Angron has only been at the centre of one novel before, Betrayer, and a handful of short stories — most notably After De’Shea by Matthew Farrer, and Butcher’s Nails and Lord of the Red Sands by Aaron Dembski-Bowden (all three are collected in Angron). Batto, captain of the Devourers, was the first to come forward to his father's side to try to placate him.

I was pleasantly surprised by this: instead of an exhausting character study, we get the direct consequences of such a person being why he is the way he is. Discovered at last by the Master of Mankind, this former gladiator-champion suddenly finds himself attired in the full panoply of a Legion commander which he has absolutely no wish to become. Through a series of cleverly-worked, yet at the same time managing to feel almost shoe-horned in, flashbacks, we learn of Angron’s youth on Nuceria and how the experiences there drove him to be the uncaring, brutal killing machine that he is today. The first part is set after Angron takes over his legion, as his people prepare to accept the butcher's nails and attempt to subjugate a rebel planet. It’s one of the enduring things about the Warhammer 40K universe that the major characters are dipshits, and Angron might be the dipshittiest of them all.The way the story weaved back and forth from the past to the present through Tethys eyes was really unique and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The flashbacks of Angron’s childhood in the gladiator pits are truly awful and so upsetting to see how he was broken by the abuse he suffered. And even the tiniest glimpse on the slave of Nuceria, before he became the Eater of Cities, of Worlds. From here on out we follow two different stories: The one in the present, where different factions within the world eaters argue over the butcher nails and wether or not to accept them. When they fail to do so and one of his commander speaks up against the punishment, no longer willing to spill the blood of his own men, Angron goes into a nails induced rage.

A fair number of fans have constantly wondered just what the War Hounds were like prior to Angron's ascension, and how they differed in culture, temperament and attitudes to their later World Eater incarnations. The World Eaters have been trying to replicate the Butcher’s Nails and implant them into a Legionnaire. Substantial progress had been made with a model that had attached itself at the temples, but it had been discarded with the others after once more it had ended in failure, and more dead or blood-maddened World Eaters had been cast into the incinerators of the 203rd Expeditionary Fleet. Yeah, me neither…) Without spoiling any story-elements, the campaign in which they are currently engaged provides some useful inspiration. When taken on its own it does benefit from a strong structure, surprisingly memorable characters, a good twist and a number of great individual moments.Plus, this leads to one of my favourite visual displays of them taking hold that I have seen to date, where the page itself runs red with blood over the descriptions.

It’s also been interesting to follow the heated dispute of Centurions Mago and Khârn, regarding their father and the future of their Legion, both of them certain they know exactly which path would better suit their brothers. Since very young, Angron was captured by the noble houses of the planet he landed on and was enslaved as a gladiator for the entertainment of the masses. To Angron, the transhuman warriors under his command are so weak and worthless compared to the ordinary men and women whose resilience and bravery he’d so often witnessed – those who had fought beside him, bringing terrible retribution upon their oppressors, before the Primarch was snatched from them by a distant entity that denied the only true future both to himself and those he had suffered and fought with. There was a period of relative lucidity between his acceptance of his role in the legion, and the Horus Heresy.And as that's going on, youve got the World Eaters split in those that desire the nails to be like their father, and those who fear what the nails will do to the legion. Furthermore, we have viewpoint characters who can directly contrast their thoughts with those of their more bloodthirsty kin. I've always felt for him, his tragic story, most unfair treatment by the Emperor, wasted potential, defective, wrong, irreversible damage. But, ever since taking part in the Great Crusade, Angron regards himself as only a ghost of his former self, and sees the Emperor as just another high-rider, a despot as much intent on his enslavement as those cursed others had been. Like Corax and to an extent Mortarion, the Twelfth had been a leader of rebels, turned by his Creator into one who would instead go on to crush rebellions against the nascent Imperium’s tyranny.

Khârn twitched, his synapses screaming out their demands for violence at being touched, but awe kept him fixed in place. While Angron himself is certainly at fault, and many cite shortcomings among the World Eaters attachment to the Nails, it doesn't forget their strengths. There is a lot more to discuss about the story, which is no wonder since the Primarchs and their progeny still face the same existential and moral dilemmas as the common humankind, only on a much greater scale. I've been ranking each book in this series because they have been of such varying quality its been kind of fascinating.Reading this novel, I was left with a niggling question: How on Terra did the Emperor not purge this Legion? Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). The Slave of Nuceria’s actual plot revolves around the question of Butcher’s Nails that Angron strongly wishes to see implanted in all of his warriors.