ROOMSKY REVIEWS: Wolfsbane
Guy Haley is a talented writer.
Guy Haley is a frustrating writer.
Guy Haley is the reason this will be a schizophrenic review. Spoilers abound.
There’s a lot to like about Guy Haley. For me, personally, it’s his vision of the setting: while it doesn’t always line up with mine, it’s quite consistent across all his books. Haley, like Abnett, is someone who could easily work his own macro-narrative, and already seems to be doing so with his post-GS 40k work. This isn’t to say his work meshes all that well with other authors, but we’ll get to the specifics of that later. The important point is that I don’t think he’s a very good fit for Heresy-era stories.
Wolfsbane is as good a backdrop as any to explore why.
So, here we have it, and event built up for years, ever since they put Russ back on Terra and sent Loken and pals to mark the Vengeful Spirit. Russ tries to assassinate Horus, wolves die, similar but separate wolves die, and Bellisarius Cawl is there too. Â So, how did it turn out?
If nothing else, Haley knows how to fill his pages. Structurally, I was against this book the moment it became clear we were oscillating between Cawl on some backwater mining colony and Russ` personal journey. Somehow, though, it won me over well before the plotlines actually met up, as both stories were served best by short bursts that Haley could cut away from before Bellisarius or Russ became annoying.
The pacing is great as a result, and the beats moved at about the speed I’ve come to enjoy in the Heresy series. It’s as much about the events as the people within them, and Haley knows it. The action, too, is long enough to be satisfying but brief enough to never overstay its welcome. Over all it’s a quick, satisfying read that I’m eager to put on my shelf once the paperback lands.
As an aside to something specific, Russ undergoes the Trials of Thor in this, and while the scene is well executed I hope this isn’t a sign of a trend with Haley. Such references weren’t especially clever when Graham did them, though I suppose I should be happy he’s not blatantly stealing like back in Perturabo.
Offsetting Haley’s story telling ability is his prose. He literally has no style. He describes what’s happening in the most flavourless way imaginable, and that’s saying something when he shares an author stable with Gav Thorpe. It’s not all bad, to be sure, when he’s forced to go into greater detail it reads well, mostly the large-scale action and the by its nature complex Mechanicus society, but the spaces in between are filled with stacks of uninspired description.
One wonders if this is a result of his workhorse reputation, and that maybe if he dropped 1 or 2 of his ludicrous yearly output he might tighten everything else into something more pleasant. As it stands though, Haley rides on his content rather than his style, which is certainly the more important factor, but it does nothing for literary flavour.
The central character of this story, Haley’s Russ is multifaceted, well-realized, and the final nail in the coffin for Mcneill and Abnett’s original work on the character. The warrior-king of Fenris remains the king but is questionably the warrior, the frightening lethality that used to hide beneath his oafish exterior has apparently evaporated. This, combined with his legion’s portrayal slotting home into their 40k selves as well, is frankly more than a little frustrating.
My favourite part of Abnett’s heresy work is how foreign everything is to its 40k counterpart. Astartes speak their minds and have constant maverick streaks, the Ultramarines are free-thinkers rather than hidebound zealots, and the Space Wolves are the Vylka Fenrika, The Rout, a legion of killers who are more than happy to be the emperor’s personal hounds. Now, much like the Ultras, they spout their token Heresy-era titles in empty lip service to the personalities they used to have. They’re fine 40k wolves, to be sure, but if you expect me to believe they went from how they are in Prospero Burns to how they are in Wolfsbane in like, 6 years and then remained stagnant for a further 10,000, well, I’ll have to disappoint you.
Russ, on the other hand, comes across as just another wolf lord rather than a primarch. All of the primarchs featured in this book are treated the same. The mystique and majesty they once exuded is just gone, and it does nothing for them to be so open. A primarch making a strange call is at least helped by their being rather opaque, their thought process clearly alien to our own. Here, they’re certainly understandable, but they aren’t as impressive when coming up with plans and arguments any of us might have off the cuff.
Russ does have a nice arc, though, and I again applaud Haley for turning something I thought would be boring and predictable (we know how the story ends), and turning it into something tense again. Russ` goal to wound Horus rather than kill him is a neat idea, and shows growth for the wolf lord in accepting that he can’t do everything; but just as much keeping in character in his need to do something.
Props again to Haley for making the part of the novel I’d expected to be the most obnoxious into some of my favourite portions. Admittedly, this is in part to Cawl’s sections failing to trample all over much of what I enjoyed about the setting (he doesn’t do that for another 10,000 years), and while the mad inventor is hardly a new trope, Cawl remains surprisingly sympathetic. The guy is a walking civil war waiting to happen, and Haley plays off that well to form the man’s past: daring, brilliant, and surprisingly selfless.
Dominaria too was quite cool, I’m always down for monstrously inhuman adepts in my stories, and her ease of letting Cawl off the hook for his heretical experiments is nice foreshadowing for her eventual betrayal.
The Real hype was obviously the return of Sota-Nul. In fact, I was more than pleased by the return of a significant Mechanicus presence in this story, period. This is the first time Kelbor Hal has done anything since what, Mechanicum? Sota-Nul’s at the warmaster’s side, Kelbor Hal is calling for membership in his “true” Mechanicum, the main setpiece occurs around a Mechanicus-occupied world for Horus’ resources. It’s the sort of thing I would have liked to see more of in the series at large.
Horus, what have they done to you? I walked into this hoping Haley might finally be the author to give the titular primarch and his legion a bit more focus. Clearly I was mistaken.
Horus, to borrow a term from the Vomkrieg Blog, “Couldn’t orate his way out of a paper bag.” He’s written the entire book like a spoiled child. If Russ was only half of what he was before, there is nothing left of the Warmaster. Yet still everyone bows to him and comments on his magnetism and yada yada yada, come on Haley, the informed awe needs to be built on something. I honestly preferred Vengeful Spirit Horus, and I hated Vengeful Spirit Horus.
Abaddon fairs no better. True, he gets a nice scene where he executes Bror and co, but its counterbalanced by him shooting a surrendering tech-priest for not bowing quickly enough, all while shouting. I had hoped for maybe some reconciling of Heresy-era Abaddon with Black Legion Abaddon, but sadly we are without.
Most of all I’m disappointed by their lack of focus. They’re a solid half of the novel’s selling point, and they only show up as distant antagonists, sinister but without depth.
I will praise the scene in which the Spear of the Emperor dispels Horus’ Molech-buff. Aside from being somewhat well described, Horus` reaction was unexpected enough to excuse its otherwise clichéd execution. Horus doesn’t repent, but neither does he feign regret  over his course. He laments all the atrocities he’s committed, but reaffirms that he still believes his cause just. That is Horus Lupercal, that is the character I would have liked to see in the rest of the novel.
I always end up :cussting on novels I enjoy and praising novels I dislike. Emperor only knows why. Wolfsbane is worth a read and a buy, moreso if you’re one of Haley’s fans. The pacing is good, the plotting is good, and those two combine to make the action good as well. It’s a strong piece with characters that are all over the place and a total lack of artistry with the written word. If such things are forgivable to you, all the better.
Arbitrary Numerical Rating: 6/10
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