"Crusade" Anthology - Opinions ? Reviews?

[Xin Ceithan]

So, I was wondering to get this to get a few ideas for the loyalist Marine side prior to the Deathwatch pbp elsewhere ob the forum. Has anyone read this and would like to share?

I ownthe Abnett story on audio, so I am unsure since the Anthologies are pretty hit and miss in my experience...

 

http://www.blacklibrary.com/prod-home/new-paperback/crusade-ebook.html

Edited November 9, 2017 by Brother Tyler
Added link

[Kelborn]

I'm tempted to purchase this anthology, as well. Though I swore to focus on HH (by finishing my reading list) first, I'm eager to hear some thought on this one as this covers the new Dark Imperium setting, which I'm really interested in. :)

[DogWelder]

I bought the Anthology but Black Library's download link for it is down. It gives you a 404 Error message when you try to download it. Tried contacting them but I suppose they are closed for the weekend.

[Xin Ceithan]

I bought the Anthology but Black Library's download link for it is down. It gives you a 404 Error message when you try to download it. Tried contacting them but I suppose they are closed for the weekend.

Wow, that is not encouraging . While this is not the kind of response I sought, it at least encourages me to wait for Mondaybefore considering a purchase.

[DogWelder]

 

I bought the Anthology but Black Library's download link for it is down. It gives you a 404 Error message when you try to download it. Tried contacting them but I suppose they are closed for the weekend.

Wow, that is not encouraging . While this is not the kind of response I sought, it at least encourages me to wait for Mondaybefore considering a purchase.

 

 

Yeah, they usually take 3-4 days to respond to technical issues even during the week though iirc.

[Kelborn]

Just checked Amazon and I'm a bit confused.

 

Amazon states that it will be released on the 21st of October 2020... oO

 

Shouldn't be the case, right?

[DarkChaplain]

Amazon's been pretty weird about a lot of upcoming releases lately. Heck, a lot of descriptions are messy, titles include "Warhammer 40k", and sometimes they even put "Pocket Books" as the publisher. They delay stuff to high heaven too (still haven't gotten my Shadowsword paperback....).

 

Crusade is a no-brainer to get at that price.

 

 

The Lightning Tower by Dan Abnett
Sarcophagus by David Annandale
Crusade by Andy Clark
Extinction by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
A Sanctuary of Wyrms by Peter Fehervari
The Purity of Ignorance by John French
The Word of the Silent King by L J Goulding
The Lost King by Robbie MacNiven
Culling the Horde by Steve Parker
The Zheng Cipher by Josh Reynolds
Red & Black by James Swallow
Honour of the Third and Howl of the Banshee by Gav Thorpe

 

I haven't read Crusade itself and The Lost King, I believe, and enjoyed most of the others. Honour of the Third was a disappointment for its brevity and missed potential for a larger story, but The Zheng Cipher, A Sanctuary of Wyrms, The Purity of Ignorance? Amazing stuff.

[DogWelder]

Amazon's been pretty weird about a lot of upcoming releases lately. Heck, a lot of descriptions are messy, titles include "Warhammer 40k", and sometimes they even put "Pocket Books" as the publisher. They delay stuff to high heaven too (still haven't gotten my Shadowsword paperback....).

 

Crusade is a no-brainer to get at that price.

 

 

The Lightning Tower by Dan Abnett

Sarcophagus by David Annandale

Crusade by Andy Clark

Extinction by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

A Sanctuary of Wyrms by Peter Fehervari

The Purity of Ignorance by John French

The Word of the Silent King by L J Goulding

The Lost King by Robbie MacNiven

Culling the Horde by Steve Parker

The Zheng Cipher by Josh Reynolds

Red & Black by James Swallow

Honour of the Third and Howl of the Banshee by Gav Thorpe

 

I haven't read Crusade itself and The Lost King, I believe, and enjoyed most of the others. Honour of the Third was a disappointment for its brevity and missed potential for a larger story, but The Zheng Cipher, A Sanctuary of Wyrms, The Purity of Ignorance? Amazing stuff.

 

Have you had better luck getting the download link?

[DarkChaplain]

Haven't picked this up (yet). I am tempted to buy the print, but as long as Amazon hasn't sorted out its nonsense, I may be waiting this one out, considering I only need to read Crusade.

[JH79]

Well this came out of the blue, and with a full audio release too? Colour me excited... but confused!

 

Black Library really does keep us on our toes with their release formats and inclusion / exclusion of audio on different titles. Dark Imperium for example is released as a major novel and the start in a series of books featuring the titular resurrected Primarch Roboute Guilliman going us against the face meltingly Chaotic servants of the Plague God... and the audio is nowhere to be seen.

 

Yet a new collection of short stories labelled Crusade gets some extra love from John Banks and Penelope Rawlins. Makes little sense to me. Still, hooray for a new audio collection! 

[DarkChaplain]

No audio for Cadia Stands or Ghost Warrior either, whereas Watchers of the Throne got one. Jain Zar had one out of the blue, even though Asurmen didn't get one. Ravenor came months after the reprinted paperbacks.

There's no rhyme or reason with what BL covers with audio. Often the most interesting stuff won't get any whereas a new Phil Kelly Space Marine Battles novel will.

 

I just hope that, at some point, they'll pad out the backlog more like they have with Eisenhorn and now started with Ravenor. Gaunt's Ghosts really needs a full release via audiobooks, and it strikes me as odd that they didn't start that when the paperbacks got reprinted. Maybe the upcoming Omnibus releases will trigger it? Salvation's Reach got one, but the narrator never did another for BL. Curious to see if they'll do one for The Warmaster, considering how much of a blockbuster title it is.

 

Let's just hope that the audible floodgates will be leading to BL increasing investment in audiobooks across the board, seeing how they can now reach a wider market and establish themselves as one of the biggest IPs on the service.

[JH79]

Agreed re Audible, it will hopefully have opened up a brand new revenue stream for BL, I just hope they engage brain a little more and stop cutting so many corners following their move internally re production.

 

Jain Zar getting the audio treatment confused the hell out of me... so book 2 of a niche series gets the full works? Interesting. I was so glad that Watchers of the Throne and Carrion Throne both had the audio treatment, even though I picked up the hardbacks it was great to have that extra option.

 

Ravanor is roughly following the same release pattern as Eisenhorn did this time last year, paper backs were slightly more spaced out though. I think they're using both series as testers to see how well something that has been available for so long would handle a new format. Maybe next year we'll get the Nightlords or even Ahriman(!) trilogies?

 

As for Gaunts Ghosts I think that may come at some point next year if Warmaster / the new Omnibus editions sell strongly enough. Warmaster is slated to have an audiobook as per this post at the community page. It's one of the only times a coming soon post has given exact detail as to what releases are coming in what format. Hopefully if they do give the entire series the audio treatment they decide to re-work Salvations Reach too. I own but just cannot listen to it. The choice of James McPherson to narrate was so bad. I have nothing against Scottish accents, in fact I love em (just ask my Wife and Mother in law lol!) but it was far too jarring to enjoy. Kind of like listening to Stephen Perring butcher a dozen or so audio shorts a year or so ago when BL was cutting more corners on the talent they hire directly. Narration was fine, character acting / accents... you're not even a patch on Gareth Armstrong or David Timson. McPherson did come back to haunt a few lucky owners of a super limited edition Space Wolves Novel which came with an exclusive Audiobook CD called Twelve Wolves by Ben Counter... no idea what the main book was called though.

 

All's fun and games in the world of Audio 

Edited October 23, 2017 by JH79

[DarkChaplain]

Well, just look at how they covered WHFB back in the day. They decided to produce an audiobook for God King, Legend of Sigmar book THREE, whereas the second even went on and won a Gemmell award iirc. Not the first, not the second, just the third. Guess what didn't sell well and basically prevented any more WHFB/Time of Legends audiobooks after, while ramping up HH audio coverage? That was around when A Thousand Sons and Prospero Burns got their audiobooks, I believe.

 

That community post makes me a bit worried, actually. Fabius Bile: Clonelord is mentioned with only Hardback and ebook, unlike The Warmaster. The audio for Primogenitor was amazing, I'd hate them to drop it for the remaining two books.

 

Regarding Crusade, I'm pretty surprised about Red & Black being in there. That was an audio drama originally. Did they get Emma Gregory to narrate it as a straight audiobook, or did they recycle the old audio drama with sound effects? The Lightning Tower was already recorded for Shadows of Treachery's audiobook (though the original Danny Webb audio drama was pretty straight forward anyway). Cool to see Peter Fehervari getting his first audiobook treatment though, and The Purity of Ignorance takes one non-audio off the list of the Horusian Wars (leaving The Maiden of the Dream and The Absolution of Swords iirc).

Howl of the Banshee was an audio drama previously too, and Extinction is neat to have.

 

What I don't really like is that they put in The Lost King, from Legacy of Russ. Great, a first-part in a series of 8 stories making up a novel which didn't get its planned sequel to cover the events of Wrath of Magnus. Amazing to get people started with 40k fiction, reading a story that hooks them for a novel and then leaves them out in the cold when they want to see the conclusion of the arc. Nevermind that it already is a sequel to Curse of the Wulfen...

 

Could be worse though. Hammerhal & Other Stories comes with fewer stories, has stories from Call of Archaon, the serialized Bladestorm novel, the serialized Black Rift of Klaxus, two stories from Mortarch of Night that were previously audio dramas (one of them being the 2nd in its arc of 4), and - here's the big thing - EXCERPTS from Spear of Shadows, which didn't get an audiobook, and the upcoming Overlords of the Iron Dragon, which also isn't getting one.

I've read a bunch of short stories that were actually stand-alone and would've lent themselves far better to this collection. Heck, the entire Call of Chaos series might've been appropriate and short enough overall, and there were two tie-in stories to Eight Lamentations that are digital only right now, a background story about Sigmar and fellows and a standalone Hamilcar Bear-Eater story, which would've worked better than Great Red.

 

That is to say, their hand-picked selection is strange and making me scratch my head.

The nicest part though? We now know the format that they'll release Sin of Damnation, Wolf King and others in soon. If they get the audio treatment too (Wolf King at least will with HH48), things are looking good.

[Kelborn]

Latest White Dwarf mentions a release on the 25th of November in Germany.

 

Did someone picked it up by now and could share his or her thoughts on it? :)

[Xin Ceithan]

To be honest, I did pick this up but could not put in more than a quick leaf through just yet.

The Zheng Cypher is a nice, quick Mechanicum vs Tyranids read.

Extinction reminded me to brush up my Nostraman even if it isn't about Night Lords per se. Legion Wars stuff is always nice.

There is at least one story from the Tau and Eldar perspective.

All in all, I feel it is indeed aimed at giving the major players from the 40 k setting something to do and encourage people new to the setting to see what they like and expand from there. Haven't started Crusade actual, but the short stories seem overall quite decent and fun. As has been said above, at the price given, I feel it is a decent buy if you are looking to spend some time with tales from the 41st millennium.

 

 

And I just noticed I misspelled Anthology. Badly. Ouch.

[Roomsky]

I'm about halfway through Crusade, not especially impressed so far but it isn't bad. Clarke's prose is more imaginative than Haley's and I like his Ultramarines, a good blend of ritual and flexibility. On the other hand its basically been one long action sequence up til now, none of the Ultras are very distinct from one-another and I dislike his Death Guard; they seem like caricatures who aren't even especially gross. I guess my main issue so far is a lack of atmosphere, for a book featuring Plague Marines everything feels oddly sterile.

 

Not finished yet of course. Will reserve proper judgment `til then. 

 

Also reread The Lightning Tower first. I'm happy to report it's still great.

[JH79]

for a book featuring Plague Marines everything feels oddly sterile.

I was struggling to find the right word re the cover art when i first saw this drop a few weeks ago... but there it is, sterile.

[Roomsky]

So yeah, I wouldn't recommend anyone pick this up just for Crusade. I'll give it to Andy Clark for at least making such a flat tale readable, but that's about it. All the Ultramarines are the same person, all the Deathguard are the same person, the Eldar is standard smug opaque lady and the Cadian is standard happy-to-be-fodder guy. There are no interesting character interactions, no real themes and certainly no building of tension or atmosphere. The Deathguard were the worst offenders, switch a few adjectives around and they could have been any enemy force. The story is exactly what newbies to the IP think its like, all bolters and machismo, and I'm kind of horrified they chose this as their first impression for new readers.

 

That said, if the dead-tree collectors among us don't have the other stories on display here already, its probably still worth a buy. Some damn fine shorts after the initial let-down.