As a huge black library fan, these books are utter garbage. I could write a 2000 word essay on the blatant mistakes and disregard for current lore that's in these books but I'll just mention two. The successor chapters of the imperial fists find out earth is under attack by an orc attack moon. The proceed to shrug it off and pick another target literally saying that if terra falls its kind of meh and the imperium will get over it. Really? Never mind that the emperor gets blank by orcs and the astronomican would go out plunging the imperium back into old night. In the first book the author states that the astartes will die out in the next 200 years. Face palm... So renagade chapters have survived 10 thousand years but all of a sudden the founding loyalist chapters just can't make it any more? This is a complete mess, don't but it, it's not worth your money or your time.

I'm a huge BL and Abnett fan, so I was very excited to start a new series exploring the post heresy universe. Unfortunately, I have to give this book a scathing review. This can't be Abnett. It feels ghost written and poorly done at that. Character development is generic/predictable and the space marines are so shallow they were given cheesy "wall names" just to tell them apart. Everyone is a caricature: the sneaky assassin, the monotone space marine, the prideful general, and the ignorant/arrogant politicians. The writing is a perfect example of over-telling and not showing, reading more like a screenplay than a novel. The sheer amount of monologuing and unrealistic self-talk is hard to read. Also, IT'S POST HERESY! Paint me a picture, set the mood, do something to make me feel all hope is lost but we're still putting up a fight. Instead you get the feeling that the heresy was the girlfriend that you were ready to break up with so you could get back to just shooting things, page-after-monotonous-page, like nothing happened. SPOILERS: The plot is so paper thin I don't see how it made it to production. The unbelievably advanced ork tech, the barely mentioned annihilation of a space marine legion by silly insects, poor military decisions one after another, the list goes on and on. I guess, after the heresy, we just threw out military doctrine and transport the whole legion planet side without support because they're space marines right? Who could defeat them? And then their defeat is a side note, to move the plot along. While everything in this book is possible and well explained, it felt like watching an Olympic swimmer die from drowning. Sure it's technically possible, but so far fetched you can't get over the absurdity of it. And to top it off, the cover art makes space marines look like chubby football players wearing Halloween costumes. Yes this review is bad, but you gotta call a spade a spade even if it means offending one of the greatest sci-fi writers ever.

Nice story but GW pricing is absurd. Short story at a novel price.

Ways too short for what I paid. Barely a novella for the price of a luxury hardback.

The price is ridiculous, but the story is great. Dan brings some much needed attention to the Imperial Fist and the politics of the post Horus Heresy imperium with some amazing twists and turns.

$15.99 for 220 pages? Absurd pricing.