"Fulgrim"

Fulgrim (Graham McNeill)

In retrospect, the warning signs should have been obvious about this book:
- The back declares that it follows the Emperor's Children in the buildup to the bombing of Isstvan III, events that have already been covered twice in five books - once in the initial trilogy and one book ago in Flight of the Eisenstein. (Although this book does go a little further into the following events of Isstvan V.)
- The book starts out not with a bang, but with a Remembrancer giving a concert that goes on for pages.
- Someone whose opinion I respect told me the book wasn't very good.

So why did I get this book? Well, I trusted Graham McNeill, who had yet to let me down with "A Thousand Sons", "False Gods" and "Mechanicum". Alas, this is his worst book, and if I may be allowed to judge having read a whole four, the least Graham McNeill-esque. Where he handles Rememberancers skillfully in his other novels, here they're at their most obnoxious, breaking up the action with long, pointless, boring, pointless, momentum-killing, and pointless stretches of pages in which not only does nothing happen, but nothing happens very, very slowly.
More troublingly, the rest of the book isn't very good either. Fulgrim's desent into Chaos is, and I hate to say this, boring. The series has followed other Primarchs as they turn away from the Emperor, and ultimately each one has a humanizing weakness that leads them down the dark path: Magnus, with his love of knoweldge and inablity to stop searching for it; Lorgar and his need for faith, taking the wrong lesson from the Emperor's dictate not to be worshipped; Horus and his pride, and his trust in councilors unworthy of it. So what is Fulgrim's story? Well, he goes to a planet with a temple that has weird shreiking music inside, and he pulls out a silver sword from a stone at the center, and then he starts hearing weird voices in his head. Zuh?

What else can I say about this book? For a novel about a chapter of genetically enhanced super-soldiers who end up worshipping the soul-eating god of pleasure, it's awfully boring (third time I've called the book that in a bite-sized review - not good). Even the pacing is bizzare, as I found myself finishing a chapter and flipping back a page to make sure that was really the end-point; The transitions feel like a bad movie where the director's just had enough of a scene and hacks it off. Even the names are unoriginal. Fulgrim's golden, flaming blade is named... Fireblade. Wow. Maybe McNeill just doesn't like the Emperor's Children; The (sadly brief) time spent with the Iron Hands legion I found much more interesting. Now it's not all bad; The Dropsite Massacre of Isstvan V is depicted here, and by the time the end of the book rolls around, it actually does get better (I credit the disapperance of the Rememberancers partially with this). The last 1/8th of the book is actually quite interesting, but unfortuneatly not enough to make up for the first 7/8ths. Given that the drop site massacre is also depicted in the far superior "First Heretic", I have to say that this is, sadly, the first Horus Heresey novel I recommend just taking a pass on. "Mechanicum" and "Nemesis" are, if failures, at least weird and entertaining, like your kid sister growing a third eye. Fulgrim is just a mess, like my living room.

Grade: D+