Teaser

Of all the Traitor Primarchs, few are as feared as Angron. The Red Angel is hatred incarnate, as dangerous to his followers as his enemies. Now that the Imperium is at its weakest, the time has come for Angron to go to war . . .

Review

I really enjoyed David Guymer’s contributions to the Warhammer Fantasy series Gotrek & Felix. He brought a weird and unruly saga to a satisfying climax, and I wanted to see what he could in the forty-first millennium. That’s why I’m reading this book, because in all honesty, Angron: The Red Angel is the sort of book I’d usually shy away from. It is, after all, a book about big, stompy, angry men being big, stompy, and angry. Mostly angry, as it turns out. Anger is pretty much Angron’s thing. Now, that may not be a type of character I usually find interesting, but there are interesting things you can do with such characters. Chris Forrester’s Wrath of the Lost is an excellent example of how to make rage more than just two-dimensional. The Red Angel, however, lacks the nuance of heroes cursed by anger. he’s a villain rewarded with anger, who then becomes a bit more angry, and makes people around him feel jolly cross as well. Still, a writer of Guymer’s skill can make something out of that, right?

Well, sadly not, it would seem is the answer. The writing is good. The prose as lively as Guymer’s previous work. I just can’t help but feel there’s a fundamental flaw in the book, in that I just don’t find Angron interesting. Curiously, there’s not as much Angron in this book as you might think, given the title. It’s not so much about how perpetual anger affects Angron (because, quite frankly, he’s fine with it) but more about how other people are affected by Angron, both those who follow him, and those who oppose him. A deeper character study of Angron is something I think I would have enjoyed more (and is possibly what his Horus Heresy-era novel is more in line with) but given what little I know about the man, perhaps it is wise to keep him off the page for as long as Guymer does.

The problem is that, swept up as they are in Angron’s orbit, everyone else in the book feels very similar. The Chaos Space Marines are big, angry, and do a lot of stomping. Their names and attributes are already fading away in my memory as I type this. They could have been larger than life characters, but boiled down as they are to big, stompy, angry men, they sort of blur into one. The Grey Knights, with whom this book gives me my first proper encounter, fare a little better. Equally consumed by Angron’s mere existence, they at least have different ideology to the rest of the cast. I think it’s their valiant and futile attempts to overcome the burning ball of rage that is Angron, are the high points of the novel.

Part of me does wonder if I might have enjoyed this book more if I was more familiar with the background of Angron. He is, after all, a major player in the timeline of the Horus Heresy. I’m not suggesting that anyone should read sixty-plus books to understand one slim novel, but that kind of familiarity would doubtless help. In a way, it’s strange that I’m so happy jumping on board at the end of the story rather than climbing on at the beginning with so many others.

Except, I’m not happy, am I? Looking back over what I’ve just typed, I come across as a little angry. So maybe the book is a roaring success after all. Maybe Angron got to me too, and I just didn’t know it.

Book Stats

• Focuses on the Chaos Space Marines
• First Published 2023 by Black Library
• Grimdark SF
• 339 pages