Troy's Reviews > Fulgrim

I really tried to like this book but for me it had a lot of things going against it. I've never been a big fan of Graham McNeill but I thought he did a good job with "False Gods". In Fulgrim nothing works for me. I think this book is about Fulgrim's fall into Chaos but since Fulgrim and the other Emperor's Children (with the exception of Saul Tarvitz) have been depicted as arrogant pricks in the previous stories they are not sympathetic characters. Without sympathetic characters this "fall from grace" theme didn't resonate with me. I found Ferrus Manus an interesting character but he plays a small role.

McNeill had a tough task with this fifth novel in the series. Besides telling a story where most everyone knows the major plot points he also has to rehash events that were previous covered in the previous books in the series. This concept of seeing events from different sides worked alright in "Einstein" but here it felt like we have seen this already without providing additional insight into the events. The book builds to the events on Isstvan V but then I felt short changed with what should have been an epic battle description. My guess is we'll revisit Isstvan V in some later books.

For fans of the Emperor's Children this book gives them a ton of background and I'm sure they'll enjoy it. Otherwise I would recommend skipping this book. I'm hoping that the series improves with "Descent of Angels" and I'm looking forward to "Legion" from Dan Abnett to restore the series to the greatness of the first books.