The End and the Death: Volume II: 2 (The Horus Heresy: Siege of Terra) Hardcover – 9 Nov. 2023

Dan Abnett does it again. The writing is near spot on. It could have been slightly less dense in places but this is an epic story with epic events and characters so you can forgive it that. Loved it.

Really enjoyed this, the character development of the main actors keeps on moving forwards,the unrelenting insanity of the final day of the siege is driven home, as is the scale of the nightmare humanity is confronted with.

Some of these books have been wonderful. But it's all starting to get a bit irritating as they sping it out and further out. Bad characters very bad, good characters easily demoralised/fooled/knocked about/killed. Some sparks in there but...get..on..with..it

Hell of a size on this hardback copy. Looking forward to getting round to reading it!!!

Great book love the shorter chapters to jump around the action (had to have a sad end ).

Abnett proves why he is the goto writer for epic stories in the 40k universe,his storytelling, his pacing ,and his action setups are jaw dropping,can't wait for conclusion,yes we know how it ends but what awaits us ,is unknown.

The Horus Heresy out-lasted my first marriage, and I’m now well into my second (your first one doesn’t count). What I’m saying is, only those of us who have fully committed to the series will now, years later, be reading Volume II of The End and The Death. (And for all you late-comers, be glad you can skip the turkeys ((I’m looking at you Abyss)) and didn’t have to wait years for a good book after Fulgrim. We’ve seen some things, together, haven’t we? And whatever the Vol II reviews say, we’re going to buy and read this book. We’re committed. And better men than me have told how good Dan Abnett is an author, and how the material is in very good hands here. Set against all that is the bald fact that this is the middle act, the set-up / tee-up, to the big finish (Volume III). And barring a handful of highlights, even with Abnett at the helm, the book never really gets going until post page 700. There’s a fair argument that it never really gets its shoes and socks on, full stop. The action, spread across a dozen characters in Volume I, there, created / served purpose as a breathless countdown to the finale, but also saw the real bones of characters like Sigismund, Amit Flesh-Tearer and Abaddon develop. But here, in this book, that same treatment of the action just doesn’t seem to hang together well, at all. There are also short bite size paragraphs lumped in which, frankly, don’t work. What seemed well-worked in the first book, here, has a tendency to pull the reader away from a set piece, or a plot pivot, just at the moment before you can really get your teeth into that part of the story. It makes the read all too often a slog - you’re flipping the next page in expectation but it never comes (Contrast this, for example, with Saturnine, which is a cracking page-turner that never allows the action to become dull or pointless). I am also going to be a little self-critical here, to a degree, because I think knowing this book isn’t the big finish can affect perception as well - you don’t want it to end, but you do want it to end, all at the same time. So perhaps knowing this is a stepping stone to the endgame has skewed my perspective somewhat, but I’m giving my honest view. I mean, as an example, Corswain’s lonely battle seems entirely relegated to a placeholder here. I’m left not really bothered about what Fo is up to either - he’s so well developed in Vol I, but you spend the entire book, this time, waiting for a scheme of his to flower. The book does finally start to fire, towards the end, and I did enjoy the main event of Horus vs Sanguinius - there’s a lovely bit of florid descriptive from Abnett towards the end, where a portion of the action is served up in literary slow-motion…..But, overall I found myself thinking reading this, and waiting for it to get going, and it just never quite does. Roll on Volume III.

Abnett's writing is superb. If you're looking for pure bolter nonsense look elsewhere, although there is easily enough of that. Plays with the psychological and metaphysical weirdness of the setting in a really fun way

Mental. Absolutely mental series! Didn't tie together like any of the reddit theories lol!Lots of expensive words used.Great read. Get some!

I had a great time reading this. I was waiting for it to be released with high anticipation. The stories inside these pages are woven masterfully. There is enough atmosphere and detail that you can imagine yourself right there, at the end of all things. A lot is revealed in this one, and there is a lot of sadness. The siege is almost over, the enemy has breached the walls and the defenders are fighting for their lives as enemies come from all sides. I'm trying to stay vague, as I don't want to spoil the book, but this one is a great read. Everything is coming to a head and everyone has lost control. No one is sure how or when it happened, but any semblance of military order is gone on both sides. Men brawl by firelight with hooks and clubs, but they can't remember even what they are fighting for anymore. A fifth great power of chaos is ready to be born, and its birth scream will be the end and the death of the human race.

I was there from the begining, when the first Horus heresy book was in the shelves... And read it. It was a fantastic start, every page of it was it worth...Now, more than fifty books later, look what we have: of the 600 pages of the book, only 100, perhaps, are worth of it... The other five hundred are just for filling the book with plots uninteresting and absurdly repetitive (with other books in the series) and sell it a as full book..Games workshop cant receive any credit or applause for such a way to destroy an excelent storyline.. Just for the sake of money. My congrats for selling your souls to the warp and finishing the Horus heresy in such a shameful way.

Dan Abnett always delivering. Amazing "end" to an amazing series. For the emperor!

The must-have item for all WH40K fans.