Angels of Caliban by Gav Thorpe is the latest entry in the saga of The Lion, Primarch of the Dark Angels, as the Heresy continues to unfold. Here the primarch of the Dark Angels decides to flush out the Night Haunter by cracking down on the civilian populace and imposing martial law. In pretty much every instance, the conflicts within and between the Legions is interesting, multi-layered and has huge potential for the future. As mentioned earlier Lion El’Jonson really can be a bully and while I can’t agree with his methods I find it easy to appreciate him as a character.

Warhammer 40,000: The Horus Heresy consists of fifty-four primary books, and includes one additional book that complement the series but is not considered mandatory reads. A lot of this may not seem that odd for Space Marines, but it’s juxtaposed against Guilliman and the Ultramarines, who have a very different view of the role of Space Marines.And the epic duel as featured on the cover of the novel between the Lion and Curze didn’t disappoint at all. The denouement is very interesting, too, for what it promises for the three Primarchs and their Legions. I realize also that there’s some dissonance here, and those early chapters as Farith Redloss of the Dreadwing leads his brothers in a campaign to liberate the world of Zephath are pretty dense reading and can be confusing as Gav goes into details about the Dreadwing and their organization. In one moment he will encourage one of his officers to disagree and speak plainly, the next he will grow furious about it.

All the same though, there is a payoff for it in the end, and soon we are back on Macragge as the Lion learns just how much of a fool he’s been made by Curze.Gav wrote this before any of the major political events of 2016 either in the UK or the US occurred, yet somehow it almost seems like it predicted it.