Why did "Battle for the Abyss" get such a bad reception?

[DogWelder]

Battle for the Abyss was the first Warhammer 40k book I ever read and I enjoyed it greatly. The action, suspense, space combat, fighting daemons, a plot in which a small band of rebels have to destroy a huge planet-killing super battleship before it destroys an important planet (which gave me fond memories of A New Hope) etc. Everything was great.

 

So I was rather surprised when so many longtime fans of 40k said they hated it. A common complaint was that it was irrelevant to the plot.

 

I just re-read it with all that I know about the Horus Heresy now, and I get an extremely different picture. The story was rather pivotal to the Horus Heresy.

The Furious Abyss was a super-battleship that could take on entire planets and their defense fleets on its own. Kor Phaeron had sent it to Maccrage to support several smaller Word Bearer fleets that were awaiting the signal to attack the core systems of Ultramar the moment the Battle of Calth started.

Kor Phaeron's entire plan was to pull a dual strike on the Ultramarines. While the bulk of the 13th Legion was held up at Calth, and the main force of the Shadow Crusade rampaging throughout the outer systems of Ultramar, the Furious Abyss would virus-bomb Maccrage, wiping out all life on the Ultramarines homeworld and supporting the rest of the Word Bearer fleet in laying waste to the core systems.

 

If the Furious Abyss was not destroyed, then it wouldn't have mattered if the Ultramarines won Calth. They would arrive back at their core systems to find them in ruins and a planet-killing battleship eager to take out their badly injured fleet. Guilliman would have been killed, Ultramar would be destroyed and the Ultramarines would have ceased to be an effective fighting force by the end of the Heresy.

 

Because it was destroyed, the Word Bearer attack on the core systems failed (revealed in Unremembered Empire) and Guilliman and his sons were able to return home in relative peace.

 

So what gave long time fans a negative view towards the book?

[Lord Marshal]

It's a side story (I guess you could say filler) which always end up being viewed negatively. It doesn't really do a whole lot to push the story forward at all, it's just sort of there because, uh, they needed to fill a slot on the release calendar? That it's one of the earlier and weaker HH books probably doesn't help much. Your first breakup and all that.

 

The Word Bearers come across as a mixture of Skeletor and Gargamel from The Smurfs... that is to say, hilariously one-sidedly evil because bruh they're evil yo.

 

My biggest gripe is that it largely falls into the seemingly bottomless pit of Bolter Porn books. Space Marines kill (Chaos) Space Marines and it's so epic and explosive and metal and pewpew and boom and just... BLARGH. That's nothing new for Black Library which is exactly why it's such a problem in that there's really nothing else to the book but that.

 

I wouldn't say it's bad per say, it's just extremely forgettable. Then again I'm one of those freaks who enjoyed The Damnation of Pythos.

Edited June 30, 2017 by Lord Marshal

[hopkins]

good on paper, but lacking in delivery

[Sandlemad]

It being a side-story definitely earned it some hate. A substantial chunk of the fanbase really dislikes any story which isn't a breakneck rush to Terra; anything which deviates from the main plot points is going to get a lot of opprobrium, regardless of quality.

 

That said, for Battle of the Abyss the quality isn't there either. The concept is a good one! The heresy having its own 'Sink the Bismarck!' story is cool but the writing and the characters are very poor. All the marines are pretty one-note examples of their legions' most obvious traits, e.g. the inscrutable Thousand Son, the sensible Ultramarine, the moustache-twirling Word Bearers, and there is a high percentage of bolter porn.

 

What you say about the plot and its significance is not wrong and could absolutely support a good and interesting book... but Battle for the Abyss isn't it. To be honest even if it was a better book, it could probably have done with coming after the Calth sequence had kicked off with Know No Fear.

Edited June 30, 2017 by Sandlemad

[JH79]

What everyone else said above, it wasn't progressive enough for the main plot of the Heresy... plus many saw it as largely pointless and forgettable. Many parts of it have since been retconned too, such as the development of the Ultramarine's Practical and Theoretical approach to everything and The World Eaters butchers nails are seemingly absent too etc... i only have the Audiobook but i heard that the Afterword written by LJ Goulding for the Hardback release was very eye opening and made many look at the novel in a slightly different light. I think it was posted on the forum here many moons ago so if you can find it might add some meat to the bones as it were.

 

Personally I quite liked it, no nonsense or messing about, let's just catch that huge ass ship full of Word Bearers and beat the living *cuss* out of em! Skraal was an especially enjoyable character for me, a super violent World Eater who's as loyal to the Throne as they come... gave me shivers the first time i heard him yelling that the Emperor will unleash the wrath of the Warmaster upon Lorgar when their treachery is unveiled!

 

It will never stand up there with top tier Heresy works such as The First Heretic, A Thousand Sons, Know No Fear & Praetorian of Dorn etc... but i don't mind that, it's a harmless rollercoaster ride and sometimes that's enough

[Izlude]

The awesome review by PurpleHeresy (actually many of his reviews are both good and funny) sums it up. For many of the reasons cited above. Everyone in that book is just a walking stereo type (i.e. Space viking, the sage thousand sons). For me anyways perhaps bottom 3...actually worse book (Have read everything in the series)

 

http://purpleheresy.blogspot.com/2014/01/battle-for-abyss-by-ben-counter.html?m=0

Edited June 30, 2017 by Izlude

[HeritorA]

it's just extremely forgettable, blank, a total sidestory and has cartoonish characters

[Petitioner's City]

The awesome review by PurpleHeresy (actually many of his reviews are both good and funny) sums it up. For many of the reasons cited above. Everyone in that book is just a walking stereo type (i.e. Space viking, the sage thousand sons). For me anyways perhaps bottom 3...actually worse book (Have read everything in the series)

 

http://purpleheresy.blogspot.com/2014/01/battle-for-abyss-by-ben-counter.html?m=0

 

I loved these reviews so much, and I got so sad when he stopped writing them. He had a forum on 30K forums about it and it tailed off :(

[Tymell]

The side-story nature of this didn't really bother me, it never does really: I'm reading the HH series because I want to read about this setting and frickin' huge galactic civil war being expanded and examined. Whether a story is a big, huge event or something more minor, I don't really care so long as it's well-written.

 

But I didn't feel Battle for the Abyss was, unfortunately. The actual prose felt very clunky and dry, at times I really struggled to get through it. The characters are very one-dimensional and don't really develop through the story. The book is less about character development and story, and more just a series of action set-pieces. Some of that action -can- be good, but when I don't care about the people involved in it, it's hard to get into it, compounded with the variable prose quality.

 

I still don't think it's the worst the series has to offer (I'd put Descent of Angels forward for that), but for me it's certainly down there near the bottom of my list.

Edited July 1, 2017 by Tymell

[Wargamer]

For me, it suffered from two major flaws; the first was retreading ground that had long since gone stale (ie: "Marines fighting Marines? This is unthinkable!") and second was the magical maguffin ship that conveniently had all evidence of its existence destroyed, and was itself destroyed so no-one will ever know it existed.

Plus, I think by that point I and various other Heresy readers were getting bored. The pieces were on the board, and had been on the board for a long time, yet for some reason everyone was too busy talking about the pieces to actually play the game.

 

The Heresy book series is one I gave up on because I was just sick of it. I developed a "wake me when Terra's under siege" attitude, and this story is one of the main reasons why.

[helterskelter]

I'm going to go against the grain here, as novels in the heresy series go I don't think it was that big of a side step, not in the same vein as "Damnation of Pythos".

Yeah some of the characters weren't the best, but there was plenty to like about some of them.

And looking back at it, I tend to see it as a prequel to the Calth Arc now.

I base my love of books by my ability to finish them in decent order, I got through this pretty quick, still haven't finished Deathfire (having purchased and read a half dozen full novels after it)

[DukeLeto69]

Hmmm well it certainly is one of the less good books, in that lower category, is not one of the must reads. I have never thought Ben Counter was that good actually (for my tastes anyway). As others have said, it was not particularly well written.

 

However, I think the real issue for many people was that by the time you get to this book you finally realised that BL were treating the Horus Heresy series as a setting rather than a single story. We had already diverged from the core story arc before then, but this book, at the time, felt very divergent.

 

Ironically if this had come out later and closer to the Calth arc it might have been better received?

[bluntblade]

I still fantasise about what Galaxy In Flames might have been had French, AD-B or Wraight taken it. As far as I can tell from that book Counter's... adequate, but nowhere close to BL's top tier.

[Mellow]

There's no doubting the whole point of the ships existence was to assist in the destruction and holding up of the largest loyal legion. This makes perfect tactical sense but I think it dragged on and could have been included in less detail within one of the other UE/Ultrama Crusade novels.

 

This would have tackled the "side-plot" issue by literally including it as a side plot and would have had a better reception because of it.

[Wargamer]

There's no doubting the whole point of the ships existence was to assist in the destruction and holding up of the largest loyal legion. This makes perfect tactical sense but I think it dragged on and could have been included in less detail within one of the other UE/Ultrama Crusade novels.

 

This would have tackled the "side-plot" issue by literally including it as a side plot and would have had a better reception because of it.

Actually, from a tactical perspective the ship was utterly stupid.

 

Anyone remotely familiar with naval doctrine of the 40K universe will tell you that battleships belong in fleets. While they have tremendous firepower, their sheer bulk makes them cumbersome and difficult to maneuver. To operate successfully, they need smaller ships to scout for them, to cover their blind-spots and (with the exception of larger carriers) provide fighter screens to protect them from torpedoes and attack craft.

 

Yet the grand plan seemed to be to take this ship, which by design cannot reliably operate alone, and send it alone across half the galaxy while hoping that nobody will notice a warship the size of a small country flying around.

 

All this did was give the Word Bearers a healthy dose of Star Wars Stupidity; a fetish for super-weapons that are easily destroyed by a considerably smaller opponent, and not a single iota of tactical and strategic acumen required to employ their phallic compensation in a meaningful way.

[bluntblade]

Witness the Word Bearers and World Eaters at Nuceria; admittedly they didn't realise Guilliman was right on Erebus' heels, but with two Glorianas, some escorts and one king-ship they were unable to prevent the Ultramarines from making planetfall in major numbers, lost the Lex and very nearly the Conqueror too.

[A D-B]

Witness the Word Bearers and World Eaters at Nuceria; admittedly they didn't realise Guilliman was right on Erebus' heels, but with two Glorianas, some escorts and one king-ship they were unable to prevent the Ultramarines from making planetfall in major numbers, lost the Lex and very nearly the Conqueror too.

 

In their defence, the Ultramarines just showed up. That's a bit like trying to hold the sea back with swear words.

[DogWelder]

 

Witness the Word Bearers and World Eaters at Nuceria; admittedly they didn't realise Guilliman was right on Erebus' heels, but with two Glorianas, some escorts and one king-ship they were unable to prevent the Ultramarines from making planetfall in major numbers, lost the Lex and very nearly the Conqueror too.

 

In their defence, the Ultramarines just showed up. That's a bit like trying to hold the sea back with swear words.

 

 

A lot of Ultramarines fans I know felt that the Battle of Nuceria was biased against the 13th Legion in "Betrayar", however they did pretty well for themselves imo.

 

They destroyed the Fidelitas Lex by swarming it with about 30 smaller ships (was this an aircraft vs. battleship metaphor?) and managed to make landfall, the outnumbered ground troops weathering the storm against the better part of two traitor Legions led by their primarch. Not to mention Guilliman took on both Angron and Lorgar. While it wasn't a decisive victory for the Ultramarines (like Sotha) or even a phyrric victory (like Calth), they did stop the Shadow Crusade in a way.

[Mellow]

They are Ultramarines. By their very definition they are ultra good at doing ultra everything.

[Plaguecaster]

I liked it as well sure it wasnt the greatest of reads like betrayer or The First Herectic but it was was a good read for all its flaws, plus the villians werent portrayed as some tragic anti hero doing it for some noble reason the Word Bereres in the story literally were a bunch of evil twats and thats why I liked it and the Word Bearers  :D then again I liked most of the other loathed titles like the dawn of war series and the blood angels omnibus

[DarkChaplain]

I actually had a reasonable amount of fun with it as well. I always put it off because of its awful reputation but when I did finally read it, going in with grim expectations, I was surprised by it. Yeah, it doesn't move much on its own and the cast is very... hollywood-ish. But even from an action novel perspective, it is far from as bad as people used to call it. The execution could've been better and tighter links to the rest of the Heresy should've been made, but as a standalone it was entertaining rather than frustrating.

[Sothalor]

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think Battle for the Abyss got the reaction it did because it was the first in the line that really stumbled. Remember, it was the eighth novel in the series and it came at a time before the massive bloat we've got now had started kicking in.

 

As others have said, the novel has issues with plot, characterization, pacing, prose, etc. And, don't get me wrong, I think the book deserves a lot of the lambasting it gets because of those issues.

 

But I think those issues got really exacerbated because up to this point, the Horus Heresy had gotten mostly good reception. Even Descent of Angels, which wasn't received as well as, say, Legion, had at least done something which most expected the series to do: delve into the background and character of the Legions, the relationships between Primarchs and their close leaders and confidants, and lay some of the groundwork for the things we know will happen further down in the timeline. 

 

Battle for the Abyss did none of those things - at least, not at the time. Oh sure, we can look back at it now and go, "Oh yeah, so those big superships show up later", but I'll be honest, their inclusion in Betrayer made me roll my eyes. It didn't make me go "Wow, that was a great payoff with a magnificent setup years in the making" - it made me go "That was kind of you, ADB, to try to include Counter's work there." Actually, it made me go "Huh? What's he talking about?" And then I had to go and dig up Battle for the Abyss to remember what the heck was going on, cause it was that forgettable.

 

I still remember how at that point in the series, the word was that Black Library was taking this super-seriously, that the Horus Heresy line was THE labor of love, how they were carefully vetting authors, that nobody could just jump in and write for it, that quality was their emphasis and focus and how it would have this interconnectedness and be tightly linked in a way no previous BL series had been, and so on. The freshness and novelty of "this is how we get to Warhammer 40k" was still there. Each novel was a revelation of the way things had been, a glimpse into the lives of the demigods, supersoldiers, and occasionally regular folks of the 31st Millenium. 

 

And I think that's why Battle for the Abyss got the reception it did - it was the first major breaking of that promise, so it stung in a special way. Looking back at it now - and golden nippled Dante tapdancing on the corpse throne, the Horus Heresy has been going on for ELEVEN YEARS, it's just one amongst a plethora of works of varying quality that we've grown numb to. 

 

I'm being melodramatic here, but in a way Battle for the Abyss was like the Atrocity on Isstvan III. It's not so much the details of the book, just as it wasn't so much the details of combat on the ground for the legionaries, but it was the bigger sense of what's going on and this shouldn't be happening.

[DogWelder]

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think Battle for the Abyss got the reaction it did because it was the first in the line that really stumbled. Remember, it was the eighth novel in the series and it came at a time before the massive bloat we've got now had started kicking in.

 

As others have said, the novel has issues with plot, characterization, pacing, prose, etc. And, don't get me wrong, I think the book deserves a lot of the lambasting it gets because of those issues.

 

But I think those issues got really exacerbated because up to this point, the Horus Heresy had gotten mostly good reception. Even Descent of Angels, which wasn't received as well as, say, Legion, had at least done something which most expected the series to do: delve into the background and character of the Legions, the relationships between Primarchs and their close leaders and confidants, and lay some of the groundwork for the things we know will happen further down in the timeline. 

 

Battle for the Abyss did none of those things - at least, not at the time. Oh sure, we can look back at it now and go, "Oh yeah, so those big superships show up later", but I'll be honest, their inclusion in Betrayer made me roll my eyes. It didn't make me go "Wow, that was a great payoff with a magnificent setup years in the making" - it made me go "That was kind of you, ADB, to try to include Counter's work there." Actually, it made me go "Huh? What's he talking about?" And then I had to go and dig up Battle for the Abyss to remember what the heck was going on, cause it was that forgettable.

 

I still remember how at that point in the series, the word was that Black Library was taking this super-seriously, that the Horus Heresy line was THE labor of love, how they were carefully vetting authors, that nobody could just jump in and write for it, that quality was their emphasis and focus and how it would have this interconnectedness and be tightly linked in a way no previous BL series had been, and so on. The freshness and novelty of "this is how we get to Warhammer 40k" was still there. Each novel was a revelation of the way things had been, a glimpse into the lives of the demigods, supersoldiers, and occasionally regular folks of the 31st Millenium. 

 

And I think that's why Battle for the Abyss got the reception it did - it was the first major breaking of that promise, so it stung in a special way. Looking back at it now - and golden nippled Dante tapdancing on the corpse throne, the Horus Heresy has been going on for ELEVEN YEARS, it's just one amongst a plethora of works of varying quality that we've grown numb to. 

 

I'm being melodramatic here, but in a way Battle for the Abyss was like the Atrocity on Isstvan III. It's not so much the details of the book, just as it wasn't so much the details of combat on the ground for the legionaries, but it was the bigger sense of what's going on and this shouldn't be happening.

 

But the Furious Abyss was important. If it was not destroyed, it would have wiped out Maccrage, Ultramar's core worlds and Guilliman's small fleet. That would have meant the utter destruction of the Ultramarines as a fighting force.

[Sothalor]

 

 

But the Furious Abyss was important. If it was not destroyed, it would have wiped out Maccrage, Ultramar's core worlds and Guilliman's small fleet. That would have meant the utter destruction of the Ultramarines as a fighting force.

 

The problem with your assertion is that we the audience know it really wasn't. The outcome of the Furious Abyss' attack was never in question, because we know Macragge is still around in the 41st Millenium. We know that the Word Bearers will ambush the Ultramarines at Calth, we know that Roboute Guilliman will survive and go on to lead the Imperium until he falls against Fulgrim and is placed into stasis, and we know that he will be interred on Macragge. We knew, going in, that the Furious Abyss would fail in its mission.

 

Just like we knew going in to Horus Rising that Horus and his Legion would turn to Chaos at some point, and trigger a galaxy-spanning civil war. Just like we knew Fulgrim would become corrupted by Slaanesh and kill Ferrus Manus. Just like we knew the Alpha Legion would declare for the Warmaster. Just like we knew that the Eisenstein would manage to get word of Horus' betrayal to Terra. Just like we knew Prospero would fall to the Space Wolves. And so on, and so on.

 

Most of the broad strokes of the Horus Heresy were already known to the dedicated audience going in. What made the series successful was that it managed to make the audience care about the characters in the midst of it. It was about that almost mythic element of watching humanity's demigods confronting their flaws and how they fell because of it. It was about the pathos of shattered brotherhood and fellowship turned to bitterest hate, the loss of a dream as humanity's champions become its own worst enemy.

 

At that time, the Horus Heresy was always a foregone conclusion - this was before Black Library's expansions (some might say retcons), and before the series turned into the cluster  of continuity and limited edition this and limited edition that and novellas and shorts and audio dramas and anthologies we've got eleven years into the whole bloody endeavor.

 

And that's where Battle for the Abyss failed: you can talk up the Furious Abyss and its ability to destroy planets and wipe out the Ultramarines and make fantastic Astartes-sanctioned caff - but we know it ain't happening. That's not where the drama was ever going to be. The drama was always going to be in making we, the audience, care about the people who are involved in the mess. And it failed to do so for most readers. Instead we got Captain Ultramarine the straight-laced, drunk and aggressive Space Wolf what doesn't trust that shifty sorcerer, the taciturn and oh-isn't-he-enigmatic Thousand Son, ANGRY-McANGRY World Eater, and Captain Word "I'm the villain, watch me twirl my evil mustache so hard I invert my face" Bearer.

 

It was a bunch of one-note, shallow characters stopping a threat that we know won't succeed, in a novel rife with plot and pacing issues.

[Mellow]

Just to throw a spanner in the works.

 

I loved this book.

 

I love all the HH books.

 

 

... and if you love all the books too then we have a lot in common ;)