False Gods Review

False Gods review by Mr. M. R. Churchill

Graham McNeill had a lot to live up to with this book, the successor to Dan Abnett's superb Horus Rising, which was widely acclaimed as one of the best Warhammer 40,000 novels that the Black Library has produced. In False Gods, McNeill continues the story of Captain Loken and the Sons of Horus, the elite superhuman Space Marines that are destined to fall under the corrupting influence of the dark gods of Chaos. So, is it any good?

Emphatically `Yes'. Though all Warhammer 40,000 fans will be well aware of the tragic fate of the angelic Primarch Horus, there is a grim fascination in following his downfall and I found it very difficult to put this book down. Unusually for a Black Library book (the publisher is known for its tendency to deal out mass bombardments of death and destruction from the word `Go'), there's a good deal of build-up before the first confrontation takes place. And - without wishing to spoil the moment - what a confrontation it turns out to be!

In many ways, this book was what I expected Horus Rising to be. Much of the story is told from Horus' point of view, whereas the previous book relegated his magisterial presence to the background. In False Gods we follow Horus both physically and metaphysically through his struggles with powers divine and diabolical. I am sure that most Warhammer 40,000 fans will prefer this direct approach to telling Horus' story, but it does have its flaws. The divine ineffability that had previously veiled the godlike Primarchs is fast wearing thin as the Horus Heresy series continues. And there's the rub - it's unavoidable that the more familiar we become with these fantastic beings, the more mundane they seem. The Primarch Fulgrim is sadly wasted in this instalment, although McNeill clearly revels in the chapter featuring the animalistic Angron, a wonderfully wild and atavistic monster. The penmanship of the gritty Scot also transfers well to characters like the wrath-fuelled Abaddon, and the Space Marines as a whole feel like a far more brutal brotherhood than before.

Although McNeill lacks some of Abnett's facility for conveying the rich splendour of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and his writing is somewhat less elegant, for the most part you would not notice that this is a different author. Unfortunately, the iterator Kyril Sindermann is used mainly for exposition rather than philosophy, and First Chaplain Erebus' scheming is thunderously obvious, but I'm picking holes here in what is essentially a sound and gripping tale. Above all else, McNeill writes Space Marine stories well, and False Gods is no exception. The time has come to return to the worship of the old gods. You know it makes sense.

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