The End and the Death: Volume I (Volume 8) [Hardcover] Abnett, Dan [Hardcover] Abnett, Dan

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As death approaches, you may want to "correct" them if they say things that don't make sense—but it's better not to. Dan, more than anyone, pushed GW’s publishing arm to a place where they could accidentally produce the longest single series of novels in the history of literature. The lives of uncountable numbers have been extinguished and even primarchs, once thought immortal, have been laid low.

From what I've read of other reviews, I'm deeply, deeply sceptical that there's 18 hours of story left to be told in both books combined, let alone 30 or more. After the Heresy series' meandering denoument The Siege of Terra was initially promoted as an 8 novel series (plus some novellas). Keeping the focus so close on those micro conflicts means that Abnett is left spending pages and pages (and pages) on legwork that really needed to have been done in other books by other authors.

Two large books and one smaller (Knight of grey, Fury of Magnus style book) to relief main story a bit. There was a very deliberate attempt on my part to make sure those things didn’t just become just more of the same. Considering Echo's ended with the shields down, we better see the Emperor and crew heading up real early into the first book. I have read every book, short story and novella in both the Horus Heresy and Siege of Terra series and this is a fitting beginning to the end if ever I heard one. There is new information here, exciting, gripping, lore with massive implications radiating backwards into the Heresy and forwards into 40k.

At a page count of 650+ pages this massive book explores many characters that we’ve been introduced to over the course of the Horus Heresy, as they set upon all of their final journeys. It feels less apocalyptic and terrifying than the masterwork that was Saturnine because it loses the key focal point to show the desperation we’re told is present. The Legions – Emperor, Custodian and Astartes are directly linked to a variety of figures of classical myth and history and god they don’t half talk about it. The great saga that began 17 years ago with Dan Abnett’s seminal novel Horus Rising is hurtling to its inevitable conclusion.

It's also three stars because some of it's problems aren't really the fault of this book they are problems with the Siege as a series hence I'm assuming these last points are inherited from the overall plot each author writing in the series was to stick to, if it was Abnett's decision for things to play out this way then I'd change the rating to 1 star because these are dumb choices. With the war at this critical juncture, Sanguinius, primarch of the loyalist Blood Angels, braves the horrors of the Warmaster’s flagship, The Vengeful Spirit, with a single purpose in mind – to slay his brother Horus, decapitate the Heresy once and for all, and stop the forces of Chaos from taking Terra. The End and the Death attempts to do it all, and for all of the skill on show in writing different voices and perspectives, it’s where the novel creaks and breaks.