Multiple author series

[Knockagh]

The primarchs, Horus Heresy and The Beast Arises are all series’s that beg you to collect them all. They appeal to (for me at least) the need to completely read and absorb the totality of the tale being told. The problem I’m having as these series’s grow is the inevitability that I will be forced to buy authors I really dislike the works of.

Most series’s both inside 40k and outside are single author. The author more than the story is what attracts me to the books. I will read anything by my favourite authors. I know a good Abnett, ADB or Gav Thorpe will have me salivating for each release.

Unfortunately I find myself being really let down mid series by authors I would never read in a month of Sunday’s. I’m all for trying new authors and that’s something I should probably do more of but buying books I know I won’t like just to complete a series on a shelf is surely a sign of madness. They could ask Donald Duck to write a book in one of these series and I would buy it for completeness.

Do people out there enjoy multiple author series’s or would you prefer a single author saga like Gaunts Ghosts?

From BLs point of view I can see the logic, they can market, promote and sell high volume through using multiple authors were single authors producing a larger variety of series’s will be slower to release storylines and will need multiple marketing campaigns.

But I for one am getting a little fed up with multiple authors. Author preference is a personal thing and books are a thing we invest a lot of time in. I’m less and less inclined to give up reading time to read authors I know I won’t enjoy. Allowing poorer authors to essentially piggyback on the coat tails of more gifted individuals (personal preference of course) single author series’s would allow the readers to choose.

What people thoughts, multi author, good or bad?

[DukeLeto69]

I totally get what you are saying. Multiple author series does, in some ways, exploit the collector or completist that are attracted to this hobby in the first place. I have all the HH in MMPB (and sticking to that because, for weird OCD reasons, I want the books to be uniform on my shelf) but there are several novels I have not read despite buying them.

 

However, this is also going to be a case of personal taste. Just because you or I do not like author X and prefer author Y doesn't mean another person will prefer the reverse.

 

Like most fan bases we are very vocal and pationate about our favourite IP. Some authors come in for more flak than others and at times it appears there is a consensus. However, like all things you can still find counter arguments and people who do confess to liking the work of specific authors.

 

In the case of HH the authors (with novels) who appear to receive the most flak are (in no order) Nick Kyme, David Annandale, James Swallow and Gav Thorpe (Ben Counter in the beginning but he is MIA). Yet there are people who love their books.

 

My favourite BL writer is Dan Abnett but there are people out there who really don't like his work and can't seem to forgive him for The Unremembered Empire or Prospero Burns (interestingly some cite that last book as one of the best in HH).

 

So I think (and hope) that multiple author series are an inevitability for BL as without them we will never get the expansion on the 10k years of history many of us crave. We just have to accept that we won't always get those series exclusively written by our favourite author or small cabal of favourite authors.

[Marshal Loss]

I think it's a situational but sometimes necessary evil. While the HH is indisputably bloated in places, and has suffered from poor vision and inconsistent themes from time to time, to do it (the war) on any real scale was always going to require that there were many different authors participating. The giant series we have been landed with has many flaws and some truly horrific entries, but for every entry so bad it makes me want to beat myself to death with a spoon, there's a really enjoyable novel to which I keep coming back time and time again.

 

The best series, at least in my experience however, are always done by a single author. There are some HH novels that I think are absolutely brilliant, but I would never rate the HH series as one of the best or most consistent in quality among those I have read. But I also like the opportunities to explore the setting that only a giant multi-author series can offer.

 

I never read The Beast Arises, so I can't comment on that.

[Knockagh]

I get what your saying but unfortunately that means we show to BL our preference is quantity over your quality? We will but any old crap if they market it correctly.

Yes we all want the history stories told but I don’t want them told badly. I would rather the Heresy series had been 20 high quality stories by their 3 or 4 top authors.

I think at the minute BL are in a position to learn lessons from the Heresy. The series took off on legs of its own unexpectedly and I get that this made it difficult to plan so we ended up with this rather unwieldy sort of series of very very wide quality tolerance.

BL can go two directions from what they have learned.

Direction one tells them we will buy any old crap that is marketed at the history delvers by any old author.

Or diection two tells them to limit the authors who deliver the series’s, making them necessarily smaller and higher quality. Lowering the author numbers would allow better collaboration between the authors and perphaps allow different styles to compliment each other rather than grate against each other.

Imagine a 10 book unification collaboration by Abnett and French, the scouring by ABD and Chris Wraight, the fall of the Eldar by Gav Thorpe and Andy Chambers and a 0 book collaboration lost somewhere else by Annandale and Kyme?

I think smaller teams working on smaller book runs placed over 3 to 4 years would be awesome.

BL seem reluctant to market their authors as individuals as though we should be fans of the genre rather than the storytellers, that is fan exploitation.

[DukeLeto69]

The Beast Arises was a flawed but ambitious experiment. With tighter editorial oversight and a little more breathing space for the authors it could have been brilliant. The problem was that too many of the books were being written concurrently and that resulted in some authors coming up with similar stories and plot points. That meant for the readers it became repetitive and some things became a little illogical.

 

However, BL should do it again. As I said, have longer production schedule to allow authors some room and editors time to review each novel to check the next novel is a logical continuation and perhaps have a slightly smaller/tighter group of authors.

[DukeLeto69]

@PP you say "I would rather the Heresy series had been 20 high quality stories by their 3 or 4 top authors."

 

I get that desire but back to my point, who decides who the 3 or 4 top authors are? Is that by sales figures? Is that by social media noise? Is that by good reads star rating?

 

You also need to take account of what the authors want to do. They are all freelance. They get commissioned but once at a certain level do have latitude to decide what they want to write about. ADB was pretty vocal and honest on B&C that he was burnt out on HH for a while. These creative people want to keep those creative muscles exercised by working on different things.

[Marshal Loss]

I don't purchase novels by authors I don't like, even in the HH series. I'll admit It is interesting to think of what the Heresy would have been like if done differently; more is not always better, I agree. And I mean, at the beginning, I was against the idea of the Heresy being covered at all, because I preferred the mystery (to some extent, I still do, although it's nice to have theories addressed from time to time). However, the usefulness of conjecture has its limits. Even authors whose works I think are rubbish have contributed, at times, important ideas that have then been built upon by superior writers into some of the best novels in the series.

 

Smaller teams (especially the two man duos you used as examples) also have a significant downside: things can go wrong. People move on. You're also asking authors who may not write quickly (e.g. ADB) to commit to a long-term schedule. Would Abnett and French want to do a 10 novel series together? I doubt it. The less people involved, the more you are at the mercy of circumstance. From a business perspective, that's too risky.

 

And ultimately, while we may dislike many of the entries in the series, there are many who do like them, and evidently there's enough demand to convince BL to keep giving these people contracts. We're a very small and not necessarily representative fraction of the community. The popularity of the juvenile Primaris lore rammed home the reality that I was no longer GW's target audience, if indeed I ever was.

[Knockagh]

@ML I agree forums are a bad place to gauge fan opinion. Yes the rise and popularity of primaris Marine lore was a suprise to me too and I felt they were a step away from BL fiction as I know it and love it but times change and it can’t stay my way forever.

I still believe small two or even one man series’s could be very successful and maintain a stricter quality and continuity than larger rushes series’s as DukeLeto points out re The beats arises. The Beast Arises for the rushed job it was, was indeed brilliant.

@DL I agree deciding on who are the ‘better’ authors is an impossible task without sales figures from books that are stand alone author works. If the series’s are short 10 (or even 5) books long I don’t see authors getting burned out as they did with HH. Much of the Heresy burnout came from the sheer volume of material from multiple sources. Also these small runs stretched out would give writers plenty of opportunity to develop their own storylines away from the history runs.

[mc warhammer]

i think even if some peeps got their hearts desire, be it a 10 book adb solo horus heresy or whatnot...it would still dissapoint. not a knock on any author but we all know that historically the strength of horus heresy lore was how little it was fleshed out, allowing it to speak to each individual reader's personal sense of awe and imagination and mystery. 

 

would i like a little more cohesion amongst the tiles? yep. less fat on the heresy meat? sure. stronger overall direction? 100%. but i also realise this is franchise fiction created to sell little soldiers. in that regard, it fares no worse, and actually, much better than a lot of others in that  field. 

[Roomsky]

See, I really don't have much a problem with it in the Heresy series, and I think if anything it's handled better there than in a series with more direction like TBA, precisely because I can skip entries. 

 

Now, The Beast Arises is good fun, and (mostly) had strong momentum to be sure, but I frankly despised The Hunt for Vulkan, and Watchers in Death wasn't much better. Too bad for me, though, you need every book or the series doesn't make sense. 

 

With the Heresy though, even with really explicit references you can skip the books you dislike with ease. This comes from due diligence of writers describing events in other books in such a way that services both completionists and piecemeal readers, they're described as just another event in the war. BL's entire range is about limited perspectives, and if you look at the Heresy as part of a setting rather than a series, you can read as much or as little as you want, because skipping books gives you the same experience as reading self-contained 40k books that dance around significant events. 

 

Take Molech, for example. When it is brought up in Slaves to Darkness, a completionist will appreciate a plot point being expanded upon. A selective reader, with the appropriate view of the setting, will instead be hearing again of mythical Molech. What's its deal, what happened there? Maloghurst gives some detail, but it just comes across as another event ripe for mystery. It's mentioned in the Primarchs series, in short stories, and now in a novel, but what really happened there? Now, if you've read VS you know the "truth", but if you skip that novel, it almost takes on the same mystique of the Heresy before it started being written about. We know the broad strokes, but not the details.

 

I'm sure many will find that an odd opinion, but at the very least the Heresy series is written in an open-ended, reverential tone that at the very least allows for such a mindset to be used. No such option exists while reading TBA. I like The Primarchs perhaps moreso because of this mindset, and while its a shame when an author you dislike gets a character you do, it can be easily skipped.

 

Things aren't perfect though, and if I had it my way, I probably wouldn't let any author have any legion for more than one book in the Heresy. So what if Kyme got the Sallies? Someone better may get them next time. ADB wrote some kickass Word Bearers, but why not see where someone else takes them? And with the same tone as the present series, readers could build up and easy collection that shows every legion, events covered in works they despised still alluded to by the whole.

 

So perhaps, I don't really support multiple author series so much as brandings. Give me a wide microsetting for TBA over the novel series any day. Let me keep my Sprawling HH over some tight narrative, at least when multiple authors are involved. Because there are authors I absolutely do not want to have making an "essential read" for an otherwise good set.

[b1soul]

who decides who the 3 or 4 top authors are? Is that by sales figures? Is that by social media noise? Is that by good reads star rating?

Sales figures would only be available to BL...but it's hard for me to believe that Abnett, ADB, Wraight, and (to a lesser degree) French are not the top authours from multiple perspectives

[mc warhammer]

i would imagine that sales comparisons between different author's books (or just different books) would also have to take into account other factors like distribution, timing, subject matter and the economy.

 

quality is subjective, but i also imagine BL aren't masochistic. if kyme keeps getting the salamanders to write- he mustn't be tanking the sales.

 

@roomsky, you're right. i've skipped about 50% of the HH with almost no damage to my experience (that i'm aware of). this forum helps fill in some plot gaps, but i feel like it would still be ok if i went it alone

[b1soul]

Yes, no doubt subject matter, along with other factors, also influence sales.

 

A macro-plot-moving Gav Thorpe novel about the return of Leman Russ to Imperium Nihilus would (probably) sell more than a self-contained ADB novel about the Navis Nobilite...even though, as a writer, ADB is leagues ahead of Thorpe IMO.

 

On Kyme's Sallies, I think you have to distinguish between HH and non-HH.

 

HH stuff sells...so Kyme's HH Sallies novels will sell OK to some extent.

 

As for 40K Sallies, haven't seen a Kyme novel in a while.

 

It's an issue of opportunity cost, I think. BL knows that if a Sallies novel by ADB would sell better than one by Kyme. But does ADB (or Wraight or French etc.) have capacity or interest to do it? What about internal politics. Since Sallies sales are presumably not terrible and Kyme might be more senior at BL, does Kyme have to be willing to give up the Sallies?

[DukeLeto69]

 

who decides who the 3 or 4 top authors are? Is that by sales figures? Is that by social media noise? Is that by good reads star rating?

Sales figures would only be available to BL...but it's hard for me to believe that Abnett, ADB, Wraight, and (to a lesser degree) French are not the top authours from multiple perspectives

I suspect we might all be surprised by sales figures by author when it comes to the HH (being a series where clearly there are folks like me buying books to complete the series regardless of author or subject matter). I believe the highest placed HH book on the New York Times Bestseller list was Fear To Tread by James Swallow. Now clearly a chart position is only an indicator of a peak in sales rather than overall long term sales but nonetheless I suspect many wouldn't have thought James Swallow would be the one to hold that accolade!

 

Also sales are not necessarily a reflection on quality, especially when it comes to HH which has a built in fanbase that likely guarantees a baseline of sales.

 

My favourite BL authors are Dan Abnett, Matthew Farrer and Peter Fehervari. IMO these guys are the best writers but that is partly also to do with the subject matter they tackle. However, I am pretty sure neither Farrer or Fehervari are big sellers (Abnett clearly is). So the quality vs quantity question is a thing!

 

Another of my favourite authors is ADB with some individual books that I totally love. However, the reason he isn't in my top three is not because of his writing but because of the subject matter he gravitates towards (pretty certain apart from Cadian Blood and MoM that all his books focus on Space Marines of various flavour).

 

So would I prefer a series written by Abnett, Farrer and Fahervari or would I want ADB instead of one of those? I simply do not know.

[b1soul]

On Swallow, as mentioned HH and subject matter (e.g. entrance of BA into the HH) affect sales no doubt.

 

I think it might be helpful to track Swallow's long-term sales per novel and then compare vs. novels by other authours of similar subject matter. Hard to control all the factors...but let's not kid ourselves here: it's crytal clear which authours have been producing the best quality.

[DukeLeto69]

On Swallow, as mentioned HH and subject matter (e.g. entrance of BA into the HH) affect sales no doubt.

I think it might be helpful to track Swallow's long-term sales per novel and then compare vs. novels by other authours of similar subject matter. Hard to control all the factors...but let's not kid ourselves here: it's crytal clear which authours have been producing the best quality.

If we are talking quality then while subjective I agree there will very likely be a pretty strong consensus across the fanbase as to who the top five are (I don't believe we would all agree a top three). As said though, I would be surprised if there is (always) a direct correlation between quality and quantity (sales) with W40K books (HH being slightly different as we have said). Even with 40k books the subject matter will play a big part in decision to purchase...

[b1soul]

Well, I think Wraight and ADB are definitely in the top 5

 

There's Abnett and French up there as well. Maybe some people think they're outside the top 5...not sure who would squeeze them out though.

 

Some might say Abnett and French are a bit less consistent, but they are certainly more consistent than the likes of McNeill, Kyme, Thorpe, Swallow, Annandale, Smilie, etc.

 

DukeLeto, who's in your top 5?

 

Mine would be (if I'm forced to rank):

 

1. Wraight/ADB

2. Abnett

3. French

4. Haley

 

I've heard good things about Josh Reynolds and Fehervari as well. I think Haley is my weak link

[Jareddm]

I suspect we might all be surprised by sales figures by author when it comes to the HH (being a series where clearly there are folks like me buying books to complete the series regardless of author or subject matter). I believe the highest placed HH book on the New York Times Bestseller list was Fear To Tread by James Swallow. Now clearly a chart position is only an indicator of a peak in sales rather than overall long term sales but nonetheless I suspect many wouldn't have thought James Swallow would be the one to hold that accolade!

 

Also sales are not necessarily a reflection on quality, especially when it comes to HH which has a built in fanbase that likely guarantees a baseline of sales.

Referencing the NYT bestseller list is a common mistake. The list takes the best sellers only within that week. That means that it is almost impossible for any HH book written after the three format split to ever come close to making it on the list, as most people will wait for the format that their collection is in, no matter how good the book is, whereas before the split, everyone was buying the same format in the same time period.

There's also the fact that it was the first Blood Angels book detailing, what was at the time, their only major participation in the Heresy before the siege of Terra. Even if the book was colossally terrible it still likely would've made it onto the NYT bestseller list on subject matter alone.

 

 

With that aside, I image there are certain authors that just work better in collaboration than others. Fehervari, who is also one of my favorites, always has a very well established vision in his stories that I feel setting within the same series as other authors would be fairly jarring.

[DarkChaplain]

As for 40K Sallies, haven't seen a Kyme novel in a while.

 

Last I read in a relatively recent interview, he's still planning to wrap up the Circle of Fire trilogy for 40k and promised more sallies, though the focus lay obviously more on his HH Vulkan trilogy and the tie-ins to it. With Laurie gone, you can also expect Kyme to do more editing for the series again, with Heralds of the Siege crediting both of them again, after a few anthologies that Laurie solo'd.

 

For Kyme, writing has always seemed more as an evening job thing, since he's actually employed by BL rather than just a freelancer living from advance to advance and commission to commission. He can whip out a short story for Age of Sigmar or Necromunda, or indeed a Heresy short, far more easily than full novels.

 

As for how much the subject matter carries sales, I'd say plenty. Damn plenty. Just last week, after finishing Rise of the Tomb Raider, I checked out reviews of Dan & Nik's tie-in novel to Tomb Raider, and it was widely panned, with reviewers honestly stating that Dan has no skills writing, is repetitive and reads like fan fiction. People with no relation to the author's gems from yesteryear clearly have a bit of a different perspective on them, down to their prose.

 

I think it'd be more interesting to hear about whether or not the people praising those authors from their 40k works have actually checked out their WHFB, AoS or original novels. Dan's got a bunch, let alone comics. AD-B has done a graphic novel thingything and other stuff. John French and co have written for Fantasy Flight Games' Arkham Horror novels. Gav had a trilogy of fantasy novels, McNeill wrote not just Arkham Horror, but also Starcraft, and has a day job writing for Riot's League of Legends. James Swallow writes for Doctor Who, Star Trek, has two Deus Ex novels out there and his own original series. I have, I believe, all non-BL Haley books on my shelves, and one Annandale. Josh Reynolds has a long-running Royal Occultist series of novels and short stories and a lot of other tie-in gigs going. Heck, him and a few others have done work for various anthologies, including C.L. Werner as well, from books for Ragnarok Publishing to Sharkpunk.

 

The question I'm posing being: Would you even pick up a non-BL, or even just AoS, by AD-B, Abnett, Wraight or French? Whose other works are you following outside of the comfort of 40k/HH? The sequel to the aforementioned Sharkpunk failed at the kickstarter level, by the way, despite having a bunch of BL authors involved.

 

Josh Reynolds also gave a bit of a statement on his AMA service thingy that's connected to his Twitter feed, basically stating that Fantasy sold worse than 40k but still mid-list for Fantasy as a whole, on the market. His first 40k novels earned out its advance much, much quicker than his Fantasy works before that.

"40K/HH sells like gangbusters. Mid-list, science-fiction gangbusters."

https://ask.fm/JoshMReynolds/answers/147964025567

 

For most of the BL freelancers, writing 40k novels is a fairly safe bet, though some get royally screwed by marketing, or lack thereof, like Fehervari did. Doing original work, even IF they have established readers/fans from BL or other tie in media, is a big risk that eats into the time they could use to earn "safe" 40k money. But even then, writing for a massive campaign supplement, or the Horus Heresy, likely goes over much better than writing about even just one's own niche of the setting (see: Fehervari, who does his own thing and excels at it, but the minority here has read his works).

And just look at how many people solely read for the Heresy here and haven't touched the authors' books outside of it, even within 40k.

 

Personally, I think Peter Fehervari writes with a degree of depth and quality that could, if given the chance, surpass most other writers in BL's stable easily, including Abnett since Ravenor. But on the sellers list, he's sadly still one of the lowest-selling recurring authors. Hopefully his third novel will change that, but with how fixated some fans are on a select few authors (some of which barely even get a novel out for the setting on a yearly basis), I'm honestly not surprised that some of the real gems fly under the radar.

 

 

 

With that aside, I image there are certain authors that just work better in collaboration than others. Fehervari, who is also one of my favorites, always has a very well established vision in his stories that I feel setting within the same series as other authors would be fairly jarring.

 

 

Likewise, I think Dan Abnett is *fantastic* for starting settings or series, setting the tone and establishing foundations. But he really is terrible at working with others after the fact. Often his own vision overrides the needs of the series or story arc unfolding. He has great ideas, but he struggles to fit them in properly with those of other people. The Unremembered Empire is an obvious one here, with strokes of genius no doubt but also a lot of stuff that clearly detracts from the whole, and then only over the last few pages does he remember he needs to make Imperium Secundus a thing and that there was a cover scene to implement. Prospero Burns changed so drastically, the actual burning of Prospero happened again only in the last few chapters. And then there's the whole Perpetual business with all those "okays" and what not...

 

He is great when left to his own devices, but he is definitely not somebody I would like to be an integral part of a multi-author series where authors are clicking together to work towards a greater whole.

[DukeLeto69]

 

I suspect we might all be surprised by sales figures by author when it comes to the HH (being a series where clearly there are folks like me buying books to complete the series regardless of author or subject matter). I believe the highest placed HH book on the New York Times Bestseller list was Fear To Tread by James Swallow. Now clearly a chart position is only an indicator of a peak in sales rather than overall long term sales but nonetheless I suspect many wouldn't have thought James Swallow would be the one to hold that accolade!

Also sales are not necessarily a reflection on quality, especially when it comes to HH which has a built in fanbase that likely guarantees a baseline of sales.

Referencing the NYT bestseller list is a common mistake. The list takes the best sellers only within that week. .

Which I acknowledged in my post when I said "...is only an indicator of a peak in sales rather than overall long term sales..." ;-)

[DukeLeto69]

@b1soul hmmm my top five would be...

 

Abnett, ADB, Farrer, Fehervari, Wraight

 

They are listed alphabetically because there is no way I could rank them as it might at times depend on a specific book or the mood I am in / stories I fancy reading.

 

So for me the perfect small group of authors for a multi author series would be these five guys. However, I doubt that would ever happen because Farrer and Fehervari are too "out there" and individualist in style IMO to work within a series context.

 

Edit to add after now reading @DC post...

 

Good points re Abnett that I do somewhat agree with. BL have commissioned him twice(?) to kick things off: HH = Horus Rising and TBA = I Am Slaughter. He is very good at setting the tone and designing the setting and making it distinct from 40K.

 

Despite being one of my favourites (if not the favourite) BL author, I acknowledge his main weakness being IMO running out of pages to properly wrap up the story satisfactorily (not always but TUE is a prime example). I wouldn't agree with you over Prosperous Burns though... That IMO suffered from having the wrong title and how it was marketed (plus the original plan to be a duology with TTS by McNeill before Abnett got epilepsy). Despite that I think PB is a superb book just not the one we were all led to expect.

 

I have read some of his non BL original novels... Triumff and Embedded... And loved them both.

 

Totally agree with all you say about Fehervari and psyched about his third novel coming.

 

Trying to ensure this post stays on topic though, I do still think Abnett works well in a "team" setting and would wager the brainstorm meetings to generate story ideas and plot points etc are richer for having him there... Oh to be a fly on the wall!

[DarkChaplain]

Oh I agree on Prospero Burns being good. I enjoyed it a lot, especially since it was one of the first audiobooks they ever did, and as a result listened to it a lot over the years.

 

But it still showed signs of Abnett doing his own thing, in my opinion. He reinvented the Wolves, obviously (and introduced the Executioner stuff people are so divided on), but there's also Kaspar's connection to the Enuncia stuff that he had introduced with Ravenor. And then there's the "No Wolves on Fenris" thing in that thematic duology.

I'd argue that most of it was for the better, but I still think that he rushed the Prospero part a great deal.

 

I've argued before that Abnett's biggest weakness are endings. Even Eisenhorn's Hereticus suffered there, it was simply over. The Unremembered Empire is one of the shortest mainline Heresy novels in the entire series by a margin. I counted that years and years ago when WarSeer was still relevant. It's kinda why I'm not enthusiastic about him doing the final book in the HH series - I just don't have the confidence that I'll be closing the book satisfied, rather than with a "what, that's it?" reaction.

 

Abnett creates settings and factions like few other people can. He kickstarted The Beast Arises in a spectacular manner (though, again, the ending felt really unsatisfying to me, and the throwaway-xenos were too reminiscent of the chapters on Murder in Horus Rising) and laid the groundwork for the entire thing. Eisenhorn is STILL the go-to "read this to get into 40k" recommendation for me. He made the Great Crusade an exciting prospect and distinguished the Legiones Astartes from the Adeptus Astartes of 40k.

But in the end I don't think he does well within limited parameters and rules set up by other authors. He needs his room to play with things. He could reinvent the Wolves, Alpha Legion, Luna Wolves and Ultramarines because the setting hadn't really featured them yet up to that point. He was free to introduce things and styles and experiment, even bringing his own quirks to the table.

But I think there's a reason why he rarely goes back to those factions afterwards, and why other authors pick them up almost exclusively afterwards. With Wraight having picked up Leman of the Russ, for example, I cannot see Abnett ever going back to write about them in any real detail. His work is done.

 

I'd really like to hear stories from Mike Lee about how he and Dan worked on the Darkblade cycle. God, how I wish they had actually had him return instead of just making C.L. Werner write a teaser short for an event anthology and then just the final novel that killed him off for the End Times... I've always wanted to know just how Lee and Abnett worked on those books, who wrote what, creative differences and where things clicked for them both. Sure, there are the notes in the omnibuses, but that's simply not enough for me.

 

That being said, I do believe that he is absolutely vital to the Horus Heresy meetings. He's such a strong ideas man that his influence over the Heresy as a whole is clearly felt throughout. I imagine him kind of like a mentor figure that nudges newer authors in the right direction and has answers for most plotting problems. Even if he's kinda responsible for the Perpetuals cropping up left and right for a while there...

[mc warhammer]

on authors working on other properties/genres/mediums...i love abnett's 30/40k but his comic book writing is just "ok" for me. 

[b1soul]

Yes, Abnett's comic writing seems a bit "phoned in"

 

As for Prospero Burns, after I eventually got over the misleading marketing/unmet expectations of the Burning from the VIth Legion's perspective...I found it to be a very well-written piece of sci-fi literature.

[mc warhammer]

i just read the thanos imperative by abnett which has all the right ingredients, but left me cold

 

if i had to put my finger on it, i'd say it lacked the poignancy and pathos of his novels. there were moments that seemed to ask for mroe sentiment but were glossed over for action and plot

 

as for PB. loved it from day one. the marketing didn't really bug me, but i know i'm in the minority there. still one of the best HH books for me