"Nemesis"

Nemesis (James Swallow)

One reason I like the Horus Heresy novels is that it can provide an in-depth look at parts of the universe that usually remain off camera. Here's an example, as this book examines the Officio Assassinorum, and a less official counter-organization (or counter-agent, I guess), with one assassination aimed at Horus, and one aimed at, well, that's kind of a spoiler.
Now, if you know anything about the setting, you already know how these events are going to turn out, but that's OK; A good story, well told, is still interesting, even if you know the ending (at least that's what I'm telling myself, because I think this book spoiled "Mechanicum", which is one of the other Horus Heresy books I want to read.) The key there is a good story and well told and unfortunately that's where this book runs into trouble. There's one minor and one major problem. The minor problem is that all of the assassins in the Imperial hit team (or Execution Squad, which I always imagined written in a jagged red font and underlined with a lightening bolt) have both a name and a assassin school that they belong to, which the author uses interchangeably, and some of them have both first and last names; So Eristede Kell of Clade Vindicare can be referred to as Eristede, Kell, or "the Vindicare", and this can get kind of confusing when you have six assassins, some of them with three names (first, last, clade). There is a Dramatis Personae section in the front of the book where you can look these up, but I feel like if you have to constantly be flipping to the cast of characters to keep them all straight the author's made a mistake somewhere.
That's the minor issue. The major one is that this book has two concurrent, almost parallel plots; One is the Execution Squad trying to assassinate Horus (and for what, class? Yes, his Heresy!) while the other starts with a crime investigation on a far-off planet at the ass end of Segmentum Ultima, far from Terra where the other plot starts. Now you know that eventually these two plots are going to combine, but it takes for ever for that to happen, and until it does, I found myself getting more and more annoyed. Trying to remember everyone's name isn't helped when every two pages we're switching back to watch the local police bumblefuck around trying to catch a serial killer, and until it becomes apparent why we're watching these scenes, they feel very intrusive. I can't help but wonder if maybe each plot should have been a separate book; As it is this novel comes in at over 500 pages. Admittedly, they do end up entangling at the end, but it feels contrived, as if the author's trying to justify why you had to read all of both plots up until now.
Strangely, there's another book of Swallow's I've read (in the Deep Space Nine universe) with more than a passing resemblance to this book - half of it follows Dukat and the Cardassians laying plans about Bajor, and the other half follows a police detective like the B-plot in this book starts with. In trying to think why it worked wonderfully there and not so here, I think that the reason is that one of these was clearly the main plot, and the same can't be said here. Or maybe the second plot in this book just annoyed me; who knows.
In summation, I know I complained at length about this book, but it's really not bad, just flawed. This isn't Swallow's strongest work, but it's not terrible either, it just falls short of being great like his other books. If nothing else, give this a read and see if you can explain to me how a blank can have a daemonskin, because I still can't figure that out.

Grade: B