by Foursx2

Caveat:

Don't let us ruin the story for you. The Horus Heresy Book Reviews contain a lot of information not normally carried a book review. If you are the kind of person who likes to discover the facts on their own we strongly suggest you just go and buy the books. They have our SciFi/Fantasy two thumbs up recommendation.

On the other hand, if you're the type who wants to know as much as they can and doesn't mind a full preview of the story we suggest you begin with the Preface To The Horus Heresy.

Horus Rising, by Dan Abnett

Horus Rising opens in the 203^rd year of the Great Crusade. Horus had been appointed Warmaster a year earlier after his victory over the Greenskins at Ullanor.

The Luna Wolves Legion (The 63^rd Expedition force) and their Primarch, Horus. translated by accident into a system of 9 planets. At the edge of the system they encountered a gathering of warships. The Emperor first demanded of their intent and unsatisfied with their response he demanded fealty and explained he was the savior of mankind and that it was his purpose to reunite all humans where ever they might be located.

The Emperor's envoys were murdered out of hand and as a result the Luna Wolves Legion of Astarte warriors dressed in Mark IV power armor plate, attacked and decimated the resistence.

At the time of the attack, Garviel Loken, a Captain of the 10^th Company of the Luna Wolves was leading the First Squad, Tenth Company of the genetically enhanced Imperial Astartes and was racing against troops led by the First Captain Ezekyle Abaddon for the privilege of capturing the false emperor in his own palace on the world designated as sixty-three nineteen..

Loken wins the race with Abaddon and catches up to the false emperor in the tallest of the palace towers. In the few minutes Loken had with the false emperor, the man argued that if their philosophies were so far apart the Astartes could have simply left them alone instead of making war on their human brothers.

The statement causes the first crack in the Crusade's harsh policy of fealty or submission. The wedge in the crack are the implied concepts of coexistence and tolerance. Loken is eventually bothered enough to bring the matter to his friend Sindermann, an iterator, who is adept at repeating and explaining the Imperium's philosophy. The iterators are the apologists of the Imperium.

About three months after the battle for the High City, Tarik Torgaddon, Captain of the Luna Wolves' 2^nd Company, carries an invitation to Loken to join the Mournival. According to the tradition of the Luna Wolves, four of the captains are chosen to act as an informal group or Mournival to watch over the moral health of the legion and to shape its philosophy. With Loken's appointment, the members of the Mournival are First Captain, Ezekyle Abaddon; 2^nd Company Captain Tarik Torgaddon; 5^th Company Captain Horus Aximand; and, 10^th Company Captain Garviel Loken.

After he joins the Mournival, Loken commits his 10^th Company to the suppression of a resurgency, on planet sixty-three nineteen, in a forbidding mountainous area called the Whisperheads.

Deep within the recesses of the mountains, Loken and the iterator Sindermann encounter the disembodied voice of something called Samus. Samus possesses the mind of Loken's brother Astartes, Jubal, and Loken is forced to kill his friend.

The experience is shattering for Loken because it seems to be direct evidence of possession by a demon or evil spirt. This is a troublesome contradiction of the precepts of the Imperium which disclaims anything spiritual. Even the iterator, Sindermann is at a loss. The First Captain, Abaddon, tries to explain the incident as the result of a deadly virus that robbed Jubal of his mind. Loken is uncomfortable with the explanation.

Eventually Horus himself meets with Loken and shares a dark secret. There are dimensionally distorted entities within the warp who at times reach out and affect the living. Horus explains that even the Immortal Emperor doesn't fully understand the warp and a complete understanding of the warp is one of the tasks the Emperor has set himself.

The sixty third expedition is distracted from its Crusade by the distress calls of the Blood Angels legion which has landed on a planet later named, Murder. Horus and his Luna Wolves take up positions above the planet and following the edicts of the Immortal Emperor they wage war on the non-human inhabitants they have named megarachnid. The megarachnid are giant intelligent armored spiders. They are fearless implacable enemies. After six months of total war the Astartes are joined above the planet by the warships of the interex.

The interex are human and they have advanced to a high level. Cut off from the rest of humanity the interex have learned to coexist with alien races and do not wage war unless forced to. The interex had been responsible for imprisoning the megarachnid on Murder and depriving them of interstellar travel. The interex had placed beacons around Murder warning travelers that it was a prison planet. Horus views the Imperium's failure to understand these beacons as a serious mistake. He is rapidly coming to the belief that the Imperium's mandate to wage war and destroy all xenos must be less blind and more context driven.

Horus' new thinking causes him to attempt diplomacy with the interex rather than the standard fealty or subjugation approach. In the end, we learn the interex are concerned that Horus and his Astartes warriors have been possessed by what they call the evil of Kaos (Kaos is the interex version of the warp).

The interex's suspicions seem to be confirmed when a very deadly knife called an anathame is stolen from their Hall of Devices museum. The anathame is supposedly made of a sentient metal crafted by an ancient alien race called the kinebrach. When the blade is dedicated to a specific target it becomes the complete nemesis of the person or being targeted. (Again there is seeming evidence of a spirit world.)

To the interex the theft is evidence of the Imperium's infection by Kaos. Horus believes the interex to be mistaken about the theft and unsuccessfully tries to avoid hostilities. In the end Horus is forced to declare war on the interex.

Unknown to all but the reader, Erebus, First Chaplain of the Word Bearers Legion was the thief who stole the anathame. We are left wondering if Kaos is involved, and how, if at all, the mounting evidence contradicting the Imperium's teachings will affect Horus, and who the intended victim of the anathame might be.

The answers will have to wait until we read, False Gods, by Graham McNeill.

Finitus:

The world of the Imperium is truly rich with detail. The writing is some of the best we read, and the oddly British feel of the text only adds to its beauty. We give Horus Rising a whole two thumbs up and recommend it highly.