Rate what you Read, or the fight against Necromancy

[Krelious]

Unremembered Empire 8/10

 

Better than I expected as I am not a fan of Dan Abnett's novels (I think hes okay but really over rated) at this point the only Heresy novel of his I have not read is Prospero Burns.  This book is well paced and well written while leaving cliches to a minimum. Feels like a middle of the road book where it kind of abruptly ends  and I know the sequels in terms of Vulcan's and Curze's storylines are not very good books, I refuse to ever read anything by Gav Thorpe ever again.  The hardcover version has the derpiest artwork of Curze which is also a plus.

 

I will be following up with Pharos and Ruinstorm 

[Rob P]

Shows how subjective this series is. Horus Heresy has some of (imo) Abnett's best (Horus Rising , No Know Fear, Prospero Burns, Saturnine) and i'd put Unremembered Empire low/mid. Reasons: expectations re primarch meetup not met; Pharos meh, "my beautiful boy" (iron warrior dude), convergence of strands (waypoint novel), and, of it's time,it was peak frustration about the HH series stagnating.

 

I'll have to reread as some of those things might not be as relevant now the series is done.

 

It's interesting as someone who didn't like Abnett that this is an 8/10. Clearly what he did or didn't do here must avoid the Abnett stuff you dislike and must lack the Abnett stuff I like. Haha

[DukeLeto69]

43 minutes ago, Rob P said:

Shows how subjective this series is. Horus Heresy has some of (imo) Abnett's best (Horus Rising , No Know Fear, Prospero Burns, Saturnine) and i'd put Unremembered Empire low/mid. Reasons: expectations re primarch meetup not met; Pharos meh, "my beautiful boy" (iron warrior dude), convergence of strands (waypoint novel), and, of it's time,it was peak frustration about the HH series stagnating.

 

I'll have to reread as some of those things might not be as relevant now the series is done.

 

It's interesting as someone who didn't like Abnett that this is an 8/10. Clearly what he did or didn't do here must avoid the Abnett stuff you dislike and must lack the Abnett stuff I like. Haha

Yep, and I say this as a big fan of Abnett’s work for BL in general as my joint fav BL author with Fehervari, it really is subjective!
 

IMO TUE is Abnett’s weakest HH entry. Partly the not meeting expectations set (ie seeing Imperium Secundus properly set up) but mainly for me, this feels like Abnett’s superhero comic book work broke through the wall and for a while he forgot which IP he was writing for. Large chunks of this book you could just swap the names of the primarchs for [insert superhero name]. And as someone who has never liked DC or Marvel type stuff, this book really was yeeeuucchhhhh!

 

For me a real test of how good I think a book is will be “will I / did I ever read it again?” I gave re-read the GG books and related Sabbat books as well as the Inquisitor books multiple times. They mostly stand up to revisiting and remain enjoyable.

 

I know I will never re TUE again. Although as I type that I do realise I have never revisited ANY HH novel by any author…. Hmmm?

Edited Monday at 08:52 AM by DukeLeto69

[DarkChaplain]

I'd go as far as to call The Unremembered Empire down as one of the absolute worst books in the entire series, because it so thoroughly mismanaged what it had to to and what it had to offer. There are really good parts in there - the typical Abnett brainstorming - but also some of the worst stuff in the series, not least of all the Primarchs brawl with hulk smash Vulkan. It's off on so many levels, especially the power balance. Don't even get me started on Damon Prytanis and the Perpetual plotline....

 

And it completely flipped the Lion around. All the setup made before, with him being very much in doubt about Guilliman, wanting to put down the upstart Imperium Secundus, it all went poof immediately. He got talked into joining up on the quick, with the third required brother not even being around, and basically uncomfirmed to still be alive in the first place. The Lion got sweet talked just the same way he was by Perturabo back before Isstvan V - something he was still kicking himself over, for feth's sake!

 

And then it ends with the very thing that was promised on both cover and blurb. Sanguinius arrives, things get decided in a rush, and the book ends. Curze gets conveniently teleported away from the immediate action. So many things just got shelved for other authors to salvage - particularly Haley and Thorpe, both of which did a great job with what they had, despite flaws.

 

TUE represents in many ways the things Abnett has been worst at when writing the Heresy. He has to pick up characters and plotlines from other authors' works, but somehow fumbles most of them. He nails his own (Guilliman's bits with Euten, for instance), but squanders the rest as he either tries to press his own stamp on them, or just doesn't really know what to do with them in the first place.

 

Just take Vulkan in particular: NOTHING would have changed if he had not been alive here. Had he been found as a dead body, put in a casket, and kept secret just the same as the live Vulkan was. He already got evaporated during atmospheric re-entry. There's no reason for him to be kinda braindead but alive/regenerated, as opposed to be physically regenerated but comatose/dead. But that way, he wouldn't have been able to take his revenge on Konrad for the torture in Vulkan Lives. But did he even need that? Especially since he was mindlessly raging, without actually experiencing an arc to grow through? I say no. It was wasted spectacle with no actual narrative benefit.

 

Curze going on a rampage? Sure, I'll take it. But not the way it was done. Perpetuals trying to get to Vulkan to stab him with Fulgurite? Would've probably been more interesting to have them infiltrating Macragge on lockdown during Curze's shadow crusade, while the Lion hunts for him. Instead we had action setpieces and xeno tech, while Curze takes on both Jonson and Roboute directly. This whole thing could've been played almost like a horror novel during Curze's escape, but was instead a superhero comic arc.

 

Curze did not live up to his fear tactics.

The Lion did not live up to his apex predator hunting or duelist skills.

Guilliman did not live up to his macro level strategy and logistics skills.

Vulkan did not live up to anything at all.

Sanguinius did not inspire anything, he was just a last-minute cameo to justify the cover art.

 

Rewriting the whole "Curze escapes and terrorizes Macragge" into a slow-burn thriller aspect that stretches throughout more of the book - particularly by involving something Abnett is good at: The civilian angle, including John Grammaticus trying to reach Vulkan to do his job - would've elevated the book a great deal, while allowing for all Primarchs involved to play to their strengths. You could have still had a direct encounter to cap it off, but in a clever way instead of the blunt hammer time.

 

But then, I seem to recall TUE also being one of the shortest full novels in the series. Which makes no sense for how much it was supposed to pull together at the time.

[darkhorse0607]

I am always really torn on TUE, although if I was forced to I would probably rate it higher than most on here.

 

On one hand, I completely agree with the majority of criticisms leveled at the book and objectively, I think that it fails at the core reason to have the book in the first place, being to establish Imperium Secundus. It gets so side-tracked with everything else (and I'll try to give Abnett the benefit of the doubt that he was told some of those things, i.e. Vulkan, had to be there) that if you remove all of the side questing and only left Imperium Secundus stuff, you'd be left with what, 50 pages? Maybe?

 

Strongly dislike the Vulkan/Curze fight at the end. Strongly dislike the Perpetual stuff in general (but that's always the case so I won't hold it against this book in particular).

 

I've gone through the book three times, and I still haven't seen how Curze got his armor. In the opening section he's described as being in rags, which meshes with the fact that he was a prisoner, but then when he drops on Macragge he has his full suit? There might be a throwaway line that I missed but I don't think so. I know it's not a big thing, but characters being changed off screen, particularly in Abnett's books, with what armor they have always bugs me (it happens in Saturnine as well, so again, I can't level the complaint about this at TUE in particular)

 

As a big Ultramarines fan in general, it always bothers me that other than in Know No Fear, you never see Marius Gage again, and no one even mentions him even though TUE would be the perfect place for that, even just having Guilliman say "I hate this Augustus guy, I wish Gage wasn't flying around somewhere so my actual First Master could be here."

 

With all of that, I believe you could go a step farther and say this isn't even a successful novel about the Heresy, in the same way that people level the complaint against Descent of Angels. Realistically, if you remove the context of the Heresy, and the Perpetuals/Primarch smash fights, and replace it with "everyone got lost in a major warp storm, ended up at Macragge, the end" then this is a peacetime novel. Especially if you remove Angels of Caliban, Pharos, and the associated short stories that are actually about Imperium Secundus and just view this book on its own.

 

BUT

 

That's honestly why I like the book so much. I am a sucker for books about Astartes off of the battlefield. It's one of the reasons why I like books like Dante so much. I'll take it all. Jealous/snarky Guilliman during the Dark Angels landing/parade? Take it. Ultramarines essentially acting as first responders to a natural disaster (or Vulkan falling from space), take that too. Guilliman and Euten, Lion and Space Wolves, internal legion politicking? Feed it right into my veins. I'll even take Guilliman farming on Sotha like he's on Thanos' retirement plan.

 

I'm not trying to leap to Abnett's defense here, I've spent plenty of time saying how much I dislike the direction he took things for the Heresy and the fact that I think the editors need to rein him in more, and like I said, I think TUE objectively fails at the premise of the novel. But I'm desperate enough for non-battlefield Space Marine stories that I'll take it anyway

[Rob P]

Finished Cadian Blood. After the initial restarts, it managed to get my attention (basically from chapter 3/4 onwards). It's essentially a routine guard novel. I liked some of the stuff with the characterisation of the captain, inquisitor and commissar and the plot was ok. It would make a good entry novel.

 

I felt some of the bits in it were jarring or difficult to pass through e.g. the prologue was pure exposition; most of the named characters weren't massively distinct and it felt like I was just having to keep a bunch of names in my head (tbf, same with nearly every BL novel! - I wish they just did short dramatis personae for every novel; I don't care if it's slightly spoilery, i'd rather know which characters need to be tabbed and which don't (for example The Wolftime had a massive dramatis personae and about 10 possibly 15 characters were important to the plot). 

 

I wanted a little more from the plot; maybe some twist or bleak moment that didn't really come. Just going back to the jarring bits, the involvement of the space marines was largely irrelevant and the plot around the villain just petered out - they didn't go anywhere! The pacing felt a little weird too; it felt like a series of vignettes stitched together.

 

That being said, I did enjoy the writing. It was an easy read once I got into it; I put my difficulty reading into it down to having read character novels back to back to back and therefore I was already familiar with some of the involved parties, whilst here it was day one. I also liked the tropes of 40k that were imbedded into it and that it was entirely self contained. The ship battle stuff was pretty cool, as was the psyker stuff.

 

Worth a read as an intro book alongside the likes of 15 Hours or Imperial Glory. Slightly more enjoyable than the last 3 I read that I gave 6/10 so 7/10 I guess.

 

[DukeLeto69]

21 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

I'd go as far as to call The Unremembered Empire down as one of the absolute worst books in the entire series, because it so thoroughly mismanaged what it had to to and what it had to offer. There are really good parts in there - the typical Abnett brainstorming - but also some of the worst stuff in the series, not least of all the Primarchs brawl with hulk smash Vulkan. It's off on so many levels, especially the power balance. Don't even get me started on Damon Prytanis and the Perpetual plotline....

 

And it completely flipped the Lion around. All the setup made before, with him being very much in doubt about Guilliman, wanting to put down the upstart Imperium Secundus, it all went poof immediately. He got talked into joining up on the quick, with the third required brother not even being around, and basically uncomfirmed to still be alive in the first place. The Lion got sweet talked just the same way he was by Perturabo back before Isstvan V - something he was still kicking himself over, for feth's sake!

 

And then it ends with the very thing that was promised on both cover and blurb. Sanguinius arrives, things get decided in a rush, and the book ends. Curze gets conveniently teleported away from the immediate action. So many things just got shelved for other authors to salvage - particularly Haley and Thorpe, both of which did a great job with what they had, despite flaws.

 

TUE represents in many ways the things Abnett has been worst at when writing the Heresy. He has to pick up characters and plotlines from other authors' works, but somehow fumbles most of them. He nails his own (Guilliman's bits with Euten, for instance), but squanders the rest as he either tries to press his own stamp on them, or just doesn't really know what to do with them in the first place.

 

Just take Vulkan in particular: NOTHING would have changed if he had not been alive here. Had he been found as a dead body, put in a casket, and kept secret just the same as the live Vulkan was. He already got evaporated during atmospheric re-entry. There's no reason for him to be kinda braindead but alive/regenerated, as opposed to be physically regenerated but comatose/dead. But that way, he wouldn't have been able to take his revenge on Konrad for the torture in Vulkan Lives. But did he even need that? Especially since he was mindlessly raging, without actually experiencing an arc to grow through? I say no. It was wasted spectacle with no actual narrative benefit.

 

Curze going on a rampage? Sure, I'll take it. But not the way it was done. Perpetuals trying to get to Vulkan to stab him with Fulgurite? Would've probably been more interesting to have them infiltrating Macragge on lockdown during Curze's shadow crusade, while the Lion hunts for him. Instead we had action setpieces and xeno tech, while Curze takes on both Jonson and Roboute directly. This whole thing could've been played almost like a horror novel during Curze's escape, but was instead a superhero comic arc.

 

Curze did not live up to his fear tactics.

The Lion did not live up to his apex predator hunting or duelist skills.

Guilliman did not live up to his macro level strategy and logistics skills.

Vulkan did not live up to anything at all.

Sanguinius did not inspire anything, he was just a last-minute cameo to justify the cover art.

 

Rewriting the whole "Curze escapes and terrorizes Macragge" into a slow-burn thriller aspect that stretches throughout more of the book - particularly by involving something Abnett is good at: The civilian angle, including John Grammaticus trying to reach Vulkan to do his job - would've elevated the book a great deal, while allowing for all Primarchs involved to play to their strengths. You could have still had a direct encounter to cap it off, but in a clever way instead of the blunt hammer time.

 

But then, I seem to recall TUE also being one of the shortest full novels in the series. Which makes no sense for how much it was supposed to pull together at the time.

TBH I always assumed TUE was a contract filler by Abnett. I think he had lost his BL mojo and I believe this book coincided with all the BL/Studio changes. 

[Scribe]

TUE was complete nonsense. 

[grailkeeper]

We're almost 70 pages in and I still don't know which book involves fighting necromancy. It's probably set in the old world anyway.

[darkhorse0607]

35 minutes ago, grailkeeper said:

We're almost 70 pages in and I still don't know which book involves fighting necromancy. It's probably set in the old world anyway.

 

It's one of the ones they printed once and never made available again

[wecanhaveallthree]

Or one of the ones that never got printed - the NEVERBORN, as it were.

 

Spoiler

I quite enjoyed Umbra Sumus, which was a better Spear of the Emperor imo.

 

Edited 17 hours ago by wecanhaveallthree
I AM THE EDIT BESIDE YOU! LOOK OUT! SUMUS IS HERE!

[DukeLeto69]

17 hours ago, Scribe said:

TUE was complete nonsense. 

Succinct but yes it was.

 

Had potential as an idea. Personally I was keen to see where all the Imperium Secundus stuff would go but they badly fumbled it starting with TUE. So ended up as more useless bloat.

[1ncarnadine]

I've long thought that Imperium Secundus is a really fascinating concept that would work great as a story told in the Heresy black book format. Cloaked in historical revisionism and unreliable historical narrators trying to retroactively justify all of what happened out there, and way, way less of the view from the ground and the perpetual/primarch story lines. It could be really fascinating, and there should be a ton of conflicts between traitor Forge Worlds, lingering elements of the Shadow Crusade and Thramas Crusade, daemonic incursions, inter-Imperium disputes, blackshields, piratical fiefdoms, etc. And many of the inter-Imperium disputes could easily be called "wars in the interest of the security of the noble cause of Imperium Secundus and the greater Imperium iteslf, against an upstart, blackguard pirate kingdom..." again, retroactively, even if you can read in between the lines and realize that some loyalists didn't want to go along with the whole idea and had to be "forcefully reincorporated." It's the sort of thing that lends itself to further drama in the Scouring, too.

 

But yeah, TUE kind of stinks. I'm in agreement that I've read it once over a decade ago and I'm not going back.

 

Oh hey, I've also broken my Siege of Terra reading block and read a lot lately. I'm going to go ahead and do a rapid-fire round-up rate-what-I've-read since roughly Christmas.

 

Flesh and Steel- Heck yeah, this was fantastic. The looks into the AdMech conclave was really fascinating, and the explanations of their forms and their holy meanings was something I'd love to see more of. The main character is (for better or worse) deeply relatable to me. I've been sitting on this and other Warhammer Crime for ages now and could never find the time to get to it, and this was a great starting point. 9/10

 

Grim Repast- More crime series, more evil perpetuated by the elite ruling class. Solid, but echoing a lot from Flesh and Steel and Bloodlines (though I read that after this). Just a little warp cult stuff, nothing too big. I actually kind of wish it hadn't even went there, tbh. We could have evil Slaanesh and Khorne leaning cultists without an explicit "blood for the bl-" winky wink. 8/10

 

Bloodlines- Still great, still not quite as good as F&S. I loved the secret serpent cult reveal. All three of these make me really hope they do a second wave of Crime books, but especially Bloodlines and Flesh and Steel. Hopefully Haley and Wraight get at least one more shot on these, though it seems like they've pumped the brakes on Crime & Horror for the most part. 8.5/10

 

Ghazghkull: Prophet of the WAAAGH- The best explanation of Ork metaphysics, probably? If Makari is trustworthy, so, maybe not. I think this one suffers a little for wanting the reader to know a little about the wars for Armageddon, but as a long-time fan it all tracked really well. Loved this one. 9/10

 

Mortarion: The Pale King- I have not been a fan of the Primarchs series books using the black book exemplary battles as a writing prompt, and imo the best of this series have been the books that avoid doing that, like Fulgrim, Lorgar, & Perturabo. But Annandale added several layers to the conflict with the Order on Galaspar that made it more than just a re-telling of the section from the black book, ultimately bringing Mortarion's vision for himself and his purpose into clear view and providing an example of yet another time that he rejected any kind of direction from the Emperor as a father figure. Solid, 7.5/10.

These next 4 I listened to as audios over commuting:
 

Elemental Council- Oh dang, this was good. There are so many layers at play, with a xenos faction that's often presented as asian-coded attempting the imperialist subjugation of a world that itself is layered in Chinese/SEA culture and is a member of a much older empire. And the Imperium is operating an insurgency via a Raptors captain? Artamax steals the show as the antagonist here and deservedly so. This novel demonstrates the relative naivety of the T'au as a race incredibly well, and their lack of questioning regarding their Ethereal caste and the Greater Good does highlight why, as a species, they haven't resonated with the warp much... yet. Something that stuck with me after this one is that the catastrophe Artamax nearly enacts is kind of inevitable the larger the T'au Empire gets? It's only a matter of time, but at the same time it's easy to feel relief that he was thwarted.

 

Bellisarius Cawl: The Great Work- Very functional story, fun Cawl stuff, and doing the work of "cleaning up" the fall of Sotha and the OG Scythes of the Emperor. 7/10

Wrath of Iron- I had never read this one, but I've always heard good things. It's very good, though feels a little dated and heavy on the action now. I'm hoping to get to Guymer's Iron Hands at some point after this, too, but I haven't yet so I can't compare/contrast his with this. The Kaesoron cameo is fun. The Iron Hands are dicks. IMO the best parts of the book were ultimately the interactions with Lord Commander Nehata and how he struggled with how to deal with the Iron Hands. Ultimately the ends justify the means here when it comes to the Iron Xth, but you have to wonder how often that is not the case. 7.5/10

 

Krieg- Oof, dark. I really appreciate how grounded this one was. There are no warp entities, xenos, cults, or anything else on the planet Krieg. Just uncompromising humanity, retreading why, once again, we can't have nice things. The darkest part of this book to me was the Cadian trooper ultimately settling into admiration and respect for the Krieg soldiery, even though they had been disturbed at various points by the behavior of the Krieg troops. 7/10

Not many low scores here, but to be fair, most of these books were rated fairly well by most folks around here so I wasn't exactly taking a chance on much. It's a big chunk out of my BL backlog, but also probably time for a well deserved break to read some non-BL fiction and non-fiction.

Edited 18 minutes ago by 1ncarnadine