Opinions on Ben Counter and James Swallow

[malorn24]

Hell, the Imperial Fists could find a way to get a company massacred on the weekend paper run.

Ah Leif.. And to think I respected you!

Hey, I don't like it, and if it was up to me the Fists wouldn't have had their Chapter Master bushwhacked and their Fortress Monastery hijacked in their own supplement, let alone having half their chapter wiped out across various fluff sources within the last century or so (Hydra Cordatus, 3 Companies in Codex Necrons, the Ultramarine movie). But that's the approach GW seem to want to take, if loyalists need massacring, the writers seem to have the VII on speed dial.

I have to agree with you. It seems like the Fist are the GW punching bags. I was upset they way they were portrayed in AE. They literally got pimp slapped even before Perturbo showed up.

[Prodigal Son of Magnus]

I feel Swallow writes generally decent novels and has no truly bad or outstanding novels yet. His only foul so far was dropping the ball on Fear To Tread. I liked Sanguinius and Azkaellon but everyone else felt like "faceless space marine x" or "evil overlord z"

 

Ben Counter on the other hand is all over the place, giving us books like Battle of The Abyss, which read like an Ultramarine fanfic but also good books like Daemon World and Galaxy In Flames.

 

Overall, both are in the middle of the BL authors group IMO.

[Morollan]

I'm going to preface my comments here by saying that I have only read work in the Horus Heresy series by either author and have no knowledge of anything else they may have written.

 

Ben Counter - Galaxy in Flames I thought was a decent novel and I enjoyed it. Battle for the Abyss however stands out for me as the worst book in the HH series.

 

James Swallow - I enjoyed The Flight of the Eisenstein, in particular the reaction of the Imperial Fists when they first encounter the vessel and hear the survivors tale. I also found Nemesis to be an enjoyable, if unexceptional book. I enjoyed the fact that it was, at least in part, more akin to a detective novel rather than the standard bolter-porn of many 40K novels. But then we come to Fear to Tread and at that point I must say I was utterly devastated. The first major appearance of the Blood Angels legion and I spent the entire novel looking up who was who in the Dramatic Personae as they were utterly forgettable and largely indistinguishable from each other. The presence of the Space Wolves was frankly laughable, the crash of the Primarch's flagship was ridiculous and the 'climax' of the novel just left me cold. Runs BftA a close second for worst book of the series.