Valdor - Birth of the Imperium

By Chris Wraight

This book is a Horus Heresy book, but within the Primarchs series. So not the main Horus Heresy series, nor Siege of Terra, but the Primarchs series of books.

Valdor doesn’t strike me as the most fascinating character. Even if you like the Custodes (as I do), their heads tend to be a bit blank, blindingly subservient and loyal. It’s worth pointing out that I do gravitate towards the traitor legions though. This book is focussed on Valdor, but also takes us back to end of the wars of Unity, where the Emperor and his Thunder warriors have finally defeated the opposition, and he begins to bolster his forces to leave Terra and conquer the universe.

The story often does not follow Valdor. It features plotting rebels, without giving too much away. The book is structured in a way that makes you want to read the next page to find out what happens next, and seeing as these primarchs books are around 200 pages (this one is exactly that many), you can easily fly through it in a couple of sittings.

“But what is it then? How are you different from all the others, except in power?” At that, Valdor slowly reached up, activated his helm-seals, and pulled the auramite mask from his face. He looked at redacted with sombre eyes, letting the sleet run down his face. ‘Because we are a necessity,’ he said, grimly. ‘We stand between ignorance and annihilation. To prevent the latter, we enforce the former. It is a bitter draught, and one you have been schooled to hate, but it must be swallowed.’ (pp.180-181)

The book does a good job of having interesting events around Valdor, and not necessarily making him the sole focus, whilst still illuminating him as a character. There are moments where another side is shown to him, rather empty and drained by his responsibilities, that made him far more interesting than I expected. We are really only shown glimpses but that’s not something I have an issue with. Old style necrons, the Alpha Legion…some mystery can be riveting, and it could be built upon further in subsequent books.

The plot of this one is hard to talk about without giving too much away, but suffice to say it is quite engaging. The action is actually pretty threadbare – but good, where present, if perhaps not developed enough to score really high marks. Some scenes do stick in the mind though – page 46 had gangster movie vibes, and Samonas’s rampage fired my imagination of a golden warrior delivering the Emperor’s justice.

Where this book struggles is perhaps the depth. A lot of time is spent on plotting, which does make you read on, but then the action felt over within about one-tenth of the time. One might argue that Valdor and the Emperor weren’t explored enough, or that this book tries to be too clever in places, but overall it made for an easy and engaging read, if perhaps not a particularly exceptional one. It’s one that people who aren’t fans of can probably skip without missing too much.

Final score

Interesting but perhaps not riveting. Chris Wraight consistently performs decent books, and has glimpses of greatness here yet again – it reminds me of my Warhawk review. The plot, glimpses of action and glimpses of deeper aspects to Valdor make this a nice shorter read, it’s just not an essential one, or one that will particularly stand out, despite little being wrong with it.

7/10