Tales of Heresy (The Horus Heresy #10) by Nick Kyme & Lindsey Priestley Review: A Rich Short-Story Anthology of the Great Crusade

Tales of Heresy is an anthology of seven short stories set during the era of the Horus Heresy, positioned as book ten in the broader Black Library series of the same name. Nick Kyme and Lindsey Priestley serve as editors, not authors — the fiction itself comes from a roster of series contributors that includes Dan Abnett, Graham McNeill, James Swallow, and Mike Lee, among others. The stories are set in the final days of the Great Crusade and the opening tremors of the Horus Heresy: the Space Marine Legions wrestle with their identities, clash with alien invaders, confront internal conflicts, and reckon with the demands of an empire being built at the point of a bolter. One thread, confirmed by the Lexicanum entry on the book, involves a wayward primarch — one of the superhuman demigod commanders whose choices will shape the galaxy's fate.

The Horus Heresy is Black Library's flagship science fiction line, and by book ten it had already established an enormous cast of characters and a sprawling timeline. An anthology at this point in the series serves a specific structural purpose: short stories can illuminate incidents, characters, and Legions that full novels have passed over, expanding the world laterally rather than pushing the main narrative forward. The seven stories collected here each throw what the publisher describes as "new light on characters and events from this pivotal time of conflict." As the tenth volume in a series that grew to encompass dozens of primary entries, Tales of Heresy represents an early experiment in using the anthology format to deepen the Heresy's lore.

The anthology format proves well-suited to the scale of the Horus Heresy universe, and a consistent point of praise across reader commentary is that the collection demonstrates just how much storytelling range the setting contains. The blogger at dave430.wordpress.com described the volume as containing "fun and powerful stories that showcase how fascinating and deep a world Games Workshop and Black Library have created," singling out three stories as standouts while noting the remaining entries as "pretty entertaining." Gathering Abnett, McNeill, and Swallow — three of the series' most prominent voices — into a single volume gives the anthology an immediate credibility, and the variety of conflicts covered (alien warfare, intra-Legion strife, primarch drama) means the collection covers genuinely distinct ground rather than repeating a single type of action set-piece.

Short-story anthologies in an ongoing tie-in series carry an inherent tension: they are most rewarding for readers already invested in the characters and factions, but the episodic, self-contained structure means individual stories cannot develop the same narrative weight as a full novel. Readers coming to Tales of Heresy without familiarity with the broader Horus Heresy cast — the Legions, the primarchs, the political stakes of the Great Crusade — will find considerably less purchase here than dedicated series followers. Additionally, because quality in anthologies varies story by story, not every entry will resonate equally; dave430.wordpress.com's review implicitly acknowledged this unevenness by distinguishing "standout" stories from the rest of the collection.

Tales of Heresy is squarely aimed at existing Horus Heresy readers who want to explore the universe beyond its main novel thread. For that audience, the anthology delivers access to multiple authors' interpretations of the setting in a single volume, and the confirmed presence of Abnett, McNeill, and Swallow ensures the writing pedigree is consistent with the wider series. Readers who have followed the Heresy from Horus Rising onward, and who want stories that operate at the margins of the saga — smaller in scale, but not in stakes — will find this a fitting companion to the larger novels. Those new to the Warhammer 40,000 universe, or who prefer sustained novel-length narratives, will want to begin elsewhere in the series before arriving here.