McNeill struggles to maintain the tone and pace of the first novel. Character ideals and motivations seemingly change out of nowhere. Marines from other legions and the LW who had personality and context in the first book suddenly exist only as plot devices.

Indeed the whole matter of the betrayal to chaos is suddenly escalated. The novel begins slowly and then starts teleporting around to a greater extent. And the same is done towards the end, Horus is able to convert multiple other Primarchs to chaos completely in the background while the heroes, whittled down to 2, are mostly none the wiser.

I cannot recommend this book for any reason except HH completeness. My overall feeling is that McNeill believed Abnett strayed too far from canon and sought to bring this book into compliance by any means necessary.