‘The Board Is Set’ – Gav Thorpe (Black Library)

Page Count: 20 Pages

There is no escaping it… By the time you read this post, my week off will be well and truly over and I’ll be back at work; trying to make sense of a weeks worth of email. And just in case anyone is wondering, I’m counting time spent lying awake in bed, worrying that something went horribly wrong while I was away. My head is at work, even if the office isn’t open quite yet ;o)

But anyway… I’m sure you’ll excuse me if today’s post is a short one, I’ve got more than a few things to get done today. While I’m working my way through those, you can have some quick thoughts on another slice of ‘Grimdark’ fiction from the war torn universe of the Horus Heresy. The series, as a whole, has ended now (just the one anthology to come) but as far as we’re concerned right now, the Warmaster’s shadow hangs heavy over Terra and the end-game is about to begin…

Malcador the Sigillite is troubled. The war fleets of the traitor Horus approach, and war on the Throneworld is inevitable. But with the Emperor on the Golden Throne, keeping the darkness beneath the Palace at bay, how can even the assembled might of three Space Marine Legions stand against the fury to come? Communing with the Emperor, Malcador plays out a wargame, musing on the key pieces and the unorthodox strategies that may be required to secure victory – and at what role he might play in the battles to come.

One of the things that I love about the ‘Horus Heresy’ short stories is how they fill in the gaps, between larger events, and lend a sense of urgency to the overall narrative. Sometimes, things don’t have to happen in a story, it’s all about building up the anticipation for what is coming next. And that’s got to be a tough target to hit; building up that anticipation but at the same time, keeping the reader’s interest so they don’t just skip to the next big novel.

I’m pleased to confirm that Gav Thorpe hits that target and makes it look pretty damn easy, if I’m being honest.

Thorpe embues his piece with a real sense of quiet terror. Horus has come and there is nowhere else for the Loyalist forces to retreat to; Terra is where it all ends, one way or another. It’s easy to forget sometimes that while the two armies are lining up, there’s a whole civilian administrative structure that’s probably as large as both armies combined, and it is panicking. That’s where Thorpe captures that feeling of sheer, hopeless terror. He doesn’t overdo it, just lets you know that it’s there and leaves you to experience it for yourself. It’s a very effective approach that heightens the anticipation of what is to come, I’m tempted to pick up ‘The Solar War’ now.

It’s not just that though, we also have a meeting between the Sigilite and the Emperor over a particularly symbolic game of… I’m going to call it ‘Space Chess’ :o) It’s a little too symbolic for the likes of me (who loves his 40K and ‘Horus Heresy’ but clearly hasn’t read enough of the books for it all to make sense) but I was all in for the questions that it asked of Malcador and how he responded. It left me with plenty to think about, just as it should be.

‘The Board Is Set’ is one that fans will get the most out of then and that’s understandable, given where it sits in a series that is, well… massive. There was enough there to keep me going though so I was happy.