Continuing in the Dawn of Fire series, this novel is better than the sum of its parts. Meaning, just like the other novels, there are a lot of excellent parts and plotlines, slightly marred by some marginalized or not very good ones. However, unlike the Wolftime, which I personally think was awful, this novel was quite good (and serves to reinforce why I would like them to just leave the series to Guy Haley and Andy Clark).
The parts following the recurring historitors in particular were really great, and the ongoing story of Captain Messinius trying to help the Primaris improve is also great.
Action is solid, and overall quality is very good. The growing plot of a certain individual potentially becoming more active, and how people are figuring it out is also very intriguing, although I wonder if it is all a red herring or if it will actually go somewhere.
Now for the bad, I have to go into spoiler territory, so reader beware from here:
SPOILERS BELOW:
The Athame is stupid, and the nonsense infinite magic deus ex card Chaos keeps playing is cheap, boring, overpowered, and uniteresting. I am sure one could read me as an Imperial fanboy being angry that Chaos one. This is not the case, I am fine with the bad guys winning sometimes, if they always lose they get neutered as villains. But the manner in which the Word Bearers get to infinitely teleport into the middle of the Imperial fortress despite teleport shields and every other means to prevent such nonsense is really annoying, and I wish such things would stop happening.
In addition, the complete idiocy of the Black Templars Crusade group in this novel is both baffling, and annoying since they make up 10% of the book despite them being on the cover seeming to hint that they wil be the main players in the novel. They are not. And the Primaris Black Templars on the cover do not exist in this novel.
Finally, the Sister of Silence being on the cover is something of false advertising since she appears and dies in the same chapter, instead of being a recurring character, which is a real waste of potential.
Not really a huge deal, but there is also a moment where an alien wielding a tau pulse carbine is able to kill a veteran Word Bearers Terminator with a single shot through the front of their helmet, which I find to be completely ridiculous. Maybe I don’t know the lore as well as I think I do, but I found that to be a huge fast and loose playing of the lore and did not care for it in the slightest.