Galaxy in Flames (The Horus Heresy): No. 3

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Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor's Children, leads his warriors into battle against a vile alien foe, unaware of the darker forces that have already set their sights upon the Imperium of Man. Every minute you keep the traitors here is another minute for the Emperor to bring the Warmaster to justice. This was a shame as I had gotten to like the central characters and the dilemmas they had been facing but the book significantly improves after the first half dozen chapters.

If you are curious about the sprawling The Horus Heresy® series but aren't ready to commit to reading 50+ books of OTT splatterpunk and corny jarhead machismo, this is a good place to stop. However, this book is certainly a recommended read, but only after reading the first two in the series, "Horus Rising" and "False Gods". The following information is not to be regarded as officially sanctioned and/ or is not written from an in-universe point of view. Not long after, the legion was renamed The Sons of Horus and an influx of cthonian recruits swelled the legions ranks.

Loken and Torgaddon (my favorites) weren't really a big part of the story like in the previous books and there was none of the funny banter between the two of them. Horus and Abaddon take a decent step away from cackling villains like they were in “False Gods,” but the political intrigue of Horus is gone.

This doesn’t make the book bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it takes away from what could be. There is such an intriguing fear of religion, the supernatural, and sorcery in the first two books, and the switch to embrace it by the betrayers is surprising (but no less dramatic).However over the course of the three books things start to change, and I was quite impressed that other points of view on the topic appeared. I didn’t love it like I did A Thousand Sons, Fulgrim, Flight of the Eisenstein, or First Heretic, but for a mandatory to read novel to understand the Heresy it was still pretty good. He is supposed to be an unbelievable killing machine, a juggernaut of devastation, and yet some of the Luna Wolves manage to drive him off - I would have liked to read about the way they achieved this against the most warlike of the Primarchs. This novel does its job best focusing on the ground forces of space marines fighting treachery, and that’s what a lot of us are showing up for. He is pursued by members of his own legion who are part of the betrayal and in desperation puts himself at the mercy of Nathaniel Garro, who is excluded from the assault force and relegated to commanding the frigate Eisenstein due to his injuries.