Brooks getting the writing job for Lion El'Johnson's 40k return novel reassures me this is going to be a ripping read, based off his previous work: Years of slaving away has finally paid off! The car is yours and you have finally fulfilled your ultimate goal. So you drive the car away from the show room and park it out the front of your house. When the Lion tries and fails to communicate with the king in the forest, the Watcher in the Dark tells him that he's not asking "the right question", and refuses to elaborate further. Hero of Another Story: Commander Dante, last seen in Darkness in the Blood trying to hold his section of Imperium Nihilus against the tyranids, appears in the epilogue to investigate the rumours of the Lion's return.

Discussed when the Lion muses on the differences between himself and his brother Roboute Guilliman; Guilliman always thinks about a dozen things at once, making him an excellent logistician and strategist, but crippling his capabilities in individual combat, while the Lion is always laser-focused on one thing, which makes him a deadly duellist, but harms his ability to go with the flow or consider the big picture. Extra-Dimensional Shortcut: The eponymous forest in some manner of space between the Warp and the materium; it allows the Lion and the people he brings with him to travel from one planet to another without the need for a ship. The Old King, aka the Emperor, appears both as a fisher-king, and then the besieged figure holding out against the dark alone in his manse. Neither time is he communicative. The former, the Lion is not prepared for what the fisher-king is angling, the latter, it is that intervention that grants the Lion the Emperor's Shield, much as the Lion was guided to Excalibur Fealty. A solid book if you want an update on the Dark Angels. Even then its still pretty solid science fantasy stuff.If you never encountered a masculine man in your whole life and were tasked to write one... well... you would have Lion El'Johnson from this particular book. He is written like a self-hating man that oozes his, what leftists would call, "toxic masculinity". But, we see him start to tone police himself and other Space Marines in the novel like some sort of dude with mommy issues. This is your first chance to read about the Lion’s exploits in the 41st Millennium – and to find out exactly what the Primarch of the Dark Angels has been up to since the end of the Horus Heresy. Not just sleeping, it would seem… If you prefer your anti-tank options a little more discrete, the Sicaran Venator trades mass for speed and can wind its way around enemy flanks before lancing neutron beam laser blasts right through the sides of opposing tanks. Outright stated the Lion has aged. He was not interred as Guilliman was, or perhaps not kept in stasis completely all those years. Something let him loose, coinciding with the Cicatrix.

Meaningful Rename: At the end of the book, the Lion renames the Fallen who chose to follow him to the Risen. Drama-Preserving Handicap: The Lion's forestwalking is apparently not powerful enough to bring him all the way to Terra. However, it does give him two full opportunities to meet the Emperor, but the Primarch couldn't recognize them for what they were. Co-Dragons: Baelor and Markog are both Seraphax's top lieutenants, though Markog is perpetually envious of what he perceives as Baelor's higher status.

System Requirements

This is a difficult and delicate book to manage, as all big event books are, but Mike Brooks handles it with aplomb!

Spell My Name with a "The": When not referred to as "Lord Lion" or "Lion El'Jonson", he's always called the Lion by the narration, regardless of the point of view character. From Nobody to Nightmare: When the Lion first hears Seraphax's voice, even his eidetic memory struggles to place him, eventually realizing that he used to be just one of the thousands of line soldiers within the Legion.Older and Wiser: The Lion, when last seen in Horus Heresy books, was prideful, cold and uncompromising. The state of the galaxy in the forty-second millennium makes him acutely aware of his own failings, and he works to be more understanding and forgiving. Again, there is no clear method he wakes up. His first sense of self is as the Walker, a sleeper awakening. The first lucid thought is a flowing river, a song of eternity embedded in its chaotic murmurs, that he could spend forever pursuing. TL;DR you awaken, a la D&D session into. There are shades of old Lion in him. Such as during the first fight against the Not-Chaos Beast, he imperiously throws his gore-clogged helmet to the people he dived in to save, commanding them first to stay out of the way, and second, clean my helmet. During a fight. That's our lovable bastard. The book develops the mythos of the Lion and the Fallen in an exciting direction that at once feels not at all obvious, and yet correct. The characterisations of the disparate members of the Fallen, and of the Lion himself, are nuanced and compelling.