Angron: The Red Angel (Warhammer 40,000)

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They're Imperial Thousand Sons, but with absolutely zero hubris: they know what they're doing and they haven't got a single speck of doubt about the horrible sins they commit. And I really liked how they use the "creature feature" rule of just giving glimpses of Angron here and there throughout until that final big juicy reveal. It depicts the titular Primarch as less a character and more an elemental force and shows the impact that his presence has on his followers, which is a really effective approach. You want the inside scoop on a Traitor Legion in the same vein as, say, the Night Lords books, here's your huckleberry.

He's just rage made manifest, and the narrative makes it abundantly clear that there is no possible redemption for him. In the darkness of Imperium Nihilus, across half a million worlds cut off from the dim light of Holy Terra, a beacon is lit. I fully admit that I am biased, as Angron and the World Eaters are my favorite primarch and legion respectively. In a way, it’s strange that I’m so happy jumping on board at the end of the story rather than climbing on at the beginning with so many others.A novel that, surprisingly, isnt so much about Angron himself, but more that tragedy that surrounds him, and its impact on the XIIth legion. So we learn quite a bit about the World eaters and Angron is left to his entry in the Primarchs serie. THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG, THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES and the names of the characters, items, events and places therein are trademarks of The Saul Zaentz Company d/b/a Middle-earth Enterprises under license to New Line Productions, Inc.

It's even got the same master/slave dynamic with a CSM and their female servant, if you're into that kind of thing.

This weekend is set to be one of the bloodiest on record, when the World Eaters arrive in Warhammer 40,000 as their own faction complete with a new codex, new models, and the big guy himself, Angron. A deeper character study of Angron is something I think I would have enjoyed more (and is possibly what his Horus Heresy-era novel is more in line with) but given what little I know about the man, perhaps it is wise to keep him off the page for as long as Guymer does. The problem is that, swept up as they are in Angron’s orbit, everyone else in the book feels very similar. We have characters who’ve been trying and failing to bring their Legion back together for millennia, and the book zeroes in on their perspective when this incredibly important figurehead re-enters the limelight. He brought a weird and unruly saga to a satisfying climax, and I wanted to see what he could in the forty-first millennium.

Also, for a book whose title claims to be about Angron, there was very little of the primarch in the novel. He’s plunged over the edge of berzerkerdom, he barely remembers who he is, and his fragmented personality sometimes starts a scene as one person and ends as another. My interest dipped a few times, but that might have been my mood more than any fault of what Guymer wrote. It was definitely challenging to find avenues to look at that in new and interesting ways, exploring how that rage transforms people differently.David Guymer is a freelance author, PhD in molecular microbiology (which still comes in more handy than you might think), and tabletop warlord based in the Yorkshire East Riding. Knowing that this is but a prelude to what sounds like some really galaxy shaking events in Angron's Arks of Omen book does make me want to know the fates of the named survivors of this book as well.