Raven’s Flight – Gav Thorpe – Performed by Toby Longworth
Raven’s Flight – Gav Thorpe – Performed by Toby Longworth CD (Black Library) www.blacklibrary.com
Following ‘Thunder From Fenris’, I was expecting big things of ‘Raven’s Flight’, and I wasn’t disappointed. This time, we’re plunged headlong into the Horus Heresy, a bloody, vicious conflict fuelled by rebellion and brother turning on brother in a seemingly inevitable civil war destined to rip the Imperium of Man apart at the seams. This time, the story, split into two distinct threads focuses on The Raven Guard, a Legion of Space Marines led by Primach Corax, a loyalist troop seemingly massacred on Isstvan V as they prepared to face the forces of Horus, and their struggle to fight and survive in a situation that seems hopeless, and Colonel Valerius of the Imperial Army, a man plagued by nightmare omens of the trap that his comrades have fallen into. Two threads that are eventually woven together in a story soaked in blood, gore, treachery and conflict on far off worlds in the far future, a story that grips the listener from beginning to end, a story that is once more brought to glorious, violent life by Toby Longworth. Again, I found myself immersed in a world that until now I was unfamiliar with, future armies based on Roman Legions and their principles of warfare and combat, an Empire on the edge of destruction, and once again, I’ve found myself becoming a convert to the cause, determined to track down the previous books and submerge myself in the horrors of the brutal, bloody war that lies at it’s heart. Less than a week ago, Warhammer 40,000 existed solely on the peripheral boundaries of all that I enjoyed, something that I’d always meant to sample, but for one reason or another had never got around to doing so. Now, thanks to both ‘Thunder From Fenris’ and ‘Raven’s Flight’, it’s become much more, and I’ve joined the ever swelling ranks of its confirmed devotees. Funny how quickly things can change isn’t it? Tim Mass Movement
