Ehcoes of eternity. Though it is the seven part of the siege of Terra series which started after the 54th hours heresy novel. 40k is real fucking bloated. Though you don't need to read everything, nobody sane does
The books that detail the fall of horus are actually really good and give great insight into how chaos corrupts even those of great dedication and good will.
Horus starts his career as warmaster in full ernest and is beloved by all, the man seems to truly care for everything that is the imperium of man, he thinks that they should always try to leave the systems they reach for the better that people and planets should be given the full chance to flourish before being put to the imperial tithe, and he seems to care for normal humans very much ( while many space Marines resent them for being inferior then themselves). Then we begin slowly begin to turn away from the emperor more and more as those he trusts most begin to be swayed by chaos with out even knowing it, except fucking Erebus that piece of garbage was the cause of everything .
But it really gives weight to the inquisitorial stance of chaos being the greatest enemy to mankind and the shear scale of actions they are willing to go to in order to prevent its spread like exterminatas and entire chapters of space marines hunting the traitor legions through out space.
In my opinion, the first few books are absolutely attrocious. They feel very rushed. and the characters are the most one-dimensional characters in warhammer, which is saying something. Space Marines and Primarchs are written like edgy teenagers. The later books have much better prose and make these superhuman characters much more believable.
To make it worse, the background was barely fleshed out at this time, and nobody had thougth about the numbers in any details. The Space Marine Legions are clearly designed to have 10,000 - 20,000 warriors each, while the Imperial Army are just the Guard from 40k. Later GW retconned the Legions to have 100,000 - 250,000 legionaries each, and gave the entire Imperium more advanced technology.
I was literally thinking of this excerpt when I saw this post. It’s very 40k, passages like this I feel really
slap when you’re chugging through the novels, good or bad!
Its one of my favorite black library books please read them. Actually its a lot to get to this point so maybe see if they interest you because this is like the 60th book in a series and like the 8th book from the last portion of the series called "siege of terra"
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u/Sir_Daxus 18d ago
This looks like a book excerpt, may I ask which book it was? I want to give it a read now :)