The End And The Death: Volume I (The Horus Heresy: Siege of Terra Book 8)

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The Emperor lives and steps into the shadows as leader of the perpetuals. He assumed that suppressing religion would suppress Chaos. The strategy failed. He doesn’t give up on His vision. He re-strategises on how humanity can conquer the universe and free themselves from warp travel/the taint of Chaos. It takes 10,000 years but in 40k the Emperor is ready for another great crusade.

Unfortunately if we’re talking about dropping plots, we have to talk about one in particular. Here’s a big spoiler for one of the most exciting things that Volume 1 tantalised us with – the Dark King. Expand this at your peril. ToW: Again, I don’t think this is a spoiler, but this book felt like it was really Malcador’s story, as much as anyone else. Was that something you were specifically aiming for, to give him his moment in the spotlight? (BTW I love that he doesn’t refer to the Emperor as ‘He’ like most characters do, but rather ‘he’!) It is finally here. The first volume of the endgame of the Siege of Terra and the Horus Heresy as a whole, a story spanning sixty books written by over a dozen writers. It is fitting that Dan Abnett, the author who penned the first book, Horus Rising, which released in 2006, is the one to finish it. To deliver a satisfying conclusion to such an incredibly expansive and epic story would be a monumental task for any writer and I cannot imagine the pressure and amount of work that went into it. What I can say is that Abnett has risen to this challenge like the Emperor himself rising from the Golden Throne one last time.Always start with a compliment; Jonathan Keeble is excellent, and I enjoy his performance every time. His characters and tone are consistent and recognisable, and the quality of his recording is clear and precise. Good job! Other plots you could drop and lose nothing – or visit once, instead of four, five, a dozen times, throughout the novel. It’s nice to see Sigismund again, but his narrative arc was completed a few books ago and retreads old ground here. Fo is a bafflingly long side-show that provides some great seeds for a 40k RPG and seems to be setting up for a Scouring series more than providing compelling plot here. Others are duplicates, loyalist/traitor mirrors. Taking an axe to some of these threads, leaving them in the red snow, would, in my opinion, make for a better book. Horus kills the Emperor permanently, realises his mistake, frees himself from Chaos’ influence, purges the immaterium, retains the power of Chaos, effectively becoming an Emperor-equivalent being. The loyal primarchs expel him from the empire, but Horus aids humanity from the shadows.

ToW: Could you talk us through the timeline of writing this, and how long you were working on it for? For example, Saturnine came out in 2020 – were you already working on TEATD by that point? And I’m assuming it was a long process, given the multi-volume nature of the book! DA: Almost all of them, actually. I particularly enjoyed the desperate politics and behind-the-scenes urgency of Malcador’s Chosen, and the emotional punch of his ascension. And there are several others, which I won’t spoil by naming, that I think pay off with unexpected emotional power towards the end. Book is very readable, very cinematic, main story chapters with lots of [what author calls] fragments sections in between. In these fragments sections we are given scenes from the battlefields, civilians escaping the city battlefields, we see actions of Abaddon and his troops, Horus' POV (which is hilarious) and finally Neverborne's thoughts and reactions on the Horus' progress. Chapters are relatively short so pacing is pretty fast. All in all very well organized, with only downside being author's use of some more exotic dictionary that made me scratch my head for a while. Only 2,500 copies are available worldwide, each numbered and signed by the author. Don’t miss your chance to own a piece of Horus Heresy history! The End and The Death: Volume II especially liked the portrayal of Alpha Legion (I am really warming up to these guys), Dark Angels (splintering of the the Mighty First might not be as clear cut as one would expect) and of course Legio Custodes. Book achieved what it promised to be - a true epic, story about what definitely qualifies as the bleakest moment in a bleak SF setting. I did not expect story will span three books but OK :) I have to say that I did not find any of the chapters to play filler role - even short chapters have a very strong effect.

Unfortunately, for me at least, all the fun stuff and the bits that are a fantastic reminder of why Dan Abnett is such a master of Warhammer fiction don’t quite add up to satisfying middle section of a single epic novel. When looked at from the context of the series, book (or should I say books, since volume 3 is expected in next 4 months) stands on its own. Knowledge of the universe and setting is of course a plus but it is not necessary to know absolutely everyone or everything mentioned to enjoy the story. Zograt the grot receives an unexpected boon from the Bad Moon in Bad Loon Rising by Andy Clark, as the power of the Clammy Hand gives him just the boost he needs to ascend from the grim depths of grotdom. Together with his troggoth companion Skrog he embarks on a quest to become the greatest Loonboss the Mortal Realms have ever known – a mad aspiration, but one that just might be within his reach. As per my main prediction but Ollanius kills the Emperor, because the Emperor is going to kill Horus and doom humanity. There’s one point that he’s especially eager to stress: this isn’t the third book in a trilogy. It’s the third part of a single novel that was simply too huge to publish.Now he's a meat puppet there's no investment in any conflict between him and other characters anymore because he's not a character anymore, he's more of a rabid dog than Angron is that really just needs to be put down. The walls have fallen, the gates are breached, and the defenders are slain. It is the end and the death. After seven brutal years of civil war, the Warmaster stands on the verge of victory. Horus Lupercal, once beloved son, has come to murder his father. The Emperor, a shining beacon of hope to many, an unscrupulous tyrant to others, must die. The lives of uncountable numbers have been extinguished and even primarchs, once thought immortal, have been laid low. The Emperor's dream lies in tatters, but there remains a sliver of hope. ToW: Ever since Necropolis, it seems to have been something of a trademark for you to be able to handle this sort of story with not just lots of POV characters but also that sort of rotating series of vignettes, to get across the scale and impact of events. Do you have a system for this sort of thing – which POVs to choose, how long to stay with them and when to switch? ToW: Out of all those vignettes and POVs, was there a minor character, scene or moment that you particularly enjoyed writing, or have a specific fondness for?

Dan's a fine novelist but this is not his finest work. The first third of the book feels somewhat abstract and a little depressing. Earth/Terra is dead, we get it. Except it isn't because we know the finale.I honestly did not expect the most artistically impressive book I read this year to be a 40k one, yet here we are. Now, Dan Abnett has been kind of the father of the language of the Imperium for decades at this point, going all the way to the Eisenhorn novels where he introduced a lot of the strange-but-familiar terms that have come to define the Imperial side of the setting since then.