Editing Horus Heresy (section)

===Books I - X===
*'''''Horus Rising:''''' A prologue story, introducing us to the series and Garviel Loken who will grow into a very significant and popular character, the 'Jim Raynor from Starcraft' of the heresy. Black Library needed a killer opener and they succeeded, Dan Abnett handling it pretty well. An Emperor (not [[Emperor|Him]]) is killed at the beginning and some bugs are killed on a planet called Murder for no reason other than they were there. The [[Interex]] show up and ask "whadya do that for?". Negotiations with them go sour when [[Erebus]] steals the '''MURDER SWORD''' from them. It is worth noting that if the Interex had some goddamn CCTV set up in their museum of awesome and valuable weapons then the whole heresy could possibly have been avoided.
*'''''False Gods:''''' Horus falls at Davin when wounded by the '''MURDER SWORD''' and gets a crash course in the chaos gods from [[Erebus]] & [[Magnus]]. After getting shown a few "truths" that WILL HAPPEN in the future (like the Emperor being worshipped as a god and Horus being reviled and forgotten) he decides to make war on the Imperium to [[FAIL|prevent]] all this from happening. Actually a rather weak and rushed affair when it comes to detailing the Horus Heresy's origin story. Until this point, we've been exploring Horus' character in great detail for 1.5 books, but then he has a nasty fever dream, sees a few bad prophecies and boom, he wakes up as a traitorous Saturday morning cartoon villain, after which point his machinations to create the Isstvan III event and Dropsite Massacre or any other bits of the heresy go completely undetailed and left behind the scenes. The really cool shit in this book is the battle on Davin, as the Sons of Horus and the Imperial Army fights against a massive horde of chaos zombies in a foggy swamp and the wreck of a space ship.
*'''''Galaxy in Flames:''''' Isstvan III happens and the traitors send the loyalists down to the planet without reinforcements and proceed to bomb them to fuck. Things don't go to plan when [[Angron]] decides to invade, turning it into a [[Not as Planned]] drawn out conflict that the Warmaster can't really afford - Loken is presumed dead after a duel with Abaddon. While it's good to have a whole book detailing a key event in the Heresy, there isn't actually any important or interesting dialogue to read that would make you glad you didn't just read a synopsis. There's also an embarrassingly written sequence towards the end, where a large number of loyalists survive an Exterminatus event by fleeing to some magical and super convenient bunkers. They see virus bombs entering the planet's atmosphere with the naked eye and somehow have enough time to run deep enough underground to survive one of the Imperium's most effective superweapons.
*'''''Flight of the Eisenstein:''''' the other side of ''Galaxy in Flames''. Nathaniel Garro escapes and gets marooned in the warp fighting daemons, eventually gets saved (and mega-bitchslapped) by [[Rogal Dorn]], who does not take the news from Isstvan [[Rage|very well]]. The first bit of the novel is so far 'the Death Guard's novel'. There is also the very first canonical appearance of Plague Marines, Euphrati Keeler being all mystical and shit, and Malcador recruiting Garro as the first Knight-Errant.
*'''''Fulgrim:''''' A divisive entry that is either forgettable to some or pretty interesting depending on who you ask - depends how much you like the Emperor's Children. Tells the story of the III Legion from the Great Crusade all the way up to the [[Drop Site Massacre]] in one book. In short Fulgrim finds a sword, gets possessed, kills Ferrus Manus - the end. It is written by Graham McNeill though, and it has an awesome quote from Fulgrim: "My Emperor's Children. What beautiful music they make." The second plot of this book is about some human, but it is so forgettable the writer has it dropped halfway through the book. The human plot also explains where [[Lucius]] get his self-scarring habit from: a painter woman told him it will make his face perfect (ugly) again, because he wouldn't shut up about how Loken ruined his perfect beauty with a sucker punch.
*'''''Descent of Angels:''''' This is the Heresy book that isn't about the Heresy, instead focusing on [[Zahariel]]'s time on [[Caliban]]. It portrays [[Lion El'Jonson]] having to deal with some social awkwardness (he cannot read people at all, so he comes off as 'do what I say or die!') and having Luther to handle the small talk. Hints that the Great Crusade <s>does more harm than good</s> {{BLAM|is bringing the lost colonies of mankind together into a united future!}} Luther gets sent home with Zahariel to hustle up more Dark Angels. Another divisive book, but could definitely have used some more time with the editor. Be aware that this book was published long before GW had decided what to do with the Lion's loyalty and personality, so its descriptions of the Lion are outdated and do not match his current status.
*'''''Legion''''' introduces [[the Cabal]], the [[Perpetual]]s and [[Omegon]]. READ THIS BOOK. Or don't, as this is where those things that would eventually take over the Heresy series and according to many completely ruin it (Cabal, Perpetuals) are introduced. I still would recommend reading it since when the novel introduces these ideas they are very fresh and interesting. Don't blame ''Legion'' when the rest of the novels were what ruined it. The [[Alpha Legion]], along with the Geno Chiliad, a regiment of genetically engineered supermen-yet-not-Astartes lead by anime lolis called ''uxors'' (High Gothic for "wives") is trying to bring some Chaos cultists in <s>space Afghanistan</s>[[Nurth]] into compliance. The cultists activate planetary self-destruct blood sacrifice; as this goes down, the Alpha Legion meets with the [[Cabal]], gets a glimpse of their vision of the future ("the Alpharius gambit"), agrees to work with them, then kills off all non-legion bystanders & ships with "FOR E-MONEY"! This book is still 100% canon, but in later books GW seems to have changed their mind on the Alpha Legion so they abandoned most of the plots from this book.
*'''''Battle for the Abyss:''''' The book is so bad that other authors tried to retcon it out of existence. This book is so bad that you would have thought it was cobbled together from [[Matt Ward|Wardian fluff]] stitched together by [[C. S. Goto]]. Reading this book, in fact, causes mind cancer, which is to say, that it does not create brain tumors, but hurts the ideas of the reader. Everyone dies, so it does not affect much (as in anything). The only thing you need to remember is [[Lorgar]] built a fuckhueg space ship and filled it with Dreadnoughts, and it failed miserably. The book's adherence to canon is an atrocity, but it does contain some decent depictions of ship-to-ship combat as a mildly redeeming quality.
*'''''Mechanicum:''''' Easily one of the best novels in the series, it explores many hidden/forbidden aspects and lore of the Mechanicum. Techpriests turn renegade after Horus tells them they can do whatever they like with technology, so they release forbidden viral scrapcodes and screw everything up. Also turns out that [[Emperor|Big-E]] invented the Machine-God by sealing a C'Tan on Mars back during the Saint George era, giving everyone visions of technology. Also more subtle hints that the Emperor is a god himself as he uses divine golden light to heal machines and instant access super wikipedia. Contains a lot of Titan awesomeness and [[Imperial Knight|Knights]] badassery. And for extra Grimdark, a tech priestess discovers that the Dark Age era humans stored a backup copy of Wikipedia in the warp and <s>with a giant psyker powered terminal accesses said Wikipedia and restores all the knowledge of mankind</s> floods her forge with lava to deny the traitors access. A psyker tech savant meets up with the gaoler of the Void Dragon and takes over his fuck long shift.
*'''''Tales of Heresy:''''' short story collection, including [[The Last Church]]. Has a lot of twist endings.
** '''''Blood Games:''''' An assassin tries to kill the emperor. The Adeptus Custodes go to kill a traitor on Terra. The assassin was a Custodes probing the palace defenses. The traitor was a triple agent working for Dorn. The bodyguard of the triple agent turns out to be an Sons of Horus assassin who detonates a bomb that kills the triple agent and nearly accomplishes a suicide run to destroy a bunch of reactors controlled by the triple agent.
** '''''Wolf at the Door:''''' The Space Wolves kill some Dark Eldar and are the defenders of everyone who does not defy the Emperor. When the liberated planet chooses freedom over the Emperor, the Wolves invade it, of course.
** '''''Scions of the Storm:''''' The Word Bearers destroy a human civilization that has crystal cities, crystal robots, and lots of lightning. They worshiped the Emperor, but Lorgar no longer does. This is also later a chapter of ''The First Heretic'', but they're narrated from a slightly different point of view .
** '''''The Voice:''''' A squad of Sisters of Silence investigate a Black Ship that became derelict in the Warp. Turns out [[Blank|the youngest of the squad]] in the future [[Wat|used sorcery]] to beam back her consciousness through time onto some psykers on the Black Ship. She <s>successfully warns the squad about Horus's Rebellion </s> is executed by a hard-core Sister for breaking her vow of [[Psyker|no funny stuff]].
** '''''Call of the Lion:''''' Half of the Dark Angels are dicks, the other half are not. Totally not foreshadowing.
** '''''[[The Last Church]]:''''' A story about the Emperor destroying one of the churches on Terra during the reunification era in his effort to wipe out religion. The Emperor and the priest of the church have an enlightening conversation about what the Emprah's trying to accomplish. The conversation ends up with the priest accusing the Emperor of being a hypocrite, with him decrying that he's no different from the old warlords who waged crusades and holy wars in the past to push their own agendas on other people. The Emperor reveals himself as the very god the priest was worshiping, and nearly convinces him to stand by his side while his soldiers destroy the church. Priest gets cold feet and walks back into the church while it collapses. An end-times alarm clock starts ringing in the ruins.
** '''''After Desh'ea:''''' The War Hounds meet their Primarch. Angron defeats the War Hounds. More specifically, the Emperor just beamed up Angron away from his last stand (rather than, you know, intervening with his Custodes or his fleet), leaving Angron pretty pissed. [[Kharn]] is a pretty great guy to be around, and pulls his femurs out of his lungs quickly enough to establish himself as Angron's best buddy ''after everyone above him in the War Hounds chain of command calmed Angron down as fleshy squeeze balls''.