The Last Church

This book is pretty iconic in my opinion and has a lot going for it. It provides us with many rare and tantalising glimpses into pre-unity Terra, as well as outlining the Emperor’s message of atheism and pitting it against the convictions of the last Priest on Terra.

As the blurb says, this book is essentially one long conversation about religion and the Emperor between Uriah Olathaire, the last Priest of the last church, and a mysterious visitor.

The visitor is very much a believer in the Imperial Truth (even though there is not Imperium yet) and is quite vocal in his support of the Emperor and his opposition of religion. Uriah, being a priest, naturally wishes to defend his faith, and has no great love for the Emperor, for reasons that are revealed as the book goes on.

As a Christian myself I was fascinated by this book and become newly fascinated each time I read it. The visitor asks some really tough questions to Uriah and I often wonder how I would answer them were I in Uriah’s place.

Some have described the visitor’s arguments against religion as ‘hat-tippy’ and I can agree to a limited extent, but the visitor also raises some very poignant questions. Uriah is written as a very devoted man, but you can clearly tell that Graham McNeil is not himself religious. The counters Uriah makes to the visitor’s arguments seem weak, but I suppose this can be put down to lack of religious training.

While religion is the main focus of the discussion, the Emperor also comes up and it’s interesting to hear about how people on pre-unity Terra felt about him and conquest. We also get many casual but cleverly written references to Terra’s history.

Ontop of all of this, we get Uriah’s life story, which helps endear us to him as a character.

Anyway, I don’t want to spoil anything. I’ll just say that this book is a must-read for anyone who is interested in pre-unity Terra, or even the Horus Heresy in general. I really enjoy this book and I think you will too.

The Emperor Protects