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by Gav Thorpe, CD/Audiobook £10:00 read by Toby Longworth, Approx 75 minutes long.

Some non hidden spoilers ahead :

This is the latest release in the Horus Heresy series and it deals with the Raven's Guard legion in the aftermath of the dropsite massacre. Corax is one of the main characters involved and much of the tale is told from his perspective. The rest of the tale largely features a commander in the Imperial Army who has fought alongside the Raven Guard before and is currently stationed on "Deliverance" -- which is, of course, the homeworld of the Raven Guard.

This man -- one Colonel Valerius -- has been having the same dream, involving blood and fire and screaming ravens, for about 7 days now. Which is, handily enough, about when Corax, his legion and the others were to engage Horus and his fellow traitors at Isstvaan. The scenes with him deal largely with trying to understand what he has been seeing and trying to convince some of the remaining Astartes that something has gone horribly wrong and they need to go and investigate. Of course in this more secular Imperium one random bloke saying he's had bad dreams isn't really seen as much of a reason to do anything, let alone disobey the direct order of a Primarch.


The scenes with him seem plausible enough -- for 40K anyway -- with him seeming to fit the general style and form of the Imperial army of this era compared to what we've seen in previous novels, and he has some good scenes when he's confronting the remaining Astartes who have been ordered to stay and are, plausibly enough, suspicious of the motivations of these mere mortals, wondering if they perhaps are also traitors who wish to flee and join with Horus.

The scenes on Isstvaan are the meat and drink of the story however. We open with Corax seeming to have a flashback or memory of his creation, with him in his incubation tank back on Terra prior to the scattering of the Primarchs. He then steps out of the crashed Thunderhawk and we discover that, of course, he survived the massive explosions and betrayal we saw at the end of Fulgrim but has been injured.
We follow him as he leads the shattered remnants of his legion in a guerrilla style war against the traitors who are searching for them after the battle. We get several scenes where Corax himself gets involved in the fighting and I found these immensely satisfying as he see... well.. hear..a Primarch really let loose. And suitably deadly he is too. Killing marines with punches and snapping their necks and backs , gunning them down or punching krak grenades into their chests. All in all he kicks much ass.

Aside from the fight scenes we get more of the background revealed. Including the number of Raven Guard lost in the massacre, Corax's thoughts about some of his fellow Primarchs, a few scant details about his life prior to the Emperor and a few hints about the nature of the Emperor himself which mesh with some of the ideas mentioned in Legion IMO. In a nice touch for the long term fans we learn that one of Corax's abilities is some form of 9presumably) psychic power that lets him cloud the minds of men.. a bit like The Shadow it seemed to me. Effectively this means that he can turn invisible and simply walk past people if he so wants. This of course is a reference to some of the fluff regarding the Primarchs in the 2nd edition of 40K and seems very apt and fitting to me. It also, I suppose, doesn't rule out or preclude any of the more outlandish theories and ideas that 40K fandom has come up with over the years.

We also discover that, according to Corax anyway, no Primarch save Horus and, perhaps, Sanguinius stands a chance in combat against Angron. Indeed when it seems that he will have to confront his brother Corax seems sure that he is going to die. It's the little bits like this that appeal to me about the HH series in general. We also get the World Eaters starting to refuse to wash the blood of their foes -- their fallen Astartes brothers in this case -- off of their armour, so their white and blue heraldry is starting to be dyed blood red. A nice little nod towards that legions descent into chaos worship and damnation.

The voice acting is generally well done and, thankfully, no one has an accent that is too ridiculous or implausible. We also get some sound affects included, mainly, I believe, from the dawn of war series of computer games. Weapons firing, explosions and the like. This are fairly low key and add to the atmosphere I guess, however that isn't quite how I imagine a boltgun to sound when it fires, and it fails slightly as generally we're supposed to hearing an epic clash between thousands of warriors, not a small quick skirmish or five a side battle. But I guess it would be impractical and perhaps not even desirable to actually produce larger sound affects as it would detract from the spoken words.

Overall I was very impressed. I've got all the audiobooks GW/BL have released so far, but that's pretty much my only experience of the genre... aside from an old "read along with" 7" single version of "The Empire Strikes Back" when I was a bairn. To this day the sound of R2D2 beeping makes me want to turn a page. The story is good and it's nice to see the RG get a bit more exposure, and it is cool to get the Primarch's demonstrating a bit more why they are such legendary figures in the 40K setting. I gather Mr. Thorpe has said he'd be more than happy to write further RG stuff in the HH series, and of the strength of this I'd be very happy for him to do so.

How did we miss this excellent review/write up about one of the best Marine Legions out there?

How?

Shame on all of us...

But hey, thanks reds8n!

I cannot wait to hear (though I'd have preferred to have read!) this one!

Sounds like something that would be prefect to listen to while painting then

Not a bad idea, especially as I've got 2000 points of Marines to paint up by the 2nd week in May!

Still deciding on Alpha Legion or Raven Guard too!

One thing that struck me while listening to it: Corax is bloody huge! I know that most of the primarchs are meant to be larger than an Astartes, but the fact that Corax is holding a heavy bolter in one hand like it was nothing really hit home for me, more so than any other depiction so far.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. It'd be nice to see it in prose form, but thats just the bibliophile in me talking.

Dragonlover

Alpharius wrote:Not a bad idea, especially as I've got 2000 points of Marines to paint up by the 2nd week in May!

Still deciding on Alpha Legion or Raven Guard too!

Alpha Legion DISGUISED as Raven Guard!

Win/ bloody win, Alpharius!

I suppose I *could* do up a few Alpha Legion as Raven Guard, or vice versa...

The voice acting is generally well done and, thankfully, no one has an accent that is too ridiculous or implausible.

Thank god for that.
I still remember the voice in the dawn of war game heard in the cut scenes. It made me ashamed of playing space marines when I heard it.

I just listened to it. I
T WAS AMAZING!!!!!!
I recemend everybody get any way they can it was really good, Toby Longworth has a great voice for this kind of thing.
btw Corax power whip FTW

Yeah
Listening to it now...

I enjoyed this immensely. The descriptions were really vivid and it was fun imagining the scenes in my head.

Wonder if BL will ever get into motion comics to tell their stories. GW has plenty of great artists.(Random Thought)

Although this did make me hungry for some Salamanders HH goodness, to find out if they broke out or were killed to a man, as I seemed to gather from this Audiobook. I'll have to listen again later.