Pandorax (And now my new favorite novel)

[malorn24]

Ok after reading or listening to so many novels from the black library I have finally found a part of a novel that I absolutely loved! And it is completely off the charts that ludacris that I laughed out loud in my car at a stop light. Without giving away too much let me try to parapharase the exchange since it was an audio book that I was listening to.

 

 

The scene is onboard the Revenge and the Lord Admiral gets a comm from a Tank Brigade commander.


Tank Brigade Commander "Your lucky you didn't let us leave your ship."


Lord Admiral " Its good to hear your voice"


Tank Brigade Commander "I would like to take the fight to the enemy. As long as you give us leave to on your ship."


Lord Admiral "Of course but I don't think your men will last that long outside your tanks."


Tank Brigade Commander "HAHA thats just it. I am asking to take my TANKS into the battle on your ship!"

 

 

Maybe it is because of my years in the Army as a Armor Crewman but I absolutley loved this part! The cavalier attitude of an insane tactic was awesome.

 

Well to me at least.
 
 

[Quixus]

I have no military background, but I laughed at that scene as well. It pretty much sums up the awesomeness/ridiculousness of the setting. It also reminded me of this:http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091011115912/warhammer40kfanon/images/c/cd/Drive_me_closer_i_want_to_hit_them_with_my_sword.png

[Phoebus]

I wish I could get a refund on that book. Contrived conflicts, cardboard cut-out characters, dumbed-down combat, inconsistencies with the setting, meaningless cameos, and still other issues ensured that reading through this novel was an exercise in frustration.

[malorn24]

It is a shame that you feel that way. I thought the only combat that I was unimpressed with was Draigo's fight on the hull of the revenge.

[Phoebus]

At one point or another in this novel, we had:

1. The Dark Angels forming these ridiculous rotating, carousel-like circular formations to fend off daemons.
2. A guy in a tank shooting down a bomber... with a tank cannon... using unaided eyesight to aim his shot.
3. Terminators using bolt pistols, and Deathwing Knights using bolt guns...
4. Valkyries being sent in to fight in giant caverns that are miles and miles long with ceilings that are hundreds of feet high, but flying right up to the very enemies they should be avoiding.
5. The Dark Angels and the Grey Knights being confused as to how to protect all the settlements on he planet from the Black Legion, given their limited numbers. Of course, this requires them to forget that they have SPACESHIPS IN ORBIT from which they could deploy on the surface within minutes. But, you know, it makes more sense to keep everyone on the surface and DRIVE to a place (which might take days) or fly to it via Thunderhawk (which might still take hours).

I mean, I could go on... but what's the point? Pandorax was poor, period. It is based on very interesting concepts, but the final product is a rather mediocre example of genre fiction. Like Dark Vengeance before it, it's informed by The Rule of Cool more than anything else: it doesn't have to make sense; author's fiat drives both individual decisions and the larger plot in general.

I have nothing against C.Z. Dunn. I'm glad he got his shot, but I wish it hadn't been with the Dark Angels... and I that his editor had done a better job. Ultimately, I'm just perplexed by the quality control process that sees novels like this released in the same general timeframe as Betrayer or Scars.

[Loesh]

Well to be fair, number 2 is something that happened in real life, and with World War 2 equipment that wasn't nearly as accurate.

 

But to also be fair, I have no excuse for everything else. :p

[Phoebus]

I'd like to hear more about this tank that shot down a bomber with its main gun. I reserve the right to feel dubious about this for the time being.

Mind you, it's not just the "one in a million shot" aspect that bothers me. It's also the idea that a bomber would even be flying within range of a tank's armaments. This is something that happens A LOT in 40k fiction. It's contrived action. Pilots shouldn't have to fly like idiots to satisfy the need for excitement in a book. Rather, the author should find ways to generate excitement within the context of the material he's using. And no, I don't buy the idea that, in the 31st and 41st millennia, aircraft have to get within strafing distances of World War One biplanes to kill something.

[Quixus]

Well a lot of the materiel design and tactics of 40K are bases on WWI and WWII designs and tactics. At that time strafing runs were indeed conducted at low altitude. The planes did not launch a couple of guided missiles from miles away. It also reflects the ridiculously short ranges of weapons in the game. If an inch represents 2m than 96 inches (the longest range I can remember right now) is 192m. For a stationary lascannon!

 

If the game used more realistic ranges, a 4 x 6 table would be much too small and CC would never happen.

[malorn24]

well the remember the gunner had the help of KC to help aquire the targetting solution, it never said he did it unaided eyesight only.

 

If I were going to complain about the terminators and thier guns it would be the autoloading of the storm bolters.

[Loesh]

I'd like to hear more about this tank that shot down a bomber with its main gun. I reserve the right to feel dubious about this for the time being.

Mind you, it's not just the "one in a million shot" aspect that bothers me. It's also the idea that a bomber would even be flying within range of a tank's armaments. This is something that happens A LOT in 40k fiction. It's contrived action. Pilots shouldn't have to fly like idiots to satisfy the need for excitement in a book. Rather, the author should find ways to generate excitement within the context of the material he's using. And no, I don't buy the idea that, in the 31st and 41st millennia, aircraft have to get within strafing distances of World War One biplanes to kill something.

How did I not see this for five days? But yeah, a Tiger in WW2 piloted by one Kramer(Insert a Seinfold joke.) fired on a Russian plane that had been harassing his crew and knocked it out of the sky, crashing it behind him.

[Phoebus]

well the remember the gunner had the help of KC to help aquire the targetting solution, it never said he did it unaided eyesight only.

 

If I were going to complain about the terminators and thier guns it would be the autoloading of the storm bolters.

Too true, I remembered that wrong.  Strike manages to hear a bomber over the noise of a sealed super-heavy tank in the middle of battle.  "Veteran ears attuned to the sounds of battle" and all that.

 

I stick by the spirit of my complaint, though. I am SO not fond of the dumbed-down technology as pertains to the ranges of weapons.  I can in no way accept the notion that Thunderhawks and Valkyries have guns with a range as effective as a World War I machinegun.  It does nothing to reinforce the themes of the setting. Warhammer 40k is about even the elite Space Marines thinking they have to pray to their Land Raider for it to start, not about that vehicle's Godhammer-pattern lascannons having an effective range of a hundred meters (or whatever).

 

And sorry, Quixus, this simply doesn't have anything to do with the game.  It's simply lazy.  It's a contrived way to create action, tension, whatever.  To be fair, though, Dunn is hardly alone in pushing this sort of thing.