At the same time, the alliance formalised the creation of the Imperium of Man and established the Imperial bureaucracy on Terra, integrating the Mechanicum as one of the myriad organisations that comprised the newborn Adeptus Terra, the massive government of the Imperium, the future Priesthood of Earth. As great an author as he is, he does have this nasty habit of overly simplifying certain subjects or themes in his worse stories. Despite their willingness to strike a bargain with Him early on, the Chaos Gods themselves later recognised the Emperor as their greatest enemy among all the intelligent beings of the galaxy, naming him "the Anathema. Much of that is down to the characters and style of figures involved, who lack the more humanely flawed or outright corrupted qualities he tends to work best with. Though He is no longer responsive to external stimuli, the Emperor still lies at the very heart of the Imperium's continued existence.

His two previous Heresy novels, The First Heretic and Betrayer, both took previously unlikable or one dimensional legions and transformed them into some of the most complex and multi-layered takes on the traitor Space Marines.The Emperor seated upon the Golden Throne in the dungeons of the Inner Palace during the Siege of Terra at the time of the Horus Heresy. With this victory, the planet and population of Terra were at last unified under the single rule of the Emperor. Much as I do genuinely praise the effort, forethought and work put into such a dynamic story, this failing above all else ultimately leaves an unsatisfying quality to the tale.

You know, 40K and Horus Heresy canon has been changing so much in recent years that you'd propably be best off with option 3. At last, the secrets of the Emperor’s project beneath the Palace will be revealed, and you’ll get a closer look at the Emperor Himself than ever before.That might just be my personal opinion, but for some reason whenever I read one of his books I get this very odd sense of deja vu, as if I've read the books before or maybe it's the feeling that I know what I'm going to get (and I've yet to be disappointed) since it always feels as if he's delivering the same (very well written) bullet points, just with different characters, and/or in a different area. For thousands of standard years before becoming the Emperor, He guided and watched Humanity develop over the course of its history, assuming the guise of a large number of historical personages. Much of this is down to the pacing and presentation, with some of the flashbacks and historical qualities robbing necessary details from the actual war itself. The ‘Ten Thousand’ Custodian Guard, along with the Sisters of Silence and the Mechanicum forces of Fabricator General Kane, fight to control the nexus points of the ancient eldar webway that lie closest to Terra, infested by daemonic entities after Magnus the Red’s intrusion.

The primarchs were sucked into the Warp through the will of the Chaos Gods while still in their gestation capsules and scattered across the Human-inhabited worlds of the galaxy.

He wouldn't have changed his heart and saved Angron at the last minute the way he did (either by not letting him go back to his men or because he'd have just taken care of the opposing army himself). Khorne was the first of the four major Chaos Gods to wake fully, and an era of wars and conflict soon raged across the globe to herald his birth.