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Vengeful Spirit


Brannick

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The Blood Angels in VS are throw away toons. However they set the precedence that the events on Signus Prime affected all Blood Angels and not just the ones there. It also demonstraights how the Red Angel can be used as a weapon.

 

Meaning not an important part of VS but has the potential of being a spoiler for upcoming books.

I sincerely hope that's not how side-plots and such are determined for the novels. Meaning, the above being given a higher consideration than ensuring Faction X also works well throughout the story of a novel.

If you think about how much was going on during VS.  Then I can understand why many side plots got so little face time.  The Blood Angels could have been complety removed without affecting the book at all.  But like I said it would require another story with the sole purpose of explaining a little tid bits we got in VS.

 

Not saying I like it but I can understand why they there.

If you think about how much was going on during VS.  Then I can understand why many side plots got so little face time.  The Blood Angels could have been complety removed without affecting the book at all.  But like I said it would require another story with the sole purpose of explaining a little tid bits we got in VS.

 

Not saying I like it but I can understand why they there.

So basically like the "Devine Adoratrice"?

One thing that has been bothering me about the Traitor Titan deployments on Molech: the absence of the Dies Irae. The Traitors may hae had more engines on the field, but the loyalists had the Paragon of Terra, a (supposedly) major game changer. Now, it's more than likely Horus's plan hinged on House Devine defecting, but wouldn't deploying the Dies Irae have been sensible as a Plan B?

Well I have been on the fence about getting the book for a while I have only read about ten of the HH books and I am pretty easy to please I think the only one I have read that I didn't like was Vulkan Lives but I liked Betrayer and AE so is the book even worth getting? There is a lot of people being critical :P hahatongue.png

If you enjoyed the opening trilogy (Horus Rising, False Gods, Galaxy in Flames), then this one should be an excellent read for you, as it is the continuation of the Sons of Horus storyline. A lot of your favorite characters from the first three novels will be returning. 

 

If not, then this would go down as a filler novel of sorts. Kind of like Unremembered Empire without Know No Fear. 

 

If you think about how much was going on during VS.  Then I can understand why many side plots got so little face time.  The Blood Angels could have been complety removed without affecting the book at all.  But like I said it would require another story with the sole purpose of explaining a little tid bits we got in VS.

 

Not saying I like it but I can understand why they there.

So basically like the "Devine Adoratrice"?

 

Yes and there are more events in VS that can warrent their own seperate books.  However having 3+ stories just expanding VS is wastefull.

I don't know about that.

 

Betrayer had "Butcher's Nails" & "Lord of the Red Sands" expanding on it.

 

Deliverance Lost had "Raven's Flight", "Soulforge", & "Ravenlord".

 

A Thousand Sons had "Thief of Revelations", Fulgrim had "The Reflection Crack'd", & Outcast Dead had "Wolf Hunt".

 

So why is VS having a few side stories wasteful?

My thoughts:

 

 

 

 

Overall, I enjoyed Vengeful Spirit. I thought it was a solid mid-tier HH novel.  It lacked that certain consistent versimilitude that the best of the series has, but it wasn't so pooly-crafted or written that my head ached either. 

 

Things I liked:

 

I thought McNeill's portrayal of Horus was really quite good.  Despite having turned into the big bad evil dude, he still retained humanity and nobility.  I could see why the Sons followed him; he retained an empathy with them, and remained a father-like figure, despite his increasing brutality turned outwards. There was a clear continuity between this Horus and the Horus of Horus Rising.  I was actually kind of surprised -- usually I find the Primarchs the least convincing characters in a HH book.  It's hard to write a good superhuman god.  But in this case, Horus seemed more approachable and empathetic than most of the humans or marines.

 

The Knightly house nobles were unconving overall -- just a characterture of decadent, sadistic space nobles -- but I did like the twist ending.

 

I rather enjoyed the revalation about the Emperor.  It's always been kicking around the back of the fluff that he made some sort of deal with the Chaos Gods before creating the Primarchs.  It was interesting to see this hint fleshed out a bit, but still without revealing too much about the Emperor's orginal powers and what the upgrade did. I also liked that Horus consciously had to set out to achieve his own Chaos powers, and that it explains how be becomes a psychic being capable of going toe-to-toe with the Emperor in the psychic plane for the final battle.

 

The Emperor seems to me to have guarded the gate pretty dang well.  He defended the planet with a space fleet, put a massive fortress over the cave, hid it from everyone with a pyschic screen, left a bad-ass thought angel to defend it, and had a failsafe agent to destroy it.  In all fairness to the Emperor, it took two Legions to destroy the fleet and level the fortress, and then a Primarch with a magic weapon to kill the angel.  The guardian came within 30 seconds of nuking the gate, even after stopping to rescue some friggin orphans.

 

I feel like there's some foreward momentum again.  Things were getting a bit stalled-out, with too many Primarch side-trips hither and yon.  Put some lightning into the lightning strike to decapitate Terra.

 

The Regicide game.

 

Malacador's conversation with the Emperor.

 

Things I didn't like so much:

 

Leman Russ is on Terra, and leaves again. This just distracts from the overall race to Terra.  If legions have a chance to stop there and then go puttering about elsewhere, I just don't feel the urgency.  And I question the Imperium's military wisdom.  Fortify the place.

 

The strike force's confrontation with Horus felt both necessary, and yet, contrived. Oh, they are blown out into space and escape after the confrontatio... You know what would be surprising and increase the versimilitude of the universe?  If some heros died when matched by overwhelming force!  I like Loken, but he can only boomerang out of certain doom so many times before I stop caring.

 

The Ultramarines and Blood Angels.  I just couldn't care about them as people, so when they fought, it was just colorful violence with no real emotional stake in them.  I felt more pathos for the crazy death-seeking Warhound Titan commanders than either Marine dude. 

 

 

 

 

I don't know about that.

 

Betrayer had "Butcher's Nails" & "Lord of the Red Sands" expanding on it.

 

Deliverance Lost had "Raven's Flight", "Soulforge", & "Ravenlord".

 

A Thousand Sons had "Thief of Revelations", Fulgrim had "The Reflection Crack'd", & Outcast Dead had "Wolf Hunt".

 

So why is VS having a few side stories wasteful?

All of those are stories in the same arc as the parent novel.  With the exception of Wolf Hunt none of them really expand on the main story.  Even then Wolf Hunt only cleans up the 2 year precieved timeline debacle found in TOD.  Disclaimer:  I don't have Lord of the Red Sands and thus might be missing something there.

 

Expanding the Blood Angels in VS would be like asking to have the Armatura Captain expanded on from Betrayer.  Not that no one would buy and or read those stories.  It is wasteful because they were planned as throw away characters to serve a purpose for a single story.  Not to create additional unessassary side stories.

 

Besides we are already most likely getting Devine Adoratrice, a Death Guard book pre VS, a Space Wolf book pre VS, and maybe a novela about Horus' time in the warp from VS.  That is in addition to already having Little horus as the beginning of the arc like "Betrayer had "Butcher's Nails" and "Deliverance Lost had "Raven's Flight".   While information is always good.  I would rather have Black Library working on new stories and new arcs then expanding on characters/formations that we already have the relavent information on.    

I'm not sure I understand why "new stories with new characters" is preferable to "established characters in new stories".

 

If I understand you correctly, your position is that ADB writing a novella about Legatus Orfeo, Regent of the War World is in some way "a waste" and inferior to ADB writing a novella about "Some Ultramarine nobody remembered until ADB dug his name up from a Rogue Trader era piece of artwork".

 

And I just don't see how that's so.

I'm not sure I understand why "new stories with new characters" is preferable to "established characters in new stories".

 

If I understand you correctly, your position is that ADB writing a novella about Legatus Orfeo, Regent of the War World is in some way "a waste" and inferior to ADB writing a novella about "Some Ultramarine nobody remembered until ADB dug his name up from a Rogue Trader era piece of artwork".

 

And I just don't see how that's so.

 

It isn't new characters so much as characters who's threads have already ended. The Blood Angels for example; we already know a bit of their back story, we know how they end up and we know what purpose they served. They were designed as a plot device to show the power of the Red Angel and the effect the Signus has had on the Legion, even on elements that were elsewhere. The Blood Angels have served their purpose, any short story about them is pointless.

 

I'm not agreeing with the whole point, but I do agree that any short story about these Blood Angels would be needless.

It isn't new characters so much as characters who's threads have already ended. The Blood Angels for example; we already know a bit of their back story, we know how they end up and we know what purpose they served.

So...exactly like the Emperor, all the Primarchs, and the Horus Heresy series in general?

 

Or almost any historical work of fiction ever?

 

MAJOR SPOILERS:

The tall creepy guy kills Gerard Butler, Brutus joins the conspiracy and they kill Caesar, Henry IV defeats the French, Mel Gibson doesn't free Scotland, Michael Cain holds the line at Rourke's Drift, John Wayne loses at the Alamo, and the boat Leonardo Dicaprio is on sinks

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