn’t.

In some cases, there were books that were mediocre in their story, but I hold in high regard because they involved POV’s from sub-sets of humans, and the author put in the effort to make those POV’s feel unique.

So…why do this blog post? Or a series?

This is an introduction blog post. I have a lot of miscellaneous thoughts I want to write up, but if I did them in one post, they’d either be over too quickly, or it’d be so long I should have it published.

I’ll be doing more blog posts on this series over the next few months. I’m planning a list of books I’d love to read again, some I didn’t enjoy, and some books it was fun to read for the POV reason stated above.

How many blog posts? I don’t know. I’ll write what I want to say, and that’ll be it.

One Scene to Remember

I didn’t want this post to just be ‘hey, I read some books, expect a flood of posts afterwards’, so here’s a scene from one of the books that I think about a lot. It’s a scene where, in the midst of giant war machines and great strategies, we see humanity.

The book is The Master of Mankind, book 41 in the series. It is set on Earth, and in the webway, a extra-dimensional network of transit hubs that allows people to move from one planet to another without going into space. The enemy is approaching through the webway, and there is a battle coming.

Two characters are walking through a crowd of refugees. One is a space marine, Zephon of Baal, a genetically modified human build for war, and the other is a custodes, Diocletian Coros, an even bigger and better genetically modified human build to protect the Emperor.

A young child approaches, a refugee from a world already burned. He looks up at the two enormous warriors, asking for his parents and seeking comfort. Zephon provides some comfort to the child, while Diocletian is dismissive. Leaving the refugees, Diocletian chides Zephon.

‘You are a creature of pointless sentiment,’ Diocletian voxed to his new companion.

He heard Zephon’s sigh as they walked onwards. ‘You said I disappointed you, Custodian. I assure you that the feeling is mutual. I had not imagined conversing with one of the Ten Thousand to be such an exercise in soulless discourse.’

Diocletian didn’t believe that deserved a reply.

I’ve thought a lot about why I like this exchange, and it is due to the humanity of Zephon. So many space marines we meet are focused only on the war, or on the rituals of their legion. So much of the game and its books are de-humanizing, and here’s a great warrior taking a moment to comfort a child. While everyone else is looking up the hierarchy, he’s taking a moment to look down.

This is not the only example of humanity in the series, but it is my favorite.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you for the next post in this series, where I will discuss my favorite books from the Horus Heresy.

Keep on writing!

Michael