What to say about Born of Flame by Nick Kyme. This book serves as a collection for all of the novellas and short stories about the Salamanders as well as one final short novel. It’s a mixed bag, to say the least. It doesn’t help that a lot of this is out of chronological order with the current plot of the Horus Heresy, and at least one of the short stories was already published in an earlier collection. I say at least one, because only one struck my memory chords. If the others were also previously published, well, I guess that says a lot about them, doesn’t it?
Let’s get down to business so I can move on to possibly the next disappointment in this series. I’m not bitter. You are.
The first novella, Promethean Sun, takes place during the Great Crusade. I’m not going to lie, I zoned out for this entire novella. I caught pieces while I was listening to the audiobook, but I had a hard time caring about anything that happened to the Salamanders or any other Legion BEFORE the heresy. Perhaps this novella was in a previous collection, which is where it should be for sure. If it was and I already read it, well, yikes. I could look up whether this is the case, but my level of caring is too low. I’m probably being way too harsh, but this close to the end, it’s hard to focus on anything that happened in the before times.
The second novella, Scorched Earth, takes place during Istvaan V. Again, this information would have been useful several books back. What’s incredibly sad about this novella is that it’s actually very good. It has incredible Spec Ops: The Line vibes, which is a very good thing. It hit me in all of the right emotional feels, and now that I think about it, that’s a game my eldest child should play. But like I said, it’s almost too little too late. Now that we’re almost at the Siege of Terra, I’m not half as interested in the horrors of surviving Istvaan V as I would have been before book 20.
Now Sons of the Forge was excellent. Extremely sad, but excellent. Black Library republished the short story “Artefacts” right before the novel, almost as a recap of “do you remember when Vulkan told the Forgemaster (now Forgefather) to destroy all of his inventions except for seven?” T’kell stored the seven artefacts in a vault on Prometheus. Now that Vulkan has been given to Mount Deathfire, T’kell means to return to Prometheus to extract the artefacts and return them to the seven regions of Nocturne. However, evidently Vulkan told Horus about his creations before Horus turned, and now Sons of Horus are also on their way to Prometheus to collect.
If that wasn’t enough, a group of Iron Hands are also in system, and they rescued the Salamanders from the Sons of Horus as they tried to escape back to their main ship. Fortunately, the artefacts are on the ship, and the ship was able to escape capture from the Sixteenth. And yet unfortunately, the Iron Hands that have “saved” the Salamanders are not…well. They don’t care about the Salamanders’ mission. They believe they have every right to claim the artefacts for themselves to win the war.
We saw how desperate and, well, sad the Iron Hands have become in Deathfire. The Salamanders are absolutely shocked at how much the Iron Hands have turned Ferrus Manus’ mantra of “the flesh is weak” to something quite literal. With this cold logic of the Omnissiah against the compassion of the Salamanders, none of this was going to end well.
Sons of the Forge is quite short as a standalone novel, but it deserved better treatment than cramming it into an anthology that mostly contains stories that take place years earlier. If the 50th book was just this novel, I would have had far kinder things to say. But c’est la vie.
Next one is not an anthology (I think), Slaves of Darkness by John French. According to the summary on Amazon, this one jumps back to where we are chronologically, with the Lion and Guilliman trying to make it to Terra, the Sons of Horus reeling from Leman Russ’ assassination attempt, and Perturabo and Lorgar trying to wrangle the other crazy Legions for the final assault. This sounds like it will be hilarious in a few ways.
Fifty books down, 4 to go.
Horus Hearsay is dedicated to Keri’s journey through the Horus Heresy saga. The chronicling of the Horus Heresy began over ten years ago, with currently 54 books in total, not counting The Primarchs series or the various short stories outside of the official anthologies. Horus Hearsay will only cover the main novels.
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