The Wolf of Ash and Fire by Graham McNeill – Review

Until March 31st, Black Library is giving away the Graham McNeill short story The Wolf of Ash and Fire for free on iTunes.

Set before the Heresy, before Ullanor, The Wolf of Ash and Fire picks up on an intriguing sentence from the Index Astartes White Dwarf article, from way back in April 2002 – an event where Horus saved the Emperor’s life on the Ork-infested planet of Gorro.

As long as it’s free, I’d definitely recommend giving it a read. The Wolf of Ash and Fire (obviously) features action scenes with Horus and, more importantly, the Emperor himself going to town on the Orks.

In comparison to the (one-sentence) original, this story also shows how insanely over-the-top 40K, and especially the Horus Heresy-stories, have become, to keep things “epic”.

Horus Lupercal, ever the favoured son of the Emperor of Mankind, stands ready to lead his Legion against the ork-held planetoid of Gorro. After nearly two centuries of warfare in the name of the Great Crusade, the many victories of the Luna Wolves have become the stuff of legend – still, nothing could prepare them for the singular honour of fighting alongside the Emperor himself…

---

#1 – The Emperor at Gorro

Before there was the Horus Heresy-series of novels, there were the Index Astartes articles in the old White Dwarf, which ran from the late 1990s to about 2004. Back then, these were the source of background on the Space Marines Legions.

The particular event, which McNeill picked up in his story The Wolf of Ash and Fire, is from the article on the Black Legion

The line has spawned a few debates over how powerful the Emperor and the Primarchs are in battle. Or, inversely, how powerful a “huge, frenzied Greenskin warlord” could become, to be able to threaten the likes of Horus and the Emperor.

Personally, I thought a part of the dilemma was the Horus-Heresy ‘epic-creep’. Though the Emperor and his Primarchs were always described as powerful beings, some 30-novels of constant “out-doing” each other in Primarch-epicness, pushed up the benchmark of how we, as Black Library readers, think of Primarchs on the battlefield quite a bit.

---

#2 – The Wolf of Ash and Fire

The Wolf of Ash and Fire tells the story of this fight on Gorro.

First question: Can you make a 49 page story (what it says on iTunes) out of a single sentence?

I guess you can, though I think McNeill cheats a bit by putting in some 20 pages on the Luna Wolves: early-days Abaddon, Sejanus, Little Horus doing their shady things Mournival-things, etc… flashbacks to McNeill’s False Gods are inevitable.

However, the Emperor does get a suitable grandiose entrance, and we also get to see him ripping into Orks on the surface of Gorro, which is a lot of fun to read.

McNeill puts it on thick, which in turn left me asking: Where is the Ork warlord that nearly killed the Emperor?

To get to that particular iconic point of Warhammer 40K history, McNeill frankly goes all-out into Manga-territory. The entire planet of Gorro breaks apart, while the Emperor and Horus dive into the kilometers-deep chasms of the dissolving planet to battle some type of gigantic Mech-Ork-Warmachine-Hybrid species, each of them dwarfing the Luna Wolves Primarch, amid “rogue gravity vortices” and other nasty things.

The (Mech-)Ork-warlord that goes for the Emperor’s throat is a titanic mechanized monstrosity with “six clanking, mechanised limbs“, etc.. .

Needless to say, McNeill went no-holds-over-the-top to solve the question how an Ork could almost kill the Emperor.

---

#3 – Thoughts?

The Wolf of Ash and Fire is free to download (until March 31st, I believe), so I recommend you do that.

For one, it is a piece of “classic” pre-Horus-Heresy lore re-imagined. For another, it has the Emperor himself kicking ass and taking names.

Would I recommend to buy it?

Difficult question, now that I had it for free (and don’t know what it will eventually cost).

With its unabashed over-the-top wreckage, I thought The Wolf of Ash and Fire fell short of the visceral horror of other Heresy stories, including by Graham McNeill, such as in Mark of Calth.

On the other hand, if you want some rip-roaring over-the-top action without all the brother-against-brother angst of the normal Heresy, and want to read about the Emperor cutting loose, this is the story to pick up.

Let me know what you think!

Z.