Ashes of Prospero: discussion (spoilers)

[mactire]

Oh, I'm so hoping Grimmnar or a returning Russ says to Guilliman " nah you can hang on to the big tall fella's, we got 13th company back so were sorted for replacements".

 

We be rocking MKiii not MKx.

[Aenar Deathclaws]

I don't think that it'll happen but

 

If the 13th makes it to the Fang, we'll see the rebirth of the 13th Great Company of the Space Wolves. And that'll be very cool

 

I have a friend on an other forum who has read the book and finds it very good even if it's a bit too short as I said. And he's not a SW fan like me.

 

And he did love the way Lukas is described. I'll buy the book on him in february for sure.

 

I have lend my book to other friends and I'm waiting for their opinion on the book. But i'm confident.

 

Read the book when he's out.

[Roomsky]

Anyone pick this up now that it's widely available? I've been warming up to Thorpe's stuff lately, how is it?

[kamedake88]

@Roomsky, I finished it a couple of days ago and I am still pissed I wasted money on it. I don't know why I keep reading things written by Thorpe. I would have thought the Dark Angels trilogy would have tought me a lesson but I ignored it. I suppose it's because Black Library keeps giving him interesting bits of lore to flesh out. I've met Gav and he's a swell bloke really, but I think he is too prolific for his own good in working for GW. I don't know if the grind of being an author of his ilk is getting to him but a sort of tedium is becoming more apparent with each subsequent work. Perhaps a sabbatical for him is in order. 

 

As for the book itself, I got the ebook for what... $11.99 I think and it was way too expensive from a cost analysis prospective. The novel is generic, rushed drivel with wood stand-ins for actual characters. 3/4^th of the plot is uninteresting build-up of why Njal undertakes his mission with the obligatory "things go BOOM" filler to stretch page count. If you get a rise out of reading significant names applied to "generic fictional large man who has large canines, and armor modified as to lick his own crotch #127" then by all means pick it up or read the following sentence.

Njal finds Bulve eye and the 13th company or what remains of it... fin.

My rating of it is: I'd rather have this novel then heart disease fuel from McWhopperBox /10. Then again it's 6 or so hours I could have spent working out. So the money would have been better spent on a day pass at my local gym. Edited March 4, 2018 by kamedake88

[b1soul]

Thorpe's writing style is tolerable at best...but it is straightforward and eaaily digested by younger readers I think.

 

 

I also think Gav seems like a very nice fellow, but his prose really suits codex writing more than novel writing.

[Xisor]

Good grief. Someone slipped some pain enhancer on those wounds.

 

----

 

I read it a while back. I thought it was a really neat story. Low-key for being monumental, it gave plenty of insights into a whole lot of aspects of Fenris et al. I'm very fond of Gav's writing these days, far more engaging and a lot less... wet than many authors.

 

The journey aboard the ship itself was one of my favourite sequences of recent times.

 

In all, I think it takes on the tone of an odd adventure story - a wizard collecting a ragtag band of misfits to go on a voyage of no small importance into the unknown and face monsters of their own history.

 

I enjoyed it a lot.

[Rob P]

A Brief review of Ashes of Prospero - I think it's reasonably spoiler free.

 

I'm going to preface this by saying that I don't particularly like the Space Wolves. This is a culmination of reading various novels where the authors do a good job of showing both sides to the Space Wolves. They are honourable and heroic but they also ooze hubris and often have egotistical certainty in their actions.

I found this book difficult to review because there is a massive amount of things I liked and an equal amount of things I didn't like.

It''s set in the Dark Imperium era and the setting appears to follow on from the events in Warzone Fenris (which I haven't read).

I'll throw out the Black Library blurb as the amazon one contains different information and typos:

The grand halls of Fenris grow ever quieter following arduous campaigns. Concerned by his Chapter’s diminishing numbers, the Great Wolf Logan Grimnar entrusts Njal Stormcaller to uncover the remedy of their plight. When a 10,000-year-old enemy embeds itself in the Rune Priest’s mind, it claims the salvation he seeks lies where it all began. On Prospero. Alongside an eclectic company of injured Space Wolves, Thralls and a Trickster who is more hindrance than help, the Stormcaller sets forth. But it soon becomes apparent that greater mechanisms are at work. It is no longer only the Sons of Russ’ fate at stake, but the entire Imperium.

I felt that the tone was not quite what I was expecting, the writing was uneven and the pace was not quite right.

Let's start with the tone. The book has Lukas Trickster in it (I don't consider this a massive spoiler as is says as much in the the blurb). This sets the tone of the book. It's quite cartoon-like rather than, say, the Horus Heresy which feels grandiose with an undercurrent of being serious. There is nothing wrong with this, because 40k is often done this way (Think Space Wolf versus Wolf King), but I didn't particularly expect it or want it. It was insufficiently dark. Also, there were a couple of scenes that felt too staged - think the Crazy 88 scene from Kill Bill.

Next is the writing. When I say it's uneven, I might be using the wrong word. I liked a lot of the dialogue and some of the hints at more from the characters that didn't quite make it to the page. There were a couple of fighting scenes that I really enjoyed because they were focusses on the combatants rather than the fight as a whole. And, in case I forget to say it later, I enjoyed what I considered to be plot A which was the relationship between Njal and the '10,000-year-old enemy'. I was incredibly satisfied with how that ended.

There were two main issues I had. The first is that I found a lot of the combat scenes boring to the point I was practically skipping over them. I didn't care for the overall context of a lot of the fights. In defence of the action, it's standard fare for this sort of action in 40k. As mentioned above I engage a lot better when the action is the background to what the characters are doing rather than at the forefront. I also found a lot of the descriptive paragraphs said a lot more than I needed. For example, there is a scene where some of the characters go in a port tower and the inside is described in some detail and I was internally screaming for the story to move on. I just didn't care.

The second issue was how some of the characters behaved. Lukas just does not work for me - though I though his big scene was excellent. Also there were some early bits with Njal where he 'goes to mum and she says no, so he asks dad' and it felt like that rather than something else.

In terms of the pacing I felt the first 1/3 took too long to set the story up or that it lacked sufficient content to justify taking so long to set the story up. Once that was overcome it felt that the pacing really sped up and get into a groove. I'm surprised that the book is 350 pages as it felt like it was a lot shorter, hence I felt I was losing pages on not a lot happening.

In terms of plot, as I said above I was happy with the conclusion of the 'Njal  and the Enemy' story. Some people might be disappointed if they wanted something bigger than the story from the story (e.g. a massive shift for the Space Wolves into the Dark Imperium) - though there is something of a smaller change to the universe by the end of the book. The big unknown threat hinted at in the blurb comes a bit too late to really have a punch. That didn't bother me too much but I think it was a misstep in placing it in the blurb.

Overall it fits well into the theme of Conquests (aka Space Marine Battles 2). It has some nice plot points and it has a LOT of action.