Garro

Garro by James Swallow is the forty-second installment in the Horus Heresy series. It collects the Garro audio-dramas and novella into one prose novel, presenting Garro's adventures as a Knight-Errant in chronological order for the first time.

Garro opens close to where The Flight of the Eisenstein left off, with Nathaniel Garro entering the service of Malcador the Sigillite. Garro is then dispatched on the first of a series of recruiting missions, arriving on Calth during the height of the battle between the Ultramarines and Word Bearers as per the events of Garro: Oath of Moment. After recruiting Ultramarine psyker Tylos Rubio straight off the battlefield Garro dives into the events of Sword of Truth, he and Rubio investigating a refugee fleet led by loyalist World Eater Macer Varren. Drama unfolds as a traitorous faction is revealed (much less of a surprise post-Scars as it would have been before the release of that novel) and Varren ends up joining the Knights-Errant.

Garro boasts some excellent supporting characters but as its name suggests the novel is really only about one man, and Garro's fellow Knights-Errant fade into the background fairly quickly as Garro's story increasingly becomes one of a lone agent abroad in the galaxy, acting as much out of his own inner conflict as in abeyance of Malcador's directives. After failing to liberate an Imperial Fist Librarian from the Phalanx (as per Burden of Duty) and terminating his former battle-brother Meric Voyen who doomed himself through his misguided attempt to cure Nurgle's Rot (as per Ashes of Fealty) Garro leads Rubio and Varren to the wasteland of Isstvan III, where the last of Malcador's desired recruits lingers like a vengeful spectre, a diabolical Legion of One. Loken seems like a lost cause, but Garro is able to restore his mind and bring him back to Terra.

As the tone of Garro's adventures becomes darker he begins to branch out on his own, helping an Administratum scribe get the bottom of a vast conspiracy whose mastermind turns out to be Garro's boss, as per the events of Shield of Lies. Increasingly detached from his role as Malcador's agent Garro begins to seek a higher purpose and tracks down Saint Euphrati Keeler as per the events of Vow of Faith. James Swallow uses the novella to wrap up multiple plot threads he had left hanging in his earlier works, but by its end Keeler ends up in Imperial custody and Garro reluctantly returns to the fold. Swallow's author afterword makes it clear that there is more in store for Garro and that his true fate it yet to be revealed, but with two novels now written for him one can't help but feel that the ideal time to wrap up his story may have already passed. Whatever Garro's fate is, its revelation belongs to the nebulous future of the Heresy series.