Horus Heresy: Old Earth by Nick Kyme (Book Review)

Well, it's the best of the Horus Heresy Salamanders novels, for what it's worth. Yes, that is as backhanded a compliment as it is meant to sound.

For those not in the know, my views of the prior Salamanders works of this era have been dim, to say the least. Vulkan Lives was the literary equivalent of having my skin flayed, while Deathfire wanted to make me facepalm every other chapter. While they certainly were not the worst things ever reviewed on this website - even for Warhammer 40,000 - there's still no denying that they were not good. So, to its credit, Old Earth seems to be one last stab to have the trilogy go out on a high note. A few old criticisms seem to have been directly addressed here, both in terms of the storytelling and style of prose. It doesn't quite save the book, unfortunately, but it makes it the leanest and easiest to read of the lot.

Synopsis

Vulkan lives. A word which was once a cry of hope is now spoken often in earnest, and the giant of Nocturne once more walks the earth. Yet, he is troubled by certain matters. Images of prophecy and possible futures hound his every waking moment, and the mysterious forces which encouraged his return still seem to have another use for him. As his sons seek to reunite with their father, Vulkan must face down a threat from ages past, one he seemingly defeated long before the Emperor's arrival. His path will bring him before both the shattered remnants of the Isstvan survivors and the Golden Throne itself before his journey is completed. Yet, what awaits him at the end of his time throws much of what he believed true of his life into question...

The Good

Surprisingly a substantial part of Old Earth proves to be genuinely good from the outset. Unlike its previous two releases, the "teaser" offers elements few other stories can and concepts which other authors have largely ignored. While most have remained focused primarily upon humanity's civil war, the quick introduction of the Craftworld Eldar into this tale - including Eldrad himself - grabs the reader's attention. This is further enforced when Vulkan awakes, only to find himself almost as confused as the reader, facing down what seems to be the living embodiment of Mount Deathfire itself, as his sons begin their hunt for him.

The opening pages are quick, satisfying, and establishes many running themes with little issue. Furthermore, it avoids the stumbling point of using faith and mystery to simply excuse the absolute single most insane things the writer can think of, or having the heroes all but pulling victories quite literally out of their rears. Here, the vagueness is used to establish atmosphere and some of the issues in following prophecy. It sets the tone, builds atmosphere, and establishes a genuinely brilliant form of bluff which relies upon the reader overlooking certain predictions in favour of others. Rather than coming completely out of nowhere to the point of being nonsensical, the thematic qualities and ideas are established very early on.

Vulkan and the Salamanders also fare much better this time in comparison to previous outings. While Vulkan himself is still sadly surprisingly unremarkably and lacks the demigod aspects the Primarchs are supposedly famed for in certain areas, they do shine through in others. Moments of personal history, half-remembered discussions and how he is viewed among the legions assists in this regard. While he's less the unstoppable juggernaut or elite general they are sometimes depicted as there is an undeniable Herculean quality to his depiction.

Many minor descriptive elements retain a more poetic quality this time around. While fleeting and lacking focused detail, many are executed so brilliantly that your mind finishes the rest. Building up where they left off or forming an almost exact visual of how the scene plays out despite how seemingly sparse it is on the page itself. It's a rare quality to get right, and a few of the repetitive or awkwardly phrased moments have been thankfully worked out of the book, meaning there are very few moments which can take you of its atmosphere. In fact, it's one of the few books where, in key scenes, there is a genuine cinematic quality to how it phrases and presents dramatic scenes.

The balance between various storylines is very clear cut and much more streamlined this time. While each book in the trilogy dabbled with the subject of various ongoing storylines, they were often either muddled by inconsistencies or suffered from extremely abrupt ends. Many even suffered from a notable issue where, at times, you questioned why they were even present rather than ending partway through the tale. This isn't the case here. The two major stories of the book focusing upon Vulkan and Shadrak Meduson are both fairly well told and compliment one another extremely well. You can see a few comparisons between the two roles, with each following a path with the remnants of their legion and seeking to unite those left. Yet, while Vulkan's story is one of myth, hidden duties and intentions, Meduson's is one of political drama, intrigue and attempting to find a purpose again.

Kyme mentions in the afterward that the Meduson plot was once considered for its own book and it's clear why that might have been the case. While the character's own arc has been notably uneven throughout the series, there was some noted substance to his efforts. He was an interesting contrast to his legion due to his Terran birth, and with the Iron Hands having fragmented into guerrilla fighting units, attempting to reunite them was a subject worth exploring. With so many clashing personalities, ideas and figures, having one person trying to turn them back into a full legion was a tale worth telling, and what we get here is definitely well told. Up to one moment, but we will get to that.

The fight scenes featured in Old Earth are odd in a few ways. They lack the more bombastic nature of other major tales or even the rapid-fire descriptive punches of two armies clashing in a constant flow of war. Instead, they treat many events almost as duels no matter their scale. You can compare Vulkan engaging a certain Dark Eldar character with Meduson leading a fleet of warships into battle. There's a consistency in how easily the narrative flows through certain actions, easily expressing large-scale or complex maneuvers through a few key sentences. While this was previously a quite infuriating factor in past works, it genuinely benefits the story here.

In fact, Old Earth was going so well that it looked as if it might redeem the entire trilogy...

The Bad

... Right up until a "reveal" happens with the Iron Hands. You can see the exact point where a flawed if solid concept and a few balanced ideas wobbled, then fell completely to bits. While it would be wrong to reveal the exact moment where everything went wrong, it's one of those moments which is so over the top and exaggerated you cannot take it seriously. The sort of bit which even a superhero comic embracing its intentional zaniness would never attempt to play for drama or even effectiveness, because it's so downright stupid. Worse still, it heralds the return of a few key problems which has plagued both the Horus Heresy and some of Kyme's works alike: Ending the story, and violently screwing over the Iron Hands with an industrial drill.

The Heresy itself was supposed to be a beginning. It was a tragedy where a bright hope was abruptly snuffed out and things started to go horribly wrong. While many traitors would be pushed somewhat down their path toward corruption, it was only the beginning of a ten thousand year journey into becoming what is featured in the game today. The same is equally true of many loyal legions, where their personalities, cultures or even dominating ideals changed over time. To give one of the better examples, you could sit down and compare the Space Wolves of M31 and M41 and find a few notable differences. They retain a number of broad key characteristics, but you can still see distinct alterations which have developed over time. Unfortunately, they are often the exception.

More than a few authors keep treating the Heresy books as the entirety of their turn rather than the beginning. Fulgrim was especially guilty of this, where the Emperor's Children were effectively converted into their modern-day selves by the end. Equally, the Sons of Horus are all too often a mere step away from being the classic Black Legion, and the Raven Guard works effectively set them up for their current selves by that series' end. The result is that you have a radical series of changes over three years, but for it to then suddenly stop and nothing to change for the next 9,997 years. 

Just when Old Earth seems to be avoiding this, it slams this home with full force, to the point where the entire legion might as well have had its switch flipped from good to evil in the space of a page. By the time the book closes out, they have suddenly become exaggerated caricatures of themselves, so over the top that they would be laughed off of a Flash Gordon set. Why? Because someone slapped together a badly scrawled "redemption" arc in Codex: Clan Raukaan, and the reader needs to be reminded that the legion NEVER did anything right until that book's "hero" came along.

While this might sound bitter over the actual fall itself, the tragedy of it would have been fine. The legion turning in upon itself, even how Meduson's story ends, could have been executed brilliantly thanks to infighting or the need to focus upon the greater good. The problem is, the book hammers home how cartoonishly evil the Iron Fathers have become within the space of months following their primarch's death that it's impossible to believe. It's one of these moments where the writer needed to get from A to B, but decided to just burn his way through everything in its path, sense or good storytelling be damned. Imagine if, for a moment, A Thousand Sons went from Ahriman being his usual self to a cackling daemon summoning Tzeentch worshipper in the space of a chapter. Then multiply it for an entire legion and you might start to understand just how badly this is botched here.

The moment this comes into play, similar effects begin to show throughout the rest of the book. While they are not nearly so egregious, you can see the old habits falling back into place. Vulkan's story is suddenly catapulted forwards in a few specific scenes purely because the book requires it, in moments which arise from nowhere. The story's later phases do not so much as shift and evolve as they do lurch about. When the story needs to speed things along, you can see exactly where stages were skipped in order to keep the tale moving and bring things to a close. This is sadly very obvious in the final few pages where Vulkan meets the Emperor. After so many minor scenes and a slow-burning start, the real drama of the finale was notably blitzed through at high speed, with the final revelation talk barely lasting a few lines if that.

Another definite problem which holds back Old Earth is how it repeatedly relies upon convenience to have many things line up together. While there's something to be said for simply accepting narrative requirements or breaks in reality for drama, you can only take things so far before the reader starts to question them. The use of the Webway to overcome more than a few obstacles in this regard - or how the distance between the Salamanders and a large number of pursuers seems to be nebulously defined to the point where they could be any distance apart - hurts the book at its worst moments. This is to say nothing of how a few key scenes also fall back on bad habits. Notably how one character seems to only appear because he was in the rest of the series, and a few other major figures are regulated to merely cameo roles after a strong start.

The story suffers from being incapable of reincorporating or using certain key events as needed as well. You shouldn't be too surprised when something brand new emerges a few times over, or a character undergoes a full personality transplant at at least one point, to excuse a plot twist. Because of these, the flaws might be fewer and less painful than previous parts, but it's hard not to just question why they were not dealt with in a first draft.

The Verdict

This was genuinely depressing to read. Not because it failed, but because for so long this looked as if it might finally be a success, and I would be given nicer things to say about Nick Kyme again. Despite all that has been said about this book and its preceding tales, Kyme is still a talented author. His works with the Ultramarines - or even moments where they show up in his other works - range from entertaining to downright brilliant. When he wants to write horror, specifically of the exaggerated Hammer or surrealist variety, he's one of the three authors I would personally trust to do it right in this setting. Furthermore, he's also one of the best writers for audio dramas. It's simply that, with this mini-series within the larger Heresy saga, he seems to stick to elements he's not good at or simply bad ideas.

Old Earth starts well, keeps going relatively decently, and then starts to gradually fall apart as it goes along. There are still good moments which emerge throughout the latter two-thirds of the book, from moments of descriptive genius to a few genuinely great moments of drama. The issue is that you're left trying to force your way through contrivances, abrupt twists and moments which break any and all suspension of disbelief. If you were one of those who genuinely enjoyed Deathfire and didn't facepalm at every dramatic moment, you will likely enjoy it. If not, just buy something else from this range and wait until the Siege of Terra starts.

Verdict: 3.7 out of 10