Have you read Thorpe's Legacy of Caliban trilogy?

[Helias_Tancred]

... and if you have, what did you think?

 

I've read tons and tons of Black Library novels, novellas, short stories, I own about 50 audio dramas, etc. My favorite part of the hobby is that stuff before building/painting, and playing the game. 

 

I've really liked his trilogy, between this and Descent of Angels, and Fallen Angels (which was one of my favorite HH novels), I've really come to like you guys and your primarch ;) ... but gee whiz you guys enjoy undermining the chain of command! From your squad sized elements all the way up to your Inner Circle lol. Could you imagine a Dark Angel forced to serve with the Ultramarines or Imperial Fists for several years? They'd probably spend most of that time in some sort of punishment cell? lol... or with us Blood Angels we'd have your man dueling on some Baalite stone all the time!

 

Anyways that was one of the major vibes I took away from Gav Thorpe's Legacy of Caliban trilogy concerning elements of your chapter's culture. 

 

I just wondered what your thoughts were on this, and whether I'm correct, or maybe misinterpreting things?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Chaplain Lucifer]

It's nice for some stuff like how terminators train and work. As for interaction between characters and general portrayal of DA, leaves much to be desired. It's an ok read but needs lot of critical thinking about some information is presented.

[southpawgrammar]

One of my favorite 40k books is Thorpe's Angels of Darkness. It was the book that made me start with The Dark Angels. But I was not so impressed by The Legacy of Caliban trilogy. The books were a bit childish and rather superficial in my opinion. I will not reread them.

[Gillyfish]

They weren't bad books by any means, but I also had some issues with the decision making of some of the characters. I think Gav was trying to show the thought processes that the commanders and other marines went through and what pressures (in terms of duty and emotion) were exerted on them. I was pleased that he tried to show that and the conflict between pursuing the Fallen and doing right by the Imperium. For the most part, I thought that was a strength. Unfortunately, I felt that that sometimes the depiction didn't quite work. As the OP said, it did rather give them impression that the DA are less likely to follow the chain of command than other chapters, whereas I'm not sure that's true (we're not Space Wolves, after all ;) ). In fact I might suspect the opposite to be the case - loyalty to the Chapter is everything. To be fair, that is partly due to the fact that I think Gav was trying to depict the key moment's in marine's life when he begins to question the Chapter's teachings and may then have further secrets revealed to him. After all, it would arguably be less interesting to not have any conflict for the characters (beyond shooting things, obviously).

 

Overall, I enjoyed them. I'm not sure my own conception of the DA 100% matches with Gav's but then that's the beauty of the hobby; there is room for both our versions of the DA to exist.

[Brother dean]

50% useful, 50% Gav Thorpe does not understand our chapter or how to write believable plots.

[Guest]

I would add both the last DA books have been good, not perfect but definitely better.

 

Angels of Caliban and The Unforgiven.

[Cleanse And Purify]

One thing I dislike is how thin he makes his characters. They often have very little in the way of personality. And there are way too many of them, all with very similar names (Annael, Anaziel, Sorael, Soriel, etc) and it makes the books a bit flat and samey after a while.

[Volt]

It's godawful. Not just as a piece of literature (but to be "fair" I wouldn't really consider most of the black library remarkable at all in that regard) with completely forgettable characters, but the sheer amount of stupidity in it on account of characters is jarring, greatly. And then there's the constant lore errors, which themselves are incredibly annoying.

 

All in all I think the fandom was better before its creation. It contributed nothing but inconsistency, confusion, and more of Thorpe's soul-sucked completely dry and dull prose done with a pen dipped in bleached done. Grammatically it's fine, but that's the only positive thing I can really give it credit for. IMO, it's just simply clear cut hack pulp work. It exists to make money, and nothing more.

[Helias_Tancred]

Thanks for the feedback. I'm interested in reading more of your chapter & legion, what other Black Library material would you recommend? Especially ones that you feel are more on target?

 

I did read Angels of Caliban as well recently, I enjoyed it fully! Loved the scene where the Lion strides in and has a few choice words for Horus.

[Stoic Raptor]

IK'm re-reading them now because I am spending my hobby money on models instead of books.  Entertaining to read but Gav sure isn't Aaron Dembski-Bowden, that's for sure.

[Reynolds]

It is indeed something that needs to be addressed as a trilogy. It has its strong points while having its parts where it shows quite well where Gav struggled with. Perhaps most being in the first part, being the stage setter for the rest of the storyline/trilogy.

- Master of Sanctity feeling as something where the "main punch is at", after mid-way, and the Unforgiven balancing with multiple charaters and many turning points, which... many other writers I believe would be struggling with to keep somewhat in a stable format.

 

Not saying it's not without its faults, especially rousing the ire from our numbers being too centered around the internal-conflict, instead of clearly focusing on the outside conflicts, but... As my personal opinion: It takes massive proportions that I've yet to see in many other 40k novels, while somewhat keeping everything on a believable scale.

 

- No back-flipping terminators, believable Dreadnought-linebacker fire-fights and the Ravenwing even showing an array of emotions I've only seen 30k novels portray properly. It gets hectic, but it is kept together to the very end without falling apart.

 

The big picture is great, the details and in-depth tidbits might bog some people. But moments like the duel between two great fighters on-board a Capital Ship makes up for it, in my books.

 

This is essentially what Gav seems to excel at: He makes great entwined, complex storylines, but sometimes the details might not be on-the-mark.

- Still... I'd say that Gav is the master of the internal Dark Angels matters, AD-B has only properly touched the "outside subjects", hence he has been in the clear of criticism of our chapter/legion thus far. Internal matters is what often pokes people, in the wrong way.

 

It's easy to make a book like the Purging of Kadillus(InsertWarCampaignBookName) with a clear enemy, but it can make a more shallow book character development-wise. Where as the Horus Heresy series got a whole series of books concentrating on character development & fights with the same characters in them.

- All in all... Gav is pushing a bit for both worlds, hence I'm not surprised he is having his hands full. But thus far... until I see some other authors actually try to do a DA novel with the internal-storyline on the same scale, I have no quarrel with what we've been getting thus far. Seems nearly like it's been a stage-setter for the present/future storyline that is to come in 40k/8th edition.

 

And for the bottom line. I liked it, even with its criticism. A great way to salvage the Angels of Darkness as a bridge to the whole trilogy.

[rendingon1+]

I have high hopes for this one:

http://www.blacklibrary.com/whats-coming-soon/march/smb-eye-of-ezekiel-ebook.html?basket_add=1&basket_item=10322

1) Not Thorpe

2) Book about Exekiel which I find the coolest DA character. Also looks like an epic battle.

3) Apparently the story does not include Fallen and I don't want to read about Fallen anymore.

4) CZDunn is quite good at writing Dark Angels stuff (good audio - Ascension of Balthasar, great audio - Deathwatch Last Guardian)

[Phoebus]

My two biggest complaints regarding Gav Thorpe's body of work on the Unforgiven:

1. The protagonists are, for the most part, disappointing. The Grand Masters of the Inner Circle never feel like these formidable, century-old warriors whose unseen influence nonetheless stretches across the galaxy. Azrael, Sammael, and Sapphon are sympathetic figures who at least reconcile their obligations to the Hunt for the Fallen in a nuanced, considered manner - they are not pantomime villains who betray their allies without thought to the consequences. Ezekiel seems formidable, but this is mostly because he is rarely utilized. In general, however, these great and powerful Space Marines make decisions that belie their experience and the acumen we would expect from them. As a result, their Chapter doesn't always feel like a force to be reckoned with.

 

2. The antagonists are rarely present and their schemes never truly feel like a proper part of the plot. I challenge anyone who read the Legacy of Caliban trilogy to convincingly state what Typhus thought he and Astelan were going to accomplish. Or what the relationship between Tuchulcha, the Ouroboros daemon on Caliban, and the Plagueheart was. Or what exactly Cypher's intent was for all this, what his relationship with Astelan was, and so on. There are tremendous stories that could have been told about all this, but we got virtually none of it because it's more important to Gav to maintain a veneer of contrived secrecy.

[Helias_Tancred]

Okay, I'll bite.

 

He and Astelan were going to bring the Fallen of Caliban to modern 40k times, and kill off the Lion and the loyal Dark Angels at the same time. Astelan would have a more sinister Dark Angels legion allied with Typhon. Quite a force to confront the Imperium.

 

I assumed all were some ancient essence or tool of chaos or warp craft? Together their power was immense and could open a rift across time that would allow Typhon and Astelan to achieve all of their objectives.

 

That plan conflicted with Cypher's objectives so his best option was to alert the Dark Angels so they could be ready to oppose it.

 

Astelan is quite the arch enemy of the Dark Angels chapter. He has a massive chip on his shoulder, is super power hungry, and hates the Lion.

[Stoic Raptor]

If there's anything that shows why Gav has a long way to come as an author, it's the word he uses to describe the flexible joints in power armor: "Bendium"

[Phoebus]

Okay, I'll bite.

He and Astelan were going to bring the Fallen of Caliban to modern 40k times, and kill off the Lion and the loyal Dark Angels at the same time. Astelan would have a more sinister Dark Angels legion allied with Typhon. Quite a force to confront the Imperium.

I think Astelan's goals are easy enough to divine from The Unforgiven. How does this serve Typhus, though? Is Astelan pledged to Nurgle? Does Typhus think he can be corrupted by way of the decisions and rituals that will lead to their goals? Thirty thousand Space Marines are hardly enough to even start tipping the balance of power within the Eye of Terror - much less threaten the Imperium as a whole.

 

The point, here, is that we get zero perspective from Typhus until he and Azrael square off - at the eleventh hour of the conclusion of this saga - and even then all we get are some allusions as to his goals.

 

I assumed all were some ancient essence or tool of chaos or warp craft? Together their power was immense and could open a rift across time that would allow Typhon and Astelan to achieve all of their objectives.

Who knows? The point being, if all of this scheming - stretching across ten millennia and involving a daemon that had corrupted a legion's homeworld for Chaos knows how long and a warp artifact that one of the Ruinous Powers itself coveted - was about Astelan getting 30,000 Space Marines, then that's just an underwhelming result.

 

That plan conflicted with Cypher's objectives so his best option was to alert the Dark Angels so they could be ready to oppose it.

Astelan is quite the arch enemy of the Dark Angels chapter. He has a massive chip on his shoulder, is super power hungry, and hates the Lion.

What are Cypher's objectives? What has he been doing about Astelan & Co. - and Typhus - all this time?

 

See what I mean? At best, we know Astelan is really keen on getting his hands on a bunch of Fallen Dark Angels and avenging himself on the Lion. We'll have to wait yet more years - for the next Dark Angels heresy novel or novella or short story or whatever - to find out to what extent Typhus initiated this cycle of schemes and planning. And ultimately, that's the point I'm driving at: far more effort has been put in making Angels of Darkness relevant to newer, ostensibly better ideas that came about through the Horus Heresy series than was put toward making the new books themselves good in their own right.

[Augustus]

And it will probably consist of more alluding to pointless scheming that results in nothing (which is fine if the story is at least entertaining).

[Xenith]

I don't think anyone has done more to harm the reputation of the Dark Angels than Gav Thorpe.

[Augustus]

Is it any wonder why their popularity has been declining?

[Xenith]

Books don't at all turn people away from armies, I feel. Bad writing can be ignored, while good writing drags you into building and painting an army.

 

Bad rules, however, see armies shelved like nobodies business, as you can't get away from it off you want to use the army.

[Major_Gilbear]

Books don't at all turn people away from armies, I feel. Bad writing can be ignored, while good writing drags you into building and painting an army.

 

Bad rules, however, see armies shelved like nobodies business, as you can't get away from it off you want to use the army.

 

I dunno... Ask IH players how they feel about the Clan Raukan book; whilst the rules/relics are decent enough, I doubt many IH players will profess their love for how their Chapter has been presented therein.

[Xenith]

 

Books don't at all turn people away from armies, I feel. Bad writing can be ignored, while good writing drags you into building and painting an army.

 

Bad rules, however, see armies shelved like nobodies business, as you can't get away from it off you want to use the army.

 

I dunno... Ask IH players how they feel about the Clan Raukan book; whilst the rules/relics are decent enough, I doubt many IH players will profess their love for how their Chapter has been presented therein.

 

 

Yes, but has the bad writing/characterisation made them drop their armies?

 

From the bitterness I see in that forum, definitely not (also helps IH have solid rules).

[Reynolds]

...to get back on point, Phoebus' point stands, regardless of digression and personal-entwined ire from bitterness. I know from the bottom of this place, and the hearts of men where it stems from... and it is not on its own without merit. But just as Ward nearly tried to retcon the Iron Hands codex, all of the established canon, the Wings of Meduse novel proved his "Codex" to be wrong.
- With the coming of the Gathering Storm III, straight from the horse's mouth: There will be no more scheming within scheming. Cards will be coming out to the front, answers will be given, but ultimatums will never be full truths, for none exist as long as uncertainty exists in this world, and in the 30/40k.

I spent a good deal of digging deeper and deeper in to the lore after the bitter days of the 4th edition DA codex. I pushed in and bought every single 30k book circa 2006-2016, and read through them like it was my poison for the night, as I read of the "Weeping Horus", and the contempt I had bundled up within me... until it actually hit me, that even in the year 30 000... Even the Primarchs are only humans, and each of the Primarchs carry one essential human factor within them. For Horus, it was innocence.

- What the 30k was before Gav picked it up, it was complete rubbish, it retconned for as far as we knew, everything even our Codex had laid down. People were enraged in the Dark Angels forum.

 

What I know that transpired, for a  fact, was that Gav was given the Dark Angels to work with, to pull the coherency in-line with 30 & 40k. and he did a miracle... he made it all make sense again. People were preparing to go to the barricades back then with how bad it seemed to be, yet these days people seem to love the first two novels the most, as "Gav made novels to fix the plotholes/faults in them", essentially.

- People are so quick to judge him, yet it was Gav that salvaged our 30k lore, nearly single-handedly.

 

- What people hate about him, is how he is vague, not sometimes 100% exact in the details. But reading Purging of Kadillus, the prequel to Angels of Darkness and the Legacy of Caliban trilogy, he knows how to write his fights, as I for one become bored with the non-stop action sequences in some other writers tales.

***
 

Typhus had his sights on gaining the Dark Angel Geneseed, as Asmodai raged about Astelan's pact to him, he replied that it was a "small price to pay for the freedom of the Imperium".

- Ouroboros is something that has been explained more in-depth, elsewhere... Similar entity has infested a few selected planets as well, planets that the Eldar stay very, very far away from, if they can select. The Entity of the planet Mara is one like that. These entitites are from the age of the Old Ones.

- Tuchulka Engine is somewhat... related to the Entities that Ouroboros is. As it was in the Sons of Ellyrion duology: "Power that existed before the the Chaos Gods existed. Power from the olden days." These things are something that are not "only types to exist" either.

 

One thing people need to swallow though: Not everything and all is entwined with the Four Gods of Chaos, that are beings of warp.

- We simply put do not know enough, yet, to make the final judgement on anything. Not on Cypher, not what anything means(that hasn't been stated), and the scheming we are now witnessing is in a lot smaller scale than it was when the first two 30k DA books originally came out.

***

Some people are drawn in to the hobby due to the models, others due to the Codex rules, and some... often the most dedicated, due to the fluff. 

- It's easy to make false judgments on everything and everyone, it's hard to keep foresight and respect for others when anger and ire are so close-by. But we are on the break of a new dawn, and how it looks like... is grim, as the Legacy of Caliban seemed to serve as a prequel it.

Opinions are opinions, and so is my post in these matters, albeit with history behind it.

[Brother dean]

...

What I know that transpired, for a  fact, was that Gav was given the Dark Angels to work with, to pull the coherency in-line with 30 & 40k. and he did a miracle... he made it all make sense again. People were preparing to go to the barricades back then with how bad it seemed to be, yet these days people seem to love the first two novels the most, as "Gav made novels to fix the plotholes/faults in them", essentially.

- People are so quick to judge him, yet it was Gav that salvaged our 30k lore, nearly single-handedly.

 

 

Yes those two books were bad. (I am assuming from inference that you meant "Descent of Angels" and "Fallen Angels")  But what did Gav do that rescued those two books and our 30k lore?  

The Lion, a short that is equally poorly written and only has the "Even if it costs me my Legion." line?

Savage Weapons (by AD-B) 

Prince of Crows (by AD-B)

Unremembered Empire (Dan Abnett)

Angels of Calaban (Alan Bligh, Dan Abnett (who had it fully outlined before handing it to) Gav Thorpe...)  In fact it has been mentioned that Alan Bligh "micromanaged" Gav's writing due to his clear mistakes throughout. (see the Raven Guard)

 

I know there were a couple more shorts in there that Gav wrote but from where I stand, our 30k lore has been fixed by AD-B, Dan Abnett and Alan Bligh...

[Xenith]

 

 In fact it has been mentioned that Alan Bligh "micromanaged" Gav's writing due to his clear mistakes throughout. (see the Raven Guard)

 

I image also to stop him pulling another "he was waiting to see who won" move.

 

Gav may have 'fixed' the 30k/40k lore in your eyes, but remember that Gav is the one that broke it in the first place!

 

Every other author since then has been on firefighting duty to show that the Dark Angels are actually loyal, so much that they had to make up the entirety of the 'Thramas Crusade' to show which side the DA actually fought on in the heresy, not to mention the Imperium Secundus arc.