The First Heretic by Aaron Dembski- Bowden

Amidst the galaxy-wide war of the Great Crusade, the Emperor castigates the Word Bearers for their worship. Distraught at this judgement, Lorgar and his Legion seek another path while devastating world after world, venting their fury and fervour on the battlefield. Their search for a new purpose leads them to the edge of the material universe, where they meet ancient forces far more powerful than they could have imagined. Having set out to illuminate the Imperium, the corruption of Chaos takes hold and their path to damnation begins. Unbeknownst to the Word Bearers, their quest for truth contains the very roots of heresy…

Reeling in the wake of the reprimand levied by the Emperor, the foundations of his belief undermined , Lorgar, Primarch of the Word Bearers, returns to his homeworld to contemplate the future of his Legion and the nature of his service to the Emperor. He finds comfort in the ancient rituals of Colchis, the same religion that he had quashed in a bloody civil war. With this an obsession is born, one that echoes the voice that calls to him in his dreams, beckoning him towards the edge of the galaxy.

The story begins 43 years before the infamous betrayal at Isstvan V and follows Argel Tal, a captain of the Legion, as his loyalty to Lorgar sets him on the route that will culminate in the ultimate heresy taking root in his flesh.

Aaron has dug deep here, giving us a solid character who you can’t help but empathise with, even while you know that what he is doing is wrong on so many levels; because you can get under his skin, and understand who he is, and what drives him and his battle-brothers, the tragedy of what is unfolding around him carries that much more weight. Right to the bitter end, when he and the remnants of his company stand bloodied and tattered in body and soul on the ravaged battlefields of Isstvan, their erstwhile brethren lying broken at his feet, Argel remains an engaging and sympathetic character.

This isn’t an action heavy story, although Aaron is certainly no slouch in this department- his visceral depiction of the carnage of Isstvan flies off the page. The First Heretic doesn’t suffer for that though in the slightest; it’s an intelligent and gripping portrayal of a once loyal Legion’s slow fall into the grip of Chaos. The road to Hell is indeed paved with good intentions.

If there was ever any doubt or worry about Aaron’s ability to do justice to the Horus Heresy series, it hasn’t so much as been dismissed as shot into the heart of the sun. This is brilliant stuff.

You can read an extract here.

Soul Hunter - Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Fear these Space Marines.

Betrayed, cast from the Emperor's light and hunted as heretics, they are the rebels of the 41st milenniun. Garbed in symbols of death, the Night Lords are remorseless hunters and killers. They will never repent for the blasphemies that saw them banished, They prey upon the dying Imperium, bringing death from the darkness between worlds.

And terror is their most powerful weapon.

Soul Hunter poses an interesting situation- a Space Marine legion that has sided with the traitorous forces of the chaos Warmaster, not out of allegiance to any warp spawned powers or the Warmaster himself, but on the back of a murderous betrayal by the emperor himself. Insular and fixated on exacting their vengeance, the Night Lords have waged their war against the Imperium since the assault on terra 10,000 years ago. But their insular stance has weakened them; with no world to call home, their infrastructure is steadily collapsing, their numbers dwindling with little or no chance of reinforcement. The attrition of their war against the Imperium spells doom for them, yet what choice do they have?

Soul Hunter follows the events surrounding Talos, the titular Soul Hunter, known as a prophet amongst his peers, as they are drawn into Abaddon’s daring gambit to plunder one of the Mechanicum’s forge worlds.

Aaron takes his time setting the stage for the fireworks which follow, carefully building up the character of Talos and feeding the history of this non mainstream legion through in carefully constructed pieces, so that by the time the combat explodes across the pages, Talos has become a complex character, far more than the first impressions given of him. Similarly, the Night Lords have been given a long overdue shot in the arm, setting them up as an enigma amongst the Warmaster’s cohorts, and while the same attention isn’t lavished on the cast of supporting characters, they’re more than just red shirts, the switches to their perspectives more than mere fuel for the story’s engine.

After his dab handling of the combat in Cadian Blood, I expected nothing less than sheer mayhem from Aaron now that he’d been given Space Marines to play with, and large calibre carnage is what he delivers. There are some great sequences- one that really lit up the pages for me was his handling of the ship to ship combat in the void. Bearing in mind the ponderous nature of void combat, with ships duelling over thousands of kilometres, undertaking complex manoeuvres over a space of hours, the vivid tension and energy he infused these with were exhilarating. And as for the hunt in the basement of the prison complex... awesome.

If this is the calibre of goods we can expect from Aaron, someone needs to chain him to his writing desk! More sir, more!

Cadian Blood - Aaron Dembski-Bowden

When the Imperial shrine world of Kathur is blighted by Chaos, the brave Guardsmen of Cadia are sent to reclaim it. The plague of Nurgle has set in deeply on the planet, forcing the Cadians into battle with an innumerable legion of the infected. In the midst of battle, Captain Parmenion Thade is thrust into an unlikely commanding role. Yet, he cannot imagine what lies ahead on Kathur, and just how important it will be to ensure victory there…

Cadians. Commissars. A dark secret. A planet full of shambling plague victims.

What’s not to like?

And the best part is, it does exactly what it says on the tin. Right from the start, there’s a feeling of ‘this is going to get ugly’, and it soon does, in a blissful chorus of las guns and tumbling plague victims.

Stepping aside from the corpse shredding action sequences, Cadian Blood is lifted by the enigma of what lies at the epicentre of the apocalyptic plague that has reduced a thriving shrine world to an infected nest of violence and death. There’s a palpable escalation in the tension, and the taut pace never slackens as Captain Thade and his men inch closer to the horror at the centre of the web, their new Commissar’s watchful eye and trigger finger a threat as real as the enemies who seek to despoil their flesh.

Aaron’s served up a generous portion of 40K action, with an unashamedly bulging side order of bloody fun. These are Imperial Guard –infantry, not Space Marines, and their determination to stand by Thade and not let their brothers down in the face of the insanity that confronts them is nothing short of heroic, and Aaron does this esprit de corps justice.

It’s well paced, thoroughly entertaining and sitting neatly on my shelf, it’s new home.