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Ravenwing


Vazzy

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Just finished it. Overall, I thought it a great addition to Dark Angel material. Several great characters and insights. As others have mentioned, the best parts I thought were the tensions building and playing out between the 2nd and 5th companies. It also was great properly explaining how the Ravenwing worked. Maybe it's just me, but I never quite understood how Ravenwing hunted the Fallen, but that only the Deathwing knew about the Fallen. This was well dealt with and satisfied me in that regard.

 

It wasn't perfect - there were a few clunky bits. Annael

only wondering how the Lion died after 400 years as a DA

seemed a bit silly, but I was just ok with that. Some of the other things - narrative/dialogue, not content - jarred a bit more. I understand why Gav did some of them, but they still jarred.

Sammael seemed to have an astonishing level of short attention span and be easily swayed by his counsellors - he seemed to regularly forget pivotal details of the situation, having to be reminded by the Chaplain and Librarian - you know, minor things like the fact that you are chasing Cypher, or be quite sensibly concerned that you're walking into an obvious trap, but then the Chaplain says "damn the torpedos" so you wall blithely into it.

 

EDIT: I do think it would have been better if the 5th Company marines had been selectively mind-wiped (as in, just their memories of the events on the last planet had been erased, by mind wipe or psychic manipulation. Would be more realistic than promoting them to Deathwing, and also set up a better line of tension for future plotlines.

 

 

That said, these are minor quibbles in the largest scheme of the whole novel - overall, thought it very good.

 

The other thing I was very excited about were the new units that were described. Given the codex has supposedly been done for some time, and recent trends of more direct linkages of items from codexes into BL novels, I'd say we'll see all of the goodies. Dark Talon and Nephilim flyers (both of which sounded ace), Black Knights, Plasma-loaded Land Speeders, "Dark Shroud" landspeeders (which could be fantastic on a tactical level, assuming the points make sense) all sound like they'll make Dark Angels really distinctive but not at all "Thunder-Lion" silly.

 

Pretty excited! ;)

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Is it possible to remove the spoiler covers?

 

I find the increased level of spoiler tagging, and multi-quote posts all tagged, with all the quotes also tagged, actually very fitting for a discussion about how the Dark Angels conceal knowledge from those not meant to access it! ;)

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really enjoying this thread and all the to and fro discussion... i ordered mine last week and my copy arrived on monday ~grins~ i am going to read it now and hopefully will finish the book in one sitting... as i have been waiting soooooo long for a Ravenwing themed book and perhaps the DA will get something like a LS Tsunami after all lolz... for anyone that doesnt know its a variant of LS i invented back in 2006/07... i can post a pic here if anyone wants to take a look or check out my WIP thread... anyways i wish ALL of my Dark Angel brethren a very merry Xmas!

 

http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t229/zrolimit88/DSC08860.jpg

 

I find the increased level of spoiler tagging, and multi-quote posts all tagged, with all the quotes also tagged, actually very fitting for a discussion about how the Dark Angels conceal knowledge from those not meant to access it!

 

agreed Battle-Brother Aegnor!

 

catch you on the flipside

 

peace

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So just finished this and thought Id chip in....

 

 

The characters are reasonably well developed and each has enough variation to keep it interesting and not just "super soldiers on a mission" feel which some books have.

 

I don't think as mentioned before that the elevation to the black knights and DW are rewards, rather that this might seem as an elevation of sorts but there is some conflict between the oaths of brotherhood and centuries of indoctrination and having to deal with there own fallibility. Death in battle is expected and accepted but do give up and renounce that calling must be hard to reconcile.

 

Its also shown in one point that Malicafar is a subordinate of Sammael but is higher in the inner circle which is interesting as I would have thought the grandmaster of the 2nd would be fairly high up.

 

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i like how we can just highlight the text with your mouse and it becomes visible its similar to an old trick an ex girlfriend and myself used to send coded messages to each other... back then we simply would make the txt colour white and leave a star a the beginning of the message to indicate its presence... when you highlight txt with the mouse it appears blue and thus visible...
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Got Ravenwing a few days early from my housemate. I am loving it to pieces. The mid-combat dialogue is superb. I find 40k novels tend to go dialogue-combat-dialogue and one of them feels tacked on, like the combat doesn't belong in a combat novel or too much talking in a battle book.

 

Mr Thorpe...good job.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just finished myself. Good read but I do agree with Phoebus and others. The last quarter was rushed.

 

 

 

When Sammael was first discussing the plan to use the Imperial Commander I actually thought he was going to go against it - it just seemed wrong both tactically and honorably. I thought that it was what Thorpe was trying to set up from the get go actually, with Boreas's realization that by hunting the Fallen at all costs, the Dark Angels sacrificed what it was to really be Adeptus Astartes - defending humanity. I really thought Sammy was going to conjure up an alternative plan because of that. But he went along with the plan and that disappointed me.

 

Like others, the promotion to DW also didn't sit well with me. But it should be noted that Sammeal said "...rendered into the care of the Deathwing" and did not specifically use the term "inducted". Perhaps they will be rendered into the care so they may be judged. Mind-wipe may not yet be out of the question. Of course the next sentence does say "Serve in the First Company with honor...", I still feel that perhaps their induction is not a definite.

 

 

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Got it for Christmas and finished it a couple of days ago.

 

 

Regarding the bit about entering the Deathwing, I did notice an interesting bit about Telemenus stating when he faced the Deathguard that he had faced traitors before, but that this time it seemed almost painful to him. The way Gav wrote it suggested to me that Telemenus had had his memory tinkered with by the Librarians. So perhaps being rendered into the care of the Deathwing could result in similar consequences.

 

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