Fulgrim - Review

I just read the book Fulgrim form the Horus Heresy series.

I bought it beacuse of the strong role of Iron Hands in it.

My vote?

5/10.

Weak Points:

The plot is very simple. Fulgrim and his legion enter in a temple dedicated to Slaanesh and from that point on they are damned. Easy.

No librarians around, no one able to see such evident contamination in all the Fleet Expedition.

Fulgrim has nothing better to do that take an alien sword (which is casually possessed by a daemon).

The characters' personality development is the worst part of the book. One dimension. They betray so easily you wonder how they could ever be loyal to the Emperor. There is no real character transformation, things such "psychology" are out.

The Iron Hands are the side characters, and they are second in all. In every scene they have to look dumber than Emperor Children. The worst is when the IH are hunting a human "enemy" fleet and never had the thought to search for their supply lines. Fulgrim needs to tell them (!!!).

Ferrus Manus is depicted very much like Angron: reacting with pure rage at every smallest thing going on around and schizophrenically calm down the moment after, if someone say something to distract him.

The book loose a lot of chapters describing less important events and side characters and then hurry up in the last chapters to catch the most relevant and important events.

The worst is the conversion of Fulgrim to Horus' cause: one page and a half (p.346-347) in a book of 510 pages.

Horus: "the emperor betrayed us"

Fulgrim: "what?"

H: "We fought and he is the one who takes all the glory"

F: "noo..."

H:"we risk to loose all we fought for"

Daemon in the alien sword: "join him"

F:"ok ,I'll join you" .

Wow, you do not really need to write a book about it.

Wasn't the fall the Emperors' Children the most drammatic of all?

The perfect Horus' oratory skills result?

Not in this book.

Good Points about the book:

-you receive some extra information about the Iron Hands, especially about the Primarch' body guard, the Morlocks.

-The final battle on Istvaan V is really epic.

-The final corruption of the Emperor Children to Slaanesh is very well depicted. It is also very nice the story of the creation of noise marines.

-nice reference to "the Picture of Dorian Grey" throughout all the book.

If you ever read the book, skip the first half of the book (where loyalists turn to chaos) and go directly where chaos is chaos, that part is very well done.