He had history, he had his own motivations, and he was a fascinating character to read about. Horus wasn’t just the guy who fell to chaos and took his brothers with him. For me, the most important thing that Horus Rising did was remind me…remind us all…that life isn’t black and white. One thing’s for sure though we were seeing characters, archetypes, legions in a new light. Some of these were already familiar to existing 40k fans, while others were brand new and never before seen.
Horus, Abaddon, Loken, Erebus, Eidolon, Sindermann, Keeler, just to name a few. So it introduced us to the concepts of the Horus Heresy series, and it also introduced us to a whole raft of characters whose stories have resonated through the rest of the series. Horus is on the rise as we start the series, but we all know what happens in the end… It also felt powerful, as we – the readers, most of us at least – knew what was coming. It had primarchs, the first time we’d ever got to see these demigods in their original state, and it had Space Marines in the thousands – it felt fresh. 40k is all about the grim darkness, but here we saw a different tone in a book whose characters were filled with hope for the future, who hadn’t yet experienced the pain of betrayal and the hopelessness of inevitability.
It’s one of those first-in-a-series books that does more than just set the scene for what’s to come – looking back now, it introduced a tone, a style, a sense of scale that instantly set it (and what followed) apart from all of the 40k books that came before.
HORUS HERESY HORUS RISING BOOK SERIES
After a further 40+ novels (and counting) this is still generally held as one of the series high points, and is an obvious entry in the …Legends Collection. The opening novel of the Heresy series, first published ten years ago, this is where it all began for what’s become the biggest and most popular series that Black Library have ever published.
Issue Five of the Warhammer 40,000 Legends Collection from Hachette and Black Library returns to the Horus Heresy with Horus Rising by Dan Abnett.