The Master of Mankind (Volume 41) (The Horus Heresy) [Paperback] Dembski-Bowden, Aaron

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To enhance the Primarchs beyond the capabilities that even genetic-engineering allowed, however, the Emperor also drew upon the powers of the Warp he had learned at Molech to enhance His creations, imbuing them with nearly godlike levels of charisma and capability, but also unintentionally making them susceptible to corruption by the entities of the Warp. In many ways, the depiction of the Emperor and his Custodians here is very much akin to Angron and the World Eaters in Betrayer. The primarchs were sucked into the Warp through the will of the Chaos Gods while still in their gestation capsules and scattered across the Human-inhabited worlds of the galaxy. While the book's structure is as dynamic, varied and chaotic (please, that's not a pun) as past books, it manages to seem somewhat disjointed by comparison.

Now the greatest threats to mankind’s existence are using the webway to besiege Terra, and humanity faces utter annihilation. Metabolic collapse leading to rapid death was not uncommon, and many Thunder Warriors were also prone to mental instability and even psychosis as they aged. But to make His dream of reuniting all of Humanity within a single galaxy-spanning empire possible, the Emperor knew that He would have to make some difficult, even immoral decisions. The Emperor wanted answers and he didn't have time to deal with Land spending too much time focusing on "Why the hell does my omnissiah feel emotion! Really, there's an entire section of the book where they're examining Angron's body (while he's unconscious) and he decides he's going to just leave the Butcher's Nails in there to give him another warrior, and permit the War Hounds to have them so they'll be a more effective bloodthirsty force.For example, The Emperor cites the Crusades as one of the reasons religion is evil, as if there wouldn't be crusades without religion, even though he's literally just about to launch THE GREAT CRUSADE. The foul Warp entities that would become the four Great Powers of Chaos had not yet fully formed when the Emperor was born on Old Earth during prehistoric times before even the Age of Terra, somewhere in ancient central Anatolia (modern Turkey) in the 8 th Millennium B. If only one side has ever been winning, without anything ever stopping or coming close to halting it, what's the point in getting invested in it?

In the former's case, there's still enough hope that humanity's old foe might be beaten, while the latter was helped by its genre conventions and without the need for an ongoing saga. It's only with the character dynamics and personal drama that serious shocks tend to arise, and where the books are definitely strongest. For example, the Emperor, in this book, refers to the primarchs almost exclusively by their numbers. The decision to keep and deploy Angron looks stupid from a purely logical point of view, but then, there is no explanation why the Emperor would keep Angron around, unless it was out of paternal affection. Even the likes of Battlestar Galactica, a series about survival when all hope was lost, avoided saying "The Cylons will lose in the long run" as it would rob all investment from the viewer.The problem is that, like there, he took it to a point where the story outright ignores many of their strengths and failed to ever balance out this problem, meaning we're left with a very singular, very narrow, depiction of a force who are just outright failures within the setting. If you are looking for Black Library fiction that breaks the mould of hulking warriors in impossibly oversized armour, over the top military battles against nightmarish, 80s horror movie adversaries, and abject nihilism at every corner, you will be disappointed. This is best seen throughout the climactic battle, and no matter the scale of the engagement, every shot, punch or stab carries with it a sheer weight and impact few books can match. With the final abatement of the Warp Storms caused by the birth-pangs of the Chaos God Slaanesh and ended by the Fall of the Aeldari, the Emperor finally began the Great Crusade in ca. In these ancient days, all the shamans of Earth gathered in a grand conclave to decide what must be done to stave off the day when they had all been consumed by the Warp.

It could be down to personal opinion of course, but most accounts of the tale cite it as a story heavily criticizing the Emperor's edict. While Horus' rebellion burns across the galaxy, a very different kind of war rages beneath the Imperial Palace. We would not have Magnus using sorcery to contact him because there wouldn't have been the same level of trust from the Emperor to assume that Magnus wouldn't use sorcery (and even if that still happened, the Emperor wouldn't have the trust to assume that everything was still fine with Horus). The sad thing is that most of the stuff you bring up where the Emperor did regard the primarchs as his sons, it skips entirely.

He's less the God here than he is the man, albeit a powerful one and ever the master architect of humanity's future. It is wonderfully crafted, brilliantly atmospheric and with a great conversation, yet it has the simple problem of making little to no sense in the grand scheme of things.

The argument is only occurring between a few people on Bolter and Chainsword, but the gist is that there are fans who believe that the entire 40k setting is all about a nihilistic struggle against Chaos' inevitable victory. To start with the positive points, as expected the story has a very narrow and concise focus placed upon the war in the Webway. There was some of this in The First Heretic, with the Custodes observers, who were kind of blinded to what was going on, in part because of their presumed superiority to the Astartes and even the primarchs (or at least one so pathetic as pre-Chaos Lorgar).I particularly like how to everyone in the throne room, Magnus appeared as a insanity inducing monster of pure horror, killing many of the mortals around him with his mere presence. I don't want to ruin the scene itself, but it really starts to hammer home the idea that the Emperor is not a "good" man. I mean, sticking with the former for a moment, he speaks with Arkhan Land about the Butcher's Nails, identifies them, and confirms they were one of the technologies forbidden on Mars. He had already purged ancient Terra of all its ancient religions and superstitious beliefs by the time the Great Crusade began, even going so far as to personally witness the destruction of the final church on Terra's ancient soil after engaging its resident holy man, Uriah Olathaire, in a battle of ideas, wit and dogma.