Legion by Dan Abnett

After the disappointing sixith book in the series, Descent of Angels. I had hopes for this, the seventh book in the open-ended Horus Heresy series. As an aside, I suspect there will be twenty books before this is done.

I wanted Legion to be good, after Descent threatened to bog the series down in irrelevant side details and prequels. Legion is a sort of prequel, it being arguable whether the book is set about the same time as the first page of the first book in this series, or just earlier.

The Alpha Legion are encountered by a unit of Earth soldiers fighting a bitter planet-bound war, and also by John Grammaticus, the once-human agent of an alien cabal. The Alpha Legion are difficult to contact, their motives inscrutable. Their loyalty to the cause seems above question, but what is their real loyalty, and what drives their strange actions?

Dan Abnett sets up a very good story here, readable even though the final actions of the Alpha Legion are known. Or are they? That’s the question Abnett poses at the close of the book. What are they really up to, even ‘today’?

A good read, and recommended for fans of the setting. It made me want to dig out those old rules for The Lost and the Damned and play an Alpha Legion force.