Prospero Burns

Dan Abnett

2010

Although technically part of the Warhammer 40k series of books based on the eponymous wargaming system, Prospero Burns and the other books set in the Horus Heresy sub series take us back 10,000 years to a time when the forces of Terra are still sweeping out through the Galaxy believing they are lords of all they survey.

Focussing the story through the eyes of Kasper Hawser, an archaeologist travelling through the remnants left after the Imperial Armies of Consolidation have brought the worlds under the command of the Empire. Hawser comes to fear that the Empire is too busy expanding to worry about protecting its past but as he’s sucked into the Imperial Bureaucracy, he loses heart and travels to the world of Fenris to find out what is so unusual about this ice locked world and it’s there that his destiny starts to be unravelled.

Abnett was already a practiced writer in the Warhammer 40K universe and he writes this backstory with an assured hand as we are introduced to characters that will come to affect the humans of the 40,000s so directly. Thankfully, this book doesn’t fall into the trap of being too mystical, though there are some such elements these are relatively subdued when compared to the science fiction elements and the Astartes of the Space Wolves feel more like real people than most authors generally manage.

---