Following on from Vengeful Spirit and Wolf Mother, Graham McNeill’s Horus Heresy short story Old Wounds, New Scars follows Alivia Sureka, the Perpetual, as she reluctantly returns to Terra. Over the course of a long and dangerous journey through the warp on a battered warship along with her adopted family and countless thousands of refugees from Molech, Alivia has worked hard to ensure as many people survived as possible. As their destination draws closer, and the whispers of the warp grow louder, Alivia recalls moments and people from her long life, and looks ahead in concern to the dangers approaching on Terra.
It’s a quiet, reflective story in which not a lot really happens in terms of action or excitement. Instead, it’s more about the continued exploration of Alivia’s character (following on from Wolf Mother in particular) and her past, offering a little more insight into her relationships with Terra, the Emperor, and a key figure from her past. From that we can start to infer a little bit of what we might see in her future, which may or may not involve Alivia and some of her fellow Perpetuals beginning to find themselves drawn back together. It feels rather more like a prologue to something bigger than a standalone story, but it’s enjoyable nonetheless.
This was released as part of the 2018 Black Library Advent Calendar – click here to see the main page for the Advent Calendar, with links to all of the reviews.
Check out the main Horus Heresy series page on Track of Words.
