Dark Imperium Spoilers/Plot Summary (Read Along)

[Mellow]

The only way back from becoming a Daemon is to receive The Emperors peace.

 

To the back of the head.

[cheywood]

Currently on chapter 18 and, while I'm quite enjoying Guilliman, the prose, and the Primaris marines, it feels as if some of the environments are underdeveloped. Specifically places like Guilliman's Library and the Ardium hive spire. I feel like I've noticed this about Haley's work before. Anyone else have a similar experience or am I crazy?

[DogWelder]

Currently on chapter 18 and, while I'm quite enjoying Guilliman, the prose, and the Primaris marines, it feels as if some of the environments are underdeveloped. Specifically places like Guilliman's Library and the Ardium hive spire. I feel like I've noticed this about Haley's work before. Anyone else have a similar experience or am I crazy?

 

I think descriptions are kept short to appeal to a wider audience. Being an Ultramarines fan, I would have loved about a 100 pages describing Ultramar, its planets, their society, city structure, architecture, the Ultramar Auxilia etc. etc.

 

However, I doubt people who aren't explicit fans of such things would appreciate being forced to sit through all that.

[cheywood]

I'm always up for more worldbuilding. I meant more that it's easy to visualize most of his characters, his action scenes, etc. but a few of his architectural descriptions are hard to visualize. I remember experiencing the same feeling reading Death of Integrity.

[DarkChaplain]

Having read a bunch of Haley's books outside of Black Library, I can't say that he's ever been lacking in terms of worldbuilding. If anything, some of his novels have a great deal of it to the point where some people I've read reviews from found it too much.

 

For the record, I had no issues visualizing things in Death of Integrity, Skarnik or his other works like Baneblade and even some of his Age of Sigmar stories. Just the right amount to leave an impression without being overbearing or conflicting with one's own imagination.

[cheywood]

Having read a bunch of Haley's books outside of Black Library, I can't say that he's ever been lacking in terms of worldbuilding. If anything, some of his novels have a great deal of it to the point where some people I've read reviews from found it too much.

 

For the record, I had no issues visualizing things in Death of Integrity, Skarnik or his other works like Baneblade and even some of his Age of Sigmar stories. Just the right amount to leave an impression without being overbearing or conflicting with one's own imagination.

Oh I have no issue with his worldbuilding, although he does tend to do it in big blocks of text (like a lot of authors). Must just be me then with the visualization. 99% percent of it comes across perfectly, but every couple of chapters he'll have a paragraph I just can't conjure in my mind. Mostly architectural/environmental features like I said. His characters and action sequences are quite vivid. Quite a good book overall unless it falls off a cliff in the last couple chapters.

[Felix Antipodes]

I had the opposite problem as every time I came across one of his really interesting nuggets of information I got whipped off to another scene. Incredibly frustrating at times. For example, he mentions that Greater Ultramar will now be protected by 10 Chapters but only mentions 4 by name and doesn't reveal where most will be stationed. He also states that the 8 new Chapters will be Primaris but names one as the Avenging Sons, previously an Astartes Chapter. Rebuilt or brand new? There are lots of stuff like this throughout the novel. Tantalising glimpses that tease the reader.

 

Not the Guy Haley is really to blame. His main brief was establishing the new setting and he did that very well indeed. It's not his fault some of us would prefer a gazetteer of the entire 500 worlds - with maps and biographies! ;-/

[Nineswords]

I had the opposite problem as every time I came across one of his really interesting nuggets of information I got whipped off to another scene. Incredibly frustrating at times. For example, he mentions that Greater Ultramar will now be protected by 10 Chapters but only mentions 4 by name and doesn't reveal where most will be stationed. He also states that the 8 new Chapters will be Primaris but names one as the Avenging Sons, previously an Astartes Chapter. Rebuilt or brand new? There are lots of stuff like this throughout the novel. Tantalising glimpses that tease the reader.

 

Not the Guy Haley is really to blame. His main brief was establishing the new setting and he did that very well indeed. It's not his fault some of us would prefer a gazetteer of the entire 500 worlds - with maps and biographies! ;-/

 

You can tell when author's have to keep to a brief - my impression on reading DI was that there was a lot of exposition to be done, and to introduce the new setting to a new audience, hoping that older audiences will get a lot of the detail where it's a bit thin, as there isn't enough space. As for your specific example: I think there are two reasons: a. He simply doesn't know all ten and b. by not naming all ten, it allows players to fit their DIY Ultima Founding chapters into the background. 

 

I tweeted guy about the name of the new space marine escort vessel, and he replied saying he hadn't come up with a name yet, which suggests to me that GW's IP lawyers need to clear a bunch of stuff, amongst other things.

 

On balance, I think Guy did a wonderful job with Dark Imperium, it was a very hard brief.

[Mellow]

I really enjoyed the book.

[Felix Antipodes]

@Nineswords

Don't get me wrong I really liked the book - so much so that I'm currently half way through a reread. As for the unnamed Chapters I assumed they would be fleshed out in the upcoming Codex rather then left for DIY creation reasons, but that works for me too.

[Perry]

This was an enjoyable read, with some interesting subplots that can be further explored in the future, such as the governance of the 500 worlds, Cawl and his political ambitions within the Mechanicus, Pylon construction to remove the great rift, an update to the Codex Astartes and what is being developed on Iax?

 

Also enjoyed the passage about Primaris marines making many mistakes during the Indomitus crusade, training does not make up for lack of combat experience.

[Nineswords]

@Nineswords

Don't get me wrong I really liked the book - so much so that I'm currently half way through a reread. As for the unnamed Chapters I assumed they would be fleshed out in the upcoming Codex rather then left for DIY creation reasons, but that works for me too.

 

No worries - I didn't think you didn't like the book (is that a real sentence?)!

[Khornflakes]

I did enjoy the book more than  I thought i would. It portrayed Guilliman (or Gillian as my auto-correct keeps on trying to add in) as more, well...human then previously. 

 

The bit about the Cherubs did raise a smile as well as the interactions with the religious personnel. 

 

The Primaris marines came out better than expected as well. Aiming to give it another read. 

[Xenocide Enthusiast]

I loved the bit about the cherubs.

 

Great read that certainly makes me want more.

 

Way more.

[Nazguire]

I enjoyed the book for the most part.

 

- Definitely some parallels between Marneus Calgary and Luthor now. You can see tiny seeds of resentment and fear of being made obsolete start to germinate within Calgar. Being left behind on Macragge to govern the central system of the 500 Worlds is a great honour but, just like Luthor, he sees it as punishment and that he will never be able to live up to the Primarch's expectations.

 

- Cawl, to me, verges between a very interesting character with huge scope for development and a giant plot hole. On the one hand, it is not hard to grasp that one of the main reasons no one has worked out the Space Marine gene work is because of the ritual and dogma within the Imperium. On the other, it seems like he just fixes everything. Cawl Inferior was great - Guiliman's thoughts about how it is most likely AI but the timing isn't right to call Cawl out on it were well done. Would like to see a Cawl based faction start to cause ructions within the Mechanicus, and Cawl continue to be the crazy scientist he is, without venturing down the 'oh so done before' Chaos Dark Mechanicus route.

 

- Primaris marines didn't come across as these OP monsters like I thought they would. Just the right amount of youthful optimism, inexperience, thoughts about the future, etc that we read in the early Horus Heresy books sprinkled throughout the Primaris characters. At times, this book really felt like Horus Rising all over again, just in 42k.

 

- Daemon scenes irritated me. I can't take them serious when the daemons are portrayed as cartoon characters. Abnett and French understand the horror of 40K daemons - I haven't read a BL author yet who writes them as well as either of those two, in my opinion. I think part of this is due to GW's rebranding of Chaos a few years back away from an unknowable horror to something more Saturday cartoon.

 

- Death Guard suffer from a similar problem in parts, but are also really well done in others. When they're portrayed as this inescapable, indefatigable force of zombie Space Marines, I am all about it. When they start to revert back to more of the Saturday cartoon, not so much. Mortarion capturing his adopted father's soul from the Warp to torture was an awesome touch.

 

- While I understand how Typhus and Mortarion are not best buds anymore, the dialogue felt forced and a bit over done. Mortarion's power is through the roof and while Typhus is clearly a favoured champion of Nurgle, he's not a Daemon Primarch. This is why I'm fairly against the Primarchs coming back - it undermines (on both sides) the gravitas of many of the established 40k characters. In my mind, the moment that Typhus starts opening his mouth, Mortarion would have squashed him, no different than if Khârn went at Angron. These guys were created so as to be the Big 4's champions and now they're being pushed into the background and losing their impact. This isn't Hayley's fault - it's GW drive to dilute the core essence of 40K: that in a universe of daemons, monsters, giant bugs and inescapable horror, it is the average Joe Blow who holds it all back, with some help from the Space Marines.

 

- Guiliman's constant internal turmoil over how to reconcile his beliefs with how the Imperium has turned out and the true nature of The Emperor was great. You can see his bitterness rising and his more autocratic elements coming to play: Guiliman even acknowledges at one point that he is becoming a tyrant and how he is doing it, just like The Emperor, because he is forced to. How much longer until the difference between himself and what he despises is no more?

[Izlude]

Had a quick question about the armour of fate that Guilliman wears. I think in book 3: Rise of the Primarch, it mentions that Guilliman is told that if he takes of his armor (supposedly life support) that he would die? In Dark Imperium he obviously takes it off and stuff, just curious about this. I don't know maybe the argument that 100+years went by?

[Kelborn]

Maybe it's the same as with Darth Vader's armor?

 

RG being able to take it off for a short amount of time for medical treatments.

 

*Now I got some weird "I am your father!" scenes in mind including RG....damn it ^^*

[Perry]

Had a quick question about the armour of fate that Guilliman wears. I think in book 3: Rise of the Primarch, it mentions that Guilliman is told that if he takes of his armor (supposedly life support) that he would die? In Dark Imperium he obviously takes it off and stuff, just curious about this. I don't know maybe the argument that 100+years went by?

Perhaps in the 100+ years since those events he's gained some immunity, or maybe the author decided to ignore that passage in book 3

[DogWelder]

Maybe it's the same as with Darth Vader's armor?

 

RG being able to take it off for a short amount of time for medical treatments.

 

*Now I got some weird "I am your father!" scenes in mind including RG....damn it ^^*

 

I don't really think there's much of a time limit. Considering he spends all his free time in his personal quarters planning, speaking to his Sons, drawing up designs for the 500 Worlds, reading books, training Sicarius in statesmanship etc. where he always has his armor off. Not to mention that warp travel can take weeks or even months and he's in there all that time.

[Mellow]

One could assume that perhaps he has spent enough time in the armour that he is now fixed and can remove it.

[veterannoob]

SNIPPY!

- While I understand how Typhus and Mortarion are not best buds anymore, the dialogue felt forced and a bit over done. Mortarion's power is through the roof and while Typhus is clearly a favoured champion of Nurgle, he's not a Daemon Primarch. This is why I'm fairly against the Primarchs coming back - it undermines (on both sides) the gravitas of many of the established 40k characters. In my mind, the moment that Typhus starts opening his mouth, Mortarion would have squashed him, no different than if Khârn went at Angron. These guys were created so as to be the Big 4's champions and now they're being pushed into the background and losing their impact. This isn't Hayley's fault - it's GW drive to dilute the core essence of 40K: that in a universe of daemons, monsters, giant bugs and inescapable horror, it is the average Joe Blow who holds it all back, with some help from the Space Marines.

 

 

I loved the book but you make a great point about the Demon Primarchs and their underlings. I'll ask Guy his thoughts on this in a wider scope. Our interview got pushed back a few days due to work schedules.

[ninjasuperspy]

I did not enjoy it at all.

 

I mean these are kind of Baby's First Lit Crit complaints but man it didn't have a protagonist (Felix comes CLOSE but he doesn't undergo any changes at all in the book other than getting better suits of armor), an antagonist (Morty shows up only to be relentlessly negged by Typhon on that conference call & show us his magnificent clock collection like Mike & Frank just showed up to do an episode of American Pickers on the Endurance), tension, character arcs, rising/falling action, or really anything that really makes a plot at all. We get a couple of good scenes (the Robute/Fulgrim Rumble Intro, Felix signing everybody's yearbook when they graduated, the corruption of Iax) but all-in-all the book was a bunch of loosely related scenes presented in chronological order where the good guys barely suffer so much as a setback as they steamroll over traitor force after traitor force on a smorgasbord of entirely indistinguishable planets. They barely even slow down! The Inceptors are introduced charging straight into the teeth of an Iron Warriors bastion then slaughtering everyone inside without breaking a sweat! The Plague Marines are all worse than useless, the only one who manages to accomplish anything is That One Mini With the Bell who slows Felix down until he remembers how awesome he is. Calgar puts down a 'rebellion' that is supposedly part of a bigger pattern that we never see and isn't ever mentioned again. Seven plague champions are introduced who proceed to do literally nothing at all then at the dang climax Guilliman fights a dragon we've never heard of in an awful fight that lasts for something like four paragraphs that are mostly made up of Robute declaiming his various achievements until he wins (this is also my least favorite thing from the new Doctor Who). The timeskip was a gigantic mistake that left me entirely rootless then G-man suddenly has all of these resources that he just wastes for no reason. The Sisters of Silence? Oh they go turn off the cloaking device on Morty's Big Throbbing Clock then get ruthlessly merked by the Dracolich and nobody in the book cares because none of them have names or backstories or characters at all.

At no point did Felix need to do anything other than Believe in Himself in order to absolutely, comprehensively triumph over any type or amount of difficulty. I would have liked to see him, I don't know, think back on something he learned from one of his squadmates & use Fenrisian ferocity or Calibanite swordsmanship or something. Who knows? Maybe he could encounter an obstacle and have to wander a bunch of warzones to get the band back together.

[Nazguire]

I did not enjoy it at all.

 

I mean these are kind of Baby's First Lit Crit complaints but man it didn't have a protagonist (Felix comes CLOSE but he doesn't undergo any changes at all in the book other than getting better suits of armor), an antagonist (Morty shows up only to be relentlessly negged by Typhon on that conference call & show us his magnificent clock collection like Mike & Frank just showed up to do an episode of American Pickers on the Endurance), tension, character arcs, rising/falling action, or really anything that really makes a plot at all. We get a couple of good scenes (the Robute/Fulgrim Rumble Intro, Felix signing everybody's yearbook when they graduated, the corruption of Iax) but all-in-all the book was a bunch of loosely related scenes presented in chronological order where the good guys barely suffer so much as a setback as they steamroll over traitor force after traitor force on a smorgasbord of entirely indistinguishable planets. They barely even slow down! The Inceptors are introduced charging straight into the teeth of an Iron Warriors bastion then slaughtering everyone inside without breaking a sweat! The Plague Marines are all worse than useless, the only one who manages to accomplish anything is That One Mini With the Bell who slows Felix down until he remembers how awesome he is. Calgar puts down a 'rebellion' that is supposedly part of a bigger pattern that we never see and isn't ever mentioned again. Seven plague champions are introduced who proceed to do literally nothing at all then at the dang climax Guilliman fights a dragon we've never heard of in an awful fight that lasts for something like four paragraphs that are mostly made up of Robute declaiming his various achievements until he wins (this is also my least favorite thing from the new Doctor Who). The timeskip was a gigantic mistake that left me entirely rootless then G-man suddenly has all of these resources that he just wastes for no reason. The Sisters of Silence? Oh they go turn off the cloaking device on Morty's Big Throbbing Clock then get ruthlessly merked by the Dracolich and nobody in the book cares because none of them have names or backstories or characters at all.

 

At no point did Felix need to do anything other than Believe in Himself in order to absolutely, comprehensively triumph over any type or amount of difficulty. I would have liked to see him, I don't know, think back on something he learned from one of his squadmates & use Fenrisian ferocity or Calibanite swordsmanship or something. Who knows? Maybe he could encounter an obstacle and have to wander a bunch of warzones to get the band back together.

 

It did feel at a certain point that the Death Guard were no threat whatsoever - as stated earlier in the thread, you can tell Hayley was writing to a brief which is expected. That brief most definitely contained a phrase to the following effect: promote the Primaris.

 

The dragon thing had me puzzled - it definitely felt like we were meant to recognise that dragon, or at the very least keep his name stowed away for future memory. Perhaps he is going to be a recurring character?

 

Ultimately, I feel like your main issue is that the book tried to cram too many things into it to be an effective plot. I can agree somewhat. It did have some nice parallels with the Horus Heresy - there was a Triumph at Ullanor, there was a Luthor moment, the uncertainty facing the Primaris as they come to the end of the Great Crusade, etc. I think this is what it was trying to achieve too.

[HeritorA]

Author tried to create a solid narrative - but it is not.

The story is an empty bucket. All that happened could have been explained in 50 pages. 

It is really an overcomplicated novel that tries to be 3 things at once — a supplement for a 'codex'/new bible release; lore building event that provides ground for a solid period of time and events that made the universe cringe in turmoil; advertisement for the new model range and setting (let's not forget that GW main focus is on the tabletop and models — so not a surprise here). Thus, as one might expect, it turned out to be not quite a good book.

[Kelborn]

1) Dude, were you on vacation? ^^

2) You already shared your pov on this book for several times. No reason for you to repeat it again after some shared their satisfaction about it.