Mechanicum: The Horus Heresy, Book 9

I love how it follows a mortal female character throughout the book. Who shrouded in mystery, strength and intelligence. Definitely gives an amazing view of how the Mechanicum came to be the way it is and was.

"The problem however, is that this storyline has little to do with the Heresy itself, and whilst it is interesting to see this past, it really adds nothing to the Heresy storyline itself. "I contend the storyline has everything to do with the Heresy itself, it is a foundation story of the Horus Heresy series for the following reasons:- Mars Fabricator General aligns with Horus, what F.G. gets in return, how this impacts then entire Heresy storyline- Rise of the Dark Mechanicum- Civil War on Mars between forces aligned with Terra and those aligned with F.G. and Horus- Foreshadowing of events re:Imperial Fists and Dorn- Spread of Scrapcode, corruption, and losses of Imperial loyal assetsI'll admit a lot of the events gain greater clarity and importance after reading Titanicus, but still, Mechanicum is a very good book. This really helps the reader to understand why Horus was able to consolidate his logistical power base, without which he would have faced an adversary with forges supplying weapons, ammo, all the Astartes equipment - all under some level of implicit or explicit Terran control.Prior to this, that seems very improbable given the proximity of Mars to Terra, and the influence of the then-intact Emperor on the origins of the Mechanicum that Horus would have been able to continue to prosecute a civil war. He would be limited to the stocks of munitions and supplies on hand with the Emperor's forces having a large ready resupply right next door. It's not so much about what Horus gets going forward, it's about what the Imperium doesn't get at a critical juncture in the progress of the Horus Heresy.And sadly, it really starts to explain how the 41st millenium techpriests became techno-religious morons spouting liturgical nonsense just to change a light bulb. Superstition and ignorance replace knowledge, and "knowledge is power". This book gives some great insight into what happened to some of that knowledge. When I first read a short story in I believe "Let the Galaxy Burn" I couldn't believe how ignorant the "experts" were of their own technology, wasting valuable time in an emergency making sure their prayers to the Machine God were in order before they flip a switch. Rote text and memorization replaces understanding of technology, now I can see part of why that happens.It also rescues Graham McNeill from my "what happened to this guy's writing?" list. I had low expectations after suffering through the "Battle for the Abyss", a book I would have put down for good halfway through if not for its inclusion in the Heresy series.

I'm pretty new to the Warhammer Universe. Got into it from the RTS games and other console games like Space Marines 1 and 2. The Mechanicum was what really interested me the most with there technology and how the world worked. Very good read!!

Chills ran up my spine multiple times during this read. Starts off slow but the build up and giant robot battles totally make up for it! Well done!

I don't like "McNeill, Graham". Fulgrim for example, didn't feel like it respected the canon or the audience. It got a lot of things right anyway, but I wouldn't want to read it again. Mechanicum is different, but not that different. It is definitely a great subject to have a whole book on. What is HH era mars like? Are Mechanicum elites basically crazy inhuman cyborgs? Most of the time. And the book has some decent exploration of both Titans and Knights (small titans) and depictions of their battles. That aside, the character Dalia was a disaster. I won't even go into why, but cmon, it's a subplot that doesn't belong here. Luckily you can ignore her aspect of the book because it affects nothing. Unfortunately the revelation about the "dragon" is dumb as well... Y'know what I don't want to talk about it any more.One more thing, it was very cyber-punky, shooting bits of code at eachother to corrupt each other's hard drives or something. That's all well and good but at least some of them should have been more tech-priesty, worrying about whether the machine spirits were happy and doing rituals, a missed detail.Anyway, was it a good book, actually yeah, just not as good as a lot of other things. Safe to read it and safe to skip it in the grand scheme of Horus Heresy.

Starts off a little more slowly than some previous Horus Heresy novels, but the slow burn is a setup for epic confrontations, hope-shattering loss and death, with all the imagination and vision of the Black Library at work behind the scenes as a mad director.