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The Siege of Terra #Novella
Fury of Magnus
A Siege of Terra novella
In the midst of the Siege of Terra, Magnus the Red embarks on a very personal mission – one that will bring him face to face with the Emperor once more!
READ IT BECAUSE
Discover the end of Magnus' journey from Prospero to treachery on Terra in a deeply moving and elegiac tale that sees him finally choose his side and take his place amongst his brothers.
THE STORY
Of all the Emperor’s sons who fell to Chaos, it is perhaps Magnus the Red whose tale is the most tragic. Sanctioned because of his desire for knowledge, chastised, judged, and shattered to his very elements – there is much for the Crimson King to feel vengeful for. Yet revenge is not the only thing that draws him to Terra alongside the Warmaster’s besieging armies. He seeks something, a fragment, the missing piece of himself that lies within the most impregnable place on the planet – the inner sanctum of the Imperial Palace. As the greatest conflict of the ages reaches fever pitch, Magnus fights his own inner battle. To be whole once more, he must not only overcome the fiercest of defences, but also face the one being whom he loves and hates with equal fervour more than any other – his errant father, the Emperor of Mankind.
In the midst of the Siege of Terra, Magnus the Red embarks on a very personal mission – one that will bring him face to face with the Emperor once more!
READ IT BECAUSE
Discover the end of Magnus' journey from Prospero to treachery on Terra in a deeply moving and elegiac tale that sees him finally choose his side and take his place amongst his brothers.
THE STORY
Of all the Emperor’s sons who fell to Chaos, it is perhaps Magnus the Red whose tale is the most tragic. Sanctioned because of his desire for knowledge, chastised, judged, and shattered to his very elements – there is much for the Crimson King to feel vengeful for. Yet revenge is not the only thing that draws him to Terra alongside the Warmaster’s besieging armies. He seeks something, a fragment, the missing piece of himself that lies within the most impregnable place on the planet – the inner sanctum of the Imperial Palace. As the greatest conflict of the ages reaches fever pitch, Magnus fights his own inner battle. To be whole once more, he must not only overcome the fiercest of defences, but also face the one being whom he loves and hates with equal fervour more than any other – his errant father, the Emperor of Mankind.
7 pages, Audiobook
First published September 19, 2020
131 people are currently reading
787 people want to read
About the author
Graham McNeill
339 books903 followersHailing from Scotland, Graham McNeill narrowly escaped a career in surveying to work for Games Workshop as a games designer. He has a strong following with his novels Nightbringer, Warriors of Ultramar, Dead Sky, Black Sun and Storm of Iron.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
December 16, 2021
Wait, are you suggesting what I think you are suggesting?’
‘What do you believe I suggest?’
Ahriman’s eyes widened as the implications of Magnus’ unsaid words sank in.
‘That you mean to topple whoever finally claims Terra’s throne and take it for yourself…’
‘Who among my brothers is as remotely suited as I for such a position?’ demanded Magnus."
An expensive but excellent page-turning Siege of Terra novella giving a satisfying and heart-breaking conclusion to Magnus the Red's storyline started in A Thousand Sons so many years ago, with the primarch of the XV Legion willingly embracing his destiny and taking agency over his actions at last.
‘You mean Dorn taught us that,’ snapped Perturabo.
Magnus needed no special sensitivity to see how deep the failure of Saturnine had cut the Lord of Iron. The long war for supremacy fought between Perturabo and Rogal had come down to this battle, this moment, and Dorn – that most singularly unimaginative of warriors – had somehow managed to outfox them all.
Fury of Magnus gives a closure too to some loose threads like Bodvar Bjarki's pack and Perpetual Alivia Sureka's ones started respectively in previously released Vengeful Spirit and The Crimson King novels from the same author.
And you can really see how much mr Graham McNeill is grown together with these storylines and characters.
‘Yet here you are, Alivia,’ said Malcador. ‘Every step you took on the road away from Terra has led you back here. This is where you were meant to be. You know He needs you, but I need you most of all.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I need you to save the Emperor.’
Alivia wanted to laugh, but saw Malcador was deadly serious.
So many great twists and moments between these pages: Ahriman, Menkaura and Amon bloody fight against the rampaging Space Wolves, Magnus reading about the horrors of the war inside besieged people's mind, his confrontation with Vulkan and the Emperor, expected since reading the Dramatis Personae list opening the book but still a gut-wrenching one, and much more.
+Speak with your mind,+ sent Ahriman.
Atrahasis nodded. +One hundred and seventy-one of us remain in this thrust. The thousands of mortals who began this march with us are already dead or will be dying in agony within a matter of hours. Only legionaries remain.+
+Good,+ said Ahriman.
+Good?+
+No mortal soldiers will be left alive on the wall. We strike hard for the breach. This is Astartes war now.+
‘I am Bjarki,’ he said. ‘This is Svafnir Rackwulf and Olgyr Widdowsyn. We kill sorcerers.’
‘What?’ said Abidemi. ‘Sorcerers?’
‘Them,’ said Bjarki, pointing to shapes emerging from the glowing mist.
A host of red-armoured warriors of the Thousand Sons, mounted on shimmering discs of light, and led by a towering figure of fire and wrath.
‘Magnus…’ said Abidemi.
‘Maleficarum,’ growled Bjarki.
A fitting ending to Magnus the Red's
Magnus expected to see hate in his brother’s eyes, but he saw only great sadness.
He brought his staff up once more, expecting a furious charge, but Vulkan did not attack. Instead, he lowered his mighty warhammer and hung it from a clawed hook at his belt.
‘Brother,’ said Vulkan.
Another single word to the heart.
All is Dust.
June 11, 2024
I enjoyed this infinitely more than McNeill's previous Siege of Terra novella, The Sons of the Selenar, which read like a contractual obligation, but it did finally clue me in to the perspective of the folx behind Warhammer 40,000, re-evaluate how I feel about that, and take a break so I can decide whether I want to carry on, as well as continuing to scratch my head at the decisions Black Library makes about how they release their books and what stuff goes in where, especially as they had to make a point of including all the novellas, side stories, and audio dramas that only novel readers missed into main series anthologies...because, while Selenar was the end of an arc of side characters from the main series and some lore, it was completely non-essential, while so much of this is absolutely important, pertinent information about a lot of stuff...and really should have been a whole arse novel, honestly.
I normally put a spoiler free summary here, but that doesn't seem to be happening for this one, so I will give my vague overall thoughts before getting into the spoiler zone.
As I said in my initial reaction, this feels like the Rosetta Stone for the Horus Heresy and perspective of those behind Warhammer 40,000, which is summarised by the explicitly presented binary of the nightmare of the Imperium of 40K or something much worse, going on to defend 40K and present things more definitively than I think was a good idea, both for the foundations of the Horus Heresy and 40K not benefiting from being so explicit and from the perspective that it puts forth being rather damning from a moral, ethical, philosophical, and/ or politicial perspective, especially when it's widely known just how much of a fascist, rightwing, and hateful section of the hobby and fanbase there is--just look at the utter ludicrousness of the reaction to female Custodes and constant complaints about 'wokeness', women, pronouns, and people of colour on Warhammer. Remember the reaction to there being a Black Ultramarine on the cover of a Dawn of Fire book?!
What I'm saying is that having one of the only people truly capable of criticising the Emperor doing just that so perfectly, but then being shown and agreeing it's space fascism or daemon universe for eternity presented as an unquestionable binary, and the her going on to defend space fascism because at least people can 'love and hope' fucking sucks.
I'm saying that having a character with such potential, epochs of life, and that could have been so fascinating, and her being constantly reduced to having very little agency for all her power and only being presented as the embodiment of woman as mother across a handful of books and stories to ultimately be a completely pointless character that serves no purpose beyond being Mother! and ultimately epitomising the milquetoast vacuousness of the heart of Warhammer, Black Library, and Games Workshop fucking sucks.
I'm saying McNeill and Black Library in general's handling of women and the offensive dichotomy presented in this book by the oblique reference to the Astartes as a "twisted, barbed-wire bitch of a mother" and the doting, loving, capitulating mother fucking sucks.
The use of denigration and gendered insults only being reserved for the women in the book fucking sucks. Just as it fucking sucks when Goulding had Khârn do it in front of Captain Sarrin no less in Prince of Blood made zero sense and fucking sucked.
This book shows more clearly than any other just how difficult, likely impossible, certainly by Black Library, it is to blend the high, lofty, inhuman mythos and allegory of godlike figures and actions so familiar from Hellenistic and Roman myth with the grounded, modern, emotionally resonant and moralising in one series, story, and same characters. This really shows just how much this series breaks its own established expectations and understandings of characters, events, and the moral, ethical, and nuanced, rounded presentations of a character in one moment or story to another. Maybe it's just me and my autism, but I don't understand how I'm supposed to comprehend a character of situation that I have witnessed in very real, humanising, and difficult situations, in which I really am supposed to be emapthising and at times sympathising with, in spite or even because of their rights and wrongs in one moment, but in the next I'm supposed to not blink when they do or allow something awful, even going so far as flatly acknowledging that it's unthinkable to them, but allowing and encouraging it without any compunction or question? I'm seriously asking. Am I wrong to think that flipping characters between comprehensive and comprehendable to completely impenetrable and opaque and without the text or anything questioning or even acknowledging this?
Ultimately, the prose is great and the writing is largely good with some beautiful and interesting passages, and moments that are emotional for the reasons intended, but I found it started in a bit of running, messy manner than made it hard to be drawn in, until it wasn't and I was completely drawn in. I care about the characters and the series, both from the wider series and this book, but for all the reasons stated above, my autism, my perspective on the series and how dear it has been to me over a very difficult year so far, and my conception of the perspective of this series and Warhammer 40,000 in general I'm colossally disappointed and confused.
I know it's not normal to be as invested in this series as I have been and I know it's not normal to be unable to process and accept that the media I enjoy doesn't agree with my worldview. It's definitely not normal to be having full autistic meltdowns and emotional conversations with people about how fucked up I feel because of a few lines in a book and what I see as dangerous and repugnant attitudes being extolled, justified, and defended by the media I enjoy. I understand we live in a late stage capitalist nightmare in which the Overton Window is as smashed and infected with the Chaos of conservatism and bigotry, so the media, even the ones espousing to be and founded upon satirising and critiquing said awfulness, are produced by massive companies that simply by being massive companies are bought into and not rocking the boat that's keeping them afloat, but I don't have to like it.
I'm taking some time off of the Horus Heresy and Warhammer in general to process and get my head straight. It's most likely I'll be back, but with my expectations lowered and no longer going quite so hard on obsessively completing Black Library series. Over the years, I've amassed so much Warhammer stuff on Audible and other places, and I do enjoy the universe and stuff, so I will likely continue to work through things (in all meanings of that phrase), but I would be lying if I didn't say this book broke my heart and changed the way I see Warhammer, and, again, I know it's not normal to be like this.
I have a lot of very strong political opinions and a whole bunch of trauma and neurodivergences. Being who and what I am in the world I live in, I wasn't really given any choice with any of that and I wouldn't change my core values for anything. I also don't expect all media to conform to my values. I genuinely don't. I just wish I didn't struggle with that so much, but I do recognise it is a me problem though.
Espousing sexism, misogyny, and playing daemon's advocate for space fascism, presenting the binary of space fascism or hell universe are genuine problems with Black Library, Games Workshop, Warhammer, Graham McNeill, and a large percentage of Black Library authors and Games Workshop designers. They are also something I am going to have to find away to process and/ or compartmentalise if I am going to continue to engage with it though.
Detailed summary and more spoiler thoughts below.
***Due to my need to get the story straight in my head before discussing it, there are FULL SPOILERS from now on and my usually vague and spoiler free summary is a more detailed account***
Following on from Saturnine, Old Earth, and Vengeful Spirit (and Wolf Mother, etc.), Vulkan's Draakswards and the the last of Russ' Watch Pack are lending their strength to the defence of the palace, combining their efforts to combat the magical might of the Thousand Sons through combining their wyrd and unleashing the primordial essence of Fenris and Nocturne. Magnus calls his closest sons too him and they exploit a weakness on the Palace's etheric wards to get inside with the intention to finally reclaim the last piece of the Crimson King's soul. On the way they appear in the guise of Loyalists, receiving praise and awe from the refugees, and Magnus takes an action that reveals he is not all bad. Olivia, the Perpetual from Moloch, is among the countless refugees that have fled to Terra from across the galaxy and is summoned by Malcador. They play Regicide and awkwardly reminisce in the manses where the Primarchs were intended to grow up and where we learn the shard of Magnus had been staying. Magnus and co rock up to the manses expecting to find the soul and have a not unpleasant conversation with Malcador who convinces him to play with Olivia, until Malcador reveals that the shard of Magnus' soul is gone, it having been used to save Revuel Arvida from the Fleshchange at the behest of Jaghatai Khan's demands the last Loyalist Thousand son be saved, after he guided the Ordu through the Ruinstorm in The Path of Heaven and The Last Son of Prospero, and all the good and bad Magnus has done was in him already. Upon hearing this Magnus flips out and grabs Malcador, which causes one of his more trigger-happy sons to blow Olivia away and get himself atomised by the Crimson King for breaking his order to not kill anyone. It is then pointed out to him that, unbeknownst to him, he blasted Malcador in his fury and is holding a charred corpse. Olivia's soul meets the Emperor's in some oddly peaceful pocket of the warp. She tears him a new one for being a monster who makes monsters, but then he shows her his Acuity and she sees the nightmare Imperium of Warhammer 40K is a better alternative than eternal daemon galaxy. The Emperor appear to Magnus as Revelation. Magnus kills this avatar. The Emperor takes Magnus on a psychic journey to see the galaxy how he wanted it to be--Horus bringing the last world to Compliance and Magnus operating the Golden Throne, but not as a wasted cadaver as he was shown by Chaos. Instead he sees a serene reclining form and the Emperor tells Magnus that while Magnus' body powers the machine, their souls are off frolicking together. Returning to the central chamber where the Emperor remains on the Golden Throne with Vulkan guarding him and his Draakswords arriving with their remaining Wolf Brothers. The Emperor has convinced Magnus to return to the fold and all seeks well until he very offhanded and callously mentions that the price for signing back up with the Imperium is the death of his Legion. He says they're gone bad and will all suffer the Fleshchange in a few years, and he can make a brand new, even better, Legion for Magnus, presumably alluding to Primaris, as McNeill previously did in the end of The Sons of the Selenar. Understandably Magnus isn't having that. The Emperor makes zero effort to soften the blow, explain why, or offer any solace, neither does Vulkan. Magnus asks Vulkan if he would do it if their roles were reversed and he says absolutely not, but Magnus should do it anyway. Neither his father, nor his brother offer him anything beyond this ultamatum, so Magnus flies into a rage again. Magnus and Vulkan punch on for a bit. Things look bad for Magnus, so he pulls the Expeditious Retreat back to the Planet of the Sorcerers trick again. Where his looking glass is shattered like his soul, but the missing piece is represented by a flect of Chaos that is seen to be infecting the rest. Olivia washes up on a beach with Malcador, who's unconscious body she carries to the shore, in some unclear realm. It's not made clear if they are back from the dead on another planet as there are no oceans on Terra, if this is some kind of afterlife place, or if this is a purgatory pitstop for Perpetuals that come back from the dead. She reads a story from her magic fairytale book on a page one of her daughters had folded down of a tree that lived for 365 years and witnessed the lives and deaths of creatures around it that last less than a day to it. She closes her eyes and is very upset, dropping the book in the water. A person hugs her, presumably Malcador, and she thinks of her children and feels that she is with them and has everything she could ever want, and "closes her eyes for the last time". Back on Terra, there are two Draakswords and one Space Wolf remaining. The Salamanders finally allow the Space Wolf to mark their armour, representing how their wyrd is connected. They wander out into the desert of no man's land beyond the walls, meeting two other figures with big swords and grim expressions who complete their squad, Garviel Loken and Nathaniel Garro. They all walk off like badarses and rock music plays and "to be continued" and the "fin" flash up in the screen.
This is the quote that broke me:
"Alivia knelt beside him as the pain and horror of the Emperor’s Acuity filled her once again. She wept bitter tears, cursing that she was part of its perpetuation. She wanted to walk out into the ocean until her strength gave out, until she sank into the darkness and her lungs filled with water.
But what would be the point?
She was cursed to return again and again, to live yet another evolution of this life.
Alivia tried to push the Emperor’s visions aside, but they kept coming. Furious ages of war, tides of xenospecies wreaking untold carnage, a vast and soulless regime – as bloody and cruel as it was possible to imagine.
But the alternative?
A universe of horror, of torture and disease, of wanton cruelty and bloodshed. It would be unending, torment from which the human race could never escape, for its enactors were no mortal foes, no psychotic empire that must inevitably fall. No, this was a time of immortal monsters wrought from the tortured psyches of the very people who suffered within it.
What the Emperor had shown her was little better, a dark future that was as horrifying a nightmare as it was possible to imagine, a time when human lives were all but meaningless, ashes of bone ground between the gears of history.
But at least they were lives. Even in this bleak reality, men and women still loved one another, still raised their children as best they could, still served something greater than themselves. They still clung to one another when the darkness closed in, and endured the unendurable, because that was what people did.
They lived, they survived, and they persisted.
But most of all, they hoped.
Amid all the cataclysms still to come, there were yet embers of light. She had seen a time when heroes long thought lost returned, when those embers took flight and began a final conflagration that made this spasm of rebellion look like a frontier brushfire war. The outcome of that future war was unknown, but that humanity would fight back was enough."
OK. So, the last thing I'm going to say about this because I cannot be arsed to get into the specifics of why making Vulkan a sympathetic character previously and then a soulless, hypocritical godling was a bad idea, emblematic of the high/ low issue I've already touched on, how pointless, frustrating, insulting, and wasted potential Olivia has been, or how killing off MAJOR characters in novellas that a lot of the main readership don't read and that the various different ways of handling death, resurrection, and the afterlife colossally reduce the impact, weight, or meaning of said deaths in a universe where there is a very a real and actual hell...are all bad and silly things. They absolutely are, but I have spent too much time and energy on this book and series in general.
The last thing is about the quote above that broke me. I don't have anything against the actual content, and I have talked at length about the reason I think grimdark settings like the Dark Millennia can be so magical and effecting is because of the moments of love and hope and bravery and sacrifice that are the light in the dark, and all the brighter because of it. My issue is with the framing.
"What the Emperor had shown her was little better...But at least they were lives. Even in this bleak reality, men and women still loved one another, still raised their children as best they could, still served something greater than themselves. They still clung to one another when the darkness closed in, and endured the unendurable, because that was what people did.
They lived, they survived, and they persisted.
But most of all, they hoped."
Presenting this as a defence of 40K is what I find to be genuinely disgusting. It's the binary with not even the merest consideration of there being any other way beyond hell galaxy and space fascism that is intellectual bankrupt and morally repugnant. You want straightfaced fascist fans of the Imperium buying your books and models? because that's how you encourage and grow your fascist fanbase!--Obviously, the answer is yes please! because capitalism and companies not wanting some money, rather, wanting all of the money always and ever-increasingly, regardless of profits and harm.
That hope and love is IN SPITE of the space fascism. It is never because space fascism is the better alternative. Also, better alternative for who? Because billions of people live lives of nothing but torture, slavery, and are sacrificed to keep this thing going. But taking the premise and saying an absolute fuck it to Godwin's Law as we are already here, one could argue that being in a concentration camp is better than being dead or in hell, but many would disagree or say there is no difference. That doesn't mean we should be defending concentration camps as a better alternative to death or hell, right?
"...still served something greater than themselves"
Are you fucking serious? Are you seriously serious right now? The woman who knows the life of the Emperor, called him out for being a monster and creating monsters and called out the Imperium for being awful, thinks that suffering under the Imperium is serving something greater than themselves? Oops, looks like I failed my Godwin's save again. Would it be better to be serving fucking Nazis than living for ourselves? Because that's what I'm getting from this.
I never expected the satire of authorianism and colonialism, literally the 80s Conservatives and the whole history to the British Empire, to be doing fascist apologia, but, hey, Darius Hinks' Guilliman stories got published. But I also never expected a company as big as Games Workshop/ Black Library to have any meaningful values or moral perspective that actually aligns with my own Anarcho-Socialist leaninings, I totally understand that. But having the expectation for them not to make excuses and defences for the Imperium, the absolutely fucked colonialism and war crimes of a Primarch presented as admirable and honorable, didn't seem a lot to ask...
Truly vacuous, soulless, ignorant, and dangerous.
I normally put a spoiler free summary here, but that doesn't seem to be happening for this one, so I will give my vague overall thoughts before getting into the spoiler zone.
As I said in my initial reaction, this feels like the Rosetta Stone for the Horus Heresy and perspective of those behind Warhammer 40,000, which is summarised by the explicitly presented binary of the nightmare of the Imperium of 40K or something much worse, going on to defend 40K and present things more definitively than I think was a good idea, both for the foundations of the Horus Heresy and 40K not benefiting from being so explicit and from the perspective that it puts forth being rather damning from a moral, ethical, philosophical, and/ or politicial perspective, especially when it's widely known just how much of a fascist, rightwing, and hateful section of the hobby and fanbase there is--just look at the utter ludicrousness of the reaction to female Custodes and constant complaints about 'wokeness', women, pronouns, and people of colour on Warhammer. Remember the reaction to there being a Black Ultramarine on the cover of a Dawn of Fire book?!
What I'm saying is that having one of the only people truly capable of criticising the Emperor doing just that so perfectly, but then being shown and agreeing it's space fascism or daemon universe for eternity presented as an unquestionable binary, and the her going on to defend space fascism because at least people can 'love and hope' fucking sucks.
I'm saying that having a character with such potential, epochs of life, and that could have been so fascinating, and her being constantly reduced to having very little agency for all her power and only being presented as the embodiment of woman as mother across a handful of books and stories to ultimately be a completely pointless character that serves no purpose beyond being Mother! and ultimately epitomising the milquetoast vacuousness of the heart of Warhammer, Black Library, and Games Workshop fucking sucks.
I'm saying McNeill and Black Library in general's handling of women and the offensive dichotomy presented in this book by the oblique reference to the Astartes as a "twisted, barbed-wire bitch of a mother" and the doting, loving, capitulating mother fucking sucks.
The use of denigration and gendered insults only being reserved for the women in the book fucking sucks. Just as it fucking sucks when Goulding had Khârn do it in front of Captain Sarrin no less in Prince of Blood made zero sense and fucking sucked.
This book shows more clearly than any other just how difficult, likely impossible, certainly by Black Library, it is to blend the high, lofty, inhuman mythos and allegory of godlike figures and actions so familiar from Hellenistic and Roman myth with the grounded, modern, emotionally resonant and moralising in one series, story, and same characters. This really shows just how much this series breaks its own established expectations and understandings of characters, events, and the moral, ethical, and nuanced, rounded presentations of a character in one moment or story to another. Maybe it's just me and my autism, but I don't understand how I'm supposed to comprehend a character of situation that I have witnessed in very real, humanising, and difficult situations, in which I really am supposed to be emapthising and at times sympathising with, in spite or even because of their rights and wrongs in one moment, but in the next I'm supposed to not blink when they do or allow something awful, even going so far as flatly acknowledging that it's unthinkable to them, but allowing and encouraging it without any compunction or question? I'm seriously asking. Am I wrong to think that flipping characters between comprehensive and comprehendable to completely impenetrable and opaque and without the text or anything questioning or even acknowledging this?
Ultimately, the prose is great and the writing is largely good with some beautiful and interesting passages, and moments that are emotional for the reasons intended, but I found it started in a bit of running, messy manner than made it hard to be drawn in, until it wasn't and I was completely drawn in. I care about the characters and the series, both from the wider series and this book, but for all the reasons stated above, my autism, my perspective on the series and how dear it has been to me over a very difficult year so far, and my conception of the perspective of this series and Warhammer 40,000 in general I'm colossally disappointed and confused.
I know it's not normal to be as invested in this series as I have been and I know it's not normal to be unable to process and accept that the media I enjoy doesn't agree with my worldview. It's definitely not normal to be having full autistic meltdowns and emotional conversations with people about how fucked up I feel because of a few lines in a book and what I see as dangerous and repugnant attitudes being extolled, justified, and defended by the media I enjoy. I understand we live in a late stage capitalist nightmare in which the Overton Window is as smashed and infected with the Chaos of conservatism and bigotry, so the media, even the ones espousing to be and founded upon satirising and critiquing said awfulness, are produced by massive companies that simply by being massive companies are bought into and not rocking the boat that's keeping them afloat, but I don't have to like it.
I'm taking some time off of the Horus Heresy and Warhammer in general to process and get my head straight. It's most likely I'll be back, but with my expectations lowered and no longer going quite so hard on obsessively completing Black Library series. Over the years, I've amassed so much Warhammer stuff on Audible and other places, and I do enjoy the universe and stuff, so I will likely continue to work through things (in all meanings of that phrase), but I would be lying if I didn't say this book broke my heart and changed the way I see Warhammer, and, again, I know it's not normal to be like this.
I have a lot of very strong political opinions and a whole bunch of trauma and neurodivergences. Being who and what I am in the world I live in, I wasn't really given any choice with any of that and I wouldn't change my core values for anything. I also don't expect all media to conform to my values. I genuinely don't. I just wish I didn't struggle with that so much, but I do recognise it is a me problem though.
Espousing sexism, misogyny, and playing daemon's advocate for space fascism, presenting the binary of space fascism or hell universe are genuine problems with Black Library, Games Workshop, Warhammer, Graham McNeill, and a large percentage of Black Library authors and Games Workshop designers. They are also something I am going to have to find away to process and/ or compartmentalise if I am going to continue to engage with it though.
Detailed summary and more spoiler thoughts below.
***Due to my need to get the story straight in my head before discussing it, there are FULL SPOILERS from now on and my usually vague and spoiler free summary is a more detailed account***
Following on from Saturnine, Old Earth, and Vengeful Spirit (and Wolf Mother, etc.), Vulkan's Draakswards and the the last of Russ' Watch Pack are lending their strength to the defence of the palace, combining their efforts to combat the magical might of the Thousand Sons through combining their wyrd and unleashing the primordial essence of Fenris and Nocturne. Magnus calls his closest sons too him and they exploit a weakness on the Palace's etheric wards to get inside with the intention to finally reclaim the last piece of the Crimson King's soul. On the way they appear in the guise of Loyalists, receiving praise and awe from the refugees, and Magnus takes an action that reveals he is not all bad. Olivia, the Perpetual from Moloch, is among the countless refugees that have fled to Terra from across the galaxy and is summoned by Malcador. They play Regicide and awkwardly reminisce in the manses where the Primarchs were intended to grow up and where we learn the shard of Magnus had been staying. Magnus and co rock up to the manses expecting to find the soul and have a not unpleasant conversation with Malcador who convinces him to play with Olivia, until Malcador reveals that the shard of Magnus' soul is gone, it having been used to save Revuel Arvida from the Fleshchange at the behest of Jaghatai Khan's demands the last Loyalist Thousand son be saved, after he guided the Ordu through the Ruinstorm in The Path of Heaven and The Last Son of Prospero, and all the good and bad Magnus has done was in him already. Upon hearing this Magnus flips out and grabs Malcador, which causes one of his more trigger-happy sons to blow Olivia away and get himself atomised by the Crimson King for breaking his order to not kill anyone. It is then pointed out to him that, unbeknownst to him, he blasted Malcador in his fury and is holding a charred corpse. Olivia's soul meets the Emperor's in some oddly peaceful pocket of the warp. She tears him a new one for being a monster who makes monsters, but then he shows her his Acuity and she sees the nightmare Imperium of Warhammer 40K is a better alternative than eternal daemon galaxy. The Emperor appear to Magnus as Revelation. Magnus kills this avatar. The Emperor takes Magnus on a psychic journey to see the galaxy how he wanted it to be--Horus bringing the last world to Compliance and Magnus operating the Golden Throne, but not as a wasted cadaver as he was shown by Chaos. Instead he sees a serene reclining form and the Emperor tells Magnus that while Magnus' body powers the machine, their souls are off frolicking together. Returning to the central chamber where the Emperor remains on the Golden Throne with Vulkan guarding him and his Draakswords arriving with their remaining Wolf Brothers. The Emperor has convinced Magnus to return to the fold and all seeks well until he very offhanded and callously mentions that the price for signing back up with the Imperium is the death of his Legion. He says they're gone bad and will all suffer the Fleshchange in a few years, and he can make a brand new, even better, Legion for Magnus, presumably alluding to Primaris, as McNeill previously did in the end of The Sons of the Selenar. Understandably Magnus isn't having that. The Emperor makes zero effort to soften the blow, explain why, or offer any solace, neither does Vulkan. Magnus asks Vulkan if he would do it if their roles were reversed and he says absolutely not, but Magnus should do it anyway. Neither his father, nor his brother offer him anything beyond this ultamatum, so Magnus flies into a rage again. Magnus and Vulkan punch on for a bit. Things look bad for Magnus, so he pulls the Expeditious Retreat back to the Planet of the Sorcerers trick again. Where his looking glass is shattered like his soul, but the missing piece is represented by a flect of Chaos that is seen to be infecting the rest. Olivia washes up on a beach with Malcador, who's unconscious body she carries to the shore, in some unclear realm. It's not made clear if they are back from the dead on another planet as there are no oceans on Terra, if this is some kind of afterlife place, or if this is a purgatory pitstop for Perpetuals that come back from the dead. She reads a story from her magic fairytale book on a page one of her daughters had folded down of a tree that lived for 365 years and witnessed the lives and deaths of creatures around it that last less than a day to it. She closes her eyes and is very upset, dropping the book in the water. A person hugs her, presumably Malcador, and she thinks of her children and feels that she is with them and has everything she could ever want, and "closes her eyes for the last time". Back on Terra, there are two Draakswords and one Space Wolf remaining. The Salamanders finally allow the Space Wolf to mark their armour, representing how their wyrd is connected. They wander out into the desert of no man's land beyond the walls, meeting two other figures with big swords and grim expressions who complete their squad, Garviel Loken and Nathaniel Garro. They all walk off like badarses and rock music plays and "to be continued" and the "fin" flash up in the screen.
This is the quote that broke me:
"Alivia knelt beside him as the pain and horror of the Emperor’s Acuity filled her once again. She wept bitter tears, cursing that she was part of its perpetuation. She wanted to walk out into the ocean until her strength gave out, until she sank into the darkness and her lungs filled with water.
But what would be the point?
She was cursed to return again and again, to live yet another evolution of this life.
Alivia tried to push the Emperor’s visions aside, but they kept coming. Furious ages of war, tides of xenospecies wreaking untold carnage, a vast and soulless regime – as bloody and cruel as it was possible to imagine.
But the alternative?
A universe of horror, of torture and disease, of wanton cruelty and bloodshed. It would be unending, torment from which the human race could never escape, for its enactors were no mortal foes, no psychotic empire that must inevitably fall. No, this was a time of immortal monsters wrought from the tortured psyches of the very people who suffered within it.
What the Emperor had shown her was little better, a dark future that was as horrifying a nightmare as it was possible to imagine, a time when human lives were all but meaningless, ashes of bone ground between the gears of history.
But at least they were lives. Even in this bleak reality, men and women still loved one another, still raised their children as best they could, still served something greater than themselves. They still clung to one another when the darkness closed in, and endured the unendurable, because that was what people did.
They lived, they survived, and they persisted.
But most of all, they hoped.
Amid all the cataclysms still to come, there were yet embers of light. She had seen a time when heroes long thought lost returned, when those embers took flight and began a final conflagration that made this spasm of rebellion look like a frontier brushfire war. The outcome of that future war was unknown, but that humanity would fight back was enough."
OK. So, the last thing I'm going to say about this because I cannot be arsed to get into the specifics of why making Vulkan a sympathetic character previously and then a soulless, hypocritical godling was a bad idea, emblematic of the high/ low issue I've already touched on, how pointless, frustrating, insulting, and wasted potential Olivia has been, or how killing off MAJOR characters in novellas that a lot of the main readership don't read and that the various different ways of handling death, resurrection, and the afterlife colossally reduce the impact, weight, or meaning of said deaths in a universe where there is a very a real and actual hell...are all bad and silly things. They absolutely are, but I have spent too much time and energy on this book and series in general.
The last thing is about the quote above that broke me. I don't have anything against the actual content, and I have talked at length about the reason I think grimdark settings like the Dark Millennia can be so magical and effecting is because of the moments of love and hope and bravery and sacrifice that are the light in the dark, and all the brighter because of it. My issue is with the framing.
"What the Emperor had shown her was little better...But at least they were lives. Even in this bleak reality, men and women still loved one another, still raised their children as best they could, still served something greater than themselves. They still clung to one another when the darkness closed in, and endured the unendurable, because that was what people did.
They lived, they survived, and they persisted.
But most of all, they hoped."
Presenting this as a defence of 40K is what I find to be genuinely disgusting. It's the binary with not even the merest consideration of there being any other way beyond hell galaxy and space fascism that is intellectual bankrupt and morally repugnant. You want straightfaced fascist fans of the Imperium buying your books and models? because that's how you encourage and grow your fascist fanbase!--Obviously, the answer is yes please! because capitalism and companies not wanting some money, rather, wanting all of the money always and ever-increasingly, regardless of profits and harm.
That hope and love is IN SPITE of the space fascism. It is never because space fascism is the better alternative. Also, better alternative for who? Because billions of people live lives of nothing but torture, slavery, and are sacrificed to keep this thing going. But taking the premise and saying an absolute fuck it to Godwin's Law as we are already here, one could argue that being in a concentration camp is better than being dead or in hell, but many would disagree or say there is no difference. That doesn't mean we should be defending concentration camps as a better alternative to death or hell, right?
"...still served something greater than themselves"
Are you fucking serious? Are you seriously serious right now? The woman who knows the life of the Emperor, called him out for being a monster and creating monsters and called out the Imperium for being awful, thinks that suffering under the Imperium is serving something greater than themselves? Oops, looks like I failed my Godwin's save again. Would it be better to be serving fucking Nazis than living for ourselves? Because that's what I'm getting from this.
I never expected the satire of authorianism and colonialism, literally the 80s Conservatives and the whole history to the British Empire, to be doing fascist apologia, but, hey, Darius Hinks' Guilliman stories got published. But I also never expected a company as big as Games Workshop/ Black Library to have any meaningful values or moral perspective that actually aligns with my own Anarcho-Socialist leaninings, I totally understand that. But having the expectation for them not to make excuses and defences for the Imperium, the absolutely fucked colonialism and war crimes of a Primarch presented as admirable and honorable, didn't seem a lot to ask...
Truly vacuous, soulless, ignorant, and dangerous.
October 17, 2020
We could write a thousand words to describe this book, but in the end three are just enough: "All is dust"
September 27, 2020
The Heresy is, as you know, coming to an end. With Sons of the Selenar, McNeill managed to bring together loose threads in a massively satisfying way, and he repeats the feat here, but on an even larger scale.
This book manages to be both massively significant *and* pretty inconsequential. You expect that; it’s a novella, outside of the numbered series but it still managed to leave my jaw on the floor with the audacity of some of what happens. There are nods to earlier stories aplenty, and it has that same air of finality as the earlier SoT novella. Whoever writes book 5 and beyond will at the very least have to allude to the events here, and their consequences, but not having reading this book first wouldn’t bewilder the reader.
That’s not to say it’s not a good book- it’s nicely fast paced and the import of the siege gives gravity to all accounts of it. McNeill nicely conveys the scale and horror of this war, both on civilians and combatants, the pencil sketch portrayals we get of this are compelling. ‘Magic’ and dream sequences are a personal bugbear of mine, but despite the heavy presence of the Thousand Sons in this book, I wasn’t overwhelmed by these, and even enjoyed them.
Not everyone will be satisfied with the direction the plot goes, but with so many people having so much invested in such a long-running series, that’s inevitable. I feel that Fury of Magnus hits all the right notes and brings together several unwieldy strands of story really well.
Plus, the design of the ugliness of the Taurox is slagged off in-universe, which is amusing.
This book manages to be both massively significant *and* pretty inconsequential. You expect that; it’s a novella, outside of the numbered series but it still managed to leave my jaw on the floor with the audacity of some of what happens. There are nods to earlier stories aplenty, and it has that same air of finality as the earlier SoT novella. Whoever writes book 5 and beyond will at the very least have to allude to the events here, and their consequences, but not having reading this book first wouldn’t bewilder the reader.
That’s not to say it’s not a good book- it’s nicely fast paced and the import of the siege gives gravity to all accounts of it. McNeill nicely conveys the scale and horror of this war, both on civilians and combatants, the pencil sketch portrayals we get of this are compelling. ‘Magic’ and dream sequences are a personal bugbear of mine, but despite the heavy presence of the Thousand Sons in this book, I wasn’t overwhelmed by these, and even enjoyed them.
Not everyone will be satisfied with the direction the plot goes, but with so many people having so much invested in such a long-running series, that’s inevitable. I feel that Fury of Magnus hits all the right notes and brings together several unwieldy strands of story really well.
Plus, the design of the ugliness of the Taurox is slagged off in-universe, which is amusing.
February 3, 2021
This book hurt, a lot, and returns the Horus Heresy to its roots as a Shakespearean (sorry, Shakespiran) tragedy on a grand scale.
December 5, 2021
Have you ever heard about the tragedy of Magnus The Red? I thought not. It’s not a story the Imperium would tell you. It’s a Ancient Legend from 10.000 years ago.
Magnus The Red was a Primarch of the XV Legion, so powerful and so wise he could use the Warp to influence the aging process to create revitalizing life… He had such a knowledge of the Warp that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying.
The Warp is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was Losing his Legion which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice Arhiman everything he knew, then his apprentice dammed his legion to dust.
Ironic, he could save others from death, but not his Legion from themselves.
I respect this novella because it gives reason as to why Magnus chooses his own dammination over going back to the fold and siding with the imperium. Magnus is given a Faustian bargain that he and many readers here would not accept. It's honourable and understandable. The final tragedy of Magnus spans beyond even this novel with Arhiman.
Indeed "all is dust"
A special mention in this Novel for the image of Magnus and his warriors doing a 90's style rock band pose while trying to save civilians.
Magnus The Red was a Primarch of the XV Legion, so powerful and so wise he could use the Warp to influence the aging process to create revitalizing life… He had such a knowledge of the Warp that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying.
The Warp is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was Losing his Legion which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice Arhiman everything he knew, then his apprentice dammed his legion to dust.
Ironic, he could save others from death, but not his Legion from themselves.
I respect this novella because it gives reason as to why Magnus chooses his own dammination over going back to the fold and siding with the imperium. Magnus is given a Faustian bargain that he and many readers here would not accept. It's honourable and understandable. The final tragedy of Magnus spans beyond even this novel with Arhiman.
Indeed "all is dust"
A special mention in this Novel for the image of Magnus and his warriors doing a 90's style rock band pose while trying to save civilians.
January 25, 2021
Some in the review section say this book brings in another tangent, I am not sure, the book, at least seems to me, brings a few storylines to a closure, and in that it has succeeded.
But quite a lot of it sounds very incredible, especially the ending, for me at least.
Overall, the book is interesting enough for it to be a enjoyable read
On a side note, it is too expensive for a novella, I didn't see that it is a novella, so the fault is mine, but still.....
But quite a lot of it sounds very incredible, especially the ending, for me at least.
Overall, the book is interesting enough for it to be a enjoyable read
On a side note, it is too expensive for a novella, I didn't see that it is a novella, so the fault is mine, but still.....
March 9, 2021
Wow! This one left my jaw hanging. There are some great lines in this novella about the horrors of war, this writer has really grown! There are serious subjects explored as in some other Horus Heresy novels. I don't want to spoil it, totally worth a read. One of the better offerings. The audiobook is amazing by the way. The voice actor did a wonderful job, as always.
March 6, 2021
Even when Magnus does something wrong, he does it for the right reasons!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 24, 2021
All my reviews for these end up the same. Had I known in 2006, when I started reading these books from a game I'd not played since the 90s, that I'd be 60 books in and they'd still be publishing cash-in side novellas, I may not have bothered.
The Good
It actually does something interesting for once
There's some good character work
It retroactively makes one of the worst side-plots slightly less terrible
The Bad
There's some absolutely ludicrous stuff happens
It's yet another tangent
It doesn't really make any sense in the wider narrative if you think about it
You shouldn't be publishing "self-contained" novellas when you're nearly 70 books in to a series that could've been wrapped up in 10 books
The Good
It actually does something interesting for once
There's some good character work
It retroactively makes one of the worst side-plots slightly less terrible
The Bad
There's some absolutely ludicrous stuff happens
It's yet another tangent
It doesn't really make any sense in the wider narrative if you think about it
You shouldn't be publishing "self-contained" novellas when you're nearly 70 books in to a series that could've been wrapped up in 10 books
January 12, 2021
Absolutely fantastic.
Following Magnus's (almost human) journey to find his best part of himself is probably something many of us can attest to in our lives. He spends untold effort of himself and his sons in pursuing this goal entirely seperate to that of Horus, only to end up closer in bed with the Warmaster.
The final twist and offer to his soul is gut-wrenching, dripping with conceit and your mind will scream for Magnus to accept it. So rare is that a book leaves me this dispondant for a character to 'do the right thing', even if it meant their enternal damnation.
Following Magnus's (almost human) journey to find his best part of himself is probably something many of us can attest to in our lives. He spends untold effort of himself and his sons in pursuing this goal entirely seperate to that of Horus, only to end up closer in bed with the Warmaster.
The final twist and offer to his soul is gut-wrenching, dripping with conceit and your mind will scream for Magnus to accept it. So rare is that a book leaves me this dispondant for a character to 'do the right thing', even if it meant their enternal damnation.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 3, 2023
Magnus was always a tragic character for me - Primarch that fired the very opening salvo in Horus Heresy while trying to prevent that very carnage from taking place. Everything that takes place from there on, destruction of Prospero, flight to the Warp to the sorcerers planet and witnessing the new mutations of his Legion, everything seemed to be a punishment for something Magnus did by accident, gigantic tragedy born out of misunderstanding. But in truth all of that was was caused by Magnus' vainglory, his view of himself as the only one with sufficient knowledge to control the Warp and guide the humanity to bright future (this even comes to the surface in his discussion with Ahriman on how he sees post-Heresy events unfolding).
Story confronts Magnus with Malcadore and later with the Emperor. In all these conversations it is visible that Magnus has fallen way lower than he ever thought was the case. When offered only way out and rejoining the Emperor's forces, Magnus refuses it, but while it might seem to be out of love for his sons for me it looks like decision born out of inability to admit that he (Magnus) failed and literally opened the gates of Hell to consume entire universe. And through this refusal he loses the very last traces of humanity and finally fully joins the Horus' team.
Very interesting book, highly recommended to all fans of Horus Heresy and W40K in general.
Story confronts Magnus with Malcadore and later with the Emperor. In all these conversations it is visible that Magnus has fallen way lower than he ever thought was the case. When offered only way out and rejoining the Emperor's forces, Magnus refuses it, but while it might seem to be out of love for his sons for me it looks like decision born out of inability to admit that he (Magnus) failed and literally opened the gates of Hell to consume entire universe. And through this refusal he loses the very last traces of humanity and finally fully joins the Horus' team.
Very interesting book, highly recommended to all fans of Horus Heresy and W40K in general.
July 14, 2023
The title of this book could not have been more aptly named: for me that is. Because while reading this novella (although at almost 250 pages it’s hard to call this a novella), the fury building within myself was building up more and more. Not because the book wasn’t good, but because I felt myself getting more and more angry with the way how my favorite Primarch was treated.
It’s no secret that Magnus’ tale is a tragic one, but this book seemed intent to rub even more salt into that open wound. And as much as I got angered by it, I loved this book to death. The book is full of some terrific character moments, a lot of them filled with tragedy, great action and is just a great read all around. Well done mister McNeill!
It’s no secret that Magnus’ tale is a tragic one, but this book seemed intent to rub even more salt into that open wound. And as much as I got angered by it, I loved this book to death. The book is full of some terrific character moments, a lot of them filled with tragedy, great action and is just a great read all around. Well done mister McNeill!
September 7, 2024
As this is classed as a novella, people say you can skip this and just stick to the main volumes of The Siege of Terra.
I can wholeheartedly plead that you don't, this is an incredible addition to the series with so many fantastic set pieces. I can't say too much as the main building block of this story is the decisions that Magnus must face, and the consequences of said decision.
Cannot wait to continue my journey with the Warmaster and the Emperor, although I shall be sad when the series concludes, it's been a hell of a journey.
I can wholeheartedly plead that you don't, this is an incredible addition to the series with so many fantastic set pieces. I can't say too much as the main building block of this story is the decisions that Magnus must face, and the consequences of said decision.
Cannot wait to continue my journey with the Warmaster and the Emperor, although I shall be sad when the series concludes, it's been a hell of a journey.
February 26, 2023
"In the end, that was what I loved about telling this story - that Magnus eventually damned himself by doing the right thing in refusing to abandon his sons, as any father should."
- Graham McNeill, Los Angeles, 2019
There's really nothing else to say about this story. A beautifully tragic tale.
- Graham McNeill, Los Angeles, 2019
There's really nothing else to say about this story. A beautifully tragic tale.
January 17, 2023
Reading this book made me angry at the emperor and gave me more sympathy for Magnus
He was always just a good dad at the end of the day and damned himself for his sons
Really hope we find out more of the emperors own acuity now as well
This one was a short but enjoyable read !!
He was always just a good dad at the end of the day and damned himself for his sons
Really hope we find out more of the emperors own acuity now as well
This one was a short but enjoyable read !!
September 19, 2024
Fury of Magus is a pleasantly surprising addition to the series. It starts of slow with some unnecessary bloat but gets stronger as it goes on. There's several returning characters, some Primarch-Emperor interaction, short but intense action scenes and the 'human' viewpoints work well to further the story, not just to pad the word count.
December 10, 2024
God fucking damnit Magnus!!! You were the chosen one! (Great book).
March 14, 2021
Brilliant, yet another great book in the seige of terra series.
I think Magnus should of taken the deal, I would love to see how the future would have been different.
I think Magnus should of taken the deal, I would love to see how the future would have been different.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 6, 2021
(Audiobook) I enjoyed the story and Graham's vision of the setting and characters. This is a story most enjoyed after reading through the previous books.
March 5, 2021
A solid novella in the ongoing series, which has some awesome further character depth on the enigmatic Magnus. The best stuff is the PoV of being a refugee in the Imperial Palace and the perspective of Olivia.
January 31, 2021
More like 4.5 stars. Mutual understandings were reached, and Magnus is so nearly brought back into the fold, but we all know it’s not meant to be. I kind of wanted this to be a full novel, but upon finishing it I realized it’s the perfect length. This is possibly the best part of the Siege so far!
January 30, 2021
What could have been for Magnus and his legion... what a beautiful tragedy. It was great reading about so many other characters and getting back to the epic scale of the Siege of Terra!
September 8, 2022
2 Stars for the effort to look up names and write them down on your Novella. Nothing else can be salvaged from this.
Check below if you want to know why.
Check below if you want to know why.
June 1, 2025
I have never been a big fan of the Thousand Sons. I'm still not. But the book was good overall and there were some interesting moments. However, I feel for all the good that came of the book there's just some pretty miserable moments. And just another quibble to point out, I do not understand what constitutes a novella or a core book of the series or a short story or whatever in the Horus Heresy. Sons of Selenar was a total sidequest with very little crucial importance to the story yet Fury of Magnus is quite integral to the plot of the Heresy with majorly important lore moments. Why they make the distinction that this is only a Short Story/Novella and not a numbered part of the Siege series I cannot understand.
If I had to pick the three space marine legions that interest me least it would be the Salamanders, Space Wolves and Thousand Sons. So imagine my excitement when thirty pages in I realize this entire book will be about those three legions. That's okay. Good writing can overcome that complaint. And we mostly get good writing. The prose is good, the story is fairly tight and we get a magnificent showdown between Emperor and Magnus that's lovely for the lore. In all it's a good book.
But some major complaints riddle it for me. I hated the scant usage of Lemuel as a plot device/Macguffin that's scarcely detailed. We spent so much time with him earlier in the Siege he's more of a silly 'Glup Shitto' moment than he is a tightly connected lore dripping callback because they do virtually nothing with him. It's a real missed opportunity.
I hated the way they rapidly introduce and throwaway Alivia and do very little with her character besides make her this bitter jaded one note vessel by which to re-validate the Emperor and the future of 40k that comes after the Heresy. She gets no agency. She's a tool for Malcador and the Emperor. Her story becomes useless. She's interesting at first because of her condemnation of the Emperor and Malcador as evil tyrants lusting for power but then is reduced to someone that, despite living an unfathomable amount of time, decides "Well evil is okay if it's less evil than some other evil." Just juvenile stuff. 40k is sometimes very self-aware that there are no good guys in the setting but then it goes way out of its way at times, in the Heresy particularly, to paint the IoM as some bastion of sanctity of goodness and humanity. Straight up justifying that "whatever the Emperor wants to do must be good because if he doesn't the demons win."
It nerfs all nuance in storytelling and shows authors like McNeill (and perhaps just the narrative direction by the Black Library as a whole) cannot handle telling complicated stories. They have to boil things down between a single good party versus a single bad party. Perhaps that's just what you get when so much of the Heresy, and especially the Siege, is told directly through the eyes and mouths of the leaders of this civil war. Also didn't love the weird throwaway discussion of Astarte as the evil bitch mother of the Space Marines or whatever. There's just no subtlety or nuance to any of this. Everything is reduced to "Emperor good. Women know nothing. Demon bad."
I also just don't think that Magnus's rejection of the Emperor's final offer was handled well at all. It's just way too simple and too juvenile. I am thoroughly unconvinced of Magnus's implacable love for this particular group of his genespawn that he was willing to throw them to the demons in order to kill his dad. It just doesn't sit well. Magnus is an emotional child and we know that already. But we also know him to be exceptionally smart and cunning. In his dialogue with the Emperor he just kinda seems like a petulant idiot. And they do nothing to actually help lay out why he would reject the Emperor's offer in the way that he did. It could even be that Big E was straight up lying and Magnus saw through it. But as it stands Magnus just seems incapable of weighing the offer on the scale. The same Magnus that let thousands of his sons get massacred by the Space Wolves before coming to their very late rescue. The same Magnus who has been fighting off the demon incursion into his own soul and his sons' souls while the other legions turned into Chaos-riddled homunculi. Decides quite rapidly that maybe being a demon ain't so bad after all if it means killing his dad. I guess.
The book in its totality is solid. It's certainly necessary for the lore. But the writing of the women characters in particular is quite bad. And the way that McNeill lays out Magnus's rejection of the Emperor is also quite bad. And that gums up some of the narrative pretty bad
If I had to pick the three space marine legions that interest me least it would be the Salamanders, Space Wolves and Thousand Sons. So imagine my excitement when thirty pages in I realize this entire book will be about those three legions. That's okay. Good writing can overcome that complaint. And we mostly get good writing. The prose is good, the story is fairly tight and we get a magnificent showdown between Emperor and Magnus that's lovely for the lore. In all it's a good book.
But some major complaints riddle it for me. I hated the scant usage of Lemuel as a plot device/Macguffin that's scarcely detailed. We spent so much time with him earlier in the Siege he's more of a silly 'Glup Shitto' moment than he is a tightly connected lore dripping callback because they do virtually nothing with him. It's a real missed opportunity.
I hated the way they rapidly introduce and throwaway Alivia and do very little with her character besides make her this bitter jaded one note vessel by which to re-validate the Emperor and the future of 40k that comes after the Heresy. She gets no agency. She's a tool for Malcador and the Emperor. Her story becomes useless. She's interesting at first because of her condemnation of the Emperor and Malcador as evil tyrants lusting for power but then is reduced to someone that, despite living an unfathomable amount of time, decides "Well evil is okay if it's less evil than some other evil." Just juvenile stuff. 40k is sometimes very self-aware that there are no good guys in the setting but then it goes way out of its way at times, in the Heresy particularly, to paint the IoM as some bastion of sanctity of goodness and humanity. Straight up justifying that "whatever the Emperor wants to do must be good because if he doesn't the demons win."
It nerfs all nuance in storytelling and shows authors like McNeill (and perhaps just the narrative direction by the Black Library as a whole) cannot handle telling complicated stories. They have to boil things down between a single good party versus a single bad party. Perhaps that's just what you get when so much of the Heresy, and especially the Siege, is told directly through the eyes and mouths of the leaders of this civil war. Also didn't love the weird throwaway discussion of Astarte as the evil bitch mother of the Space Marines or whatever. There's just no subtlety or nuance to any of this. Everything is reduced to "Emperor good. Women know nothing. Demon bad."
I also just don't think that Magnus's rejection of the Emperor's final offer was handled well at all. It's just way too simple and too juvenile. I am thoroughly unconvinced of Magnus's implacable love for this particular group of his genespawn that he was willing to throw them to the demons in order to kill his dad. It just doesn't sit well. Magnus is an emotional child and we know that already. But we also know him to be exceptionally smart and cunning. In his dialogue with the Emperor he just kinda seems like a petulant idiot. And they do nothing to actually help lay out why he would reject the Emperor's offer in the way that he did. It could even be that Big E was straight up lying and Magnus saw through it. But as it stands Magnus just seems incapable of weighing the offer on the scale. The same Magnus that let thousands of his sons get massacred by the Space Wolves before coming to their very late rescue. The same Magnus who has been fighting off the demon incursion into his own soul and his sons' souls while the other legions turned into Chaos-riddled homunculi. Decides quite rapidly that maybe being a demon ain't so bad after all if it means killing his dad. I guess.
The book in its totality is solid. It's certainly necessary for the lore. But the writing of the women characters in particular is quite bad. And the way that McNeill lays out Magnus's rejection of the Emperor is also quite bad. And that gums up some of the narrative pretty bad
April 18, 2021
A decent premises for a story, if one we already know cannot come to pass given the existing 40K lore but the possibility fits with the story and the characters and it's a great idea to ponder what if...
I did enjoy the story overall but if Magnus wasn't one of my favourite characters this would be 3/5 rating not a 4/5. For 90% of the book this was a great read pity about how McNeill decided to bring about the ending.
As the ending has issues,
While I agree Magnus would make the final decision he does for the reason he does, the reason itself is problematic since the explanation of why its required makes no sense, not at this point in the overall lore of 40K.
The thousand sons haven't really changed that much yet at this point after all flesh change has long been an issue and now the emperor decides it's an insurmountable problem?!
Then there's the description of the new legion Magnus is promised "fists of steel" "hearts armored by adamantium" which sounds too much like the outcome of the Rubric. Alternatively if these were meant to be actual flesh and blood marines how will their "flesh be perfect" if the emperor just stated fixing the Thousand Sons is beyond him - Magnus is unlikely to want to lead a legion that doesn't share his gifts as his current legion does.
Combined with the complete about face of Vulkan from agreeing with he couldn't sacrifice any of his own sons to telling Magnus to sacrifice his whole legion in less than a page.
It's fairly well established the Emperor is prepared to lie to obtain his ends including to his creations surely this would have been easier to write up either that Magnus see that the emperor is actually lying to him about him being more than a battery for the throne
Or that Tzeentch nudges Magnus that way, I know where the conversation takes place and that's it protected but I literally mean Tzeentch not just a Major demon, after all we know he'd be keeping a close eye on Magnus.
Then and this is pedantic but the section at the end (and it's tiny) that's only possible to have been written in hindsight of more recent novels specifically the "dark imperium" series added to the forced ending.
No the emperor didn't see some magical future where lost heroes return, anyone familiar with 40K (or 30K) knows the emperor is an idiot. Yes when it was just a game the actual history could be left vague now that it's a significantly long series of novels then the lore only works because the emperor has long been blinded by his own power and arrogance. After all in any other scenario it's only plot armor that meant Lorgar wasn't executed and his planet exterminated long ago.
If you've got a copy with the afterword by the author skip it because it reads like McNeill didn't read his own book "Magnus can no longer deny the truth" umm Magnus has a moment of truth but it's really not the one McNeill seems to think he wrote if anything it's the Emperor McNeill's words should be attached to.
Magnus is correct when he tells the Emperor (and Vulkan) his offer came with impossible conditions; and that Magnus only knew what the emperor told him. Really the only reason the emperor isn't accepting of some truths is his own overwhelming arrogance that is on display.
Also in the afterword of the book McNeill describes the "sacrifice" of one of his characters if this was his intent that the event in the ending is a "sacrifice" and not a murder it's very badly set up since there's very little (at best) that indicates what happens to them is willing in fact it seems a lot more like they're only there to be used as a plot device since McNeil wrote something that doesn't fit with the existing lore and so he needed a way to undo it.
And then there's the promise we've not seen the end of some of the character in the story, but they're not characters that have any particular resonance, yes they've been in earlier books but they were second tier and this story doesn't elevate them in fact you could remove them and the plot could take place without any change - they actually aren't important so why are we promoting them for future novels.
I did enjoy the story overall but if Magnus wasn't one of my favourite characters this would be 3/5 rating not a 4/5. For 90% of the book this was a great read pity about how McNeill decided to bring about the ending.
As the ending has issues,
While I agree Magnus would make the final decision he does for the reason he does, the reason itself is problematic since the explanation of why its required makes no sense, not at this point in the overall lore of 40K.
The thousand sons haven't really changed that much yet at this point after all flesh change has long been an issue and now the emperor decides it's an insurmountable problem?!
Then there's the description of the new legion Magnus is promised "fists of steel" "hearts armored by adamantium" which sounds too much like the outcome of the Rubric. Alternatively if these were meant to be actual flesh and blood marines how will their "flesh be perfect" if the emperor just stated fixing the Thousand Sons is beyond him - Magnus is unlikely to want to lead a legion that doesn't share his gifts as his current legion does.
Combined with the complete about face of Vulkan from agreeing with he couldn't sacrifice any of his own sons to telling Magnus to sacrifice his whole legion in less than a page.
It's fairly well established the Emperor is prepared to lie to obtain his ends including to his creations surely this would have been easier to write up either that Magnus see that the emperor is actually lying to him about him being more than a battery for the throne
Or that Tzeentch nudges Magnus that way, I know where the conversation takes place and that's it protected but I literally mean Tzeentch not just a Major demon, after all we know he'd be keeping a close eye on Magnus.
Then and this is pedantic but the section at the end (and it's tiny) that's only possible to have been written in hindsight of more recent novels specifically the "dark imperium" series added to the forced ending.
No the emperor didn't see some magical future where lost heroes return, anyone familiar with 40K (or 30K) knows the emperor is an idiot. Yes when it was just a game the actual history could be left vague now that it's a significantly long series of novels then the lore only works because the emperor has long been blinded by his own power and arrogance. After all in any other scenario it's only plot armor that meant Lorgar wasn't executed and his planet exterminated long ago.
If you've got a copy with the afterword by the author skip it because it reads like McNeill didn't read his own book "Magnus can no longer deny the truth" umm Magnus has a moment of truth but it's really not the one McNeill seems to think he wrote if anything it's the Emperor McNeill's words should be attached to.
Magnus is correct when he tells the Emperor (and Vulkan) his offer came with impossible conditions; and that Magnus only knew what the emperor told him. Really the only reason the emperor isn't accepting of some truths is his own overwhelming arrogance that is on display.
Also in the afterword of the book McNeill describes the "sacrifice" of one of his characters if this was his intent that the event in the ending is a "sacrifice" and not a murder it's very badly set up since there's very little (at best) that indicates what happens to them is willing in fact it seems a lot more like they're only there to be used as a plot device since McNeil wrote something that doesn't fit with the existing lore and so he needed a way to undo it.
And then there's the promise we've not seen the end of some of the character in the story, but they're not characters that have any particular resonance, yes they've been in earlier books but they were second tier and this story doesn't elevate them in fact you could remove them and the plot could take place without any change - they actually aren't important so why are we promoting them for future novels.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 18, 2025
With Fury of Magnus, Graham McNeill offers a powerful and revelatory chapter in the Siege of Terra saga, reframing Magnus the Red's entire character with both an incredible nuance and tragedy. While The Crimson King novel depicted his post-Heresy unraveling, that being a godlike being crumbling under the weight of his choices—Fury of Magnus thrusts us into a more immediate and volatile crucible, where grief, wrath, and fractured pride collide in a tapestry of metaphysical and emotional turmoil. Here, Magnus is a creature of purely contradictions—both a destroyer and a mourner, both master of his fate and prisoner of his past. McNeill's command of cosmic horror and psychological decay here remains surprisingly razor-sharp, but what sets this novel apart is how it transforms Magnus into a figure simultaneously mythic and painfully human. There is a raw, searing vulnerability to the Crimson King, a being whose immense power offers no protection from heartbreak. As the Siege of Terra burns around him, Magnus's struggle becomes as much about his own identity as the fate of the Imperium—a battle not for victory, but for meaning in the ruin he and his sons helped create. Honestly this may be my favorite novella i’ve read for this series it’s essentially perfect in what it aims to do for Magnus and what it aims to show the readers regarding his situation and why he does what he does and I absolutely love the way it was executed.
November 9, 2021
МакНилл пишет, как всегда, очень хорошо. Сольное выступление Магнуса вышло весьма странным, что тоже не удивительным. Я ждал какой-то колдовской загогулины со сложными ритуалами, рисованием кругов и прочей оккультистикой и соответствующего магического противодействия. Нет. Вообще не понятно: Магнус вроде как уже демон-принц, со времен прыжка с Просперо, так что никакого выбора у него нет. Если демонство принял то всё - просто часть той силы, что вечно жаждет зла. Я вообще думал, что всё это вроде как розыгрыш расколотого сознания Магнуса, а не реальная возможность вернуться. Или нет? И ещё непонятно, что Тзинч себя никак не проявляет. Вроде остальная троица открыто проявляются в подведомственных легионах, хотя бы в роли смутных образов, но они им по-своему служат. А для 1000 Сынов Повелителя Перемен вроде как и не существует или же они со своим научным умом относятся к нему скорее как просто к одной из персонификаций варпа. То есть они скорее видят в варпе материал с которым они работают.
October 1, 2024
A good read that felt like it was just cut a bit short in the end. Feels a reasonably pivotal moment in the series, so interesting that spun off into a novella and thus outside the main novels of the series, albeit Siege of Terra at least only has 3, compared to the large number in the main Horus Heresy set.
I'm also aware that potentially some of this is later retconned, but as it stands it is an interesting moment in the Siege, with an interesting view of what might have been.
Magnus is an interesting Primarch, and I think showcased well here, both his virtues and flaws, and ultimately doesn't seem too dissimilar in outlook to Lorgar - seeming to genuinely care about people, but prepared to sacrifice people / ends very much justify means. The thousand sons themselves here come across very detached from humanity as a whole, not as compassionate as Magnus, but prioritizing scholarship above everything.
Links together a few prior threads from other novels, and a bit sad about the outcomes for some, but linked things well and was a good read, but felt like it could have been a full length model to make the most of it.
I'm also aware that potentially some of this is later retconned, but as it stands it is an interesting moment in the Siege, with an interesting view of what might have been.
Magnus is an interesting Primarch, and I think showcased well here, both his virtues and flaws, and ultimately doesn't seem too dissimilar in outlook to Lorgar - seeming to genuinely care about people, but prepared to sacrifice people / ends very much justify means. The thousand sons themselves here come across very detached from humanity as a whole, not as compassionate as Magnus, but prioritizing scholarship above everything.
Links together a few prior threads from other novels, and a bit sad about the outcomes for some, but linked things well and was a good read, but felt like it could have been a full length model to make the most of it.
August 19, 2024
I liked this. I saw a one-star review here that made some very salient points that I agree with about teh Black Library's treatment of feminine characters in general and Graham McNeil's in particular. Erda getting blindsided was completely unnecessary especially as I am an Erda apologist. Still, I was hurt less by those than this reviewer, partially probably due to different life experiences but also I think more because having read all of these in such a relatively short timeframe I've seen how much worse it can be. That being said, . This book also does an excellent job of conivincing me that which I know is a grossly memetic phrase at this point but it's also both true and correct. Well written and I believe does an interesting literary technique in putting the Emperor in the role of a lliterary satanic figure, as a temptor. Much to think about there. Also creating scenarios to purge all the good ways so his awful way is the second most awful. Also much to think about.
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