Title: The Horus Heresy: Descent of Angels
Author: Mitchel Scanlon
Publisher: The Black Library
Release Date: 2007
Price: $7.99
Rating: Two thumbs sideways, 73/100, C, ** out of five.
Pros: Great character development, exciting when the story isn’t slowed down by itself, gives a completely different view of the events of the Horus Heresy
Cons: The story takes too long to develop.
Overall: It’s a fresh perspective in the series that just didn’t realize its potential.
Even at its lowest point, The Horus Heresy had never put out a truly average installment. That’s what I would be saying if Descent of Angels didn’t fall flat on its face by bringing an entirely new view on the Heresy.
This sixth book marks a low spot for the series. Even the heavily flawed False Gods came across as a stronger product. Mind you the problem with False Gods was the attention to detail was ridiculously inconsistent but the story still moved. In this case it goes into a painful amount of detail consistently. While the characters are some of the best developed characters in the series and description is some of the best in the franchise, the storyline occasionally gets held up by these details. This makes a fantasy/sci-fi war novel just a bit
It just moves too slow. With books like these there’s a balance that has to be made between action and story development and this book simply moves way too slow. False Gods took one extreme and Descent of Angels took the other. False Gods had too much action for story development. Descent of Angels had too little action to build upon the character development and building up of events. It also doesn’t bode well if it is a fantasy/sci-fi war novel that the majority of the action happens in the last 85-90 pages of the book.
Now if this had been another style, it really wouldn’t be an issue. However, Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 is about never-ending war with constant epic sweeping battles. You only get a true taste of the franchise toward the end of Descent of Angels. Everything before then just ends up tiresome because of the level of details and the agonizingly slow pace.
Yes, you do see the birth of the Dark Angels Space Marine legion. That alone is incredible, since you see the First Legion evolve into its more brutal form after they find their Primarch on the planet of Caliban. However, it just seems empty without the amount of action that the other books had. Yes sometimes too much action can be a bad thing, but don’t have enough or have a book that’s all development and details, you might as well have a second book released simply for the addition of the story.
It’s hard to bash the merits of the book though. It’s one of the best developed stories in the series with some of the strongest developed characters in the series. However, it can get painfully boring.
If you want to see some of the events of The Horus Heresy well before Warmaster Horus Lupercal was corrupted by the taint of Chaos, read the book. If you’re an absolute die hard Warhammer 40,000 fan, get the book. If you’re not within either of the two groups just listed, avoid the book.
Other books in the series:
- The Horus Heresy: Horus Rising by Dan Abnett
- The Horus Heresy: False Gods by Graham McNeill
- The Horus Heresy: Galaxy in Flames by Ben Counter
- The Horus Heresy: Flight of the Eisenstein by James Swallow
- The Horus Heresy: Fulgrim by Graham McNeill
Site [The Horus Heresy: Descent of Angels] Read [Lexicanum] Also Read [The Emperyan] Also Read [I Can’t Stop Reading!]
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