Praetorian of Dorn

I feel like this book was so all over the place that I can’t even structure how I’m going to complain about it. Maybe I’ll go in descending order of annoyingness.

The Alpha Legions plan makes no sense. And don’t hit me with that whole “It’s the Alpha Legion they want to confuse their enemy, it doesn’t need to make sense.” They expended so many assets to complete pointless objectives. And I do mean pointless. Imagine the amount of trouble the Alpha Legion had to go to, in order to smuggle six Alpha Legionnaires and a handful of human operatives into the Imperial Palace, just so they could blow up some statues. All of the things six Alpha Legionnaires could have done after getting into the Imperial Palace undetected, blowing up some statues is probably the dumbest.

They start on Terra and work their way outward, until the novel ends on Pluto. Why? To send Dorn a message? Archamus tells Alpharius that pride is his weakness but honestly it seems like total stupidity is his weakness. Ask yourself this: in the grand scheme of things, what did the Alpha Legion really achieve?

The Alpha Legion mission parameters are flexible, and they have multiple objectives and degrees of success, I understand that, they state it outright in the novel. But what really did they achieve? It seemed to me that their main objective was to kill Dorn. That would have made sense, that would have crippled Terra’s defences and greatly demoralised the Imperial Fists. That would have been a successful harrowing. But even when Alpharius and Dorn go toe to toe, Alpharius says he doesn’t actually want to kill him.

Their actual objective was to take Pluto without anyone in the Solar System knowing, and at first that kind of makes sense. If you can break down the outermost wall of defences first, then the final siege of Terra becomes that much easier. Except how on earth were they planning on keeping it a secret? Even if they imprison Dorn, wipe out the Imperial Fists and send back hundreds of Alpha Legion imposters in their place, how are they going to explain Dorn’s absence?

Also, what good does taking Pluto actually do them? We’re not really told. I don’t understand how just destroying Pluto’s defences using brute force would have been any different from what the Alpha Legion did in the long run.

And let’s not forget that they lose a Primarch in the deal. This is supposed to be the Alpha Legion’s moment in the sun, their finest hour, their time to shine, and they totally blow it.

Onto the next point, the way the big reveal with Silonius is written. I thought the hints dropped throughout the book that Silonius was actually Alpharius were cool, but maybe alittle heavy handed. The thing that I thought was unnecessarily confusing was the actual reveal. The fact that the real Silonius joins the fight right as the fake Silonius is revealed to be Alpharius makes the reveal really convoluted. I had assumed that Silonius wasn’t really a real person and was just a persona that Alpharius had taken up. But the fact that Silonius was a real person, but that the Silonius we knew wasn’t the real Silonius, but as soon as the Silonius we know becomes Alpharius, the real Silonius starts walking around, is very disorienting. It confused me to the point that, on my second listening, after the big reveal, I found myself wondering if I had misinterpreted it the first time around and that Silonius wasn’t actually Alpharius at all. I just feel like it could have been handled better.

Another thing was Archamus. The attempts to make us care about him through flashbacks felt forced and almost like cheating. And his death does seem like it’s supposed to be emotional, but I honestly just couldn’t bring myself to care. I thought the best bit of character development we got from him was the fact that he was having trouble sleeping. But even that is diminished by something that’s said later on in the book about how Archamus hadn’t really been stressed before the Alpha Legion attack. The reveal that his name isn’t actually Archamus and that he named himself after a fellow aspirant is kind of clever, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect on the story or on Archamus’ character. The original Archamus died because of Kye’s mistake and he obviously feels guilty about it at the time, but later on we never see it factor into any of his decisions. He never even thinks about it.

There’s also Dorn’s motivation for getting Archamus to take over. When he realises that Alpharius is behind the attacks (if you can even call them that), Dorn puts Archamus in charge of the defence so that Dorn can remove himself from the situation, and not let the Alpha Legion trickery effect his thinking. Which makes no sense.

I mean Dorn is a Primarch, he is one of the smartest people in the galaxy, but he puts Archamus in charge because he’s afraid that dealing with it himself will cause him to overthink things. If he’s really so scared of the Alpha Legion confusion, why is he putting Archamus in charge? Surely, he’ll be even more affected by it than Dorn will. Dorn makes a show of regret that he “Has to” put Archamus through the experience, and requests rather than ordering. I always think this is kind of cruel of Primarchs because they know that none of their sons are ever going to refuse them and so making it sound like they have a choice just kind of seems gratuitous. Archamus even says that to him, there’s no difference between an order or a request. This is further emphasised when he goes back to Dorn later and asks to tap out, saying he’s changed his mind, and Dorn says ‘no’. It doesn’t make sense that Archamus is so perturbed at this point, and it doesn’t make sense that Dorn is so keen to avoid taking on the responsibility himself.

And it raises the question; why do the Alpha Legion tactics even work on Space Marines? I can totally understand why confusing and demoralising human troops would be a huge help. But Space Marines undergo heavy duty psychological training so that they can fight on under hindered in the face of psychological warfare. Archamus says that it’s not the war he was made for. This seems like a cheap excuse to me. They are space marines. They are the Emperor’s own Astartes. If they are really that rigid and un-adjustable, then they don’t deserve to be space marines. I think the author really sells the Imperial Fists short in this book, or rather, oversells the demoralising effect that the Alpha Legion will have on them.

I’ve passed a thousand words now so I’ll be brief for the rest of it. In the flashback where Dorn and Alpharius argue about methodology, I kind of find myself agreeing with Alpharius. It is better to assassinate a few hundred nobles and politicians than it is to kill a few thousand soldiers. Dorn lets his honour get in the way of preventing bloodshed.

However, I liked one point that Dorn made. Alpharius says that they are the way the Emperor designed them and if he’s not reprimanding them, then he must approve of their methods. This is an excuse Konrad Curze uses a lot as his legion becomes crueller and crueller, but Dorn counters that perhaps the Emperor expects them to recognise and overcome their own flaws. Which I think is a very good point.

The Alpha Legion human operatives, or “assets” is a piece of lore that I really enjoy. I liked the character of Myzmadra a lot and the reveal the Incarnus was actually loyal to the Alpha Legion the whole time was pretty clever, even if not much came of it. As I said in the Spoiler Free review, the Alpha Legion assets, especially Myzmadra are the highlight of this book for me.

Praetorian of Dorn has gotten some pretty good reviews on other websites so I figured my dim view of it would be controversial. Hopefully though, you can understand why I disliked it so much.

The Emperor Protects