Emperor’s Children – The Unseen Library

Publisher: Black Library (Audiobook – 22 October 2024)

Series: Warhammer: The Horus Heresy

Length: 6 hours and 26 minutes

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

2024 was a great year for Warhammer fiction, especially as the Black Library released a ton of awesome books across the various sub-series and franchises, including The Horus Heresy series, which serves as a major prequel to the Warhammer 40,000 books I usually look at. One of the last releases of the year was The Horus Heresy character novel, Eidolon: The Auric Hammer. Written by Marc Collins, who previously impressed me with his Warhammer Crime novel, Grim Repast, Eidolon: The Auric Hammer was a fast-paced and compelling read that dove into the twisted mind of an ambitious traitor as he travels to the final battle of the great war.

Plot Synopsis:

A Horus Heresy Novel

Lord Commander Primus Eidolon has claimed many titles along the annals of his infamy. He is the Exemplar and the Risen, the Soul-Severed, and the Auric Hammer. Now, fallen far from his primarch’s grace, he carves a path to Terra, where the culmination of Horus’ grand heresy awaits.

READ IT BECAUSE

Eidolon has been a key figure of the Emperor’s Children Legion from the beginning. Now, on the eve of the Siege of Terra, he’s fallen far from grace and is facing a long overdue reckoning for his many misdeeds during the Horus Heresy. Can he come to terms with his tainted legacy?

THE STORY

Coaxed and goaded by the wiles of the warp – and an entity whose whispered truths stretch even his credulity – Eidolon finds himself stranded around the world of Tatricala, where the ghosts of his past haunt every fated step. Now he must choose which life he wants to lead… and how much of his soul he is willing to sacrifice for it.

If Eidolon cannot banish his daemons, then they will surely take him for their own.

Eidolon: The Auric Hammer was an excellent addition to the canon, and one that will really appeal to those readers who dove into the extended Horus Heresy series. Like many of the Horus Heresy character books, The Auric Hammer focuses on one of the interesting supporting characters in the larger franchise and provides a compelling story around them, while also diving into their past. In this case, Marc Collins tells a quick and entertaining story around Eidolon, one of the commanders of the now fallen Emperor’s Children legion, who has given in to the hedonism and worship of Slaanesh, the Chaos God of pleasure and obsession.

Collins does a great job effectively introducing the character of Eidolon and thrusting readers into his personal madness. I must admit that I haven’t read any of the other Horus Heresy novels before, so I wasn’t especially familiar with the character of Eidolon, which did slightly reduce my appreciation for this book. However, readers with even moderate knowledge of Warhammer 40,000 lore and the Horus Heresy can easily follow along with Collin’s quick story without too much difficulty. Collins breaks this into a couple of fun parts, with a fight against daemons on the protagonist’s ship leading to an impromptu invasion of an isolated planet alongside “allies”. However, nothing goes to plan as Eidolon and his comrades find themselves best by the dark plots of a daemonic entity who desires to destroy him.

This last third of the book is probably the best, as Collins envisions a series of daemonic encounters that play in the ravaged psyches of the various Emperor’s Children characters. While I had a hard time connecting to some of the supporting cast members (Collins might have been better off with a more tightly focused narrative), it was interesting to see their various struggles, especially as it effectively showed how far their legion had fallen. Eidolon’s personal inner struggle was the strongest part of the book, especially as Collins dove into his many issues, including his ambition, resentments and the anger he has with the various father figures in his life. The protagonist comes out of this book stronger, and I particularly loved the reveal about who was behind everything at the end of the novel. The confrontation that Eidolon had with this figure was extremely entertaining, and you come away appreciating just how suicidally stubborn Eidolon can be.

As is my habit with most Warhammer fiction, I chose to check out The Auric Hammer on audiobook, mainly because it was voiced by one of my favourite audiobook narrators, Toby Longworth. A very effective narrator, Longworth perfectly captures the various elaborately dark characters featured with The Auric Hammer, and I love how he brings readers into the outrageous and grim Warhammer universe. Longworth’s already impressive voice is enhanced in various sequences by cool sound effects that help to showcase the various daemonic creatures that the protagonist encounters. These effects and Longworth’s fantastic voicework really make you appreciate the eldritch power and inherent evilness the various figures they represented, and I felt it did wonders on bringing me further into the narrative. Combine that with the excellent way in which Longworth captures the intense dark emotions of Eidolon, including his frustration and disgust at his Primarch’s actions and abandonment of him, and this proves to be an outstanding and addictive audiobook. Featuring a relatively short runtime of just under six and a half hours, The Auric Hammer is an easy audiobook to get through quickly, and I had a lot of fun knocking it off in a couple of enjoyable sessions.

Overall, Eidolon: The Auric Hammer was an awesome and exciting Warhammer audiobook from Marc Collins that is worth checking out. Cleverly focusing on an intriguing figure in the canon while also expanding on the massive Horus Heresy series, The Auric Hammer really grabbed my attention, and I had a great time getting through it. An excellent Warhammer book to check out, especially if you have been enjoying the other Horus Heresy books.

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Publisher: Black Library (Audiobook – 6 April 2024)

Series: Warhammer 40,000: Renegades – Book Two

Length: 14 hours and 17 minutes

My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

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Prepare to break the bounds of sensation, desire and treachery in the amazing Warhammer 40,000 novel, Lord of Excess by Rich McCormick, the second book in the fantastic Renegades series.

I have been having a great time with the huge variety of unique and elaborate Warhammer 40,000 books coming out in recent years, and it is always fun to see the impressive reads the franchise is producing. One of the things I particularly enjoy about the Warhammer 40,000 fiction machine is the way in which it gives new authors the chance to shine, with several talented authors writing their very first book as part of the Warhammer canon. I have already talked about one particularly good Warhammer 40,000 debut this year with Deathworlder by Victoria Hayward, but another incredible first novel I had the great pleasure of reading was Lord of Excess by new author Rich McCormick.

Lord of Excess was an exceptional book that was released as part of the loosely connected Renegades series that looks at a different band of traitor Space Marines as they make their dark way through the universe. For example, the first Renegades book, Harrowmaster by Mike Brooks, looked at the nefarious Alpha Legion, and I am sure that future entries will dive into the other traitor legions with some fun stories. Lord of Excess is the second Renegades book, and it provides the reader with an outstanding and unique story focussed on the ultimate beings of excess, the Emperor’s Children.

At the dawn of the Imperium, the Emperor’s Children were the master of mankind’s most loyal and revered Space Marine Legions, dedicated to the fight for humanity while seeking perfection in all things. However, during the tumultuous events of the Horus Heresy, the Emperor’s Children followed their Primarch into treachery, and turned against their Emperor, falling into the service of the ruinous powers of Chaos.

Now, millennia later, the Emperor’s Children are a twisted remnant of their former glory. Scattered into smaller warbands, the Emperor’s Children now only seek pleasure and sensation in hedonistic service to the Chaos God Slaanesh, the lord of obsession and excess. One such band is the feared and infamous group known as the Adored. Lead by the tainted Space Marine Xantine, the Adored has ravaged the galaxy for centuries, taking slaves and bringing untold torment, but Xantine has never found what he truly desires, until now.

Suddenly dropped out of the Warp, the Adored find themselves in orbit about the isolated planet of Serrine. A wealthy and corrupt planet of the Imperium, Serrine has been long cut off from the rest of humanity due to corrupted currents of the Warp. Sensing the opportunity to carve out a place for himself, Xantine decides to take control of Serrine, and turn it into the perfect society, dedicated to loving him. However, making true perfection is an impossible task, and Xantine soon finds his rule challenged by both the population of Serrine and those closest to him. Worse, there are darker forces at work within the bowels of Serrine, and soon the world will be engulfed in perfect destruction.

Lord of Excess was an exceptional and impressive Warhammer 40,000 novel that achieved so very much for the reader. Featuring a complex and compelling tale of betrayal, deceit and corruption, loaded with fun characters and larger-than-life personalities, Lord of Excess was an entertaining and elaborate read from the very start, and I could not get enough of it.

I really loved the story contained with Lord of Excess, and I find it hard to believe that this was McCormick’s very first novel. The plot of Lord of Excess is an elaborate and continuous tale of woe and failed ambition as it charts main character, Xantine of the Emperor’s Children, as he attempts to bring perfection to the world of Serrine. Starting off by introducing Xantine and his renegade Space Marines, you are soon shown the world of Serrine, an isolated and mismanaged Hiveworld with plenty of its own problems, including an uprising from a genestealer cult. Taking advantage of these chaotic events, an obsessive Xantine leads his mostly apathetic Emperor’s Children to the planet’s surface, telling the locals they are there to save them. This proves to be an intriguing start, as the reader is shown a battle between two very different group of villains, which is essentially the equivalent of the cenobites from Hellraiser facing off against xenomorphs from Alien (with both sides using a lot of purple). This fight against the genestealers is a fun first part of the book, and I honestly thought that McCormick was going to stretch that conflict out for the entirety of Lord of Excess. However, the author instead chooses to cleverly end this conflict about a third of the way through the book, and the rest of the novel goes in some very interesting directions.

Following this introduction, Lord of Excess than goes through a series of time skips, as you follow the unlucky course of Serrine under the “benevolent” rule of the Emperor’s Children. Each new version of Serrine you see is somehow worse the previous version, and it proves extremely entertaining to watch the inherent downsides of the protagonist’s twisted version of perfection. The plot cleverly rotates between the machinations of Xantine and his Adored as they fight over the course of their warband, and several intriguing human inhabitants of Serrine, whose reaction to the fate of their planet varies across the emotional spectrum. The plot goes in some very interesting and entertaining directions, as Xantine finds himself continuously beset by betrayal, mostly of his own making, while many others are driven to extreme lengths by Xantine’s actions, and other malign foes hiding beneath Serrine’s surface. Things continuously get darker and darker as the plot continues, leading up to a brutal and amusing conclusion. I loved the various elaborate twists and captivating revelations that McCormick cleverly worked into the plot, and his accompanying character work really helps to sell it. The book ends on a fantastic note, with devilish and deserved endings for many members of the cast, and the ultimate fates of everyone really reminds you that Lord of Excess is a grimdark book focussing on deranged villains.

McCormick really showcased his effective and powerful writing style in Lord of Excess, and I loved the elaborate and multifaceted book that he ended up creating. The fantastic story has so many deep elements to it, and it transcends the typical action-focused Warhammer fiction by providing nuanced portrayals of society, human nature, and the impossible search for perfection. That’s not to say that there isn’t action in Lord of Excess, as McCormick loads the book with multiple over-the-top and entertaining fight sequences that prove hard not to love. However, he also balances these battles with intriguing character work, long-running elaborate story elements, and complex depictions of intriguing Warhammer features. The way in which the author cleverly shifts the narrative around several fantastic characters works to create a fun and layered story with many moving parts to it. I also love how descriptive and visual McCormick got at times. The author clearly had fun describing the many excesses and mutations of the Adored, and you really got a clear and vivid sense of the twisted nature of the beings involved. This ended up being such an outstanding read, and McCormick did such a great job bringing his elaborate story to life in the absolute best way.

I felt that Lord of Excess was a pretty awesome Warhammer 40,000 novel, that will really appeal to a varied audience. Established Warhammer fans will love the fantastic depictions of the Emperor’s Children featured within this book, and I love how well McCormick captured the complexities of these renegade Space Marines and the depths to which they have sunk. While he doesn’t do a full deep dive into the history of the Emperor’s Children, McCormick provides some detailed flashbacks into their past, that Warhammer readers will appreciate, which also providing some good context for new readers. While this book did spend a lot of time examining the Emperor’s Children, it also featured its own unique and clever narrative, which really utilised the grimdark nature of the wider Warhammer setting to its advantage. Readers are gifted by a truly complex and intense read, and I felt that Lord of Excess is an amazing example of just how good a Warhammer 40,000 novel can be. This would be a pretty good entry point for new readers keen to check out the elaborate Warhammer 40,000 fictional universe, especially as you can get an amazing sense of the overall cruel, deadly and often ironic nature of this fantastic overarching setting.

Easily the key strengths of Lord of Excess were the elaborate, distinctive and damaged characters that McCormick centred his story around. There are some brilliant characters featured in this book, from ancient traitor Space Marines lost in their own obsessions, to the normal inhabitants of Serrine, whose lives are irrevocably turned upside down by the arrival of the Adored. These elaborate character arcs are very intriguing, and McCormick expertly features them throughout his story, ensuring that the reader becomes intrigued by the fates of these various figures. The most prominent character is the Adored leader, Xantine. An ambitious and twisted being, Xantine finds himself drawn to the world of Serrine and sees it as an opportunity to create a perfect world, much like the previous planets the Emperor’s Children called home. Xantine proves to be an intriguing central figure for the book, especially as you get drawn into his obsession and the disdain of his followers for his vision. Thanks to the machinations of the daemon S’janth, who shares Xantine’s body, you get some fascinating insights into this character’s mind, and you soon appreciate the depths of his determination to be perfect, which stems from his daddy issues and dark personal history. I loved seeing how the events of the book were driven with this figures love of perfection, and Xantine proved to be an excellent dark heart to this entire story.

In addition to Xantine, Lord of Excess features several other great characters, all of whom are damaged in fantastic and intriguing ways. This includes the various members of the Adored, each of whom has their own unique obsessions and focuses. McCormick really had fun when it came to these corrupted figures, and there are some delightfully over-the-top characters as a result. These other members of the Adored often come into conflict with Xantine, primarily due to their incompatible obsessions, and I loved the barbed interactions that followed, especially as Xantine both loves and hates his fellow renegades. While several of these characters stood out, the best one was probably Vavisk. Vavisk, a Noise Marine, is obsessed with finding the perfect sound, and often finds himself lost in his horrifying music. However, Vavisk is also Xantine’s closest friend, and the unique bond of brotherhood between these two figures, proves to be a key part of the book, especially as the potential for it to break is always there.

Other major characters include several inhabitants of Serrine who attempt to survive the actions of Xantine. Due to a creation myth, many people on Serrine initially see Xantine as a destined saviour, and the eventual revelation of his true nature leads to much heartache for them. These characters provide an outstanding alternative perspective to that of Xantine and the other Adored, and I loved seeing the various reactions to the evil that came to their planet. Key figures include the young man Arqat, whose rage at the injustices performed against him drives him to some dark places. The mysterious Cecily founds salvation and escape thanks to the patronage of Xantine, although her loyalty costs her deeply. While the foppish noble Pierod, seeks to take advantage of the arrival of the Adored, which has blistering ups and downs for him. I really enjoyed these three human characters, and their unique storylines, some of which were nearly as extensive as Xantine’s, helped to turn Lord of Excess into a particularly brilliant read as you get drawn into their various tales of woe and opportunity. While Pierod’s story was probably the most entertaining, due to his naked ambition and greed, you honestly connect to all three of them, and it proves fascinating to see where their encounters with the Adored takes them. McCormick writes some grim and fitting fates for all three of them, and the other humans of Serrine, and seeing the journey they take to get there, is so damn entertaining.

As with most Warhammer 40,000 novels I enjoy, I ended up grabbing Lord of Excess on audiobook, which is just the best way to appreciate a piece of Warhammer fiction. Coming in with a runtime of over 14 hours, the Lord of Excess audiobook is a decent length, but one you can get through quickly once you become caught up in the outstanding plot. I love how well this format highlighted the epic narrative featured with Lord of Excess, and you get a real sense of the plot’s chaotic delights, unnatural horrors, and devilish figures when they are read out to you. It helped that the Lord of Excess audiobook was helmed by one of the very best Warhammer 40,000 narrators, Richard Reed. Reed has been killing it in recent years with his work in Warhammer 40,000 fiction, including The Infinite and the Divine by Robert Rath, Ruin and Reign by Nate Crowley and Grim Repast by Marc Collins, all of which were greatly enhanced by his impressive voice work. His work in Lord of Excess is particularly awesome, as he once again produces an impressive range of unique voices to fit the big personalities of the plot. This includes multiple mutated and utterly corrupted Space Marines, and Reed provides very fitting voices for them, as well as the unlucky humans caught up in their machinations. The over-the-top story comes out so much better because of Reed’s compelling narration, and I love how effectively he captured the various insane figures. This amazing voice work turned the Lord of Excess audiobook into something very special, and I had an exceptional time getting through it.

Lord of Excess by Rich McCormick is an absolutely brilliant and amazing piece of Warhammer 40,000 fiction that I could not get enough of. Expertly combining elaborate elements of the Warhammer 40,000 canon with a complex narrative and darkly damaged characters, Lord of Excess was so much fun to read, and it proves impossible not to get caught up in this epic debut. This might be one of the smartest and most compelling pieces of Warhammer 40,000 fiction release so far in 2024. A truly outstanding Warhammer 40,000 book from a particularly amazing new author, Lord of Excess comes very highly recommended, and Rich McCormick is an author with big things in his future.

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