"Legion" by Dan Abnett

So with an excellent starting shot for the HH Race, this marks the second time Dan Abnett steps up to the plate of the 31st Milennium. Fuck me, what a horrible mix of metaphors. I'm not a sports guy, OK?

One of my all-time favourite HH covers. You really get a sense of the scale of the Astartes compared to 'normal' troops.

Dan Abnett's excellent 'scene setter' novel 'Horus Rising' got the ball rolling on the Horus Heresy series. It introduced some characters that I felt weren't brilliantly served by subsequent authors. It introduced some characters who are still going strong today. It also introduced some themes that are sometimes well-handled by subsequent HH authors, but have become a bit of a cliché in some ways. But waaay back when 'Horus Rising' was Dan's sole contribution to HH, many 40K nerds were eagerly anticipating more of the same from this next Abnett missive from the 31st milennium. And hell, it was one concerning a, um, Legion that we never really knew that much about, as well. Panties was a-wettenin'; would Abnett deliver???? Well, you already know he did... but probably not in the way that everyone hoped.

Abnett had me at hello here; the book starts with a monologue of someone cussing a lot while resisting torture, and you're only a few pages in when someone casually drops the word 'fugger'. We also learn, to some readers' obvious disappointment, that Legion will focus primarily on the 'geno', or elite (yet, horrifyingly, human) ground-pounding soldiers of the Imperium, who fucking die in droves fighting an inscrutable, stubborn enemy. Horrendous casualties, arrogant clueless dickheads throwing the lives of their grunts away casually, and (barely censored) cussing? Oh, so that's what it's about, Abnett getting on his 'Naked And The Dead' shit? Sign me the fug up.

This book got fugging banned because of all the fugging cursing. I highly recommend it.

Not only that, HOLY SHIT, some actual fucking! I didn't think anyone would get laid in this whole damn Heresy (not lookin' at you Fulgrim, you damn slut) but hey, look who's burnin'; not just the galaxy. Come to think of it, that female remembrancer back in 'Horus Rising' got some as well, didn't she? Actually, the (not that graphic) sex in 'Legion' isn't gratuitous at all. It leads to one of the book's most painful moments, and also the most shocking. Puns about 'the shocker' are going through my head right now but I'm not gonna stoop to that level...

For better or for worse, 'Legion' doesn't fit in with the Horus Heresy series so far (which was only five books), or since, really. No Isstvan, no fraught interactions between different legions, no gradual corruption, no Erebus popping up like some power-armoured Zelig. I can see how it would bum people out that there was this sudden diversion to something that appeared to have no relevance to the series at first. 'Legion' does, however, deal extensively with three areas which can't be discounted: the Imperium's non-Astartes footsoldiers, the Cabal, and the Alpha Legion's reason for siding with Horus.

The "Imperial guard" bits of the book might be my favourite. If you're a fan of Abnett's non-BL book Embedded, this will appeal to you too. It's Gaunt's Ghosts with the 'grimdark' taken out; he's really good at making you feel the easy, unforced camaraderie between soldiers in awful combat situations. It's like Band Of Brothers with no flag-waving. Plus, his too-brief descriptions of the different regiments and their garb reminds me of my favourite 40K artwork: really weird, hideous-looking but flamboyant cohorts of things that look more like goblins than men.

The Cabal is an interesting, but potentially problematic, MacGuffin for 'Legion' - and in fact, the whole HH series. They're basically a bunch of foul xenos who've traveled the cosmos jerkin' civilisations around like their name was Puff Daddy, and swearing to always fight Chaos. They sometimes seem to be around just to push the story forwards: the Alpha Legion are looking for them, and the Cabal have dire warnings they desperately want to communicate to the Alpha Legion, but they're also way too cool to just knock on the door of the battle barge and lay out their motivations, so they have to have a big song-n-dance around the galaxy. While the Cabal are the basis for some AWESOME scenes in Legion (their chosen 007, John Grammaticus, is some kind of weird Jerry Cornelius self-hating immortal - instant jackpot), I am going to need a LOT more information about how this Cabal was formed before I "buy it". I'm not a 40K fluff expert, but how come we haven't heard of these dudes before - especially since they seem to have played such a pivotal role in the Heresy? What could make so many disparate breeds work together...? And don't just say "Chaos, innit". Having said that, I'm not trippin'. It looks like they get a bit more fleshed out in later books (I do remember them playing a minor role in 'Deliverance Lost', but when I read that book I didn't have a fucking clue what they were). And suspension of disbelief is a big part of all sci-fi, really, so a bit more isn't exactly breaking my enjoyment of HH.

As for "the reason for betrayal", it's on some Sophie's Choice shit. The Alpha Legion primarchs are basically told "If Horus wins, he'll wipe out the human race, but the machinations of Chaos shall forever lie ruined. If Horus loses, the human race will stagnate, and bring about a decisive Chaotic victory at some point between the years 40,000 and 50,000 CE. Pleasant dreamz!" Now, we know that the Alpha Legion joined up with Horus. We also know Horus lost. So... WHAT DID THEY DECIDE?!?! Did they fuck Horus over intentionally, in the hopes the human race would persevere and NOT succumb to Chaos? They are specialists in infiltration and subterfuge, after all. Or did they try their best to engineer Horus' victory but fail? Or did they start as fifth columnists and slowly get corrupted? Gawsh. It may seem like a cheap trick the way I've presented it, but it's actually some shit that's got me eagerly awaiting the next Alpha Legion-dedicated story. No doubt it will be filled with dark hints fit to leave me screaming with insane laughter at the knowledge which has broken my mind. I really love that even this early in the HH series, Black Library were prepared to give us revelations of plot developments utterly contradictory to the so-called 'unquestionable truths' the fluff had previously asserted about this period.

I always loved the tiny amount of Alpha Legion fluff that I'd read - that Primarch Alpharius trained all his marines to be just as deadly on their own as in a unit; that when all the other Traitor Legions retreated from Terra in disarray following Horus' death, the Alpha Legion were completely organised and fell back in good military order. 'Legion' as a book is completely in line with what we've been told about them before, but it also makes several key changes and additions to their background. The 20th Legion make extensive use of human agents, since they can get sneaky more easily than a gene-bulked 9-foot superhuman. Having said that, Legion XX also seem unafraid of shelving their armour and making more of an effort to be stealthy; diplomacy, sabotage, kidnapping, black ops, psyker obfuscation, all that good shit. They won't hesitate to stitch up Imperial troops if it serves the greater good (quickly established, but reiterated on a MUCH larger scale at the end) and they are, even for Astartes, ruthless as fuck. Most of the Alpha Legion stuff involves their Primarch, or rather, Primarchs. Alpharius/Omegon can easily be described as terrifically intelligent and terrifically arrogant. However, they're an oddity amongst the many primarchs who can be similarly described, in that they may actually be as clever as they think they are. And they've trained their legion incredibly well; it seems a little ridiculous that these guys are the only ones who've tried to break down the sycophantic hierarchy that apparently exists in every chapter. Instead of starstruck teenagers desperately competing for a pop idol's attention, the Alpha Legion Astartes/Primarch relationship seems more like a circle of academics reciting their dissertations; still competitive and egotistical, but much more cerebral than all the "Lupercal/Aurelian/Russ, look at meeeee, I love you the best and I am sooooo awesome" crowd.

Alpharius and Omegon: probably less likely to bring about humanity's downfall than these dudes

The coolness of 'Legion' is tempered by the sadness that not many HH books have learned its lesson (memo to certain BL authors: you don't have to "let us in" to Astartes minds and have them gabble about their motivations like a 14-year-old girl's diary; just show-n-prove, motherfucker). I sometimes feel like a lot of HH books - especially ones starring legions who haven't had an HH book before - blueprint 'Horus Rising' or 'Fulgrim' like it was mandatory, but where are the 'Legion' clones? There aren't any. Maybe I should be grateful; this book will stay unique in the Heresy series, and probably in Black Library in general.

My rating for 'Legion' is 10/10. I toyed with a 9/10 rating because of my lingering doubts about the Cabal, but they clearly had to be introduced somewhere in HH and I suppose here's as good a place as any. They wouldn't really come back into the narrative until around book 20 of the series, though...

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