The Lost and the Damned – Guy Haley

Book two in Black Library’s Siege of Terra mini-series concluding the Horus Heresy, Guy Haley’s The Lost and the Damned picks up where The Solar War left off as Horus Lupercal launches his assault on Terra itself. Reinforced by thousands of conscripts and protected by ancient shield technology, the outer walls of the Imperial Palace bear the brunt of the initial attacks as the Warmaster tests the physical defences with brutal bombardments and assaults from the dregs of his forces. The loyalists know they need only endure until salvation arrives, but time is of the essence for the traitors. While the legions wait to take to the field on both sides, egos clash as the traitor primarchs vie for position, bickering amongst themselves in the name of pride, glory or their new gods.

Where The Solar War covered events spanning the whole of the Sol system this is much more concentrated on Terra and its immediate orbit. There’s still lots going on, from the perspective of primarchs, legionaries and mortals on both sides of the conflict, but it’s a more focused story this time around. The physical siege has begun, and Haley incorporates elements of traditional siege warfare from conscripts manning the outer walls to the traitors constructing vast siege towers (not to mention some fun air combat scenes), while much of the narrative is driven by the question of why the siege progressed the way it did, at the beginning at least. The Palace’s aegis is the first barrier Horus needs to breach but this is a siege fought on multiple planes, so there’s a metaphysical element to consider as well which Horus understands, but his brothers less so.

After an early recap of prior events by way of Dorn, Sanguinius and the Khan discussing strategy with Malcador and Valdor (a little exposition-heavy, but useful nonetheless), Haley settles into a rhythm of depicting the early stages of the siege from multiple perspectives, but focusing the action on a single point. While primarchs and legionaries plan their strategies (often pushing back against orders or expectations) and wait to be unleashed, conscript Katsuhiro – dragged away from his normal life and utterly out of his depth – provides a consistent, human viewpoint on the brutal realities of defending the outer wall; the siege in microcosm. It’s an effective way of demonstrating the mind-numbing scale and ferocity of events – while Space Marines and primarchs are built to deal with this sort of thing, for mere mortals it’s just appalling. Two books into the siege, we’re starting to really see how despite humanity being at stake, this is truly a war for post-humans.

While the title could refer to the traitors as a whole, and certainly the bickering daemon primarchs, the main reference is the mortal dregs that Horus throws against the guns of the defenders. Haley shows their perspective with a couple of nice little vignettes, but mostly concentrates on Katsuhiro’s arc to illustrate the horror of what he’s forced to face, and tie the whole narrative together. As you’d expect from the Horus Heresy, alongside the core narrative there are all sort of other character arcs from earlier in the series being continued and/or concluded. The key players – the three loyal primarchs on Terra; captains Raldoron and Thane; Horus, Abaddon, Zardu Layak and the daemon primarchs – are joined by familiar characters such as Gendor Skraivok and the Night Lords, the Legio Solaria, and even a couple of Alpha Legion operatives, as well as a few new faces among the defenders.

This was never going to have quite the thrill of The Solar War – being the first Siege of Terra novel – or the epic action of what’s still to come, while dedicated Space Marine fans might wish for a bit more Astartes action (don’t worry though, there’s plenty of that to come!). Instead, while there’s lots of variety – and some brilliant moments that could only come towards the end of the Heresy – the focus always returns to the grinding, attritional brutality of manning the walls, Katsuhiro’s misery broken up by (awesome) moments of bravery, glory and occasionally intrigue. There are teasing revelations and snippets of foreshadowing throughout, and in answering some of the questions about the siege Haley in turn poses some tantalising suggestions as to what might come next. Overall Haley has done a fantastic job of maintaining the tone and illustrating the complexity and ferocity of these first stages on Terra, while moving the narrative on, setting the scene for the siege to ramp up in intensity, and simply telling a compelling story.

Check out the main Horus Heresy reviews page on Track of Words.

Click this link to buy The Lost and the Damned (or this one for the audiobook version).