Day two of Black Library’s 2016 Advent Calendar brings us The Maiden of the Dream by John French, the second ‘story of the Horusian Wars’ after The Purity of Ignorance. The titular Maiden is Mylasa, a powerful psyker who, as one of Inquisitor Covenant’s acolytes, uses her gifts to interrogate prisoners of the Inquisition and purge their memories. Can she be trusted, however? Beneath the accumulated memories ripped from the minds of others, is her soul still pure? Keep reading…
The seventh Horus Heresy book of 2016, the thirty-ninth in the main numbered series, and John French’s first ‘full’ novel in the series, Praetorian of Dorn comes with high expectations. Not least because it’s set in the Solar system, where the Alpha Legion launch a coordinated attack on Terra’s outer defences, testing the resolve and skill of Rogal Dorn and his Imperial Fists. With legion operatives, both human and legionnaire, activating across the system, Dorn and Archamus – Master of the Huscarls – are pulled two ways as they attempt to maintain Terra’s defences and stop the Alpha Legion.
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John French’s latest short story, The Purity of Ignorance, comes with an interesting tagline – ‘A Story of the Horusian Wars’. As yet there’s been no confirmation of whether this means he’s actively working on a new series regarding the Horusian Wars, but still…it’s ripe for speculation!
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Black Library’s 2016 Summer of Reading campaign hits day six with a blast from the past with The Purity of Ignorance by John French, featuring Inquisitor Covenant from 2001’s Inquisitor game. Leading his warband in an airborne insertion, Covenant is joined by Lieutenant Ianthe of the Agathian Sky Sharks, seconded to Inquisitorial duty. Discussing her military record with Preacher Josef, one of Covenant’s companions, life with the Inquisition appears somewhat irregular. Meanwhile Spire Mistress Nereid lounges in her throne room, surrounded by the trappings of luxury…
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Within Black Library’s epic and ever-growing Horus Heresy series there are a few sub-series, collections of stories which fit together to form a story arc in their own right as well as contributing towards the whole series. One such arc is the story of the Battle of Tallarn, as told (primarily) by John French, and with the release of the short story Tallarn: Siren this arc has now come to a close.
EDIT (July 2017): a year after writing this review, the collected Tallarn stories (most of them, anyway) are now available in a single volume – appropriately just named Tallarn – which forms book 45 of the Horus Heresy series.
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Set early on in the Tallarn arc within the wider Horus Heresy series, John French’s Tallarn : Siren finds a handful of Imperial citizens holed up in a tiny underground shelter with the last surviving astropath on the planet. As they desperately try to make contact with any other survivors, they attract the attention of both Marshall Lycus of the Imperial Fists and the invading Iron Warriors, one determined to use the astropath to send word of the planet’s fate, the other keen to prevent that happening. The shelter’s occupants await rescue, but fate may have something else in store for them.
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A small but perfectly formed anthology collecting together eight short stories, most of which were previously available in one form or another, Ahriman: Exodus fits in and around the three novels in John French’s fantastic Ahriman series, extending the overall story and fleshing out some of the secondary characters. The stories are split into two sections – The Tale of Ctesias, containing five stories that introduce and add detail to the titular Ctesias, and Voices of Fate, which contains the remaining stories, three micro-shorts featuring Helio Isidorus, Ahriman and Magnus the Red.
First released as an audio drama alongside James Swallow’s Burden of Duty, and now available in prose form, John French’s Grey Angel takes place on Caliban and sees Garviel Loken and Iacton Cruze infiltrating the Dark Angels’ fortress of Aldurukh. Sent by Malcador to determine the loyalty of Luther and his men, Loken has let himself be captured in order to engineer a meeting with Luther, while Cruze continues to make his way deeper into the fortress in search of answers.
The third and final part of Voices of Fate (collected together in Ahriman: Exodus), and the last of the accompanying short stories in the Ahriman series, King of Ashes sees John French take a look through the eyes of Magnus the Red, Primarch of the Thousand Sons and father to Ahriman. He relives his first steps into the warp and the first fateful meeting with the two powers that will shape his life, and he also recalls the moment of Ahriman’s failure, the fateful results of the Rubric and the damage done to his sons. The parallels are clear, he sees his own pride reflected in Ahriman, his own flaws inherited by his greatest son.
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Hand of Dust, the second in John French’s Voices of Fate arc (collected together in Ahriman: Exodus), sits between the novels Sorcerer and Unchanged in the wider Ahriman series and sees the Thousand Sons sorcerer in reflective mood. Standing among the ashes of his Legion on long-dead Prospero, he reflects on memories of events that have seen him on the path to what he believes will be redemption. His first, horrifying glimpse of the flesh change, the moments immediately after his banishment at the hands of his father Magnus, these are the memories that he returns to before he bends his will to the next great stage in his plans.
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