It’s been a long journey. The Buried Dagger marks the end Black Library’s Horus Heresy series, a broad and sweeping collection of stories that detail the background of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It’s been 13 years in the making so far and this is Book 54 in the series. As you might expect, this isn’t one single tale but many individual threads, and The Buried Dagger focuses on three things; the rise of corruption on Earth, the fall of the demi-god like Mortarion and exploits of Knight Errant and hero-exile Nathaniel Garro.
The duty to close the series rests in the hands of James Swallow, who’s been telling Garro’s story since Book Three, The Flight of the Eisenstein. Jim has always been a strong writer, but it’s clear that his writing has levelled up many times since that previous work. The Buried Dagger is essentially a space opera thriller, tightly paced and written in a broad and cinematic way.
The pacing on this book is nothing short of incredible. There’s a lot to unpick in this narrative; we have the weight of an entire bookshelf’s worth of work behind it and yet somehow it works with very little prior knowledge. We don’t recommend that you go in cold, though. Deeply steeped in The Horus Heresy mythos and yet not bogged down, this is a tale of betrayal, loss and self-delusion.
Mortarion was always going to be one of the most challenging villains to write; this is a near god-like being who willingly turns to into an avatar of corruption and rot, after all. Swallow makes this cartoonish weirdo compelling and interesting, without removing any bit of the terror of such a creature in the process. In addition, we have the entire Knights Errant present; the ragtag band of Legionnaires, mostly recruited by Garro in order to fight the growing darkness. Swallow gets the blend of heroic and desperate prefect throughout. The story flits between the grim tale of Mortarion back to the almost hopeful efforts of the Knights to slow down the coming horrors.
It’s also a rapid read and each page seems to cram as much action and emotion on to as possible. There’s a reason for this of course; even though this is the end of The Horus Heresy series, it’s not the end of that story. The follow-on series is The Siege of Terra, which details the final assault on Earth by the Traitor Legions. As both a series ender and an opener for a whole new range of books, The Buried Dagger does admirably. This is a cracking novel and a just reward for those of us who have diligently followed the series, and also just as much fun for the more casual Warhammer fan.
THE BURIED DAGGER / AUTHOR: JAMES SWALLOW / PUBLISHER: BLACK LIBRARY / RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 23RD
