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

[The Doctor Of War]

Personally i wasn't keen on how it appeared no editor had ventured near it. The book was riddled with errors that should have been caught long before print.

[Space Truckin]

I couldn't finish reading this book.  It's where I decided there was no way I could read the entire HH series in order.

 

However - I picked it up as an Audio book as someone mentioned a Prequel to the Calth series and it was fantastic.

Audio book is much more entertaining than the book  for some reason. 

[Wargamer]

That's because with an audio book you can do something entertaining while you listen.

[Roomsky]

Got through this one recently due to a rapidly dwindling supply of things to listen to at work.

 

I can't speak for why it got the reception it did with any real authority, but I can tell you why I think it's bad:

 

*clears throat*

 

The prose was mostly* abominable, no artistry with the written word even seems to have been attempted. Non-pov characters all but loudly exclaim how they feel, and the astartes shoot-outs are mind-numbing.

 

The main characters were flat caricatures of their respective legions, Brynngar especially demonstrating no real difference between 30k and 40k space wolves.

 

The Word Bearers were fantastically incompetent, the sheer amount of conniving and bad decisions made by the crew of the Furious Abyss makes it a wonder the legion can function at all.

 

The plot was comically symplistic, even in a setting as heightened as 40k, a single really large battleship would do little good on its own, as demonstrated in a multitude of other works. For that matter, its demonstrated in this work, as it had trouble dispatching one very tiny fleet.

 

Not to say I didn't get any enjoyment out of it, I'd even (if just barely) put it into the "guilty pleasures" category. It's kind of refreshing in that it lacks the dour tone of most of the series, and Counter does manage a few interesting set pieces.

 

*Counter is good at writing warp shenanigans, this actually made me want to read Daemon World.