My knowledge of Warhammer 40000 lore grown a lot in this time, and knowing now what is going to happen to characters in their future adds a lot of pleasure and entertainment to the reading. The opening trilogy of the Horus Heresy is still one of the best parts of the saga, and re-reading it after ten years is still a blast. So far the Horus Heresy series is a delightful wonder containing deep themes, excellently crafted character development, and an enticing overarching story. These Warhammer 40K books get an undeservedly bad reputation. One might say these developments could have been expanded some more, but then again, I went into this series with relatively low expectations, and they have regularly been exceeded. I confess to be left in doubt as to how strongly Horus' initial motivation as portrayed in this book is actually quite justified, and I believe leaving that up to the reader to figure out (at least those of us who are relative novices to the Warhammer 40K universe), was part of the authors' intention. Graham McNeill does an impressive job as the architect of the fall of such a central character, using equal doses of truth, manipulation and prophecy. False Gods is in my mind even better than its predecessor Horus Rising, mostly because of its absolutely artistic description of the corruption and subversion of Horus and some of his main lieutenants. 'Truths you will not want to see,' replied Sejanus, 'and answers you will not want to hear.' 'What lies beyond that door?' asked Horus, backing away from the silver portal. Interestingly, I think the best quote to sum up the qualities of the second book of the Horus Heresy is this: Warning don't read that part before meal.

Again there are some well written fights and I especially liked how adequately disgusting are descriptions of Nurgle's (God of death, decay and disease) forces. We finally get to learn more about gods of chaos, emperor and see how deep corruption has spread through Imperium. Horus rising was more of prolog while this book deals with events that lead to Horus becoming aligned with Chaos and starts setting the stage for the main events and great civil war to follow.

On the other hand story in this book is at much more interesting place. So far I got the impression that Abnett is better writer than McNeil, his dialogs and characters where more enjoyable. Writing in this book is notch bellow first one. Still not sure if this book is better or worse than first one but it's still a bloody good fun. So if you are completely unfamiliar with Warhammer 40k avoid this and reviews for this series in general.

Edit: Someone pointed out to me that there are readers start this series without knowing what Warhammer 40k is and that for such reader this review might contain spoilers.

False gods graham mcneill