Episode 1: Horus Heresy | Grim Dark Book Club
Channel: Zak Lettercast
Date: 14/05/2021

This podcast is for anyone passionate about the grimdark fiction genre! From the Horus Heresy to Winds of Winter, we’re going to dissect it all! Expect a new post each month that dissects and reviews a new book. The current project? Read every book in the Horus Heresy series! Don’t worry, for those of you who don’t like 40k, I promise to sprinkle in books from other fandoms. Please, make suggestions! Subscribers are automatically entered in a drawing to win a free book!
Hi there! My name is Ivo Lettercast, and welcome to my podcast, Grim Dark Book Club! This podcast is for anyone passionate about the grimdark fiction genre! From the Horus Heresy to Winds of Winter (when it does finally come out), we’re going to dissect them all! Expect a new post each month that dissects and reviews a new book. My current project? Read every book in the Horus Heresy series! Don’t worry, for those of you who don’t like 40k, I promise to sprinkle in plenty of books from other fandoms. I really want to review stories that we all enjoy, so please, if you have suggestions, make them! Subscribers are automatically entered in a drawing to win a free book!

Title: Today we’re actually reviewing the first three books in the Horus Heresy, which are Horus Rising, False Gods, and Galaxy in Flames. I’m doing all three together because I think they actually work better as a single book than as three separate ones, and I’ll get into that a little bit later.

Author: So, each of these books was actually written by a different author. We have, in order, Dan Abnett, Graham McNeill, and Ben Counter, and their writing styles are actually pretty distinctive when you read them one after the other, but each of these guys end up returning to write more stories in the Horus Heresy, so their voices end up carrying through pretty far into the whole book series.

Genre: The entire Horus Heresy series is classified as Grim Dark, even though, in my opinion, you wouldn’t exactly know it until the second or third book in if you didn’t know anything about Warhammer when you started reading it.

Audience: That said, we all know that Black Library only really started taking off in the past 15 years or so, so it can be assumed the audience these stories were initially meant for was people who already knew about Warhammer and really just wanted to get deeper into the lore. Obviously, that’s changed. GWS wants to get more people excited about their universe, and Black Library is an excellent means to reach people like me who are less interested in playing the game, and more interested in reading the stories of the people who exist within the 40k and AoS universes. All of that in mind, these first three books in the Horus Heresy series are geared toward adults who enjoy reading science fiction and grim dark fiction with a militaristic theme, but especially toward those who want to find out what exactly happened in pre-40k times that lead things to be the way they are now in the 41st millenium.

My rating: 
Overall, I give the first 3 books a 6.3/10. The first book, Horus Rising, was a 3/10, the second, False Gods, was a 5/10, and the third, Galaxy in Flames, was a 9/10.
Summary of the book: Alright, so here comes the summary of all three books. It’s going to be long, and I’ll be using some quotes from from https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/ for these, which means there will be spoilers. If you don’t want spoilers, turn this podcast off now! You have 10 seconds before I start.

Alright, here we go. In book one we are introduced to several characters. We meet 3 Primarchs: Horus, Rogal Dorn, and Sanguinius. We meet several Luna Wolves, including Garviel Loken, the Mournival, and Maloghurst. There are some Emperor’s Children and people from a few other legions, and some Remembrancers.

The main character of these books is technically Garviel Loken, but by the end of it the focus includes Remembrancers Kyril Sindermann, Euphrati Keeler, and Mersadie Oliton as well. A lot happens in this book, but it boils down to Loken getting accepted into Horus’ inner circle, discovering the existence of lodges in the Astartes ranks, learning about the Warp, and attempting come to terms with the nuances of it all while maintaining his “humanity,” which everyone seems to praise him for in this book. We meet the megarachnids, a xenos species, and the interex, humans, which the Astartes inevitably wipe out. We also get the first hints of the cult forming based around the Lectitio Devinitatus. The Luna Wolves change their names to the Sons of Horus, a galaxy-shaking semi-sentient weapon (called the Anathame) is stolen from the Interex, and the Vengeful Spirit moves on toward the moon, Davin.

Full transcript available upon request.