Scars – Audio Book Review

Scars is the unabridged audiobook version of the novel of the same name, written by Chris Wraight as his first Horus Heresy. Originally, Scars was published as a “web series” with chapters of the book released one at a time. I couldn’t be bothered at the time. As the title suggests, Scars focuses on the White Scars.

As far as the Heresy goes, nothing much happens in Scars, since the White Scars ultimately didn’t do much in the Heresy. Indeed, the story itself lacks a bit of focus.

That said, books on the White Scars are rare – 30K or 40K – and Chris Wraight does a great job capturing this particular Legion in an entertaining 40K romp.

Of all the Legiones Astartes, the White Scars of Jaghatai Khan remain the most enigmatic and elusive. Born of a civilisation that prizes honour, speed and fearsome loyalty, their allegiance has yet remained unclear even as the galaxy is torn apart by Horus’s treachery, and both sides have apparently counted them among their potential allies in the war to come. But when the Alpha Legion launch an unexplained and simultaneous attack against the White Scars and Space Wolves, the Khan must decide once and for all whether he will stand with the Emperor or the Warmaster… or neither.

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#1 – Scars Audio Book – The Product

Scars the audio book comes with 11 CDs – 1 CD less than Vulkan Lives!, even though both audio books have the same run-time.

Like the former, Scars is priced at £30.00 by Black Library.

The audio book is read by Johnathan Keeble. I enjoyed his reading. Like all people reading Horus Heresy audio books, he gave different accents and voices to different characters, most notably an extremely coarse and deep voice for Mortarion, even though the audio book is not an audio drama full of background sound-effects such Honour to the Dead.

That said, there seems to be an “editorial” (?) mistake on the last CD, where Johnathan Keeble reads several lines clearly meant to be spoken by the Khan in his “Mortarion-voice”.

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#2 – Scars – The Story

Spoiler Warning!

The story of Scars, in a nutshell, revolves around the Khan and his Legion being (finally) informed about the ongoing Horus Heresy and the civil war among the Space Marine Legions.

Contradicting news reach the White Scars, making it hard to tell who is the traitor (the Space Wolves? The Sons of Horus? The Alpha Legion?) and who is not.

While the Khan tries to make up his mind about what to do, the lodges (déjà vu!) within the Legion try to sway things in Horus’s favour. Amid all this, the reader is treated – through several characters (including a human fleet logistics officer) – to an in-depth treatment of the White Scars philosophy of war, and how this Legion thinks of itself and the Imperium.

This, as far as I can tell, are the main themes of the book. However, they do run through a few shorter sections, including

• a stand off between the White Scars and the Alpha Legions,
• a quest to Prospero and a scrap with the Death Guard, and, in between,
• a story of a lone White Scars Stormseer investigating a Word Bearer ship with a few Isstvan-Survivors.

For better or worse, the original “episodic” publication of Scars showed in these parts.

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#3 – Scars – The Verdict

Overall, I enjoyed Scars, though it does have a few flaws that should be pointed out:

• A few editorial/production-mistakes that should have been caught.
• The story doesn’t do much (or anything) to move the Horus Heresy forward: Rumours of Horus possibly being a traitor? Lodges? The trauma of Isstvan? Sounds more like book 3 or book 4 in the Horus Heresy series, not book 28!
• Lack of a truly unified story could be a problem for some (though it wasn’t for me, to be honest).

The good parts on the other side are:

• Great, fluid writing/reading. Without nearly as many overlong or convoluted sentences of the kind you find in the books from Nick Kyme or Graham McNeill, ‘Scars’ flows better. Looking forward to reading more stuff from Chris Wraight. Looking forward to listening to more audio books read by Jonathan Keeble.
• A good take on the White Scars. I was wondering how an author would give them depth and character beyond the bike-schtick, and Chris Wraight does it marvelously.

For me, the “good” outweighed the “bad”, and I enjoyed the book. If you like the idea of a White Scars tale, ‘Scars’ is a good one.

If you are mainly trying to follow the Horus Heresy series, Scars is probably a book you can safely skip without missing much.

Z.