Red Fury by James Swallow

(Be warned the Inquisitor-Text spoils most of the book!)

Vital Stats:
Page Count: 284

Era: 40k (no specified year)
Perspective: Blood Angels, Flesh Tearers, Angels Sanguine, Angels Vermillion, Blood Drinkers, Angels Encarmine
Major Characters: [Inquisitor-text]Brother Sergeant Rafen, Mephiston the Lord of Death, Chapter Master Dante, Corubolo, Chapter Master Seth, Brother Sergeant Noxx, Corubolo, Caecus

Special Guest Stars: [Inquistor-text]Fabius Bile

Location: Baal

One Sentence Review: A family reunion of Blood Angel successors gets crashed.

A Few Musings: James Swallow is quickly becoming a favorite of mine. He seems to get better with each 40k novel. Although I enjoyed his first two Blood Angels books - they suffered from being short. I think having both in an "omnibus" is a good thing because I have always suspected they were a single novel cut in half. Faith & Fire was a decent book and something from a Sisters of Battle perspective was a welcome change. However I think his Flight of the Eisenstein is one of the better Horus Heresy books and so I was looking forward to Red Fury.

What makes Red Fury highly recommended is that Swallow does something that few Black Library authors have done (or perhaps were allowed to do)...use the icons of 40k as major characters. He did a great job of this in Flight of the Eisenstein. Almost more so than in the first three Horus Heresy books, Swallow grabs the reader with fast pacing and then throws in major characters from the canon and uses them as major characters. This is repeated to great effect in Red Fury.

The basic plot is [Inquisitor-Text] that after the events of the first two Blood Angels books, the Blood Angels are greatly diminished in numbers. They call their successor chapters to Baal to discuss in a great conclave the future of the chapter. Since this is the 40k universe, this of course goes horribly wrong.

While I won't reveal in the regular text (read the invisotext at your own peril!), the use of characters such as [Inquisitor-Text] Mephiston and Dante is expertly handled. It makes a fairly mundane science fiction story [Inquisitor-Text] that seems straight out of Judge Dredd, Leviathan or any sci-fi story with clones and genetics really compelling.

There were a few canonical points in the novel that were new to me and very compelling. [Inquisitor-Text] In particular, the genetic experiments and failures of Corax in replenishing his Legion was news to me. However I have never paid a lot of attention to the Raven Guard. I hope that there is a Heresy era novel or short story that goes into this in greater detail.

The only criticisms I would make are that again I felt the novel was too short. This is not to say that there was more story to tell at this point, but the sub-300 page novels just have a general feel of being too short. But I must say that the ending does not feel rushed which is the cardinal sin of most Black Library books. The other criticism is that Swallow is better with the downtime between action sequences then his description of actual battle. This is almost the opposite of Abnett but in a novel about a "family reunion gone wrong" it works.

This novel is clearly a set up for a second novel (and hopefully third [Inquisitor Text] what is beneath the masks of the Angels Sanguine?). Personally, I can't wait. I just hope that [Inquisitor-Text] after dispatching his brother in the first two novels and the dreadnought sized bloodfiend at the end of this one that Rafen gets promoted to Captain or given a gold helmet at least!

This is one of the better offerings from the Black Library this year. I highly suggest it.

Bolters (Out of Five): Four