‘The End and the Death: Volume 1’ – Dan Abnett (Black Library)

 

Page Count: 665 Pages

It took me a little (okay, a lot) longer than I’d planned but I’ve now got ‘The End and the Death: Volume 1’ under my belt and I’m ready to keep going with the next two. Well, maybe I’ll read something else first… This book was one heck of a slog to get through but if you’ve made it this far in the series, there’s no way that you’re jumping ship now, not three books from the end of the whole thing. You knew what you were getting into ;o) And yep, I’m still reading ‘The Siege of Terra’ out of order; I’m going for the ‘time has stopped and reality is breaking down’ reading order, that’s my excuse anyway ;o) I’ll get to the others at some point.

There is no way out.

The walls have fallen, the gates are breached, and the defenders are slain. It is the end and the death. After seven brutal years of civil war, the Warmaster stands on the verge of victory. Horus Lupercal, once beloved son, has come to murder his father. The Emperor, a shining beacon of hope to many, an unscrupulous tyrant to others, must die. The lives of uncountable numbers have been extinguished and even primarchs, once thought immortal, have been laid low. The Emperor’s dream lies in tatters, but there remains a sliver of hope. Now, at the final hour of the final day, the Emperor rises. With him come his Angel, his Praetorian, and his Captain, all determined to enact terrible vengeance. Yet the hope is slim, for the Warmaster sees all and knows all, and the ultimate victory of Chaos is at hand.

There is no way out.

‘The End and the Death: Volume 1’ is one of the most unwieldy books I’ve ever read and, looking at the thickness of Volumes 2 and 3, I think this is going to continue to be the case. And to be fair, that’s what you get when you’re trying to tie off every single loose end (for a cast of hundreds) that is left in a series that has gone on for dozens of books, novellas and short stories. Does everything need to be tied off so neatly? I’m half and half to be honest. I like it when a few things are left unresolved (makes the setting a little more realistic for me) but at the same time, I get that if you’ve been following a particular character over a series this length, you’re going to want to see where they end up. As always, mileage will vary and all that.

Anyway…

The end result here is a book where pacing can be a real issue as Abnett seeks to give everyone the correct amount of screen time to progress their plot. While the approach may be necessary, it can be frustrating at the same time, waiting for your favourite characters to make it back on the page while having to follow players that you’re not so invested in. And all that is before you have to deal with the sheer weight of accompanying prose required to move everything along. This is a book where three chapters (I think) are dedicated to Malcador the Sigilite trying to get the Emperor’s attention. To be fair, the Emperor has a lot on his plate but even so…

The thing is though… While ‘The End and the Death: Volume 1’ feels like it could easily lose a hundred pages, there was still plenty that kept me engaged. It’s a bloated read but overall, it works.

Dan Abnett paints an engrossing picture of Terra (and the Imperium) on the brink of total collapse, not only under the weight of the besieging Traitor forces but the Warp itself. Not only do we get the horror of war but we also get a nice little vein of pure horror running through the book as reality breaks down and the denizens of the Warp break through. And we get all of this through the eyes of a varied cast, really giving us a ‘wide-screen’ look at the end stages of the Siege.

And it’s not just that either. War is about making a sacrifice and with the fate of the Imperium (even humanity as a whole) at stake, Abnett really makes the level of sacrifice match the occasion, whether it’s the rank and file or a certain Sigilite whose sacrifice has only just begun. Abnett has plenty of room to capture this here, so can’t really miss, but hits the target so often and so well that I felt like I was constantly reeling, even for characters that I barely knew.

And we all know that war is a tragedy because, well… of course it is. People die when they really shouldn’t have had to. Abnett nails this (see above) but where he really shines for me is in capturing the tragedy of missed opportunities and pivotal moments that go the wrong way. There is one moment in particular where something happens and then you find out that if they had only waited another fifteen minutes… Well, lets just say that ‘The End and the Death’ would have ended with Volume 2 (if they had dragged it out) and the universe of the far future wouldn’t be so grimdark after all. That was a real wrench to read.

I’m going to round things off here as really, there’s not a lot more I can say without giving away what’s coming in the next two books. ‘The End and the Death: Volume 1’ struggles under its own weight but while the pacing suffers as a result, the content is rich enough that I’m definitely here for the next two books. Hopefully it won’t take as long to make my way through Volume 2.