It might have been a dull book if it had not been for the fact that these many betrayals happened in my lifetime involving government officials who were in the news ... as happens frequently, what is reported by the mass media often is a coverup ... especially when the Washington Post is rumored to have been controlled by the CIA. Aaron Dembski-Bowden is the author of the Horus Heresy novels Betrayer and The First Heretic, as well as the novella Aurelian and the audio drama Butcher’s Nails, for the same series. He also wrote The Talon of Horus, the popular Night Lords series, the Space Marine Battles book Helsreach, the Grey Knights novel The Emperor’s Gift and numerous short stories. He lives and works in Northern Ireland. Legacies of Betrayal is the thirty-first book in the Horus Heresy Series. It is was published in October 2014.

A bigger issue: I think that Betrayal is trying to do too much here. Not only is Allston setting up Jacen's Sith journey, but this conflict between the Galactic Alliance and Corellia which will spiral out to other systems. That's a lot to do, and unfortunately the book throws us into this Galactic Alliance military action against Corellia with not a lot of setup. We jump from “Corellia is unhappy about centralization” to the Galactic Alliance parking a fleet in Corellian space and sending in Jedi teams to kidnap Corellian heads of state. I know that the Dark Nest trilogy was all about this Chiss/Killik conflict in the Unknown Regions, but I would have liked to see hints of this situation in those preceding books. It would have helped to have this built up, instead of dropping the reader into the middle of a conflict that we’ve been told has been brewing behind the scenes—with not many examples of it before everything explodes. One man may hold the key to finding out. Tennent “Pete” Bagley was once a rising star in America’s spy aristocracy, and many expected he’d eventually become CIA director. But the star that burned so brightly exploded when Bagley—who suspected a mole had burrowed deep into the agency’s core—was believed himself to be the mole. After a year-long investigation, Bagley was finally exonerated, but the accusations tarnished his reputation and tainted his career.First things first, all of the stories collected here have been previously released in one way or another; we get one novella (Chris Wraight’s Brotherhood of the Storm), prose versions of eleven audio dramas (of varying lengths) and seven other short stories (again of varying lengths) drawn from limited edition anthologies, ebooks and event programmes. Where some previous Heresy anthologies have had crystal-clear themes (Mark of Calth, for example), this is only loosely themed, looking at the way in which the characters represented have been affected by the events of the war so far, and while there’s an argument to say that every character involved in the Heresy has been affected by betrayal in some way, as a theme it just about works. Six years after his retirement from the CIA, Bagley was startled by an unlikely coincidence. “Two deaths—each purportedly a suicide, each with its deep roots in the secret world, each with its own perplexing mysteries” caught his attention in 1978. Bagley was living in Brussels after stepping down as CIA station chief there. One of the men who died was a KGB defector who had provided invaluable information to the agency. The other was a long-serving CIA senior officer. In both cases, the circumstances made it clear to Bagley that suicide was unlikely. And as he dug deeply into the available (and sometimes secret) facts, he became convinced that neither had killed himself.

Another very short story that barely makes sense without context. It’s not bad, it’s just too short and random. I don’t come to Star Wars for Shakespeare or deep thought. Jacen is particularly unintelligent and prone to the justification of his actions, and Luke is an enabling boss and negligent father. Ben gets a pass at being naive as he’s a 13-year-old kid, and I know he is trusting of his master, so doesn’t question what’s going on much. But don’t these people have the Force? Well, first of all, the Force is presented differently in the books then it is in the movies, so go into this book (or all Star Wars books) expecting that. People complained about Rey having new force powers in episode 9, but that’s nothing new to these novels. The trio end up meeting a mysterious woman named Brisha Syo who wants Jacen to travel to her home on a remote asteroid near Bimmiel. Revelations ensue. Turns out, Brisha Syo is actually the Dark Lady Lumiya, who appeared in the Marvel Star Wars comics that were released between 1977 and 1986. Lumiya was originally a young Rebel woman named Shira Brie who had a sort of romance with Luke Skywalker, and then was shot down by Luke because the Force told him that she was an enemy. And surprise, she had been an Imperial spy all along! She was saved by the use of cybernetics and trained in the dark side of the Force by Darth Vader, she wants revenge on Luke Skywalker, and she has a very distinctive outfit complete with a lightwhip instead of a lightsaber. Yet again I realize that anthologies are not my thing. This one had some real gems and some fillers squeezed together in a book, seemingly chosen at random. I tried to give a short, spoiler-free review to each of the short stories. Not sure if I’m gonna ever go that again, some seem pretty pointless.As an author of licensed material myself, I can understand the thin line an author walks when working with characters that are not only beloved but have a complex history that has existed oftentimes long before you had the chance to put pen to paper. The overwhelming majority of characters who have fought and sacrificed for so long to establish and defend first the New Republic and its present political entity the GA choose to remain loyal. Most notable are of course the Skywalkers. Luke and Mara are in my opinion well depicted and require no description on my part. However Betrayal features some newcomers. The one I liked the best is...