Mortarion: The Pale King (Volume 15) (The Horus Heresy: Primarchs) [Hardcover] Annandale, David

Product Information

In a lot of ways, Mortarion is to Corax as Konrad is to Corax—a dark mirror lacking the optimism of the Raven Guard. High levels of radiation, everything is poisoned, blown up and there are literally hills of bodies next to the spires on the planet with people crawling over them.

Back in the present Mortarion tells the woman how this debate with himself about his methods is done.Each of them seemed to have been dropped into a significantly awful world, and each of them has struggled greatly to achieve what little they may have in their life. In my opinion, the backstory and motivation for each of the traitor Primarchs are significantly more interesting than that of their loyalist brothers. He has a deep desire to use his station as the commander of an army to liberate, which is rare in the world of Warhammer.

A fact that leads to an overall deterioration in the realism of the space where most of the novel is set. Like his brothers Perturabo, Angron and Curze he’s perhaps unexpectedly principled and dogmatic- his methods may be brutal, but then again, so is war itself.At least the Night Lords, distasteful or not, are different in their approach and bring a perspective worth arguing about. Anyway, two stars isn’t really for the writing, the writing is good, it’s not even really for the story which is okish. However, these things alone were not enough to completely make up for the incredibly edgy at times narrative that I find hard to believe anyone above the age of 15 would be able to take seriously.