‘I Am Slaughter’ – Dan Abnett (Black Library)

 

Page Count: 120 Pages (taken from the ‘Legends of the Waaagh!’ Collection, where the print size is tiny, my poor eyes…)

I wasn’t a big reader of ‘Black Library’ books back in 2015 (when ‘I Am Slaughter’ was first published) so I pretty much missed all of the ‘Beast Arises’ series, both as individual volumes and again when it was reprinted in omnibus editions (a couple of years later). To be fair, those years weren’t good for reading anything at all, that’s another story though.

As far as things stand then (and given the price these books go for second-hand), it looks like I’ll be getting my history of ‘The War of the Beast’ via the likes of Lexicanum. That’s part of the reason I picked up ‘Legends of the Waaagh!’ The inclusion of ‘I Am Slaughter’ means that even if I don’t get to read the rest of the series, at least I got to see how it all kicked off. And…

It is the thirty-second millennium and the Imperium is at peace. The Traitor Legions of Chaos are but a distant memory and the many alien races that have long plagued mankind are held in check by the Space Marines. When a mission to exterminate one such xenos breed on the world of Ardamantua draws in more of their forces, the Imperial Fists abandon the walls of Terra for the first time in more than a thousand years. And when another, greater, foe strikes, even the heroic sons of Rogal Dorn may be powerless against it. The Beast Arises… and it is mighty.

We all know what happened during the Horus Heresy and up to a point, we know what’s currently happening in the 42nd Millennium. That still leaves us with a ten thousand year chunk between those two points though and, ‘The War of the Beast’ happened fairly early on in that time.

We’re looking at a very different Imperium here. The worst moments of the Horus Heresy are a distant memory and if things still aren’t brilliant for the average citizen, they’ve been a hell of a lot worse… And will get worse again in the millennia to come. In a setting that pretty much coined the phrase ‘grimdark’ then, it felt likke Dan Abnett maybe found it a little more difficult (this time round) to really strike a balance between those familiar elements and what is actually a fairly optimistic time for the Imperium. The politicking does hint at where the Imperium is headed but for now… This is a time where the role of the actual Astartes is being debated, are they actually needed at all? And that kind of left me wondering… How much is ‘a 40k novel a 40k novel’ without the Space Marines? Like I said, those early stages of the plot felt a little off but, I gave it chance and…

Luckily, what definitely makes a 40k novel a 40k novel is if you throw a whole bunch of Orks at it and see what happens next. The result may not be a surprise to us but definitely is to the complacent higher echelons of the Imperium’s military and, that’s where the fun ultimately lies. Abnett has a lot of ‘set piece spectacle’ to work with here and it turns out that was all he needed to get that ‘40k vibe’ back. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure how likely it is that one particular Chapter of Astartes would let itself be pushed to the point of near extinction (although maybe they would, I don’t know) but there’s no denying how awesome it looks on the page, And it also raises some interesting questions about some of the motives around the politicking taking place; which in turn, leads to the introduction of possibly the most unlikely hero I’ve come across in 40k fiction. Or, given the nature of the setting, was it actually the most likely hero we were going to get? I’ll get back to you on that one…

‘I Am Slaughter’ has trouble finding its feet, in the early stages, but given that it’s expanding on (presumably) footnotes and codex entries, you’ve got to give it the benefit of the doubt. The later stages of the book certainly make up for the lot and have left me with another series that I’ll be on the hunt for. What a chore... ;o)