![]() More than a bridging book that gets us from A to B, ADB (see what I did there?) also ties up many dangling plot points from his, and other, books in the Heresy series with an ease that belies how bloody difficult it must have been to do. ADB takes some brave choices here that won’t be universally popular – to subvert elements of “The Narrative” of the Siege that have stood since White Dwarf 268, bringing in Angron and moving pieces around to arrive at a more satisfying – a more poetically just – ending. We know that the Angel and his Sons hold the gate against the horde, and we know where he will die. The narrative goes through “the gap” between what we knew and where we know Abnett will take us in The End and the Death. We begin above Terra as the world dies, before sweeping through the viewpoints we’ll ride throughout, then watch them converge at the one point it matters most. ![]() This is their war, and Echoes takes pains – and time – to tell the epic narrative on as small a scale as possible. We centre on characters familiar to Dembski-Bowden’s Heresy – the Legio Audax, Arkham Land, Zephon, Angron and the World Eaters, Captain Lotara Sarrin and others – with new perspectives and most excitingly ADB’s take on characters he’s previously had little chance to develop. There’s bolter action aplenty here, but many of the wars are internal and emotional, struggles fought through on every level possible. This is the World Eaters versus the Blood Angels, along with a hundred tiny glances at the billions of private wars raging as Terra falls. At the end of Chris Wraight’s Warhawk we had tales of Sigismund and Erebus, the White Scars, the Fists, the Sons of Horus and the nascent Imperial Cult, but Echoes takes us to the Eternity Gate alone, setting up the major players and putting them in motion to a final, tortured climax. But as a book – as a way forward for the Black Library – it is much, much more, and Aaron Dembski-Bowden deserves the Crux Terminatus for his work here to bring us something above and beyond the bounds of Warhammer fiction.Įchoes is the penultimate book in the Siege series, but eschews the wider war for a laser-focus on the key pieces left on the board and their final stand. As a note of plot in the ongoing Heresy series, it’s a big one and one that could easily have been mishandled. It was spun out of a scrap of lore derived from a hundred sources – Sanguinius triumphant at the Eternity Gate, the Angel versus the Daemon, the final act of blistering, glorious heroism before the Emperor’s last gambit, the crushing of hope and the rejection of despair. Why you should is a more complicated story.Įchoes of Eternity brings us to the last gasp of the Heresy, the final bloody moments before the end think we know oh-so-well. Let’s get one thing sorted: If you’re reading this review, you’re either reading, or planning to read Echoes of Eternity. This review contains as few spoilers for Echoes of Eternity as you’re likely to get.
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