Warhammer 40K is, of course, known for miniatures that cost more than gold and a hyperproduction of word-containing things that could charitably be called books, at the peril of having the world wide librarian alliance call a blood hunt on you.
I have recently listened to the first three audiobooks of Horus Heresy and, inexplicably, here I will review them as if they were actual literature.
Spoiler: they are pretty bad. But in a fun way.
(1/13)
[#]wh40k #horusheresy
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If you know anything about Warhammer 40K,
you know about Horus Heresy. Emperor's (disputedly) favored son who headed the crusade at some point threw a hissy fit, became the champion of Chaos, turned on the Emperor and made half of all Space Marines cosplay as GWAR cover bands. But the specifics were always hazy.
So of course Games Workshop did what they do best and produced 64 whole books detailing the entire thing, finally bringing it to a conclusion last year after nearly two decades
(2/13)
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Here's the crux of my review.
Having listened to over 32 hours of the combined three books that set up the start of heresy, taking Horus from a beloved loyalist warmaster to siding with Chaos and taking up arms against the Imperium of Man, I still can't tell you why Horus did what he did. You would think this is the most basic of expectations for a trilogy of books with a sales pitch of "here's how Horus Heresy started" or something.
(3/13)
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One basic problem is just the way books are written. They have an omniscient narrator, but choose to remain detached from Horus himself. You end up getting stuck in this weird place where the narration sometimes touches upon Horus' thoughts and then just steps away, making the story simply feel broken. None of the important things are seen from his perspective which, frustratingly, includes the decision to turn on the Emperor. The core premise of the entire trilogy happens offscreen.
(4/13)
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This could be made up for contextually of course, but that never happens. The story closely follows Horus' closest advisors, including his official chronicler and biographer. Someone, somewhere thought this will serve as a way to show enough information to play out to story as a proper Greek tragedy. But the execution is lacking and you get nothing. The chronicler (sorry, "remembrancer") in particular is just a giant, gaping waste of space.
(5/13)
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You will see a bit of frustration build-up inside Horus, but it literally goes from having issues with becoming a warrior in impending peacetime to murdering his own space marine "sons" wantonly and gleefully with nothing in between.
(6/13)
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Other points in frustration include a seeming lack of any kind of coherent approach to Chaos before Heresy hits. They both know and do not know about it, at the same time. They both reject magic as superstition and have had psyker librarians in every legion since the crusade started. The character who spends the entire trilogy struggling to accept the very idea of magic also had to have fought alongside librarians. Imperium's relationship with the Warp during the Crusade is at best incoherent.
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The growing religion and worship of the Emperor within a society that formally embraces secular Imperial Truth looks like it could work, but is rife with missed opportunities. Firstly, the early narrative of a secular society could be explored in the context of a militant fascist culture that treats scientific truth as just another propaganda tool, hobbled and redacted so much that it truly is no truth at all.
(8/13)
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Secondly, growth of religion is given so much objective validation and excuse that it fails to explore anything of value regarding how religious thought forms and grows.
But this is a common failing of WH40K - it has always undercut its own position of fascist critique by opting instead for the easy mark of glorifying its own in-universe propaganda.
(9/13)
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Positives include the opening of the first book, which I found captivating and very clever. Forecasting what the reader has to understand is the final act of Horus Heresy, but on a "fake Terra" with a different Emperor, under siege by Horus. Really nicely done.
(10/13)
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Some characters are explored well. The main character plays a straight man pretty well, though is a bit bland (by necessity, really). Some well known WH40K named characters are set up for their future pretty well. And, surprisingly, the most interesting and vivid characters are a few regular humans, though one is savagely undercut by a lackluster and poorly explained descent into religion in the trilogy's final act.
(11/13)
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An unfortunate war against a friendly human civilization in the second book actually feels properly tragic. Probably the only part of all three books where I had an emotional reaction.
Finally, the mechanism of how loyalist legions at large were prepared, groomed and finally seduced into accepting the heresy through secretive fraternal warrior loges is... Fine. I will accept it. It works, and is one of the few elements that feel like an actual point to be made about human nature.
(12/13)
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To conclude, Horus Heresy has some interesting parts, if taken with an understanding that you are reading masturbatory pulp fiction that expects you to already know what it is going to tell you, and then tells it in way too many details while avoiding the one thing you actually want to learn.
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@dawngreeter that and if you're okay with all the white English/Welsh narrators doing their ~voices of the world~
My god the 'Asian' accents are nightmarish.
But yeah, they're a fun romp, I'm on like book 32, I drive for work, so it's easy to blow through audio books and podcasts!
For me, I never really cared about Horus' reasoning as it seemed like an inevitable result from a demi-human making clone child soldiers of himself, but I dunno, couldn't tell you if they've gotten into it yet ha
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@20000lbs_of_Cheese The voices... Yeah. I figured I'd steer clear of that. Mostly ok, sometimes just... Yeesh.
Also, totally in the same position. More than an hour each way to and from work, on a train. And I hate audiobooks so I don't want to listen to something I actually want to read.
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@dawngreeter I won't spoil it, but one 40k actual play (can't remember the system) I listen to, the main heresy involved might be hope, lmao, so I think I figured it didn't matter as much as the world building and pulpy-war-gore-weapon info dumping did, but maybe I'm wrong!
I think I prefer audio books, or even fully sound produced short fiction, but I listened to 100 days of podcasts/books one year, and 80 days last year, ha, I got time ;_;
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