Horus Heresy : Nemesis

When last I spoke on here about the Horus Heresy series it was regarding the novel Mechanicum by Graham MacNeill. I spoke of liking the novel because it focused far more on the character interactions and much less on the technological aspects of the story. When the book which followed Mechanicum, Tales Of Heresy, turned out to be a collection of short stories rather than a novel I was buoyed by the fact that several of said stories moved even further down that trail, exploring the wider world that the series is set in and giving us a couple of lively and engrossing character pieces that had no need of genetically engineered supermen laying waste to entire worlds to generate drama. I inferred from their inclusion that the series as a whole might be in the process of widening its horizons somewhat, which pleased me.

Don't get me wrong; I've nothing against a bit of the old uber-violence now and again and after all, this is a series about a massive galaxy wide civil war set millenia in the future so there was always going to be a bit of tech and bravado involved; but I do think that a little bit of variety would stand the series in good stead. I mentioned at the time to a colleague of mine that perhaps a novel set in the shady political corridors of power might be a good idea, or an espionage novel set in this world. There had to be spies, right? In a war that big of course they were there. Sadly, what we got instead was two more novels about Space Marines blowing up aliens and then having a go at each other with their big guns and massive ships. Business as usual. Good stuff, but nothing especially original.So imagine my surprise then when we got Nemesis, by James Swallow as the 13th book in the series.

Almost completely eschewing the world of the Astartes (Space Marines), apart from brief moments in the prologue and epilogues and a brief but bloody and shocking cameo at the mid way point for an Astartes we'd seen before in the books, Nemesis focuses on the shadowy world of political assassination, with both sides despatching agents to assassinate the figurehead of the other. Leaving aside the fact that we know both sides will fail, because the series is a long way from over, the change of focus works well, allowing for a much more intimate look at the characters.

For much of the first half of the book we follow two stories; first, the formation of the team sent by the Loyalists to assassinate rebel leader Horus and then the events that unfold when they actually go out on the mission; and second, the story of a policeman on an Imperial world, investigating a series of ritualistic murders while his world suffers under the weight of rumours concerning the imminent arrival of Horus' rebel forces. As the story progresses into the back half, though, this strand takes a very dark - or darker - turn, and we realise that with this storyline nothing is what it seems.

I'm not massively versed in the futuristic Warhammer universe - the Horus Heresy books being my only foray into it so far - so it's likely that I'm not doing a very good job of describing why this book is so different from what has come before, or why I'm so pleased that it is, despite having enjoyed those earlier stories, but it is and I am. I sincerely hope that the wait for James Swallow to contribute another book to this series is not as long as the last one (he previously supplied Book 4), because he has proved himself here to be an author who can absolutely nail what I want more of in these books.