Having just read Leman Russ: The Great Wolf of The Primarchs books from the Horus Heresy series, I thought it appropriate to continue on to the next in the series. Graham McNeill's Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero is something of an ironic title, I think, because Magnus spends some time in this book pondering Prospero's destruction. It wasn't destroyed by a xenos threat or by the forces of Chaos. It was attacked and all but leveled by Leman Russ and his space marines after psykers were declared forbidden by the Emperor at the Council of Nikea, and Prospero was a hotbed for psychics. This book has nothing, and everything, to do with that.
This novel is full of parallels. You might argue it's maybe overfilled with them, to the point of distraction, but I guess it depends on your tolerance for in-universe allegories. The bulk of the story is about Magnus's efforts to save the planet Morningstar, which is about to tear itself apart by force of tectonic shifts and rending storms. But that's really just a cover story, I think, for Magnus's feelings about Prospero, his adopted homeworld and a world he only partly saved.
But even that is just a cover story for author Graham McNeill to weave a gripping tale of a daemonic being known as Shai-Tan and its incursion into the material world. Shai-Tan's death cult is up to no good, making things hard for the non-death-cult citizens of Morningstar and the space marines desperately trying to get everyone off world to safety. There are some chilling moments in this story, as death cultists turn on innocent civilians and the peaceful [really!] forces trying to assist. "Chilling" is too soft a word, really. It's enraging, and you learn quickly to hate Shai-Tan's followers.
But that, too, is just a cover story.
What the book is really about is Magnus, the Primarch who thirsts for knowledge above all else, even when it's forbidden. Whether any knowledge should ever be forbidden is one of those questions that lies at the heart of Warhammer 40,000 itself (just what did the Emperor know about the Warp before the Horus Heresy?). Magnus wants nothing more than to uncover ancient knowledge, and to further develop his own psychic abilities. There are several occasions that this backfires, and we get a glimpse of one of those times in the final chapter of this book.
I won't spoil the details here, but when I read what Magnus got up to on his return to Morningstar, the parallels and themes running through the book finally made sense. It was a minor epiphany, and I admit it took me a while to reconcile all the different story threads. Ultimately, though, it's a satisfying revelation, and one that adds weight to the traitorous Thousand Sons.
This book feels not unlike a Dr. Strange story, and that's not a bad thing. There's a lot of space magic happening here, and for a Heresy-era book I feel like that's a little unusual. There's obviously space magic happening in the Horus Heresy from pretty early on, but it's frequently a pop and a flash here and there, at least when it happens in the foreground. This book is saturated with it, and it' pretty cool to see a Primarch master the psychic realm. There's nobody holding a bolter to Magnus's head in case he gets possessed by a daemon, the way space marines do with sanctioned psykers in 40k. This is Magnus the Red. He's second to the Emperor in power, and it shows. (Well, second or third anyway, I don't know where to put Malcador the Sigillite.)
I feel like one of the advantages of these relatively short Primarch books is that they constrain the author and force a small cast of characters and subplots. I don't think Graham McNeill got the memo, though, because he does manage to fit a lot of story into this book. The good news is that whatever plot or subplot or theme you end up focusing on, it's an entertaining and satisfying glimpse into those halcyon days before the Heresy tore the Imperium apart, along with the galaxy itself.
All images in this post copyright Games Workshop.