Review of Dark Creed WB novel

[minigun762]

I wouldn't be so sure. I thought it was left fairly grey.

Even if you choose to believe that, they left him on the planet. Imperial forces will destroy him. Face it, he's dead.

 

I reread that portion and yeah its pretty clear he's not going to make it.

[Brother Nihm]

I think it would have been a great read if:

 

-Ancient Chaos Veterans didn't die left and right like Guardsmen throughout the entire story.

-There was put more thought behind the main protagonist (not Marduk) and it's motivations. It was too predictable.

which leads me to,

-Predictable plot. I knew the ending around chapter 8.

-The only thing that vaguely made sense, The White Angel, should have been explored in further detail.

-If Kol'Badar didn't throw away his weapon in disgust, only to fire it again several paragraphs later.

 

In short, compared to the previous two, the third one didn't do it for me.

[minigun762]

One thing that hit me as I was rereading part of it was the end.

 

 

I always thought that warships were at the most exposed right after leaving the warp. Wouldn't that have given the WB ships some advantage when the rest of the fleet jumped in, or can you chalk that up to the effects of the gate itself?

 

[Possessed Marine]

The thing I didn't like about it:

My favorite character dies... poor Burias

[KingDeath]

I liked that, once again, even the redshirt adversaries were at least somewhat competent.

[Zerib]

I just got done with the book last night and I would give it a 7. Too many gaps and or contradiction the plot and fluff for me.

First and foremost was the lack of daemons and Marduk's interaction with them. It did not seem like he summoned any or had a hand in it. While we were told there were monuments being built there was no real explanation as to what was going on with that or anything. Echoing minigun was the appearance of the craft from the gates and the chaos ships not getting the jump. However a Blackstone Fortress did come through so that might mean something. Granted the WB are a full legion how can they stay at any strength by losing so many warhosts? In regards to the necrons why could 3 space marines hold off that many necrons when the WB host couldn't deal with them at all until the final battle. And whats with the Grey Knights teleporting on to the bridge and taking down Ekodas and the whole command deck in one salvo?

Well thats enough ranting and raving, over all it was decent but parts just screamed wrong to me.

[Walter Payton]

I enjoyed it a lot, especially Kol Badar. I would love to see a fight between Kol Badar and Honsou, or Marduk and Honsou.

 

I was slightly dissappointed by the death of Burias, but then again he was a whiney little :P

 

Overall, 4/10

 

Why? Well, if it had come in a blank cover, no illustrations or writing, I would have given it 8/10

 

However, the cover art knocks it down 4 points. I justs didn't like the portrait of Marduk. He's a Dark Apostle of the Dark Council, not a sodding obese sumo wrestler.

[Static Entropy]

I enjoyed it a lot, especially Kol Badar. I would love to see a fight between Kol Badar and Honsou, or Marduk and Honsou.

 

I was slightly dissappointed by the death of Burias, but then again he was a whiney little :)

 

Overall, 4/10

 

Why? Well, if it had come in a blank cover, no illustrations or writing, I would have given it 8/10

 

However, the cover art knocks it down 4 points. I justs didn't like the portrait of Marduk. He's a Dark Apostle of the Dark Council, not a sodding obese sumo wrestler.

 

I'm pretty sure it's not Marduk on the cover, seeing as it doesn't match his description in the text at all.

[Walter Payton]

I enjoyed it a lot, especially Kol Badar. I would love to see a fight between Kol Badar and Honsou, or Marduk and Honsou.

 

I was slightly dissappointed by the death of Burias, but then again he was a whiney little :)

 

Overall, 4/10

 

Why? Well, if it had come in a blank cover, no illustrations or writing, I would have given it 8/10

 

However, the cover art knocks it down 4 points. I justs didn't like the portrait of Marduk. He's a Dark Apostle of the Dark Council, not a sodding obese sumo wrestler.

 

I'm pretty sure it's not Marduk on the cover, seeing as it doesn't match his description in the text at all.

 

I assumed it was, because the marine is wielding a chainsword, and Marduk has Borgh'ash. I hope it isn't however, because, as you say, it doesn't match his description, and makes him look silly.

[minigun762]

One thing is true,

the Necron in the fluff sure seem a hell of a lot tougher then the Necron on the tabletop. I'm not sure what class of ship they had but I'd like to assume it was at least equivalent to a Battleship. Anything smaller then that and there is very very little hope of stopping them with a conventional fleet considering it had a few massive Battleships sitting ontop of it raining ordnance down for quite some time with little to no effect.

[biadetic]

I'd agree with a bunch of yoiu guys. Just finished it last week and found it a little lack lustre. Compared to the previous two of course. The whole siege around the middle of the book got really boring and i almost decided to start reading a different book but i particulary liked the controversy between the captains and big Ekodas =] which is why i read on.

The lack of Daemon stuff was a let down, and even Marduk not really doing anything cool was a bit of a let down.

Id give it a 6/10.

 

Id love to see a 4th book, just better than the 3rd =]

[Dark Mechanicum]

Well dont forget that the Nexus was open and summoning was probably alot harder than usual. Every warp sense in the WB fleet took a hit when they opened the Nexus up as well.

[RazakelXIII]

[textwall] First things first: Loved Apostle to pieces, Disciple I had some issues with but it was alright overall. This one just plain let me down, here's why.

 

Main problem with the book was there's too much bickering and not enough slaughtering. Sure, being power-hungry self-centered psychopaths is all well and good but... they're Word Bearers. This ain't the Black Legion here, you're ten-thousand-year-old religious fanatics, essentially a dark(er) mirror image of the Black Templars, quit trying to stab each other in the back and get with the Imperial-killin'. The first half of this book, aside from the quick space battle (in which dreadnoughts and razorbacks are roaming the halls of a strike cruiser... whaaaaAAAA?), consisted of nothing but the various Apostles and their goons posing and raeging at each other about how arrogant everyone else is. Granted, I get that everyone had an ulterior motive here what with the whole

Brotherhood, Erebus vs Kor Phaeron thing (which, by the way, I thought was a cool idea, and matches a lot of what's been said about the Word Bearers' internal politics - *cough*talesfromthedarkmillennium*cough*, I just felt it wasn't very fleshed out)

, but could you be any less subtle about it? If you're gonna stab someone in the back, why make it blatantly obvious? And why do these meetings between the apostles read like your average Youtube thread? "U suck!" "No u!" This combination of bickering/general non-WordBearerliness has been around since Apostle, but I could forgive it because in that book the Word Bearers were generally kicking Imperial backside in some amusing way at the same time.

 

Other problems in no particular order:

 

- Various little niggling continuity/editing things that have been previously mentioned - two Hosts being the same number, for example.

-

Ashkanez

's monologue at the end. Since when was this The Incredibles? Kill him already, jeez.

- Burias devolving into a whiny... whiner. This started in Disciple and I was hoping he'd be redeemed here, he was my favorite character in the first book.

"Marduk, why can't we be fwends?" And then "Fine, I'll go get better fwends, I like them more anyway. And they give us these styyyylish robes."

 

- I miss Varnus. :P

- All the little snippets of "Word Bearer life" from Apostle, and to a lesser extent Disciple, are nowhere to be found here. All the little moments of prayer and stuff, bits showing backstory about their daemons, cultists, slaves, the possessed, that stuff, there's nothing like that here.

- The Necrons. Okay, it was blatantly obvious they'd be back (see what I did there?), but... actually, that's a problem by itself, you knew exactly what was going to happen with them.

- The White Consuls and their Guard mooks. Boring, boring, boring, goody-two-shoes loyalist scum. For some reason I couldn't even keep their names straight, they were so dull. The Elysians in Apostle were great - they just showed up for like half a chapter, and you KNEW every last one of them was going to die a horrible and ignominious death, but they always managed to be great fun - where'd that go?

- If there'd been less time spent on setup and more on the actual battle for the planet this could've been better than Apostle. Instead we get 200 pages of ceaseless exposition, a lot of which is stuff we already know, and playground-level bickering, and when the action finally STARTS to get going, the damn Necrons show up and make our intrepid anti-heroes look a bit silly because, let's face it, someone really should've seen that coming (if not Marduk, then Jarulek - in fact this really just cheapens Jarulek as a character, seriously,

all that time plotting and scheming just to yoink something from an enemy that already hates you and who you must've known enough about to realize you have no hope of defeating? Seriously? And then to get pwned by your own apprentice, lol, what a noob

).

- Some resolution with Kol Badar would've been nice, but I suppose Reynolds might write more in the future.

- Where were the Titan Legions we were shown at the end of Dark Disciple? Wow, a paragraph about some Monoliths versus a Reaver.

- What the feth was the point of even having the Black Legion sorcerer there?

He did absolutely nothing and then died for no good reason. Way to go, Ekodas, piss Abaddon off - what are you thinking?!

I get that he was there as an envoy from the Warmaster, but why did his character need to be in the book in the first place?

- I really miss Varnus. :(

 

On the other hand, stuff that made me go like this: :P

 

-

"Nobody kills Marduk but me."

Yes.

- Page 252 and 253. The stuff about the nightmares the guardsmen are having and the sounds of chanting and what are presumably the Discords. I LOVE THAT.

- Any Erebus is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

"Oh, that crazy Kor Phaeron, he's always up to stuff. We do this every week - oh, yeah, never play poker with him, cheats worse'n Slaanesh him/her/itself."

 

 

[/textwall] Tl;dr, the whole thing made me less upset that Reynolds wouldn't be writing the Word Bearers' HH book, could've been even better than Apostle was, wasted potential, BUT, it had its moments so 6/10.

[Lexington]

Huh. I haven't read Dark Creed yet, and don't plan to. Apostle was a decent if uneven read, but I gave Disciple a hundred-plus pages to get interesting, and it never returned the kindness. Down the hole it went. Creed doesn't sound to be much better.

 

It does, however, completely warm the blackened cockles of my Sicarii-playing heart to hear the Lorgar's been officially taken "off the table" as far as the modern 40K timeline goes. The implication that Lorgar was leading the Word Bearers personally always made the actions of his various lieutenants seem lesser. Their motivations and schemes could never be their own, only an extension of the Primarch's will.

 

...the whole thing made me less upset that Reynolds wouldn't be writing the Word Bearers' HH book

Wait...so who is writing it, then?

[A D-B]

Wait...so who is writing it, then?

 

Hi.

[Lexington]

Well, hi yourself. :wub:

 

Hope you're having fun with the Legions of Lorgar, Chosen of the Pantheon, Fell Vassal of Wrath, He of Multifarious Superlatives and Lover of Muffins. <_<

[Static Entropy]

Wait...so who is writing it, then?

 

Hi.

 

I'm reading Soul Hunter right now, and I have to say that this makes me a very happy man.

[Walter Payton]

Me too! Aaron Dembski-Bowden has a strange quality-he isn't polarising. After all, even Abnett has people knock his work, but I have never seen anyone do it to Aaron. It could be that he is good (or that people know he is on the forum), but I have a different theory. Ian Watson has got bored of writing porn, and returned to 40k, under the alias of Aaron Dembski-Bowden...

[A D-B]

Me too! Aaron Dembski-Bowden has a strange quality-he isn't polarising. After all, even Abnett has people knock his work, but I have never seen anyone do it to Aaron. It could be that he is good (or that people know he is on the forum), but I have a different theory. Ian Watson has got bored of writing porn, and returned to 40k, under the alias of Aaron Dembski-Bowden...

 

I'm new. I'll polarise people soon enough; it's the core truth of the genre - Hell hath no fury like sci-fi fans divided. Forums will burn. Blood will rain from the sky, as unseen deities wage war. We'll all get wet and have a wonderful day, smeared in the lifeblood of martyred gods. It'll be killer. I'll Facebook the photos.

 

Absolutely love Ian Watson, in and out of 40K. He writes this insanely contoured, baroque prose. Reading an Ian Watson novel, 'specially The Inquisition War, is like staring at ancient architecture. Alas, they don't make 'em like him any more.

[Zerib]

You should be safe, people tend to just dislike or like a book. Just stay away from writing a codex...unless you want to run the risk of unruly mobs forming and wanting to lynch you on sight for all eternity if you fail in any way.