Given that this is the Thousand Sons, fully united under a single banner once more, you would hope for some colourful characters and stunning examples of sorcery to arise throughout the book. Avoiding the more subtle tactics of last time, we see them hitting the Wolves head on with a variety of innovative and downright insane tactics. Whereas before the Alpha Legion led by Lord Skayle the Forgettable (yes, I had to actually look up his name) were little more than a side-story to be killed off and move the plot along, Chaos has a much stronger showing this time. Unlike last time, the villains here are much, much more prominent in the story and stand out against the heroes. The second any daemonic influence is confirmed, remembering that Chaos is dubious, they decide to stop and focus on putting that down before all else. It would have been an easy thing to force on the tale to keep conflict going, albeit at the cost of one facepalm per page, but they react with far more sense than last time. Better yet, there's no Inspector Javert ignoring all evidence before him and still hounding the Wolves even as the world goes to hell.
#WRATH OF MAGNUS FULL#
Quite a few (one Inquisitor in particular) seem to remember that the Dark Angels do have a shadowy past, so even while they're going full Crusade on the Wolves, there's at least a hint that not everyone is fully behind this. While it does involve the introduction of new characters, members of the fleet attacking Fenris seem far more dubious of the evidence put before them than in the past outing. The big thing which stands out first and foremost is that the opening act seems to be a single massive push to avoid a few of the expected cliches or problems.
While it doesn't always work, and a few major problems remain, it's at least heartening to know what someone on the team looked at the negative response from reviews (the few which actually examined the story) and went "You know what, we can do better." It might even by why this second half took quite so long to produce. Many of the key failings of the last book are directly tackled here, and there does seem to have been a serious concerted effort to massively turn things around. Whatever else is said about this book, let one thing be made clear - The writers were listening to criticism. Let's see if they can take advantage of it. With the promise of Magnus making his first proper appearance in millennia and risk of an Imperial civil war between multiple First Founding chapters, the writers have plenty of material to work with. This time should be given a fresh chance to prove itself, as even if an opening to a trilogy screws things up, it can always be redeemed by a great ending. After some very, very obvious manipulation on Chaos' part, the Imperium begins preparing to bomb the Fenris system into oblivion to kill the Wolves and daemons alike. Stupidity ensues, Grimnar learns that Fenris is under attack while he is away. Unfortunately, they manage to get the attention of both the Grey Knights and the Dark Angels. More start showing up out of massed Warp storms, seemingly causing them, and forcing the Great Companies to try and catch 'em all before anyone notices. To cut a long story short - The Wulfen (now retconned to never having been encountered at all by the Space Wolves past M31) show up out of the Warp and the Space Wolves take them in. It also has the dubious distinction of being the only rulebook which drove me to make a booze fueled attempt to re-write the damn thing from scratch, just to prove a drunk fan could do a better job of penning the story. The retcons left gaping holes in the universe, there were some suspiciously similar story ideas we had seen in past Space Wolf books, and the padding was unforgivable. The story of Cursed was fueled by character stupidity.
Back in February we looked into the book's lore and found it wanting. Sadly that can't be said of Curse of the Wulfen. The key problem is, however, that the actual set-up has to be good. It keeps fans questioning and it keeps people speculating, even when almost a year passes by before we get any real resolution to the story. There are few ways better than cliffhangers to keep an audience hooked, especially with an impending long wait.