HH 51 - Slaves to Darkness

[Kelborn]

What of Haley or MacNiven? ;)

[Sothalor]

If Haley's output is any indication, he's gone and written drafts of everything leading up to and including the conclusion of the series and started outlining the first eight books of The Scouring.

[Mellow]

The newer authors are certainly faster at producing novels than the ones that have been around the block a few times.

[hopkins]

thing is, the likes of swallow, mcneill and abnett have other commitments too

 

adb is excused though. dude can take as long as he likes

[MrDarth151]

The newer authors are certainly faster at producing novels than the ones that have been around the block a few times.

 

That's only to be expected. You can burn out writing anything, and tie-in stories for the universe you have limited control of faster than most.

 

I mean, Abnett wrote at a similar pace to Haley when he started. Wait a little bit, and the cycle will repeat.

 

Edit: And the same goes for reading it.

[DarkChaplain]

They're all putting out non-BL stuff these days on top of their BL commitments. Graham also has a "dayjob" now at Riot, for which he moved to the US a few years back (which also played into the delays on The Crimson King). James puts out a bunch of audios for various Scifi series as well, and Dan does comics.

 

Haley does his own stuff, as does Josh Reynolds, though at a bit of a slower pace. I've read most of Haley's non-BL output and it is playing right to his strengths, and Josh's Royal Occultist stories are a delight (and a bunch of them are free). But for both, BL is probably still the most lucrative and easiest to make work. They don't need to do their own marketing, don't need to appeal to publishers, don't have the nagging doubts of "what if it doesn't sell". 40k especially is a pretty steady stream of income at this point.

 

Unlike Dan or James, they don't have reached the same heights on name recognition alone, which nails a lot of offers. Heck, Haley got particularly unlucky with Tor.com's novella output, as his Dreaming Cities stories were basically canceled after the second entry (though he intends to continue it solo, thankfully, as they were great). For the newer authors, things are still an uphill battle in the wider market, while the older authors may have attained more prestige, or more importantly, made plenty of connections. James wrote on Deus Ex, with two tie-in novels and the likes! Dan wrote a Tomb Raider tie-in with Nik and got a writing spot for Alien: Isolation! Gav got involved in the Deathwing game writing process, too, and has a lot of stuff going on in the wider tabletop world.

 

The older authors can more easily afford passing up opportunities at Black Library in favor of more "exciting", relatively exclusive commissions. But just because they don't do as much BL these days, that doesn't necessarily mean they're not writing much in terms of volume.

[DukeLeto69]

Yeah that ^ @DC

 

Dan Abnett has ALWAYS written for other publishers alongside Black Library and, as I am sure most folks know, had a very successful comic writing career before writing a single word for BL.

 

James Swallow has hit pretty big with his original (Ie not tie in ficton) thriller series having earned his chops writing for a wide range of different tie in universes such as Star Trek.

 

All these guys need to earn a living by going where the pay check is (not saying they don't make decisions on personal interest and artistic challenge etc but they all got rent to pay too). Doing that allows them to also explore personal projects where the pay check doesn't really matter.

 

Have also read plenty of interviews with Dan Abnett where he says that he NEEDS to be working for lots of different publishers and IPs etc to enable him to stay fresh. He likes writing one thing in the morning and another in the afternoon to avoid burn out. He likes working concurrently on different projects and switching between novels, short fiction and comic books to keep his creativity alive.

[godking]

Bought and finished Slaves to darkness today.

 

I liked it.

 

1 I liked how resources and the management of resources are actually touched upon the Iron Warriors had to be careful of expending  ammunition for years

 

2 Loved the fight between Perturabo and Angron Logic and discipline beating savagery

 

This book also nicely cleared up a lot of loose threads

[DarkChaplain]

I just started it and already found a strange issue in the prologue: Horus and Malcador converse on the eve of the triumph at Ullanor, just before Horus officially accepts his title as Warmaster. But just before that, there's a reference to Loken telling the "I was there" story and all that. Unless there are other stories in which Horus slew something, it seems strange, considering the Triumph was around 2 years prior to that particular campaign from Horus Rising.

 

Anybody got an explanation for this one, or is it a genuine oversight?

[TheRealMcCagh]

I just started it and already found a strange issue in the prologue: Horus and Malcador converse on the eve of the triumph at Ullanor, just before Horus officially accepts his title as Warmaster. But just before that, there's a reference to Loken telling the "I was there" story and all that. Unless there are other stories in which Horus slew something, it seems strange, considering the Triumph was around 2 years prior to that particular campaign from Horus Rising.

 

Anybody got an explanation for this one, or is it a genuine oversight?

Horus has probably killed lots of things. And we don't know if that was Loken. Maybe that's a common intro to Cthonian tales? Otherwise, yeah, big proofreading error

[Pathstrider]

Overall, I quite liked it - it was probably a little "busy" with too many characters and not enough depth but I enjoyed it well enough

 

 

1 I liked how resources and the management of resources are actually touched upon the Iron Warriors had to be careful of expending  ammunition for years

 

This actually annoyed me a little bit - supply lines are almost never mentioned in 40k, yet we are lead to believe that the Legions that would care about it the most (the Iron Warriors) have to worry about it where others who wouldn't give a damn (Emperor's Children and World Eaters) don't have to worry about it.

[Brother Dimetrius]

Finished it. Good stuff. Will not post spoilers as I think we should give people some time to read it for themselves.

 

Stand out part for me was the one scene with Kârn. Just a few sentences, and it perfectly captured what the World Eaters have become at this point, and why.

[Marshal Loss]

After Wolfsbane, which I found to be a huge disappointment, Slaves to Darkness was brilliant. Can't recommend enough. So much happens in this novel, I echo other responses: don't spoil this one, read it for yourself. There are some things I'd like to discuss, but I had such a great time reading it, I don't want to be the one who steals these experiences from others.

 

All I'll say is...

 

 

For Horus/Sons of Horus fanboys (!!!), this is the book you have been waiting for. Perturabo (perhaps the best look at the IW in the entire HH series) also gets his time to shine. Overall, very impressed with how French managed to fit in so many themes and plots into a single book. Very well done, and one of the best HH novels of all time, in my opinion. Up there with the greats.

 

I'd really like to see French do more on the Word Bearers after this as well. His style gels well with them.

[bluntblade]

DC, there is the Wolf of Ash and Fire battle in which Horus helps the Emperor take down that massive Warboss. Maybe the reference is to that? Or it's referring to Ulla Ulla himself.

[Sandlemad]

Yeah this is good stuff. Surprised by how good a showing Perturabo gets, bit just when facing Angron but in the whole book.

 

The afterword in particular is good too, succinctly gets across the nature of chaos.

[Morovir]

I'm genuinely impressed at the portrayal of Perturabo - far better than French's portrayals in The Crimson Fist and Tallarn.

 

I also feel that it is this book rather than Ruinstorm that really sums up why the Ultramarines are late to Terra.

[ZebraM]

Really really good book but golly gee is Alpharius doing.

[bluntblade]

Depends just who you mean by Alpharius

[Fire Golem]

Was debating the hardback, but from what people have said here I didn’t want to wait a week, so I got the ebook.

[godking]

Overall, I quite liked it - it was probably a little "busy" with too many characters and not enough depth but I enjoyed it well enough

 

 

1 I liked how resources and the management of resources are actually touched upon the Iron Warriors had to be careful of expending  ammunition for years

 

This actually annoyed me a little bit - supply lines are almost never mentioned in 40k, yet we are lead to believe that the Legions that would care about it the most (the Iron Warriors) have to worry about it where others who wouldn't give a damn (Emperor's Children and World Eaters) don't have to worry about it.

The world eaters did have a whole mechanicum planet supplying them.

 

Agreed about the emperors children they should be scrapping for resources at this moment in time.

[Mellow]

Nonsense. They produce their resources with feelings.

[DarkChaplain]

Keep in mind that the Emperor's Children were pretty deranged every since at the very least Iydris, and have always been more close combat focused than the Iron Warriors with their big guns. Angel Exterminatus made it pretty obvious that they're becoming madmen that rush into the fray. Sonic weaponry also doesn't appear to use ammunition as a bolter would. They're also more indiscriminate with their raiding, and already splintered into more of their warband presence they'd have post-Heresy.

 

It makes a degree of sense that the Iron Warriors would be pretty spent now, seeing how they've waged A LOT of draining campaigns up until the Heresy, lost their home planet to rebellion, then got more tough jobs from Horus, took massive losses at Phall against the Imperial Fists, and ended up being abandoned by Fulgrim and co before launching assaults on Tallarn and surrounding systems. Tallarn took them around a year before Horus recalled him. And now, they're stated to have been defending against Loyalists for about half a year with resources running short, while anticipating the arrival of the Ultramarines especially.

 

Of course the Iron Warriors would be painfully aware that they're going to run dry at some point if the meatgrinder remains that unrelenting. They appear to have been grinding themselves into the ground for almost the entire Heresy with little chance to stop and resupply.

[bluntblade]

Horus mentioned the outer rings of Dorn's defences comprising a hundred worlds, with the clear implication being that the IVth and XVIth would be the main forces involved in breaking them.

 

Though it's noted in Extermination that Perturabo built an empire to supply the Iron Warriors as the Insurrection began.

[DarkChaplain]

Curious error in the audiobook: Jonathan Keeble is incredibly inconsistent with his pronunciations in general this time, but the "Trisagion", one of the three Abyss-class ships Lorgar built, is called "Trisaion" or similar, while the book itself has it spelled correctly.

 

It happened every time it was mentioned so far. Outside of that, Keeble also calls Colchis "Colkis" in places, which seems especially strange since he narrated the Lorgar Primarchs novel, in which the name was ubiquitous and pronounced correctly... So beware if you're listening to the audiobook, this ship's one of the big ones from Betrayer, not a new vessel.

 

They're minor nitpicks, and solely related to the audiobook edition, but it really makes me wish some of the other narrators back asap. Not having Gareth Armstrong for Wolfsbane, when he did an excellent job with Prospero Burns, was almost a crime, but Keeble's work in Ruinstorm was pretty borderline as well. I don't know, I wish they'd bring John Banks, Armstrong and Toby Longworth back in for the HH audiobooks asap. Keeble may be the go-to Heresy narrator due to how many of them he's done by now, but I think he doesn't bring the same gravitas to the table as others might, especially when it comes to Primarch-heavy stories. Having consistency errors with name pronunciation is just the cherry on top by that point (man, how many different versions of Roboute or Guilliman have we had by now?)

[Apothecary Vaddon]

Having read this and Wolfsbane, the two are a nice duology, loved Wolfsbane and enjoyed Slaves To Darkness too. 

I wanna say that Omegon...left the traitor boy band at the end, hence the breaking of the blade and not bringing anyone to the Ullanor muster, which was cool to read.

Also not having read much of the FW material I was sure that Layak was going to end up being Narek, but they're separate characters.