After not having read this for a fair few years, and reading quite a few other amazing novels in the meantime, this is still a thoroughly enjoyable novel. He is a fanatical painter of miniatures, a pursuit which has won him his most prized possession: a prestigious Golden Demon award. On the positive side it does feel like a 40k story, and the grim reality of the universe is captured well.

His eyes met those of Horus Aximand and he saw a sorrow that matched his own echoed in his brother's eyes. Loken pops up from time to time, but there was never a Captain from the World Eaters or Death Guard Who were helping Saul make the plans. I modelled him no other weapons other than his force staff to try give the feel his powers are what he has come to rely upon.

I'd have preferred the novels just went along one time scale rather than the next book being set before the events of this one and eventually catching up, but that's just a small issue as, in all fairness, the way things are done does work quite well.

Ben Counter is the author of the Soul Drinkers and Grey Knights series, along with two Horus Heresy novels.

If you aren’t sure where to start, then there might be easier starts but sometimes it’s good to start at the deep end. But when the fleeing Eisenstein is damaged by enemy fire, it becomes stranded in the warp - the realm of the Dark Powers.

At some points - where the events took on a momentum that managed to disguise the poor writing - it actually became readable, but I would say a good two-thirds of this book were fairly dull.A distinct cultural rift could be felt widening between the cthonian and terran legionnaires, which became more pronounced after an operation in the Davin system. There's this guy Horus and he's been corrupted by the Dark Gods of Chaos and now he's plotting against his father the Emperor, but some of the people in his fleet are kind of weirded out by the entire human sacrifice thing and are like "What the hell? This doesn’t make the book bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it takes away from what could be. He has converted some of his brothers and now they will have to cull the Loyalists for their own legions. Leading the surviving loyalists he pulled out of the fight, Tarvitz takes advantage of Eidolon's undisciplined attack and manages to repel the assault.