Book Review // Fallen Angels by Mike Lee
Hot on the heels of Tales of Heresy comes Fallen Angels by Mike Lee. A squeal novel to Descent of Angels and another outing by the Dark Angels, I am a big fan of Dark Angels and have enjoyed most of the novels starring them. The first Dark Angel title in the Horus Heresy Series suffered from a change of pace and speed. I do hope this novel keeps pace and drums up more excitement for the First Legion.
Book Details
Title: Fallen Angels
Author: Mike Lee
Publisher: Black Library
Type: Paperback
Page Count: 416
Commercial Fluff: As news of Horus’s treachery spreads, the Great Crusade grinds to a halt as the primarchs and their Legions decide where their loyalty lies – with the Emperor or the rebel Warmaster Horus. In this sequel to Descent of Angels, the Dark Angels face a testing time, both in the stars and on their homeworld, Caliban.
Arriving in the Gehinnom system, Lion El'Jonson and a force of DarkAngels set about subjugating the system's core worlds, vital to the Warmaster's plans to overthrow the Emperor.
Meanwhile, on Caliban, Luther and the rest of the Legion feel abandoned by their primarch. Civil war erupts as the planet strives to break from Imperial rule, and the Dark Angels are thrown into a deadly conflict that casts all they know and trust into doubt.
Review
It's a solid read, for sure. It gave context to the Descent of Angels novels, and what I mean by that is that this novel is part two of that first story arc. This novel should have been released straight after Descent as it would have made the story flow better in the Heresy series. As with the first book, we follow the fortunes of the two cousins as they continue to become veterans within the First Legion. Unfortunately, their paths seem to be fated to move in opposite directions. The first is banished back to Caliban with Luthor to train the new breed of Space Marine, while the other journeys with the Lion into the Great Crusade.
The Fallen Angels novel does suffer from a bit of back-and-forth as we hop from one cousin to the other, but unlike the first tale, this novel has a lot of action! The main story for me was the cousin left on Caliban with Luthor, here we start to see jealously and secrets unfold rapidly. The classical forests of a fantasy world are now gone, and all we are left with is a pillaged Imperial world, but this is Caliban, home of monsters, so it doesn't take long for rot to fester and grow afresh.
For me, this was the more substantial story arc deserving of a whole novel. We have the early stages of the fall of Luthor, Caliban declaring independence, some background of the new Cypher revealed, and giant worms and zombies!! This overrides the other story of the Lion leading an attack on a forge world to stop the Sons of Horus from getting some siege guns (which the Lion hands over to Perturabo anyway facepalm). Which, though good, was not as exciting as the Caliban arc.
Overall, it was a great read and another solid story for the Dark Angels. Please stay updated by subscribing for updates, and drop me a comment below. Thank you for reading.
