HH 53: Titan Death by Guy Haley

[DarkChaplain]

I noticed we didn't have a dedicated thread for this one yet. Guy Haley was recently interviewed for GW's Youtube channel and spilled a bunch of details about the book.

 

 

Blurb translation from the German Amazon listing:

 

 

Horus has gathered his armada and defeated everyone his enemies have sent against him, even the Emperor's Executioner. Yet one obstacle remains before he can strike against Terra and turn the Emperor's dream to ashes.

The Beta-Garmon-System lies on the most direct and only usable route into the Sol-System. To overcome it, Horus gathers his host of unfathomable dimensions, including countless Titans. A defeat here would mean the end of the war and Horus is not planning to turn back. The Imperium has also grasped the meaning of Beta-Garmon, however. A giant force of countless bands of Imperial Army and their own share of Titans is supposed to challenge the Warmaster's forces here.

A conflict ensues the likes of which the Imperium's Civil War has not yet experienced, a fight of Titans and a wold-shattering battle, which will decide over the next phase of the war

 

A bit blunt in places, but it should suffice until BL puts it up for the Coming Soon section (which, sadly, hasn't happened for November, it seems, so December seems more likely) or the english preorder appears on Amazon.

 

There are a bunch of juicy pieces in Guy's interview, like his passion for Coco Pops....

 

[Mellow]

Sounds like it’s going to be Tallarn but with Titans instead of tanks.

 

I really hope it’s a good one but if it’s just filler to make the HH series get to 60 books I won’t be pleased.

[R_F_D]

 

A bit blunt in places, but it should suffice until BL puts it up for the Coming Soon section (which, sadly, hasn't happened for November, it seems, so December seems more likely) or the english preorder appears on Amazon.

 

There are a bunch of juicy pieces in Guy's interview, like his passion for Coco Pops....

 

Just to say it's confirmed in the interview that it is being released in December but wouldn't be surprised to see it at the Weekender.

[Charlo]

Sounds like it’s going to be Tallarn but with Titans instead of tanks.

 

I really hope it’s a good one but if it’s just filler to make the HH series get to 60 books I won’t be pleased.

 

Considering the "Titan-Death" has been hyped up at lot, I think it's going to be very important and have major ramifications for the SoT.

 

Obviously Horus "wins" here, so he can make the break for Terra but I'm guessing the losses on both sides are going to be pretty insane!

[DarkChaplain]

Sounds like it’s going to be Tallarn but with Titans instead of tanks.

 

I really hope it’s a good one but if it’s just filler to make the HH series get to 60 books I won’t be pleased.

 

"Filler", as in "the major gateway event that we've heard so much about for years, has been referenced in countless novels and short stories and shows the final pre-Terra gambit of the loyalists to ward off Horus"? Something that ForgeWorld was going to cover exclusively to the dismay of most fans, before commissioning it on relatively short notice due to high demand?

 

My biggest annoyance with it is that they commissioned it so late, that Slaves to Darkness is out today and set after Titan Death, chronologically, so we get a glimpse of the results before the actual events leading to them

[Marshal Rohr]

It’s frustrating they are giving something so important to Guy Haley

[DarkChaplain]

Yeah, I, too, dislike that they gave a key event to one of the best writers in their stable...

[DukeLeto69]

I think Guy Haley is pretty solid if perhaps not top tier (for me that is Abnett, ADB, Wraight for you that list might be different).

 

As @DC says, there was a lot of disappointment when we thought Beta Garmon was only going to be covered in the Adeptus Titanicus game (rumoured big black book) and clearly BL and FW decided it did need a novel. Because of that it is being released out of chronological order which is a shame.

 

There must have been commercial reasons why they decided not to delay Slaves of Darkness until after Titandeath came out I guess?

[Mellow]

I’m pretty happy with Guy Haley’s quality.

 

What do you mean out of chronological order? Surely Horus recovering from Russ’ spear is before he attacks Beta Garmon?

[DarkChaplain]

Probably because Slaves to Darkness was already announced with commissioned artwork and (seeing how soon it was pre-released at events) off to the printers by the time they even got to announce Titan Death. Seeing how they're throwing in Heralds of the Siege before Titan Death, I'd not be surprised if November (event pre-release)/December was the earliest they could get the print of Titan Death out the door.

 

At best, they might've been able to switch Heralds of the Siege with Slaves to Darkness, but I can already hear the moaning and groaning about an anthology following on from the Salamanders anthology and how 2018 HH releases suck.. Especially with Slaves to Darkness likely needing to be pushed to January or February, but then there's The Buried Dagger releasing in that window, with a possible Christmas ePremiere or somesuch....

So basically, they'd have had a gap during the summer window, where right now they have one of the most exciting releases of the year right when many folks are heading off on vacation and look for books to fill their time off.

Then there are factors of storage, seeing how the print run needed to be done early enough for pre-releases and the likes, and sitting on a pile of products for another 6-8 months isn't a good thing...

 

I just hope this comes as a bit of a lesson that they ought not to be overly reliant on ForgeWorld to tell the story. There've been a bunch of characters now where I, personally, have felt pretty out of the loop because they are almost exclusively covered in the Black Books, for example, and putting a major battle of the end stages into those, without being depicted in the novel series that started it all? Bad form, especially with how long the production times for the Black Books are over at FW (and worse so now, with Alan gone).

 

Actually just checked Twitter and it looks like Guy "finished" the novel on May 30, outside of some polishing and probably editor stuff.

 

 

I’m pretty happy with Guy Haley’s quality.

What do you mean out of chronological order? Surely Horus recovering from Russ’ spear is before he attacks Beta Garmon?

 

Slaves to Darkness is set right after the victory at Beta-Garmon from Titan Death, and just before the Siege kicks off. It actually starts with Horus being in really, really bad shape in chapter one, so he's evidently not leaving Titan Death unscathed.

[bluntblade]

I still just wish the two had been merged, with Russ in command on Beta-Garmon.

[DukeLeto69]

As I only buy HH in MMPB it will be some time until I get these but assuming I can be patient then I will read Titan Death first and Slaves to Darkness after.

[Marshal Rohr]

Guy Haley is not a top tier writer. His books lack the soul I expect good 40k books to have. Instead of getting Master of Mankind or Know No Fear, Beta-Garmon will be a formulaic, paint by numbers. No culture will be explored, no organizational quirks, no languages. The universe doesn’t feel lived in when he writes.

[Rob P]

I'm not bothered about this book, because it feels like it will be 75 for the end of the Heresy rather than 60. A battle with a  bunch of titans that appears to be a necessary step to satisfy the lore just feels like a drag. I want the big stuff on Terra to happen now that we are so close to it.

 

I'm a little confused about the explanation for the out of chronological sequence nature of the story. We've had a number of out of sequence stories in the heresy in the past with no obvious explanation.

 

I'm not a fan of Guy Haley's descriptive writing as I find it overly intrusive and distracting. It isn't pleasurable either in that you have to really concentrate to follow it.

 

I'm also confused about what's going on with Horus.

 

The chronological sequence is Wolfsbane > Titan Death > Slaves to Darkness.

 

We know Horus is hurt in Wolfsbane, but no big details in that book.

 

The blurb for 'Slaves to Darkness says: 'But Horus lies wounded and as the greatest battle the galaxy has ever know looms, it is up to Maloghurst to hold his fractious Legion together and to wrench Horus himself from the edge of oblivion.

 

So is this the wounding from Wolsbane and we have a backseat driving Horus in Titan Death or is he injured again there? - suggesting that the Vengeful Spirit uber-gold sonic- super saiyan Horus thing is underwhelming.

 

Other than Perturabo and Mortarion have all the traitor primarchs peaked too early in terms of character development?

[Izlude]

Psyched for this one espcially with Adeptus Titanicus around the corner which I will get as well. My Holy Trinty has always been Abnett, ABD and French. Wraight is def not far behind.

 

Guy is a relatively new comer compared to my three but he is up there for me. Pharos was awesome if not touching with his awesome hummies and the Polux/Dantoich bromance is my favorite duo. IMO he saved the Beast series with the last book that not only did good damage control but was a good book. I loved his Dark Imperium and look forward to the second later. Totally get different strokes for diferent folks but glad he has this one it will be in good hands.

[Roomsky]

More and more of late I've found there's not a whole lot to Haley's books. He's certainly good at putting the band-aid on strange situations or lore hiccups, but I honestly haven't been overly fond of anything by him since he started pumping out 300 books a year. They often read as slightly undercooked to me, like he could have used that last go-over of the prose. Baneblade, for instance, surprised me at how much better it read than something like Wolfsbane. The characters made sense, the prose was snappy, and the action was fairly intense. All that said, I agree with Marshal Rohr's assessment at a lack of soul, his books are often not really about anything, beyond a fun action piece. Certainly I can;t blame him for such, but they aren;t really for me.

 

All that said, I don;t mind his human characters at all. If we get an on-the-ground look at Beta-Garmon, and a demonstration of Horus' influence on a battlefield just by being there, it could turn out alright.

[b1soul]

Haley is a solid work horse writer. He's like a more consistent McNeill.

 

Stuff he writes is generally OK to quite good. Nothing by him really makes me go wow

 

That said, he's much better than Kyme, Swallow, Thorpe and the like

[TheRealMcCagh]

Slaves to Darkness covers what is going on with Horus' wound. It's mentioned relatively early on and explained in further detail by Lorgar (assuming Lorgar knows what he is talking about).

 

In the interview Haley says Sanguinius is given command at Beta-Garmon, and even he is overwhelmed by the logistics involved. I'm all for more Sanguinius, but it seems like a strange choice.

[DarkChaplain]

Guy Haley is not a top tier writer. His books lack the soul I expect good 40k books to have. Instead of getting Master of Mankind or Know No Fear, Beta-Garmon will be a formulaic, paint by numbers. No culture will be explored, no organizational quirks, no languages. The universe doesn’t feel lived in when he writes.

 

I'll just assume you've only read his HH work, and not Baneblade, Shadowsword, his original novels and novellas, The Last Days of Ector, Valedor, Death of Integrity, his Red Sunz stories, Perturabo, Dark Imperium, Dante, The Devastation of Baal, Skarsnik, The Glorious Tomb, The Eternal Crusader, The Laurel of Defiance, etc....

Heck, Perturabo, Dante, Death of Integrity, Ector, Baneblade, The Eternal Crusader... They ALL dripped culture from the faction involved.

 

DoI managed to juggle TWO contrasting Chapters and the Mechanicus, all through the lens of a Space Hulk, with related shorts showing burial rights of one and Blood Drinkers doing their thing. Baneblade had so much good stuff about the civilian situation on a world at war, and the circumstances of common tankers, and what drove them to enlist. Skarsnik literally explored the life of a goblin from the earliest point, showing greenskin society in a way nothing else had before or since. Dante had to build so much of the Blood Angels culture from the ground up, because before Haley and Hinsk got to tackle Dante and Mephiston respectively, they didn't even have a name for their Chapter's fortress monastery. It went a long way to showcase the way life on Baal works, the selection process for the Chapter, the experiences with the Thirst and Rage, the present and past of the Blood Angels, and Devastation of Baal did even more of that.

 

If a story that literally kicks off with a father abusing his dense son and getting scolded by his mother in law for it, then going to sell necessities in a town on Baal and suddenly seeing a Space Marine right in front of him in the middle of a busy market doesn't feel "lived in", I don't even know anymore. Dante started with a father talking about the stars and local superstition to his son, while his wife is giving birth / dying, which impacted a lot of the boy's progress throughout. Perturabo showed us the culture of Olympia and explored Perturabo as a character that makes sense and challenged him, but also made him a creation of his environment.

 

And that's just sticking with BL fiction since the mods don't like talking about the authors' original work. I've read it, and can tell you that whether it is a scientific base on Mars or a completely alien planet, or a post-apocalyptic future-medieval zombie setting, he makes those places feel lived in.

 

Frankly, I find it strange that your contrasting examples would include Master of Mankind, considering that it has a very limited scope, doesn't show much of Terra as a whole, and focuses heavily on a handful of characters.

[Marshal Rohr]

Perturabo reads like fan fiction. I don’t know what else to tell you. I don’t read 40k novels anymore, outside of the Black Legion series.

[Apothecary Vaddon]

Weird, he's older than I thought he was

[mc warhammer]

perturabo made me a haley fan. there’s very few BL books that are as psychologically interesting and powerful

[Tarvek Val]

Perturabo reads like fan fiction. I don’t know what else to tell you. I don’t read 40k novels anymore, outside of the Black Legion series.

 

I will agree with you that there were parts of Perturabo that I felt could have been written in a more engaging and professional form, but at the same time I can appreciate that Haley was trying to write the book in a new and interesting way.

 

With any series, it's super easy to fall into a cookie-cutter style of writing - "Primarch X crash lands on Homeward Y, Primarch X faces such-and-such challenges, Primarch X finds a new home / family (or doesn't), the Emperor shows up to whisk Primarch X into the Great Crusade".

 

That would become boring and predictable by the second book, as no one wants to read the same story over and over again. Thus, I enjoyed the multiple-timeline approach Haley used by comparing the past and present versions of Perturabo. I think that the character development in the story could have been expanded, but I at least feel like Perturabo is a real human being capable of feeling emotion and regret, whereas his traditional portrayal (especially in the early stages of the Heresy) is just as a homicidal maniac who will sacrifice any number of troops to achieve victory.

 

Sideline comments aside,

I am incredibly excited for Titan Death. I have always loved reading about the battle engines of the Titan Legios - Titanicus is one of my favorite BL books to this day! I hope that the book does them justice, and I certainly do hope to see the Dies Irae getting into the thick of the carnage!

[MrDarth151]

Haley is a mixed bag for me. I think he does good character work, which is why my favourite novel of his is Dante, but I also think Beta Garmon is not a good fit for him, because when it comes to large scale action, he rather consistently underwhelmed me.

 

I think he does fine on a smaller scale, but this isn't a smaller scale. This is as big as we ever going to get, possibly bigger in scale than the Siege, and I don't really believe Haley has what it takes to carry the book through action alone.

 

It might be good, it might be bad, I'm certainly not waiting for it with bated breath.

 

I also have no emotional investment in Beta Garmon. It's a battle that's put in because it would be cool. There is no particular reason to cover it, and I actually agreed with the previous decision to relegate it to FW HH books, because that is a format that simply fits it better. And there is another thing: I have no investment in the tired formula. This battle is going to go as every other battle in HH does. There will be no surprising twists and turns.

 

A desperate Imperial defence that is eventually overwhelmed, but inflicts some casualties, while suffering bigger in return. The only question mark is how badly Imperials will lose this time, and how contrived Chaos eventual certain victory will be.

 

It has become trite. A conflict I have no investment in, is no conflict worth reading about.

[Sons of Horus]

I wish instead of having Russ leave Terra to engage Horus in orbit, he just ended up leading the loyalist forces on Beta-Garmon instead. It's mentioned in the interview that Sanguinius will lead the loyalists and he finds the logistics difficult to deal with however, I feel like this doesn't really make sense as a limitation for a primarch's mental abilities, but in any case I would believe Russ having difficulty over Sanguinius (biased opinion but meh). Ideally I would have never put Russ back on Terra in the first place but I feel like this would've been a good opportunity to fix that instead of the mess that was Wolfsbane.