Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter

This was an interesting, enjoyable and exciting book but I think that prior knowledge of the universe that Konrad inhabits would be a distinct advantage as I felt disassociated quite a lot of the time, that said it’s a good read, flows really well and captures the imagination

In this, Guy Haley’s third Primarchs novel, readers get a fascinating look at Konrad Curze: the Night Haunter, and gene-father of the Night Lords, the Emperor’s terror troops. A nuanced examination of Curze’s place in the expanding Imperium, as well as an account of his final hours — lost to madness, despair and bitterness.

There are a few threads from previous Horus Heresy and Primarchs books picked up and tied off in this novel. For example, this novel starts with the recovery of Konrad Curze’s prison sarcophagus, in which he was ejected into space by his brothers Sanguinius and Lion El’Johnson, in David Annandale’s Ruinstorm. Unfortunately or the crew of the ship that finds him, he did not enjoy his time in there…

More importantly, Haley also wrote Corax, about the eponymous Primarch of the Raven Guard (a Legion that has benefited greatly from the Heresy fiction). In that novel, the author started a discussion that continues in Konrad Curze: a comparison of these two Primarchs, and the vastly different paths they have walked. Each of them has an affinity for the darkness, as a tool and also a refuge. They are both Legions that use assassination and fear to achieve their ends — Corax and his sons are rather more subtle, however. In Curze, Haley offers Konrad’s side of the comparison: he is bitter and hates the Emperor for making him who he is, unable to understand why he wasn’t given the same respect as the Raven Lord, not to mention also Corax’s mysterious shadow gift.

‘I wonder often if Corax would have followed me into this same darkness, had the war not come. He and I were so similar, we could have been twins. Of them all, he and Sanguinius were the closest to me – not personally, none of them were my friends,’ Curze said sarcastically. ‘There were never any friends for me. But they were the most alike, though for different reasons. Corax and I, yes, both creatures of darkness, I the murderer, he the assassin, both preoccupied by justice, both raised around criminals.’

Equally, he doesn’t understand why the Emperor didn’t come to his defence when he fulfilled his role and purpose — in many ways, Curze’s relationships with the Emperor is a more transparent father-son psychodrama than most of the other Primarchs. Indeed, these novels comprise one of the most complicated family sagas ever written. As with some of the other books that have focused on the Traitor Primarchs, Konrad is far more clear-eyed about the Emperor’s flaws and mistakes (although, it should be noted that the Emperor never suggests he’s perfect, and that part of the problem is that others don’t believe him).

‘You see, that’s what I don’t understand. Why did you breed such a clutch of hypocrites?’

The novel is split between what turns out to be the Primarch’s final hours, on the one hand, and various flashbacks across Curze’s life. In the former, Konrad is ranting and raving against an effigy of his father, the Emperor. If you’ve read Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s Night Lords series, then you will know the story of Curze’s death, but it is by no means necessary to have done so in order to enjoy this book. You might, however, enjoy the cameos of certain key characters from that series — for example, Sevatar (who I really liked this this novel), the Painted Count, and also Talos (one of my favourite WH40k characters).

It’s clear that Konrad has not handled the aforementioned gift of foresight as well as his fellow Primarch, Sanguinius. Where the Angel looks to the future with hope, believing that his and humanity’s fate is not set, Curze sees it as inevitable and makes choices that he believes will bring about the inevitable, rather than the best outcome. Like Sanguinius, Curze has had a vision of his own death. Unlike Sanguinius, who has tried to see a path to avoid his death (as witnessed in Ruinstorm), Curze is resigned to his fate.

As the novel progresses, alternating between various points in Curze’s life, we see his decline. At first, he is terrifying but also magnificent — the shimmer of the near-divine still evident in his presence. As time progresses, though, he becomes ever-more twisted, filthy and insane. He comes to inhabit so fully the role he was meant to play. By the end, he is a base killer, a murderer who revels in the death and horror he creates.

“It is abhorrent, what I do. I am abhorrent. But my abhorrence is only a concentration of the sins of all men, magnified in me ten thousandfold. You intended us to be exemplars of humanity. You succeeded all too well.”

The Primarchs series has really improved in recent volumes. This is easily one of the best in the series. Haley has done an excellent of improving our overall picture and understanding of Curze, and tying together so many threads of the overall Heresy story (macro- and micro-level). Those who have read all or a lot of the Heresy series will probably get more out of this novel than only casual readers. Nevertheless, I urge fans of the Horus Heresy and Primarch series, as well as WH40k in general, to pick this up when it’s released.

Very highly recommended.

Twelve down, six to go.

Bloody, brutal, and utterly enthralling. A wonderful and insightful look into the mind and life of Konrad Curze, one of the most complex and fascinating primarchs in the 40k universe. Highly recommended.

I love the Black Library and all the 40k/Horus Heresy books! To me they are like a written form of snacks: they're very entertaining, I always want to read the next one, and it just feeds my (in this case metaphorical) gut for scifi!

I've always felt bad for Konrad Curze; he's an antihero given a purely immoral view of justice and a body that is starved for violence...to say he is the worst possible incarnation of Bat Man would be fairly accurate as an analogy. This book delves into his personal story and gives him a more sympathetic portrayal, even as we are reminded that he has gone insane.

Kurse is a wonderful look into the warhammer.universe. It takes one of the darker Primarch and gives.him depth and reason tp.his madness. Warhammer's Batman gone bad is given an intruiging and proper look. On the importance of hope in the face of fear

The most recent Primarch novel I had read was ‘Angron: Slave of Nuceria’. Whilst I enjoyed it, I can’t help but feel that my rating of four out of five might have been a little too generous. That is entirely the fault of Konrad Curze. This novel was what Slave of Nuceria could have been but fell incredibly far short of.

The best way to describe it is ‘an insane novel that is all over the place … yet works all the better for it’. The novel has two settings. The first being the present day where Konrad awaits the arrival of the assassin he has foresaw, eager to let his demise play out as his foresight has shown him. Of course, waiting for one’s death must be terribly boring, So Konrad passes the time by having a raving mad discussion with a corpse-dummy he has made up to look like his father. Absolutely bonkers, right? Yep, but insanity is, sadly, one of the many traits that Konrad has in abundance.

The other time period is basically random parts of Kondrad’s past that he feels have all served to make him the man/demi-god/Primarch/beast that he is today. Through these parts of history we see the people Konrad interacted with (poor, poor people). We are shown his origins on Nostramo from his humble beginnings of a Batman-style vigilante … well, if Batman were a thousand times darker than he is. The primarch’s entire life up until the point at which he currently tells his tale is shown through these past sequences.

Normally, I am not one for flashbacks. So the thought of an entire novel of flashbacks (seemingly randomly thrown together no less) was a little off-putting to me. My love of the Night Lords history and the urge to know more of their primarch kept me hooked, though. Thankfully! For if I had stopped, I would have missed out on a truly wonderful primarch novel.

I think I enjoyed this one so much because it felt like it had more life to it than Angron’s novel. Anything involving Konrad just felt like it belonged whereas some of Angron’s felt a bit shoe-horned in.

For those of you more familiar with the 30k history, this novel throws up a fair few ‘hmmm, what if that’s what happened?’ scenarios regarding the Emperor and the Horus Heresy in general. For years we have been told of this glorious Emperor of Mankind and how he is a paragon of justice. Konrad Curze questions that, his visions of the future make the reader wonder why the Emperor ever allowed anything like the Heresy to happen given the fact that He is also able to peer into the future.

I really like the direction that 30k & 40k is going these days and this book just adds more cement into already solid foundations going forward.

Bravo, Guy Haley. You smashed this one out of the park.

Fantastic look into Curze's backstory by Guy Haley. I've been reading his books since Baneblade and this might be my favorite so far. If you've enjoyed Haley's books in the past and/or really want an in-depth look into the Night Lords legion, I would definitely recommend this book!

The eleventh novel in Black Library’s The Horus Heresy Primarchs series, Konrad Curze: The Night Haunter is Guy Haley’s third contribution and by a comfortable margin his most unconventional one yet. A twitchy, jittery collection of characters and plot threads, it sees Curze – twisted, haunted, damaged – spending the final hours of his life reliving some of the key events which led him inevitably to a moment he’d long foreseen. Crouched in the darkness, talking in his madness to a (literally and figuratively) distant father, his only thoughts are to justify his monstrous actions and find vindication in light of the Emperor’s own cold contempt.

Or at least, that’s one possible interpretation of the book, of the events it describes and of Curze’s intentions and motivations. Anyone hoping for a decisive conclusion as to whether the Night Lords’ Primarch and his actions were justified or otherwise may be disappointed, as that’s not what this book is about. Instead, via a structure which reflects its protagonist’s fragile, fractured mental state, it’s a story which offers fascinating insights into the dark places of Curze’s mind (for those brave enough to venture therein) but doesn’t try to make definitive judgements. The Night Haunter’s early years; his understanding of his role within the Imperium and the Great Crusade; his perspective on the changes taking place within his Legion; the destruction of Nostramo; how he reaches Tsagualsa…all these and more are described, but by the most unreliable of narrators.

The multiple strands and characters make for an interesting stylistic choice, just about bound together by the overarching narrative of Curze in his final moments (long after the Heresy has ended) searching for some kind of validation or vindication. At times it’s a little tricky to find a focused through-note, feeling like lots of little vignettes rather than a single cohesive story, especially considering just how many named Night Lords characters pop up for varying lengths of time. It’s interesting to see all of these characters and how Curze relates to them, each thread exploring a little more of his character and how it shaped his Legion, but the downside is a bit of a lack of focus, at least for parts of the book. What the structure does do very well, however, is reinforce the notion of just how jumbled up, complex and contradictory this character really is.

While this might not be the most comfortable of reads – not least because of the inevitable moments of entirely appropriate but still genuinely unpleasant violence and darkness – it’s undoubtedly worth it for the opportunity to see a little more of Curze’s side of the story. Not to mention the parallels Haley is able to draw between Curze and Corax, whose Primarchs novel he also wrote. It’s not a book which provides straight answers, but instead it offers a sharp, insightful representation of a complex character which actively encourages the reader to draw their own conclusions. Was Curze’s fate inevitable? Could he have turned out differently under other circumstances? Was the Emperor ‘right’ to use him in the way he did…answers of a sort are provided, but it’s for each reader to decide whether – or how much – to sympathise with Curze.

A brutal, chaotic account of a murderous madman.

Thank you, Black Library, for providing me a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Konrad Curze, primarch of the 8th legion, is insane. His legion rots from within. His death is approaching, and he’s decided it’s time to confront his absent father. His tale is long, unforgiving, twisted and dark as only that of one abandoned, growing alone on a sunless world could possibly be. His life is spread open, vivisected and shared as he convicts the God Emperor, and himself.

This book is not for the faint of heart, or stomach. It’s brutal, vicious, full of graphic violence and grim, callous murder. I’d like to say it’s a headlong descent of an inhuman primarch into madness, but it’s more complicated than that. Perhaps it’s an exploration of how the effects of one poisoned, lightless, murderous planet can ripple outward ceaselessly. I do know that it’s a hard book to read sometimes. There seems to be little if anything to redeem Konrad Curze. There are plain descriptions of the choices he’s making conveyed at points, but much of the book is about death, dismemberment and torture, and worse. Given that it’s a Warhammer book, surprisingly, there are also very few battles in the story. Also, though the story is posited as the Night Haunter sharing his past with his father before he is murdered, much of the story itself is not in his POV.

Haley has some very intriguing turns of phrase, his prose is incredibly descriptive and there is some very interesting world-building that is conveyed. There are some especially captivating depictions, for instance, that I would almost say are entirely worth the read by themselves. Most of all, this book is worth reading, for those who are brave enough to do so, to fill in the blanks about Konrad Curze.

My first run in with the primarch of the Night Lords Chapter. What a way to introduce the people you know nothing of. This was a sad and profound book to read. I thank Black Library and Net Galley for accepting my request to read the arc. I will definately try track down more Night Lords books.

A couple years ago I reviewed the Night Lords Trilogy as decent dark, uber-violent, escapist sci-fi. This book provides a prequel of sorts and isn’t half bad for a shared-world-based-on-tabletop-gaming sort of book. In it, we get to know the primarch/gene-father of the VIII Legion both before and after his fall into the service of Chaos. He combines the implacable “justice” of Les Miserables’ Javert with the terror-inspiring vigilantism of Batman and a great big dose of prescience-induced insanity.

The story is fragmented into a kaleidoscope of flashbacks and angry rants against the Emperor of Mankind. Some of the transitions can be a bit confusing, but given Curze’s insanity, I think the overall effect works quite nicely.

The plot features the usual Warhammer amount of guts, gore, and grossness (and then some since our protagonist is one of the “bad guys”). I was really hoping for a good chunk of the story to be about the primarch’s early dark vigilante days on Nostromo, but the author was more interested in exploring his damaged psyche and events subsequent to the Horus Heresy.

This isn’t a good starting point if you’re new to the series as it assumes you have a basic working knowledge of the universe and some of its major events. However, if you’re into the Warhammer 40K books in general and chaos space marines in particular, this is worth reading.