Most of you will know me from Twitter ( @oftheaett ) 

The Emperor doesn't protect against Spoilers. You've been warned!

A Great War is coming, and it will engulf the Imperium of Man. The Space Marines of the Alpha Legion, the last and most secretive of all the Astartes brotherhoods, arrive on a heathen world to support the Imperial Army in a pacification campaign against strange and uncanny forces. But what drives the Alpha Legion? Can they be trusted, and what side will they choose when the Great War begins? Loyalties are put to the test, and the cunning schemes of an alien intelligence revealed in this latest instalment of the ground-breaking SF series by Dan Abnett, as the fate of mankind hangs in the balance.

Review 

Hail Warmongers!

We're finally here! I've been waiting a long time to read Legion & boy was it worth it. A lot of you guys out there in the warmongers community (particularly on Twitter) were encouraging me to read this one & you guys had every right to. Legion is a definitely my favourite of the Horus Heresy so far & i'm sure most people will agree that it's a great read. It is Abnett after all!

As a rule of thumb, before I right these posts I try & do a bit of research to get an idea of public opinion on each book & for once I couldn't find a single bad word said about it. That is spare one comment regarding it's relevance to the HH, which posed the question of should it be a HH novel at all? My opinion? It deserves a place.

Let me expand on that - some of you will have read my review of Descent of Angels by Mitchel Scanlon in which I raised the same point. DOA missed mark in a lot of ways not because its a bad book or poorly written, in fact over all it was a great read, but as someone who really wanted to get my teeth into the Heresy & read all there way to read about it, i was left wanting. Now I know that's my personal opinion, but it seems to be widely accepted as one of the weaker novels & the main problem is relevance. DOA is intended as a precursor/origin story for the Dark Angles Primarch & his Legion but when you match up the events in the book to the Heresy, nothing ties it in with the rest, which for me was utterly frustrating. But does Legion suffer in the same way? No, I don't think so.

The biggest case against this point would be the plots main turning point. To me this really makes the book & is undoubtedly one of the most surprising plot points of the HH so far. For those of you who've read the book you'll probably know exactly which point I'm talking about. Towards the end of the book the Alpha legion are faced with a moral dilemma in which they are forced by the Cabal to decide whether to either intervene & prevent the Heresy (i.e Stand against Horus) or comply & assist Horus in his campaign. In the end the Alpha Legion's decision is revealed when they rebel against their allies in orbit above Nurth & decimate their fleet. This single action (set two standard years before the Heresy) sets in motion all that comes after it. Now given the nature of the Alpha Legion we simply will never know the true extent of their influence on the Heresy. But what we can do, is safely assume that nothing really happened with out their's or the Cabal's consent. Which to me proves relevance, but i'll let you guys decide for yourselves.

For me Legion breaks the mould in so many ways & in a move previously unseen in the Heresy, (i'm not counting Zahariel from DOA as he later became one) Abnett chooses to centre the book around a group of none Astartes characters. This technique of choosing a 'weakling' to me is one of the true hallmarks of his writing & is a simple yet effective way to bring perspective scale to any setting. I've said this before in my Horus Rising review (another Abnett, check it out!). Now, granted HR focused more on Loken (a Space Marine Legionnaire) but where possible, Abnett switched to a more 'mortal' character for perspective & he does this more often than any other writer in the series & its a real shame. Some try with token characters which stack up against the lead role e.g. Human 'sidekicks' like Kaleb from Flight of the Eisenstein, but these characters miss the mark for me.

This also works really well in this particular setting as to have the story told by an Alpha Legionnaire would be ridiculous. The whole appeal of the AL is that they are experts in subterfuge & secrecy which means if the book was written from their perspective nothing would be a surprise for the reader. It's actually one of the biggest gripes I have about books in general, suspense & intrigue keep the reader engaged & it applies to most genres. You wouldn't usually write a horror movie from the perspective of the killer/monster as you'd see what was coming a mile off, plus you wouldn't care for the victim. The same applies to Legion, it requires an outside perspective a victim if you like (in the is case Soneka).

Now let's move on to some honourable mentions -