The Dark Imperium trilogy is a series set during the Cicatrix Maledictum era (which, at the time of this writing, is the "current" time of Warhammer 40,000). It's notable because it features Roboute Guilliman, the primarch of the Ultramarines, risen from a centuries-long coma. This is my review of the second book, Plague War by Guy Haley. This review contains no more spoilers than what you're likely to find in author interviews about the book.
This book, as its title implies, is about an insurgence of Nurgle's forces, which means Death Guard. Pretty early on in the book, it's stated pretty flatly that Roboute Guilliman is determined to face and defeat Mortarion. Well, I'm pretty sure that can't happen. Or at least, I don't think it can happen. Because I'm reading this book 5 years after its release, I have the benefit of future knowledge, and the 10th edition of Warhammer still has Guilliman as Imperial Regent. Guilliman can't lose this battle, but then again Mortarion is Mortarion. He can't be removed, and I don't mean so much from the Empyrean as from Warhammer.
But that's the promise being made in this book. Guilliman and Mortarion are going to face one another, and Guilliman is going to defeat Mortarion. It's an ostentatious and intriguing prospect, even if ultimately you're just looking forward to seeing what contrivance the author comes up with for how the showdown has to be postponed. Maybe it rains, the day they're supposed to face off? Or maybe one of them has a thing he has to do at the place. Who knows how it'll turn out.
A large part of this book is about a teenage girl who some members of the Ministorum believes to be a saint. Guilliman, who doesn't believe in the godhood of the Emperor in the first place, doesn't think the girl is a saint, and instead assumes that she's a psyker, and therefore dangerous. He orders the girl to be isolated and held for further analysis.
But the war rages on, too. So in common Warhammer 40,000 fashion, there's a lot of cutting back and forth between alternating storylines, which honestly makes the book a little more confusing than I think it needs to be. This is a complaint I have about a lot of 40k books, though, so I feel like part of the problem is me. Probably most readers won't have a problem with this, but personally I find myself forgetting the relevance of one thing or another. For instance, there's a really exciting Titan battle in this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm not making an official statement here, but I think I might feel that Warhammer 40,000 mechs are the best mechs (well, aside from Neon Genesis Evangelion). But I digress. The point is, the battle was very exciting, and I loved reading about the venerable God Machines. But also, even as I ravenously read the chapters, I had no idea why the battle was in the book.
I'm pretty sure, in general, you could probably just read the even-numbered chapters of this book and feel like you missed nothing. But here's the thing. I believe this is a unique Warhammer art form. It's the art of, for lack of a better term, nutritious bloat. I say it's nutricious because one thing about any Warhammer novel is that it's not just a single tale, it's also a vehicle for lore, worldbuilding, and battle reports. You can recognize the "bloat" of a Warhammer 40,000 book by its tenuous relevance to the actual plot, and that's your signal to pay especially close attention, because if it's not plot then it must be about lore or gaming.
The Titan battle was a battle report. Great fun to read, lots of big exciting moments, lots of descriptions of tactics and strategies (a player might even say stratagems, wink wink). It'll make you want to set up a battlefield, pull out your Armigers or Battletech mechs, and generate a battle report of your own.
Just as importantly, though, I think the "bloat" of Warhammer manages to have the sneaky effect of making a book a little more unpredictable than it would have been otherwise. I regularly find characters in a Warhammer novel who I think are the main characters of the novel. And then they die.
You don't get that in most books. Usually, you know who the main characters are. And you anticipate that most of those main characters are going to be with you until the final chapter. You don't do that in a Warhammer book, though (no points for just latching on to a Primarch). Those "extra" characters happen because of the size and scope of a typical 40K book.
And often times, those characters are really really good characters. They're often people you want the book to be about. You grow fond of them. You want more of them. But then they die.
Dark Imperium: Plague War is a good book. It's got all the stuff you want from Warhammer: compelling characters, epic story, sprawling plots, war (not many hammers, though). You get Typh{on,us}, Mortarion, and Guilliman. But the biggest reveal of all is the answer to one of the most sacred of questions in the 40k universe: Why didn't the Emperor tell anyone the horrors of the Warp existed? This answer is, unbelievably, answered very clearly, plainly, lucidly. It's done pretty casually, though. It's just a narrative about some of Guilliman's thoughts as he fights a bunch of Nurgle's demons. If you're caught up in the action, you could even miss it. It's a really great moment that's developed my perception of the Warhammer universe.
If you want to know the answer, though, you gotta read this book.
All images in this post copyright Games Workshop.