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

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Or maybe this series wasn’t a great idea to begin with, especially given how long in the tooth the Horus Heresy has become. This isn’t really a bad book, it’s just so boringly inconsequential that you’re really going to get nothing from it. They manage to blow them up, but many die after the tunnels are filled with molten ore from the factories afterwards which earns Typhon a promotion. Mortarion shows the reader his innermost beliefs and values, that will eventually turn him against the Imperium.

Mortarion is a bit stunned here and other two primarchs leaves seemingly really hoping Mortarion changes his ways. I’ve been consistently let down by this series as the books seldom offer insights into the characters that I really enjoy or want to see. This society was discovered by the ship Manifest Unity (pretty awesome 30k ship name) which was destroyed. It is still vulnerable from above down the shaft it came down so a force including Garro is sent that way. These battle scenes aren’t particularly compelling in their description and they aren’t well-written enough to truly put an image into the mind of the reader.He brought the cast of characters to life as he always does and conveyed the barrage of emotions brought to bear in the finale perfectly. When Keri and I decided to dive into the Primarch series, we divided up the primarchs based on who we were most interested in reading about. It’s a particularly bad lapse in the prose because what little descriptions we get describe the arcology as an incredibly tight space, which stands in direct contrast to the moments where Mortarion and the Death Guard fight against vehicles inside of the city. All of them have very unique perspectives not only on their father, the Emperor but also on the Great Crusade and the burgeoning Imperium as a whole.

I adore my real-life Mortarion miniature and really wanted to like this one but sadly, the few good moments of character growth and introspection were buried beneath tons of edgy gore, atrocious worldbuilding and battle scenes that drag on for too long. This novel provides a nice little insight into the Pale King and adds some depth the the Horus Heresy.

Bitter and frustrated from being unable to complete his mission in Barbarus, eager to prove himself to his brothers and newly unified Death Guard and most of all, absolutely ready to decapitate some tyrants. No doubt this wasn't helped by Keeble given him a somewhat posh British accent more reminiscent of a villain like Ramsay Bolton than a Demi-God like Mortarion. By devoting space on the page to the philosophy and world view of the tyrants in power on Galaspar we get a better understanding of why Mortarion has to be so brutal in removing them from power, which builds understanding and sympathy towards the Primarch as he’s questioned by his brothers. I was expecting more about Mortarion's character, his past, his relations with the other primarchs and the Emperor, etc.

This is covered in Forge World books and Annandale already covered the aftermath of this in his short story so this is just expanding on these events. The other two tell him that because of his methods and brutality the people dont know what to do with their freedom and his body counting decree made it so he just replaced another tyranny with another.Their cruel, wealthy overlords work them to death like human batteries and keep them docile with a steady stream of drugs (it’s worth noting the same drugs make the overlords more aggressive, kind of like the “pax” from Firefly). However, my favorite part were perhaps the Digger/Sinis scenes and the way in which she perceived Morty. The parallels between the enemy that he fights in this book, the tyranny that he fought on his homeworld in the past, and the monstrous entity that the Imperium later becomes is a clever plot device which works really well in this book.

An action packed romp into the early days of the great crusade, where Mortarion was juat trying to find his path and way. Mortarion is no exception to this rule, and while the novel which bears his name has little to do with his upbringing, it does have a lot to say about his views on the Imperium. As he answers Horus’s and Sanguinius’s questions, he insists throughout that there was no way other than what he chose to do. In the parts where we get a glimpse into the thought processes of the characters, both good and bad, we see a depth and a complexity that the author is capable of reaching.This allows The Fourth Horseman to crash into the main spire and deploy 10k marines while the fleet disengages. They are so strict everyone has allotted size of living space, proscribed number and quality of clothes, food, bed size, job and slaves. We don't actually get to learn much about the leader of the Death Guard that we didn't already know, but we do get to glimpse fan-favourites Garro and Typhon in their earlier days and, through the framing device, get some insight into Mortarion's relationship with Sanguinius and Horus.