And so peppered throughout this story, baked into its very foundations in fact, is are the first seeds of the ‘heresy’ of Warmaster Horus. So in this first instalment we’re introduced to Warmaster Horus who, in 40k lore, is the Primarch who leads a breakaway faction of space marine chapters to make civil war on the Imperium.
#Warhamer horus rising book 1 series#
What’s kind of cool about telling a story over a fifty-nine (yes, 59 and counting) book series is that it really gives the author space to delve into the subtleties and slow pace of change, even while telling fast-paced individual stories with a ton of action.
But the reason his questions aren’t entirely squashed under the jackboot of militarism is why we have a story here… I can’t say I really rooted for him, even though I saw his complications as a human being in a culture designed to indoctrinate him, but I was impressed by his capacity for critical thinking even while he was entrenched in a totalitarian system and a military bureaucracy you’d think would crush a lot of that out of him. Loken is a very human character, who has deep reservations about the morality of the genocides (yes, plural) he’s ordered to take part in. Abnett doesn’t preach or even really tell you how he thinks you should feel about this civilisation, he simply presents it, unflinchingly and in comprehensive but forensic detail, with all its warts and contradictions and atrocities. The empire Loken serves is a dystopian and fascistic military dictatorship that justifies is existence and conquest of others by way of an ideology based on the rejection of superstition and religion and a belief in the genetic superiority of humanity.
The world of Warhammer is grimdark in a way I’ve not really encountered before. Horus Rising is set during The Great Crusade, 10,000 years before the ‘main’ conflict of the 40th millennium and we follow the story mainly from the view point of Garviel Loken, captain of the 10th Company of the Luna Wolves Space Marines Legion, during their conquest of heathen worlds, whether they are human planets who reject the authority of the Emperor of Mankind, or alien worlds who are regarded as a subhuman threat and annihilated without pause for thought.
There are many possible starting points to get stuck into 40k stories (there are literally hundreds of books over multiple series), but I thought The Horus Heresy series sounded like the best place for me, as it tells the story of how the raging interstellar war of man vs man, man vs aliens and all the other crazy science fantasy conflicts of the main timeline actually came to be. What I actually got though, was a really fucking good book! I wasn’t expecting much in terms of quality, probably just a run of the mill, cookie-cutter military SF story with some cut-out characters shooting aliens with blasters superimposed on top of a bunch of clumsy exposition that was nonetheless still a fun time.
I got obsessed pretty quickly and wanted to read the stories set in this world while also getting a more substantial grounding in the extensive lore of the 40k universe. I only really read Horus Rising cos one day I opened the Warhammer 40k wiki and spent a wonderful three hours of my life barely making a dent in the lore.
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