‘Eater of Dreams (Horus Heresy)’ – Marc Collins (Black Library)

I didn’t have any time, today, to get into a longer read but I had to read something (just to de-stress a little after having to run a meeting this morning, I’m no public speaker…) so had a little mooch about on Amazon and settled on ‘Eater of Dreams’ as a bite sized read. I’ve accepted, by now, that I will likely never catch up on all the Black Library ‘short reads’ but in the meantime, I’m finding that they make for nice little interludes between other books (well, you can’t really call the grim darkness of the far future nice but you know what I mean…) And that’s where I found myself today, in need of a little interlude, so…

Former Chief Librarian of the Night Lords, Fel Zharost, has exiled himself to the warrens of old Albia. Yet Malcador the Sigillite, searching for recruits for his Knights-Errant, has taken an interest in Zharost, offering him the chance at redemption by confronting and wiping clean a sin from his past.

First things first (and not the book’s fault to be fair but whoever wrote the blurb needs to go and take a long look at themself in the mirror), I love digging into the parts of Terra that aren’t the Emperor’s palace so mention of ‘the warrens of old Albia’ sounded right up my street. That’s all we get though, a mention… We actually meet Fel Zharost as he is being led from said warrens, dammit. I’m calling shenanigans and not just because I accepted the challenge to use that word in this review… What could have been a deep dive into a fresh part of Terra remains strictly background colour then. And that’s fair enough, there’s only so much room here and plot has to take precedence over worldbuilding in these situations.

The good news then is that Collins gives us a neat take on the whole ‘surely X Chapter didn’t have any loyalists?’ question with proof positive that even the Night Lords weren’t all bad and some were able to ask hard questions of their Primarch. Fel Zharost seems to have taken that approach to it’s logical conclusion but Malcador still needs to test him because, well… Zharost is still a Night Lord and that’s not something anyone can take lightly. I loved how the nature of physical darkness is examined in a Marine who sees darkness as his natural habitat. Watching Zharost emerge from the dark spaces of the ship to see the void take shape before him, that’s almost hypnagogic… It’s really powerful stuff to be crammed into a short story.

The nature of that test is suitably explosive (in more ways than one, Zharost definitely needed to clear that one up before tackling anything else), and that’s never a bad thing in a Black Library read, but what I found more interesting was watching another part of the Sigilite’s Knights Errant take shape. The Astartes are too valuable an asset not to be used and here, it leads to really intriguing potential sub-plots as we see Zharost and Macer Varren try and find some kind of common ground (other than the fact that they’re both from particularly unstable Legions) and learn to work together to fulfil aims that they may never be fully aware of (which is why I love the Sigilite). Varren happily admits that he has no idea what he has brought Zharost to face and that hint of the unknown just makes things all the more intriguing for the reader.

‘Eater of Dreams’ has a lot going on and is definitely a tale that you’ll want to take your time over. And while you’re doing that, I’ll be over here hoping for more Zharost/Varren tales, I’d definitely read them 😊