"РЕЦЕНЗИЯ 1"https://trackofwords.wordpress.com/2015/05/25/meduson-black-library-anthology/
MEDUSON – BLACK LIBRARY ANTHOLOGY
Of all the ‘exclusive’ products Black Library have released, perhaps the one most likely to rouse the anger of fans is Meduson – a venue-specific Horus Heresy anthology that can only be purchased in person from Games Workshop’s headquarters in Nottingham. Released to celebrate the re-opening of Warhammer World and the dedicated Black Library shop within, it’s a move designed to draw out the diehard fans and encourage visitors, but is bound to annoy those fans not willing or able to make it to Nottingham. Exclusivity aside, any new Heresy release is always going to be of great interest to fans of the series, and this is no exception. With a selection of brand new stories from some of Black Library’s most respected authors, this review is a little longer than usual in order to give as clear a picture as possible of the anthology.
A 270-page hardback anthology featuring stories from eight authors, Meduson is more obviously themed than most recent anthologies (such as Legacies of Betrayal or Blades of the Traitor), focusing solely on the Shattered Legions fighting back in the wake of the Dropsite Massacre. It looks primarily at the Iron Hands, under the leadership of Shadrak Meduson, but also features Marines from other legions, both loyal and traitor, with a range of new characters complementing a few familiar faces. This isn’t the first we’ve seen of the Shattered Legions, having been covered in various short stories and novellas, as well as David Annandale’s The Damnation of Pythos, but what this does is put their actions into context, going into a bit more detail on what their resistance means to the both sides, and what impact they are having on the wider war.
The pacing and sequencing of an anthology is often the key to its success, and Meduson is for the most part an absolute success. It’s bookended by stories from Dan Abnett and Graham McNeill, between them setting out a rivalry and a conflict that really brings the Shattered Legions story arc into focus, providing the stories in between with a greater power for having much more riding on them. Dan Abnett’s story, simply titled Meduson, introduces the man himself in the immediate aftermath of Isstvan, as the Iron Hands attempt to reorganise and get back in the fight. A typical Abnett character piece, it’s a fascinating look at the stresses placed upon the legion, and the way in which Meduson starts to temper his legion’s rigidity, with Meduson coming across as driven and insightful, his reluctance to lead being the very thing that makes him suitable to do so.
With the scene set, the following stories provide detail on the various elements of the careful, complex battle that Meduson and the Shattered Legions are fighting, before Graham McNeill’s story The Either switches things around and shows the conflict from the perspective of the Sons of Horus. We see through the eyes of Tybalt Marr, a character introduced early on in the series and now returning to the forefront of the story, who gives us the chance to see how the traitors view the effects of Meduson’s guerilla tactics. Intent on the destruction of the few loyalists remaining after Isstvan, he sees the threat posed by Meduson but has to battle his own legion’s arrogance in order to demonstrate just how important it is to finally deal with the Shattered Legions. With Meduson and Marr leading the two forces, this particular arc is left poised and balanced, begging for more to be written.
Overall the standard of stories here is excellent, the seven stories in between those two bookends looking at a diverse range of characters and events. Guy Haley’s pair of interlinked tales (Unforged and Unspoken) explore how it wasn’t just the Iron Hands who were damaged emotionally and psychologically by Isstvan, but the Salamanders too, a brace of genuinely dark stories matched only in tone by John French’s The Keys of Hel. A continuation of his previous story Riven, it looks at the brooding, fatalistic side of the Iron Hands’ psyches and the damage done to them by the death of Ferrus Manus, driving them down a path from which they will never really recover.
David Annandale’s The Noose sees the Iron Hands and Emperor’s Children engaged in a cat and mouse game of traps and bluffs, the blunt and unsubtle Iron Hands apparently forced into increasingly desperate measures to try and survive against their arrogant, decadent foes. Stories from Chris Wraight (Grey Talon) and Gav Thorpe (Deeds Endure) both deal with the ways in which the Shattered Legions are having to adapt in order to survive, their individual natures not always making for an easy balance, but proving effective when their relative strengths are combined to best effect. The only blip comes in Nick Kyme’s story (Immortal Duty), a twisted tale that emphatically portrays the confusion and brutality of the battle above Isstvan while the massacre was taking place, but twists a bit too far and never really explains itself, the purpose of the story remaining unclear. It offers an interesting look into the workings and mindset of the Iron Hands, but feels unfinished and unresolved.
What Meduson offers then is a focused, themed anthology packed with all the usual action that you might expect but also a real sense of scale and importance, pulling the narrative of the Heresy back to take a longer look at a really interesting period in the series’ timeline. It does feel like it should have come earlier though – we’ve got so far past Isstvan in the main series that it feels odd to be looking so far back, so much later. It can be hard to remember who the existing characters are and what they’ve been through, and it’s hard not to think that this anthology should have come out a year or two back for it to have made the most sense. That being said, on its own merits this is a top quality release that fans of the series should find rewarding and worthwhile – it’s just a shame that it’s currently limited to only a small audience. "РЕЦЕНЗИЯ 2"http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?409168-Meduson
I had originally intended to finish this anthology before writing all the reviews at once, but I'll have forgotten the first stories by the time I get to the end, so here are the first few.
Meduson is a new Horus Heresy anthology available only from the Black Library store at Warhammer World in Nottingham. (I'm not going to comment on the policy of limited availability, discuss that somewhere else if you like). It's billed as a collection of "Shattered Legions" stories (set after Isstvan V and principally following the actions of the Iron Hands, Salamanders and Raven Guard, with occasional guest appearances from others), though so far it's been more like "Iron Hands and friends".
Meduson (Dan Abnett)
Shadrak Meduson finds his purpose - and a purpose for his fellow Legionaries - in the aftermath of Isstvan V, with the loyalist Legions shattered and their primarchs dead or missing.
I thought this was fantastic. Shadrak Meduson was compellingly portrayed as a thoughtful, driven warrior searching for pragmatic solutions in a galaxy gone mad. He's not shown as being right about everything, but he is shown as being prepared to listen when there is a chance he might be wrong... a flawed, interesting character. This was a flawless, interesting story.
Unforged (Guy Haley)
In the immediate aftermath of the Dropsite Massacre, Loyalist survivors seek desperately to regroup; but trust is in short supply.
Well-written as is usual with Haley's work, I was nonetheless left a bit flat by this one. The twist at the end just didn't feel right to me: with minimal spoilers, fragmented loyalists advertising their position in the hope of finding other loyalists can't afford to be too trigger-happy when strangers approach (albeit that paranoia and the fog of war may easily kick in). So the motivations of the characters didn't quite seem to follow through into their actions. Good, but not great.
Immortal Duty (Nick Kyme)
Those of the Iron Hands who fail may be condemned to join the Immortals, sent on suicide missions until they meet their deserved end. When the whole Legion has failed, what then?
I'll be honest: I saw the author and winced, not expecting much. In fact, this was considerably better than Kyme's normal fare. I wanted to discover what happened to the protagonist, I wanted to know how he had found himself in this situation. His actions made sense and were well-described. The ending fell a little flat, and I think this might have been better placed after The Keys of Hel in reading order, but it was a decent tale for all that.
Grey Talon (Chris Wraight)
Unable to concentrate their forces because the enemy would have one large target to aim at, the Iron Hands must adapt to a guerrilla war. The White Scars are more experienced in such matters, but the Iron Hands are not without ideas of their own.
I enjoyed this story. Each of the featured Legions were shown sympathetically, with none of the blinding idiocy that sometimes appears when one stereotype is set next to another. It gave me a good sense of the confusion and aimlessness that the Shattered Legions experienced until Meduson gave them new purpose, while also showing that none of them surrendered to despair.
The Keys of Hel (John French)
Without the guidance of Ferrus Manus, his surviving Legion look beyond his teachings for an edge in battle.
It took a while for me to figure out what was going on (maybe that's my failing, rather than the story's?); and when I did, although the concept was really cool, the reaction to it from the other Iron Hands at the climax did not seem believable. So there were definitely good components in this story, but it all felt a bit fractured and clumsy.
Deeds Endure (Gav Thorpe)
The Iron Hands must decide what it is they are fighting for with their Legion shattered, the Imperium sundered, and their Primarch dead. Perhaps the Salamanders can help them remember.
Oh dear. Sadly, I thought this was pretty awful. Filled with stilted, unconvincing dialogue and based around a heavily contrived premise; jam-packed with cliché, and even featuring appallingly asinine comments like "vengeance is just another word for revenge" (evidently Space Marines fulfil the role of thesaurus as well as soldier in the 31st Millennium); this was bad pretty much throughout.
Review Interlude
I have three stories still to read. So far, definitely recommended - not every story is a belter, but almost all of them have got something going for them, and it's easily on a par with the generally-available HH line for quality.
The Noose (David Annandale)
Obviously, when you sense that your opponent has set a trap, the only reasonable course of action is to walk into it, and set a trap of your own, which they will recognise and walk into anyway in turn.
I struggled with this one. It's one of those stories where everyone thinks they're being clever but actually, I the reader was of the opinion they were all being rather stupid. If they hadn't all been stupid, there wouldn't have been a story. I'm not a fan of stories that rely on every character in it being a bit dim. And given that they were all stupid in the same way and all did the same stupid things, how come one side won and the other side didn't? Apparently because the author intended it that way. It's all a bit out-of-universe. Not really a fan. I don't know, maybe I'm failing to recognise the subtle difference between one side appearing stupid out of desperation and the other appearing stupid out of over-confidence, but for me... it didn't work.
Unspoken (Guy Haley)
Following directly from Unforged, the Iron Hands who escaped the Scouring on Isstvan V regroup with the remnants of their Legion, and with Salamander assistance, begin playing their part in the guerrilla warfare envisaged by Meduson. In so doing, they begin to wonder if the Shattered Legions are the only ones that are broken.
This was much better, Haley back to form. It doesn't really explain the bit in Unforged that doesn't make much sense, but it does emphasise the confusion and borderline despair of the Scouring and it's consequences; and that even Space Marines, subjected to enough catastrophe, can suffer from what we might today call shock or PTSD. In a galaxy torn asunder by betrayal, in a war characterised by traps and deception following deception and traps, where a portrayal of the conflict as Loyalist versus Traitor is a vast and misleading over-simplification, we begin to wonder what can any warrior do? Judging by the characters in this story, they can at least do something, even if it might never be enough. Thought-provoking and worrisome, I thought this was great.
The Either (Graham McNeill)
I was lucky enough to get this story signed by the author. He dedicated it, "Shattered, but not broken" - a fitting summary. Under Shadrak Meduson's guidance, the Shattered Legions have reorganised, regrouped, and restarted their war against the traitors. In this new guerrilla war, both battles and victories are small, but they accumulate to slow the Warmaster and bleed his armies. But the traitors are far from stupid, and learn to respect the threat posed by the Shattered Legions.
I thought this was brilliant, the equal of the opening story. Meduson himself does not appear directly, but his presence can be felt, as it was throughout the collection - this time we see things from the viewpoint of Tybalt Marr, Meduson's sworn enemy. It would have been so easy to portray Marr as a pathetic bumbling fool, mistakenly thinking Meduson was dead, expecting plaudits for a goal he has not fulfilled. In fact, we see him as a shrewd and perceptive strategist, one who recovers from his mistakes and seeks to atone for them - even if it risks the wrath of the Warmaster. This story was clever, incisive and inspiring, and a fitting conclusion to the anthology.
Overall conclusion
The best stories in the anthology are the first and the last, but there's meat in the middle too. One stands out as plain poor, a couple are of debatable merit, but the rest are good or better. While (as previously discussed) it would have been a dick move if a book with such limited availability had held key revelations, or had significantly advanced the plot, very little of this collection felt like filler (as some of the mainstream HH releases have lately), instead shedding insight into an inglorious, unpleasant war - and the personalities that contested it.
I strongly recommend picking up this anthology, if you are able. I know it's easy to get disillusioned by the apparent milking of the HH, but good stories stand on their own merit, and there are several very good stories in here. Thumbs firmly up.
