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This is my first forum post ever, so please bear with me if I make a mess of it.

I've begun reading the Horus Heresy novel series and I keep running into events or details that could do with some explanation from wiser people than I. I'm starting this thread so I have a place where I can ask the questions that I can't find answers for myself. Everybody is welcome to ask their own questions of course and I'd love to be of assistance myself.
For the sake of spoilers I'm currently reading Fulgrim and I'm approx. a hundred pages from finishing it. This is also what has promptes my first question.

Gabriel Santar. On page 389 Julius Kaesoron disembowels Santar with a pair of lightning claws "(...) his lifeblood flooding from his ruined body (...) but on page 413 he is alive and well bringing news from Dorn to Ferrus Manus. As far as I can tell NO mention is made of his miraculous recovery. Please help me understand!

You'll get used to these inconsistencies where marines survive evisceration, explosion, dissection, dismemberment, and having chainsaws shoved up them only to die from an innocuous laser or bolt round.

Actually, Santar is alive because of a very timely bionic implantation. It is explained a bit later in Chapter 21. I, too, was taken by surprise by the amazing survival of Santar, whom I thought for certain had died. It's amazingly weird that Graham McNeil would choose to put that information in such a location, away from where the question is raised. Not sure which page, since I bought the digital edition on iTunes. But it's the 12th paragraph in the Chapter.



40K novels, including the HH novels, are not known for maintaining a clear, exact canon. However I do expect a writer covering questions raised in his/her own novel in said novel. I mean, the stuffs about Alpha Legion, and the whole Fulgrim changes from being a peacock of a Primach to being a Daemon Possessed puppet to non-daemon possessed peacock Daemon Primarch cleary needs more than one novel; but some Iron Hand captain's near-miraculous survival from a single ordeal? We don't need more that one book for that.

Yeah I read on and it's on page 416. Wow that's really confusing. I gotta say 'Fulgrim' is a weirdly constructed read, the focus of the narrative is never quite where I need it to be to be totally immersed in the book.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But thank you so much for your responses, community FTW.

The narrative flow in Fulgrim is done for a reason. Abnett did it in Eisenhorn and if you've read one, the other will be easier.

It was written so that you lose track of time, making it more difficult for the reader to pinpoint the exact moment of a character's fall from grace.

 Shidank wrote:
The narrative flow in Fulgrim is done for a reason. Abnett did it in Eisenhorn and if you've read one, the other will be easier.

It was written so that you lose track of time, making it more difficult for the reader to pinpoint the exact moment of a character's fall from grace.

Or it's just a poor book, that's the side I come down on

You scoundrel! Oh well, to each their own.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
The narrative flow in Fulgrim is done for a reason. Abnett did it in Eisenhorn and if you've read one, the other will be easier.

It was written so that you lose track of time, making it more difficult for the reader to pinpoint the exact moment of a character's fall from grace.

Or it's just a poor book, that's the side I come down on

Fulgrim was a fairly good book, actually, with character development done well, story development making sense, great consistency, and pretty damn good character interactions. I loved how they did the build-up to the showdown between Lucius and Tarvitz, which was beautifully done. Personally, I'm looking forward to when they address this, since Tarvitz had access to a secret underground hangar which mysteriously NEVER gets mentioned in Fulgrim. I was seriously disappointed with the showdown between Solomon and Lucius, though seeing as how

 dusara217 wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
The narrative flow in Fulgrim is done for a reason. Abnett did it in Eisenhorn and if you've read one, the other will be easier.

It was written so that you lose track of time, making it more difficult for the reader to pinpoint the exact moment of a character's fall from grace.

Or it's just a poor book, that's the side I come down on

Fulgrim was a fairly good book, actually, with character development done well, story development making sense, great consistency, and pretty damn good character interactions. I loved how they did the build-up to the showdown between Lucius and Tarvitz, which was beautifully done. Personally, I'm looking forward to when they address this, since Tarvitz had access to a secret underground hangar which mysteriously NEVER gets mentioned in Fulgrim. I was seriously disappointed with the showdown between Solomon and Lucius, though seeing as how

Spoiler:

Demeter doesn't last five seconds before being torn to pieces, despite being one of the greatest warriors of the Emperor's Children and having bested at least a dozen of his brothers in combat mere moments before

I disagree, I think the character development, particularly of Fulgrim himself, was poor. And that's the main point of the book, so it's a failure in my eyes. He was meant to have this big tragic fall, but he started off as a dick, and just turned into a crazy dick who heard voices from a sword. Robbed the whole book of any sympathy or gravitas, in my opinion.

Yeah, I have to agree on that one. Maybe not that the entire book was a failure, but I never got to like Fulgrim. I had special difficulty with the dialogue between Captains of the Emperor's Children, instead of several philosofical discussions on the nature of perfection, we get some very stiff humor and reiterations of the organisation of the Legion and the function of the chain of command, over and over and over again.

They just remind each other of their duties constantly. I never got a feeling of true brotherhood between the Emperor's Children which made the splitting of the Legion far less tragic than the conflict in The Luna Wolves, for me.

I must confess with guilty pleasure that I love this conversation from the Novel.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 dusara217 wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:

 Shidank wrote:
The narrative flow in Fulgrim is done for a reason. Abnett did it in Eisenhorn and if you've read one, the other will be easier.

It was written so that you lose track of time, making it more difficult for the reader to pinpoint the exact moment of a character's fall from grace.

Or it's just a poor book, that's the side I come down on

Fulgrim was a fairly good book, actually, with character development done well, story development making sense, great consistency, and pretty damn good character interactions. I loved how they did the build-up to the showdown between Lucius and Tarvitz, which was beautifully done. Personally, I'm looking forward to when they address this, since Tarvitz had access to a secret underground hangar which mysteriously NEVER gets mentioned in Fulgrim. I was seriously disappointed with the showdown between Solomon and Lucius, though seeing as how

Spoiler:

Demeter doesn't last five seconds before being torn to pieces, despite being one of the greatest warriors of the Emperor's Children and having bested at least a dozen of his brothers in combat mere moments before

I disagree, I think the character development, particularly of Fulgrim himself, was poor. And that's the main point of the book, so it's a failure in my eyes. He was meant to have this big tragic fall, but he started off as a dick, and just turned into a crazy dick who heard voices from a sword. Robbed the whole book of any sympathy or gravitas, in my opinion.

Honestly, that kind of story-telling worked for Horus. Fulgrim was, from the beginning, a beast of a different nature. The way his story was told fit him. It was in a more impersonal way than Horus's because Fulgrim views himself from without. It's how we were told his story as a result.

I still disagree. It didn't work, but it is just opinion after all.

Although I dont think Horus' fall was written all that well either haha.

Your standards are too high! This is young adult level reading, after all.

 Shidank wrote:
Your standards are too high! This is young adult level reading, after all.

I don't think they are too high. Especially not mine, I enjoyed Vengeful Spirit, Angel Exterminatus and Unremembered Empire that generally people disliked from what I've seen. I think Horus fell too quickly, he had one dream where he knew he was being lied to yet that was all it took, and I didn't like the way Fulgrims fall was written. I don't see how that means my standards are too high. They're just different to yours.

I was teasing, but I do agree that Horus fell entirely too quick. The HH series began with a speed that halted VERY quickly and seemed to only exist for the sake of turning Horus within a few books.

Ah okay haha sorry. Yeah, it was like the pivotal point in the series and he just turned on a dime, and the reasoning was weird. I dunno how I'd have done it though.

 ImAGeek wrote:
Ah okay haha sorry. Yeah, it was like the pivotal point in the series and he just turned on a dime, and the reasoning was weird. I dunno how I'd have done it though.

I would have done it the same way it used to be, that Horus' soul was buried and overridden by the Chaos Gods. In the old William King write up when the Chaos Gods fled Horus' body to avoid the Emperor's attack, the real Horus returned and immediately wept when he realized all the things that had been done in his name.

 Orblivion wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
Ah okay haha sorry. Yeah, it was like the pivotal point in the series and he just turned on a dime, and the reasoning was weird. I dunno how I'd have done it though.

I would have done it the same way it used to be, that Horus' soul was buried and overridden by the Chaos Gods. In the old William King write up when the Chaos Gods fled Horus' body to avoid the Emperor's attack, the real Horus returned and immediately wept when he realized all the things that had been done in his name.

I just found that to be lazy narrative. It's bad story-telling and takes all the depth out of the character.

I wanted a longer transition from loyal son to mortal foe. It seemed to me that Horus was stabbed, fell asleep, and woke up a traitor. Too simple.

Maybe if GW and Black Library were imaginative enough to keep things grey and grey instead of light grey (Imperium) and super dark black (Chaos), they might have been able to make compelling believable and deep reasons for the Primarchs to fall. As it is right now, I'm not sure any Chaos primarch so far is truly embracing the cause of Chaos. Horus is doing it just for himself after a cop out reason for falling in the first place, Fulgrim had to be possessed and now his return of free will reeks of back pedalling, Angron is mostly doing it for his own anger rather than any loyalty to Khorne as far as I can tell, Mortarion doesn't care for Chaos at all and later on is blackmailed into it, Magnus was catch 22'd into it, Curze doesn't care for it, Alpharius betrays everybody, and even Lorgar still seems to have lots of doubt (such as when Angron became a Chaos Prince, which to a TRUE follower of Chaos should have been a joyous occassion. Instead Lorgar felt guilty and sorry for Angron for a moment, didn't he?).

(I'll leave out Perturabo because his fall to Chaos is still unfinished... I think. They've released a (short?) story recently about what happened to him since he was last seen going into the eye of Terror but I don't know the plot of it. Even in modern day 40k at best he's more like a punch-clock Chaos follower than a true believer, though)

Heaven forbid a primarch follow Chaos because they actually believed it was good for humanity... again probably in part because the way GW/BL is handling Chaos with so much of the negative emphasized and almost none of the positive, only a complete idiot would believe that in the first place.

 Shidank wrote:
I was teasing, but I do agree that Horus fell entirely too quick. The HH series began with a speed that halted VERY quickly and seemed to only exist for the sake of turning Horus within a few books.

Well, you have to imagine that when the original books were written, they had no idea how successful they would be. It needed a gripping opening to set the stage and get people hooked.

Once the cow started producing cash, the series quickly changed gears to milking it for all it is worth. But it couldn't have had a slow build-up. It needed to establish the setting hard and fast.

 ImAGeek wrote:
Ah okay haha sorry. Yeah, it was like the pivotal point in the series and he just turned on a dime, and the reasoning was weird. I dunno how I'd have done it though.

Same thing was said about Anakin joining the dark side, it just wasn't believable based on the character that we were first introduced to.

I think it would have been better if Erebus had introduced Horus to the dark gods bit by bit, like a resource to use for certain situations. I think the whole athame concept was a bit mary sue, if it were that easy then why not stab all the primarchs with similar weapons?
As Horus got more comfortable with the idea, closer relations would form with these entities - the true nature of the warp would be revealed, the Emperor knows but is keeping it from us sort of thing, look at the power you can have, librarians were banned in case they found out the truth about the emperor's lies and so on. Not one big event, but a slow shift in thinking, like someone turning into a drug addict, soon they can't live without it.

I think that they just failed to show how close to falling to Chaos Horus was before being stabbed with the anathame. It wasn't "you stabbed me lol I follow Chaos now", he was all but there already, it just wasn't portrayed very well. Pretty much exactly what Computron said it should be.