I honestly did not expect the most artistically impressive book I read this year to be a 40k one, yet here we are. Now, Dan Abnett has been kind of the father of the language of the Imperium for decades at this point, going all the way to the Eisenhorn novels where he introduced a lot of the strange-but-familiar terms that have come to define the Imperial side of the setting since then.

So all we had to do was make it all work, make it coherent, make it fit together, fill in those gaps, and do justice to the well-known sections. You can’t let readers down by changing things, or by not giving them what they quite rightly expect to see. But readers also want to be surprised and to learn things they didn’t know. That’s a lot of hours spent planning, debating, arguing, inventing… I suppose what I’m saying is that we all knew it was a major project that would take years to complete, and we were all determined to stay the course and get it done. On the other hand, it seems genuinely unreal to finally be reaching the end. Ollianius Pius knows Enuncia and has the toughness to sustain its power more than a few seconds. That is how Olly weakens Horus enough for Neoth to finish him off Continue or begin having hallucinations (seeing or speaking to people who aren't present or who have died)The person on the Throne is defenseless so a single Daemon can destroy the throne and give Horus his victory Unfortunately, the Oll Persson subplot is decaying in quality, mainly due to John Grammaticus' pestiferous presence.

The walls have fallen, the gates are breached, and the defenders are slain. It is the end and the death. After seven brutal years of civil war, the Warmaster stands on the verge of victory. Horus Lupercal, once beloved son, has come to murder his father.Horus has a moment of clarity, frees himself from Chaos’ influence, and uses the power of Chaos to restore the material universe around earth Ahriman alone can kill a dozen Custodes without breaking a sweat. The Loyalists will need a lot of Librarians to delay him. Same with Typhus.

My issue with the Siege has always been bloat. Erda is a prime example: did we need another Perpetual, especially such a prominent one, parachuted into the narrative? Do we need all these characters flouncing about on all their individual sub-plots, still dangling as we move towards the sharp end? My praise of Echoes is that it's an incredibly tightly-focused book. It is, in short, a fantastic addition to the ethereal concept of what the Siege series should have been. The construction of the book is killer. It drives home its core concepts, it's sharply-edited, it is focused on giving the audience a brutal contrast and comparison of two Legions and their Primarchs at the very end of the war. In a perfect universe, that it ends as the shields go down, is genuinely a perfect place to end. We don't need to know how, or why, only that the final assault is about to happen, the last, desperate gambit for the last, final book of the series. In a perfect universe, every Siege book would have been like this, sharpening the narrative edge down to a singular point, giving us a whole book that could deal solely with the Vengeful Spirit. I think a list of unresolved plot threads would be very beneficial so we can have a meaningful discussion on where we expect book 8 to lead. If we can get a comprehensive list together then I will update the original post to include them. That at this point Horus has devolved into a delusional, almost mindless husk doesn't help the series either. Horus was such an effective antagonist because he was brilliant, while his fall is handled badly in the Heresy, he was supposed to be an individual that initially raised valid concerns and was pushed over the edge by the involvement of Chaos.Interesting that GW is taking inspiration from young adult novel movie adaptations. Splitting it in two is strange. Horus wins, but Vulcan uses his doomsday device to destroy all traitorous and loyal forces around earth. Only Vulcan survives. Humanity fractures into fiefdoms. Guilliman sets up a successful mini-empire. Basilio Fo creates a Genevirus that Olly injects Horus with temporarily severing his connection to the Gods The Emperor, a shining beacon of hope to many, an unscrupulous tyrant to others, must die. The lives of uncountable numbers have been extinguished and even primarchs, once thought immortal, have been laid low. The Emperor's dream lies in tatters, but there remains a sliver of hope.