Upon finishing the book, I can only assume Mortarion has been placed in there as a PoV for use in a sequel book, because I’m buggered if I know why he was there otherwise. However, Mortarion’s PoV felt pointless, and the priest just read like a fan-boy stroking himself over Guilliman the entire time. Guilliman’s PoV was fine (though it lacked the sheer magnificence of thought Abnett and McNeill created in the Horus heresy books), as was the wounded soldier’s and the space marine’s (probably the pick of the bunch). The story has a bunch of PoVs: Guilliman, a wounded soldier on a hospital world, a Primaris space marine, Mortarion shows up for a short bit, and a priest recently elevated to be Guilliman’s key member in the Imperial church. This book is the story of Roboute’s fight to face his brother, rescue his homeworld, break the Imperium out of its frozen-gear state to start working as it needs to in order to restore its former glory, and to reverse people’s thinking that the Emperor is a god, all the while keeping his own mental state-dormant in stasis for ten thousand years-in line. He’s now chasing his brother Mortarion and his Death Guard plague marines across the sector while at the same time learning of his home system of Ultramar coming under siege. He has teamed up with a rogue machanicus priest who designed the bigger and better primaris space marines ten thousand years ago and has kept them safe and secret ever since the Imperium tore itself apart. To recap the story, Roboute Guilliman is a century clear of the stasis field that kept him alive for ten thousand years. It should have been the start of a massive wave of new books and short stories and lore and… It should have been many things, but for this Black Library buff and two-decade Warhammer 40k fiction fan, Dark Imperium fell flat. It should have been a jump-in point for new fans. This should have been a carefully constructed mix of the brilliant story style of the opening books of the Horus Heresy mixed with the colossal re-introduction of Roboute Guilliman and the introduction of the Primaris space marine upgrades that would align with Games Workshop’s model range releases for these models. This should have been a book that reinvigorated those of us hundreds of books deep into the 30K and 40K universe.
To me, Guy Haley’s Dark Imperium, the highly anticipated advancement of decades of Warhammer 40K storyline by the Black Library, is the story of what should have been.
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