"Deliverance Lost"

Deliverance Lost (Gav Thorpe)

I had high hopes for this book. It's about the Raven Guard, another one of the long-neglected space marine chapters, finally getting a turn in the spotlight as they try to rebuild after Isstvan V. It's all right, but the book has a major problem - it never seems t get out of second gear. The issue, I think, is that Corax, the head of the Raven Guard, goes back to Earth to get some forbidden technology that will let him rebuild the legion, which drives the narritive, except that we already know his plan isn't going to work, because we'd have already heard about it in other novels if the Raven Guard got 75,000 new recruits in a month and defeated Horus right off the bat.
So that's one issue. On top of that, this book has surprisingly strong ties to "Legion", and you might be a little bit lost if you haven't read it; The Alpha Legion is attempting to infiltrate the Raven Guard and steal the technology they're getting to rebuild. I find the Alpha Legion is a little less annoying when they're sharing the book with the Raven Guard instead of the cryptically named army units they were paired up with in "Legion", but I still wanted to see more Raven Guard. Amazingly, even THE CABAL from Legion shows up, with little to no explination.
Now I kind of feel like this review is too much about the Alpha Legion, which I guess is fair since this book suffers from it too. Really, this is just a perfectly serviceable middle-of-the-road Horus Heresy novel. I've seen some people complain that there isn't enough fighting, which I can understand, but don't personally agree with. If you already read Legion, you might as well take the plunge, but I can't really recommend that you go too far out of your way to read this otherwise.

Grade: C