Legacies of Betrayal: Let the Galaxy Burn (Horus Heresy)

Product Information

The grand high masters of lucasville have clearly forgotten what Star Wars started as, and are losing much of their fan base in the process. Many stories in the Star Wars expanded universe seem to be in sets of 3’s, like the trilogies we see in theaters. If the novels had been made into movies (they should have been), then the “Thrawn Trilogy” could have been episodes 7, 8, and 9. Then there were several story arc’s leading to this current book. The biggest thing about most licensed media is the author's inability to make drastic change, and while I've been afforded this luxury in Green Lama novels, for the longest time many of the characters in the Star Wars universe were forced to live an ultimately "safe" world. Luke/Han/Leia would always survive, so would their friends and family. It made the novels feel unimportant, because, really, what's the point of them if at the end of the day the heroes win and nothing was really at stake? Butcher's Nails (*****) It had everything you could want from a story about the World Eaters and Lorgar. Lotara maybe my favorite ship Captain.

Only from out of great conflict can true heroes arise. With the galaxy aflame and war on an unimaginable scale tearing the Imperium apart, champions of light and darkness venture onto countless fields of battle in service to their masters.Toby pauses at the question. He says, George, do you remember what you used to preach loudly to all Service agents, operatives and analysts at Sarrit? Do you remember, George, he insists? Smiley quietly says, no Toby, what was it? George, you used to tell everyone, once you have left the Service never, ever engage in "private enterprise." "When it's over, it's over." The argument which turns him isn't very convincing. It boils down to, "Hey maybe your entire belief system is skewed. All those Sith you know about were just bad apples. Wanna join the Dark side now"?

We discover that Bagley was once a star agent turned mole suspect amongst the agency. Ultimately his name was cleared but the damage was done. Years later he is determined to uncover what happened to the deceased agent while at the same time clearing his own tarnished reputation and rekindling his relationship with his estranged daughter as well. But will I read it twice? Nope. I don’t want to listen to Jacen being a dummy anymore than I have too. It might have been a dull book if it had not been for the fact that these many betrayals happened in my lifetime involving government officials who were in the news ... as happens frequently, what is reported by the mass media often is a coverup ... especially when the Washington Post is rumored to have been controlled by the CIA.To make this plot point work you would have to do one of two things. Either firmly established that Jacen saw no other way to prevent the death of billions of people other than becoming a Sith and doing awful things or make Jacen a sociopath. Then we have John French’s micro-short Serpent which is a very brief snapshot of a Chaos ritual being performed by a priest of one of the Davinite Cults. We met the Davinites for the first time in Graham McNeill’s False Gods, the second novel in the series, when Horus was wounded during a battle on Davin and was attended to by the seemingly innocuous religious healers of the planet. Not quite sure what the relevance of the story is, but it is a decent look into the bloody rituals of those who have given away their all to the powers of Chaos. Bagley brought to the task both an obsessive concern for the truth and a passionate commitment to serve his country. He was Navy through and through. “A small flotilla of warships, from frigates to cruisers, had been christened with the names of his father and uncles.” His two brothers each rose to the rank of four-star admiral. And his “Uncle Bill” was five-star Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, who was the highest-ranking US military officer to serve in World War II and was both FDR and Harry Truman’s Chief of Staff. First things first, all of the stories collected here have been previously released in one way or another; we get one novella (Chris Wraight’s Brotherhood of the Storm), prose versions of eleven audio dramas (of varying lengths) and seven other short stories (again of varying lengths) drawn from limited edition anthologies, ebooks and event programmes. Where some previous Heresy anthologies have had crystal-clear themes (Mark of Calth, for example), this is only loosely themed, looking at the way in which the characters represented have been affected by the events of the war so far, and while there’s an argument to say that every character involved in the Heresy has been affected by betrayal in some way, as a theme it just about works. I know this review is marked spoilers, but I will not say more than that. There is a thrilling battle in Act 1, all the characters are introduced, etc. In a transition chapter, the leaders of the G.A. and Corellia seek peace. Then there is a murder mystery and an investigation (I will not name name’s of who did what or when or where. It was a surprise to me what happened. I think all who read will enjoy that they make a brief shift in the genre here).

In my humble opinion, they didn’t go about writing Jacen's story with intelligence. Jacen’s motivations and reasoning are lazy and poorly thought out. His philosophy doesn’t add up to the conclusions he reaches without completely throwing away REASONING POWERS. This is probably by design, showing that Jacen has been trained to focus on the wrong things. But if that’s the case, his training was STOOPID. A bigger issue: I think that Betrayal is trying to do too much here. Not only is Allston setting up Jacen's Sith journey, but this conflict between the Galactic Alliance and Corellia which will spiral out to other systems. That's a lot to do, and unfortunately the book throws us into this Galactic Alliance military action against Corellia with not a lot of setup. We jump from “Corellia is unhappy about centralization” to the Galactic Alliance parking a fleet in Corellian space and sending in Jedi teams to kidnap Corellian heads of state. I know that the Dark Nest trilogy was all about this Chiss/Killik conflict in the Unknown Regions, but I would have liked to see hints of this situation in those preceding books. It would have helped to have this built up, instead of dropping the reader into the middle of a conflict that we’ve been told has been brewing behind the scenes—with not many examples of it before everything explodes. Amazing. Following the events of the Shadow Crusade, we see Kharn in the fighting pits. Can’t say much without spoiling it for you. I will only repeat, Kharn is one of the most interesting characters in HH/40k and every piece featuring him is a pleasure to read.The rerelease of Brotherhood of the Storm is also available in an updated edition of the Legacies of Betrayal anthology, featuring 18 short stories of the Legions that fought in the Horus Heresy. Scourge of Fate (MP3 Audiobook) Jacen (pronounced “Jason”, fight me) is accompanied by his padawan learner Ben Skywalker, Luke Skywalker’s 13-year-old son. However, fast forward to the winter of 2022, some fifteen years after the original release. The landscape of Star Wars fandom is massively different. Countless novels, games, comics have been rendered as "Legends" tier canon following the Disney acquisition of George Lucas' franchise, including this very title. When The Force Awakens was released in cinemas, I thought the movie franchise might be in good hands, and I was pretty certain upon the release of Rogue One that it was worth sacrificing my beloved "Extended Universe" to see new Star Wars content on the big screen. Unfortunately, everything that followed has made me think otherwise. Sure. I enjoyed it because I did not expect a smart story. I wanted one but didn’t expect it. But I did find it a FUN story. There was excitement and drama and moments where I was concerned for characters that I liked. Things were clear, and it was easy to understand what was happening if you paid attention. I also wanted to mention Censure. This continued to tell the aftermath of the battle on Calth but included a nice interplay and dynamic between an ordinary soldier and the super soldier, space marine.