Book Review: Legion

I just finished the seventh book in the Horus Heresy series, Legion by Dan Abnett.  Previously I'd heard a few people on different blogs & podcasts say that this book was the stinker of the series - maybe I was just ready for a change of pace, but I loved it.  I can see where some people wouldn't like it, as it has much less of the cinematic action sequences that some of the other books have, and the majority of the book doesn't show that much of the Astartes at all - what it does do much better than many of the other books, however, is show some truly three- dimensional characters.  The book is mainly centered on John Grammaticus, a powerful psyker working for The Cabal.  The Cabal is an organization that is many thousands of years old, made up of myriad different xenos races, whose ultimate goal is to defeat the powers of Chaos - it turns out that the Alpha Legion plays a pivotal role in this battle.  I won't give away the story, but I did not see the ending coming at all - it really expands the scope of the Heresy, and the choices some of the characters have to make really illustrate just how big the conflict is.  I found John Grammaticus extremely interesting, and think he's compelling enough that Abnett could easily spin the character off into a dedicated series of his own.  I also found the Alpha Legion fascinating, and would love to read another book that gave move detail about the way the operate.  Overall I enjoyed the book tremendously, and I'd have to say it's one of the standouts of the series for me so far, along with Fulgrim and The Flight of the Eisenstein.