Horus Heresy: Deathfire

[Cap'nSmurfs]

**SPOILERS WILL FOLLOW!**

Cor! This was a good one. I finished it in about three bursts today. Just a short run-down of stuff; add your own thoughts and impressions if you read it (and I do recommend it).

At this point I'm willing to say that Nick Kyme's Salamanders tales are some of the strongest of the whole Heresy series. His style is good, his action scenes flow and make sense, his characterization is effective, nuanced and consistent, and his plots don't dwindle into incoherent messes. He also makes sure that his books advance the meta-plot without forgetting to be good adventures in their own right. Deathfire exemplifies all of those things. It's a ripping adventure with good characters, and it doesn't forget to move the Heresy along in interesting ways.

We get some returning characters from earlier parts of this saga - the ragtag band of Salamanders featured in Vulkan Lives and Unremembere Empire, the peerless Word Bearer assassin Narek (a personal favourite), who's undergoing something of a personal crisis this time out - and some new baddies, one of whom isn't especially notable or convincing (which turns out to the the point) and a couple who are downright creepy. And of course, star of the show, the man who suffuses it all, the corpse of Vulkan, fulgurite spear still sticking out of him.

We start off with some vignettes of Imperium Secundus, catching up with a few old friends - hi, Aeonid Thiel! - and seeing what's what. Guilliman, Sanguinius and the Lion get decent cameos. Before long, though, we're off on an Odyssey - well, really it's The Odyssey, with some of the same names and events an' all - as the Salamanders go off on a death-run to deliver Vulkan back to Nocturne. It doesn't go particularly well, as they dodge Death Guard, daemons, and their own fraying temperaments on a foolhardy plunge into the heart of Lorgar's Ruinstorm. Another Primarch makes a guest appearance, only deepening that particular character's ambiguous nature and allegiances. Eventually, our heroes make their way home.

If I have a criticism, and this is a common one to a lot of Black Library books, it's that the ending feels slightly rushed. I don't know how stringent their word-limits are but it often feels that BL writers stretch out and luxuriate in early chapters, doing cool character stuff and world-building, before realizing near the back-end that a bunch of things have to actually happen in the book before they can close it. But such is the strength of the adventure and the pleasing nature of Kyme's writing, which is very decent, that I can't hold it against Deathfire too much.

Oh, and in the end... Vulkan lives.

[Houghten]

I notice from having read the free preview that the pre-Vulkan name of the Salamanders was "Dragon Warriors."

I can't help but wonder if Nick Kyme remembers he's already used that name?