A Crimson Fists novel set during the same campaign as Rynn’s World by Steve Parker, Legacy of Dorn is, incredibly, Mike Lee’s first full-length 40k novel. During the desperate defence of New Rynn City against the vast hordes of Waaagh! Snagrod, Veteran Sergeant Sandor Galleas and his Sternguard veterans find themselves cut off from the remaining Crimson Fists forces and trapped behind the orks’ lines. Forced into a campaign of guerilla warfare alongside a battered, ill-equipped group of human soldiers, the veterans take the fight to the orks, all the while knowing they may represent the last hope for their Chapter.
It’s a clever companion piece to Parker’s Rynn’s World, and also Mike’s own novella Traitor’s Gorge, but where Rynn’s World deals with the grand sweep of events as the Waaagh! descends on the Crimson Fists and disaster strikes, this is a much more focused, smaller-scale story. It has the same sense of gritty desperation to proceedings, but these characters don’t see the big picture of the war, only the street-level, exhausting grind of dangerous hit and run tactics as their numbers are slowly ground down. It’s very much a gritty war story with a focus on a small number of interesting characters, and an enjoyable exploration of Space Marines out of their usual context – there are flashes of the bombastic, brutally direct way that we usually see Marines fighting, but the Crimson Fists know that they’re on the brink of annihilation and so they’re forced to adapt and find new ways to fight and survive.
As the main protagonist, Galleas has all of the strength, fortitude and determination that you would expect, but the desperate position he’s in combined with his dedication to the cause – in this case the continued survival of the Chapter – pushes him to think and act in unexpected ways. He has the flexibility to adapt accordingly, but his brothers don’t necessarily see things the same way, while the human soldiers of the Rynnsguard are simply not able to operate the way the Fists can. Like many of the best Space Marine novels, this plays upon the gulf between the Fists and the humans, as Galleas slowly figures out how to get the best out of the Rynnsguard – and what that might mean – while at the same time dealing with his own, and his brothers’, prejudices and preconceptions regarding humans and their usefulness. Characters who are interesting to begin with start to develop in engaging, entertaining ways over a nicely paced narrative, which starts off quite focused before opening up into a more episodic structure as the war grinds ever onwards, the stakes get higher and the chances of survival continue to drop.
Of course no Space Marine novel would be complete without lashings of brutal violence – much less one with orks as antagonists – and this delivers in spades. The orks that Galleas and co. face off against are a powerful, threatening enemy, and without the benefit of numbers or reliable supplies the Fists and their allies are hard pressed from start to end. There’s a constant attritional grind throughout, in a wide variety of set-pieces from an early-on headlong assault to various ambushes and carefully-plotted sneak attacks, with the additional threat of a nemesis-level ork warboss occasionally rearing its head. Make no mistake, this is an action-heavy book, but it’s the strong characters and how they interact that make it work. There’s even an occasional sense of wry humour to be found in Galleas’ slightly puzzled interactions with the humans. Overall it’s pacy, characterful and brilliantly entertaining, and while it makes a great companion to Rynn’s World it very much stands as a strong, powerful story in its own right.
I still need to find a copy of Ryn’s World