# Battle of the Fang (Big Spoilers)



## Words_of_Truth (Sep 20, 2007)

*This is not a review, this thread is for discussion of the book and contains massive spoilers which will probably ruin the book if you read it.*




Great book, truly epic and so reminiscent of the Heresy Novels it might as well of been one. It was well written and showed all the Hall marks of Chris Wraight's style, which if you've read Sword of Justice and Sword of Vengeance you'd know to be dramatic fight scenes, not "bolter fests" but well written ones with plenty of detail, but also very abrupt deaths to well built characters.

There's a lot of relation to the two HH novels, especially prospero burns, however Hawser doesn't show up. Bjorn is a badass as usual and you get to understand his relationship to Russ slightly and how he took Russ disappearing.

One of the most important parts however is that Magnus knows where Russ is, he briefly reflects at times on what happened between them and nearly lets slip as to his where abouts.

All the characters where well written, even the mortals and dreadnaughts. The mystery of the Wolf brothers is finally explained including the chapters vision of the future, which turns out to be the whole reason Magnus decided to invade.

A Wolf Priest is working on what he calls "The Tempering" the ability to create successor chapters by removing the genetic flaw in the chapters geneseed which brings about "The Wolf" i.e turning them into Wulfen and worse. Magnus foresaw this future and wanted to deny it which is why he basically sacrificed any future full scale battle ability the thousand sons may of had to accomplish it.

I had a fair idea as to what the Wolf Priest was trying to accomplish though, even more so when the mentions of the Wolf Brothers started popping up at random.

What I thought was a little rubbish though was the Great Wolf, compared Greyloc he was rather stupid, especially at the end with his confrontation against Magnus. Just seemed more like a World Eaters reaction than a Space Wolves.


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## TheReverend (Dec 2, 2007)

Ok, so I'm reading the book at the moment and one line popped out at me:

p281; Aphael and Hett (Thousand Sons) are having a discussion and Aphael mentions Russ, and Hett makes a warding gesture, Aphael then says "Do not fear - he cannot come to their aid now, as you well know"

Maybe I'm reading too much into it and they are just referring to the fact that Russ popped off somewhere, but didn't Russ go looking for Magnus? Do you suppose he found him? and that the Thousand Sons know something more?

Rev

EDIT: I've not finished the book yet but reading the OP I realise that my questions will be answered by the end


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## Words_of_Truth (Sep 20, 2007)

Yeah what I took from it was that they know either where he is or what he's up to or what's happened to him.


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## TheReverend (Dec 2, 2007)

I forgot to say that I thought the book was really really well written. It flowed, it had good character development, it had a rounded view of the story from many angles. 

If Bill King doesn't want to finish the Ragnar series, they should let Chris Wraight have a stab at it!!


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## Words_of_Truth (Sep 20, 2007)

Yeah, his style of developing mini characters before killing them off is growing on me I think. It's just makes the story a lot more real when it's not focused just on one or two main characters but the supporting characters also have a lot of character added to them.


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## increaso (Jun 5, 2010)

I love Chris Wraight. I genuinely hold the 'Sword of' books high above anything else written by the Black Library to date.

Rather than repeat what I have said previously I would shamelessly direct you to my review, written a few months ago.


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## kickboxerdog (Jun 2, 2011)

TheReverend said:


> Ok, so I'm reading the book at the moment and one line popped out at me:
> 
> p281; Aphael and Hett (Thousand Sons) are having a discussion and Aphael mentions Russ, and Hett makes a warding gesture, Aphael then says "Do not fear - he cannot come to their aid now, as you well know"
> 
> ...


that part of the story got me to, but later there is another line that refers to this also at end of book ( from the mouth of magnus)

oooo i really hope they develop it more


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## TheReverend (Dec 2, 2007)

Right, I finished the book! It was great, possibly the best written BL novel I have read so far!! 

I read somewhere that some people were a bit disappointed with the whole "battles" books because we already knew the ending. Well, that's the same with the whole HH series, but we're still reading it  And certainly whilst reading this novel I was itching to know if the main characters would survive. 

One question I didn't think about asking before I discussed the novel with a friend was, what happened to Bjorn? Battle for the Fang is set only 1000 years after the HH and already Bjorn has been mortally wounded and placed in a sarcophagus. What happened to him? 

I was interested in seeing the wolf brothers come along. That whole thing is quite confusing. Surely the Wolf Brothers just have the same geneseed as the Space Wolves? And surely creating a new Space Wolves chapter is just like creating another great company? so why the extreme mutation? I've heard some speculation about it being because they were no longer based on Fenris, but what about the 13th Great company? They might be wolfen but they are nothing like the Wolf Brothers' were described as... and what about during the great crusade when there were thousands and thousands of space wolves? no problems there... and what about when Ragnar is based on Terra for years? no problem there (apart from the extra fat space wolf he serves with...)

We still don't learn where Russ is, but I guess that's one of GW's big secrets and one we're never likely to learn the answer to.

Anyway, overall, I'd totally recommend this novel!!

Rev


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## Chris Wraight (Jun 4, 2010)

OK - Wolf Brothers  

Here's my take on what's going on. (Spoilers below aren't tagged - I assume this thread has already spilled plenty of beans.)

- No one knows exactly why the Wolf Brothers failed. All we know is that if you implant Russ's gene-seed into Fenrisians, on Fenris, then the process works fairly reliably. If you implant Russ's gene-seed into non-Fenrisians, not on Fenris, then it doesn't. That could be for all sorts of reasons, but it seems likely that over the centuries the SW gene-seed and Fenris have come to be linked in an almost symbiotic way.

- That doesn't mean, though, that SWs are confined to Fenris. They can operate anywhere, for as long as they like, just like any other Space Marine. However, if you try to *create* a Space Wolf away from Fenris, using non-Fenrisian stock, then you tend to get rapid degeneration (as the WBs found out).

- Wyrmblade's goal was to refine the gene-seed/Canis Helix so that Space Wolves didn't suffer from the curse of the Wulfen. If he'd succeeded in that, then the SWs would have been much more stable. His theory was that, if he could get rid of the Wulfen curse, then the chance of creating SWs away from Fenris, in truly independent Chapters, was vastly improved. No one knows if he was right about that, but Magnus was certainly worried enough about the prospect to invade.

- The Wolf Brothers that appear in Battle of the Fang weren't the entire Chapter - they were just a group that Magnus had captured and corrupted. You shouldn't infer from their appearance that all of the WBs fell to Chaos. Some (perhaps most) would have fallen prey to the Wulfen, many would have died, some would have turned renegade, some might have stayed loyal and gone to ground. It's even possible that non-mutated Wolf Brothers would be around in M41, most likely in traitor warbands in the Eye, but also conceivably in small loyalist groups (if they've somehow found a way to implant their dodgy gene-seed into new aspirants).

All of this still leaves some mysteries (such as how the original Terran Space Wolves were made), but I think it basically makes sense of the situation. The bottom line is that the post-Heresy Space Wolves, to a greater extent than perhaps any other Legion/Chapter, have a very close link to their home world and its rites/traditions. Break that link, and the results are very messy indeed.


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## raider1987 (Dec 3, 2010)

Chris Wraight said:


> - The Wolf Brothers that appear in Battle of the Fang weren't the entire Chapter - they were just a group that Magnus had captured and corrupted. You shouldn't infer from their appearance that all of the WBs fell to Chaos. Some (perhaps most) would have fallen prey to the Wulfen, many would have died, some would have turned renegade, some might have stayed loyal and gone to ground. It's even possible that non-mutated Wolf Brothers would be around in M41, most likely in traitor warbands in the Eye, but also conceivably in small loyalist groups (if they've somehow found a way to implant their dodgy gene-seed into new aspirants).


One wolf brother shows up in Dead Sky, Black sun. I could be mistaken on that. Anyway brilliant book mate one of the best loyalist marine books ever.


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## TheReverend (Dec 2, 2007)

hmm, might check that novel out once I have finished reading my way through my book pile... cheers for the heads up


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## forkmaster (Jan 2, 2010)

Words_of_Truth said:


> *This is not a review, this thread is for discussion of the book and contains massive spoilers which will probably ruin the book if you read it.*
> 
> Great book, truly epic and so reminiscent of the Heresy Novels it might as well of been one. It was well written and showed all the Hall marks of Chris Wraight's style, which if you've read Sword of Justice and Sword of Vengeance you'd know to be dramatic fight scenes, not "bolter fests" but well written ones with plenty of detail, but also very abrupt deaths to well built characters.
> 
> ...


:goodpost:
I think you said exactly everything I was thinking about. The only thing Im not sure I agree on (on like 50%) is the WE reference. Imagine youre super-angry at the TS and they taunt you for centuries, sooner or later you would loose it and stop thinking rationally. Thats exactly what the Great Wolf did. So thats why he did bad choices. This is what I like about the end. "This Great Wolf fucked up so now we wont make that misstake ever again".



Chris Wraight said:


> OK - Wolf Brothers
> 
> Here's my take on what's going on. (Spoilers below aren't tagged - I assume this thread has already spilled plenty of beans.)
> 
> ...


Are you *the* author himself? Welcome to the forums you lurker. It was a great book IMO and a great ending to the dualogy of A Thousand Sons where you combined the love for Magnus Legion and sense of mystery and magic, together with the new fluff of the SW (their real names for everything and look upon knowledge) together with some good bolter porn. :biggrin:

Edit: Also, the author seems to have added small hints towards the number 9 just like McNeill did.


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