I'm writing an alternate universe to 40k, and when this book came out, there was a lot of concern that it would negatively affect our project. The novel isn’t that long – at 400 pages or so you can rampage through it over a night or two with a beer or a glass of red. A standard year later the child who would become the Emperor was born in a Neolithic settlement of Anatolian herders and farmers of a normal mother and father, with normal brothers and sisters. The combined forces of the Custodes, Sister of Silence, and various Mechanicum and Titan forces have been battling nonstop within the confines of the ancient xenos-made tunnels against an unending horde of Chaos. What the novel offers readers is a glimpse into the raging war throughout the beginnings of the Imperial Webway, a look into the Custodian Guard, and even an examination of the Emperor himself.

There was some of this in The First Heretic, with the Custodes observers, who were kind of blinded to what was going on, in part because of their presumed superiority to the Astartes and even the primarchs (or at least one so pathetic as pre-Chaos Lorgar). You know, 40K and Horus Heresy canon has been changing so much in recent years that you'd propably be best off with option 3. The once alien concept of defeat has now become a foregone conclusion for all but the most stoic of the remaining stalwarts. This could all be part of an act as well, something he's doing to distance himself any painful realities, but I think there is more truth in this tyrannical portrayal than lies. As the Emperor travelled across the stars, some Humans wanted to worship Him as a god, however He forbade this, proclaiming, "I am not a god; rather than enslaving Humanity I want to free it from ignorance and superstition.Given the opportunity to fully explore the Imperial Palace, and the variety of locations on hand, the book's focus could have easily wavered and become distracted by secondary details, robbing the reader of this one moment to see the conflict beneath the seat of Imperial power. For example, the Emperor, in this book, refers to the primarchs almost exclusively by their numbers.

The primarchs were sucked into the Warp through the will of the Chaos Gods while still in their gestation capsules and scattered across the Human-inhabited worlds of the galaxy. This city is the focal point of the conflict, the last line of defense the Imperials have to hold before the forces of Chaos would be able to overwhelm them and push into the throne room itself.Even the likes of Battlestar Galactica, a series about survival when all hope was lost, avoided saying "The Cylons will lose in the long run" as it would rob all investment from the viewer.