Rate what you Read, or the fight against Necromancy

[Red_Shift]

I think that's a fair review if the latest Cain book. I re read the series in anticipation before it's release and I think I was hoping for something more. I liked it, but it could have been better. There are events referenced in other Cain novels (such as surviving being a prisoner of the dark eldar) that would make a great focus for a novel but have never been followed up on. I think it is sometimes joyful to have a story that breaks the pace a bit, like the gaunts ghosts haunted house novel - Cain alone, on a dark eldar cruiser, dealing with the bizarre and horrifying, could be a good distraction from the formula of the rest of the series

[Roomsky]

I don't think Ventanus drags down Know No Fear. Know No Fear is not an exercise in character exploration or philosophical inquiry into the nature of 40K.

 

It's a present-tense action extravaganza with characters struggling to survive under extreme shock and duress. It's definitely more plot-driven than character-driven. It's like a good Michael Bay movie.

 

My issue with that is there was literally nothing stopping Abnett from making him interesting or likable. Action Extravaganza and Interesting characters are not mutually exclusive, and as mentioned, Gaunt's Ghosts demonstrates that Abnett can pack a lot of character into very little page time. He just didn't for Ventanus, for reasons that are foreign to me.

[b1soul]

I thought Ventanus was a reasonable portrayal of a random UM line captain who got caught in a vicious grinder. This is purely my personal feeling, but I did not find him particularly [dis/]interesting.

[Red_Shift]

I've been reading the primarchs novels. My wife bought the whole collection for me for my birthday so gradually I've been getting through them.

 

Perturabo - I really enjoyed this one which is ironic as I collect imperial fists. There is a scene towards the end where Perturabo' s adoptive sister basically says that he is a twonk and the book did a really good job of explaining his character (and flaws) in a way that was threaded the line between sympathy and disdain.

 

Leman Russ - enjoyed it, bit predictable with the Johnson rivalry but entertaining.

 

Lorgar - this was actually a good read, although I greatly dislike the character and am not a massive fan of the authors work, I thought it did a good job of explaining who Lorgar is and exploring his nature. It read fairly easily.

 

Vulkan - this was ok. A fairly bland story that could have been about any space marine chapter and hero.

 

Guilliman - not yet finished, it's actually a good read but Guilliman is coming across as a bit of a condescending know it all. Far too smug. It's annoying because I've enjoyed his portrayal in the 40k books.

 

I'm saving Khan til last I think as I expect it to be fantastic. Will be another traitor primarchs next to read I think.

 

Edit: I've just finished Guilliman and picked up Magnus and the decline in the quality of paper used is shocking.

Edited August 10, 2019 by Red_Shift

[b1soul]

Thought the Lion was the best part about the Russ book. Russ has a huge ego but he met his match in Jonson

[aa.logan]

Edit: I've just finished Guilliman and picked up Magnus and the decline in the quality of paper used is shocking.

Regular harbacks, or limited editions?

 

I’m assuming you’re suggesting Guilliman is on better paper than Magnus?

[Roomsky]

Only in Death - Dan Abnett

 

Here we are, the end of The Lost. Also, it seems, Abnett's best attempt at a fakeout for a major downer ending, and I'll give him props in that I was almost buying it even knowing more comes later. Who knows, maybe Rawne was the guy on the front of the later books? (spoilers: he's not) Thematically, this ones' a little more in line with The Saint, in that it doesn't really feel like an essential part of the story being told from Traitor General to The Armour of Contempt, but it is a very nice wrap-up to all of GG so far. As usual, the character work is solid and the action continues to please despite being so many books in. The haunted house idea was well executed, and it was fun to see a book with so many of the higher ups taking a back seat to their potential successors. As always though, it wrapped up far too quickly, and I'd probably be more sour on it if the omnibus I have doesn't follow it up with The Iron Star, which is a really excellent finish and celebration of the series so far. Gosh diggity darn it though, Abnett, put some bloody effort into your antagonists for once, I'm tired of hearing about how the Blood Pact are extra dangerous while they act like any other Chaos Cultist.

 

ANR: 8/10, it's pretty good

Read the series if you haven't, it's worth the haul.

[Red_Shift]

 

Edit: I've just finished Guilliman and picked up Magnus and the decline in the quality of paper used is shocking.

Regular harbacks, or limited editions?

I’m assuming you’re suggesting Guilliman is on better paper than Magnus?

Regular hardback. The Guilliman book is decent quality and the Magnus one is a cheaper more grainy paper. I probably wouldn't have clocked on quickly if it wasn't that i literally finished one, put it back and started reading Magnus straight away. Comparing others, it seems to be exclusive to Magnus. Weird.

 

Magnus the novel is shaping up well. So far there is no conflict and it has two legions responding o a humanitarian disaster. The iron warriors are portrayed sympathetically and its nice to see the unexpected friendship between Magnus and Perturabo.

Edited August 11, 2019 by Red_Shift

[Roomsky]

The Outcast Dead – Graham Mcneill

 

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. I can’t really blame anyone for hating it; you do sort of have to let your brain gloss over the series’ most egregious continuity error, Yasu Nagasena, Atharva and his ability to do whatever the plot demands, and an unarmed, unarmoured World Eater punching through Auramite. That said, beneath all the grime there’s a lot of good stuff here. It’s actually fairly understated for one of Mcneill’s works, and the characters are all memorable without being as over-the-top as we’ve seen before in works like Fulgrim.

 

The real highlight here is the world building. Seeing Terra lose its mind over the Warmaster’s betrayal, and again after the Dropsite Massacre adds some much needed texture to the whole conflict. Learning about the astropaths and the city of sight is fascinating, as are the slums of the petitioner’s city. Combine that with further lore about Terra’s history, the unification wars and Thunder Warriors, and a portrait of the Emperor as a still somewhat aloof but caring guy are all a joy to read. This isn’t to say there aren’t any further issues with the book: the second half is far less interesting than the first and the plot gets a bit simplified compared to what it was prior. The Vacant Angel reveal is also strange and accomplishes very little, you could have just had Atharva use the last of his strength to summon a daemon in the statue and avoided 2 headscratchers in one.

 

ANR: 6.5/10 (because despite really liking it, its flaws are too huge to ignore)

Very To Taste, you may love it or despise it depending on what you come into the book looking for

 

 

Betrayer – ADB

 

So very pleased this one held up, and I even liked it better than the first go through. I wish this book had a little sticker on the cover that said “half of this book is about 1 battle,” because the first time I read it I found the length of Armatura annoying, and this time I was blown away by how well ADB paced and structured an account of a single battle. No scene lasts longer than it has to, and every POV character is engaging and interesting. The World Eaters are of course the standout in this book, and Angron’s introspections on Nuceria are some of the saddest moments I’ve seen put to page.

 

As is usually the case with ADB books, I could gush for many, many paragraphs, but I won’t Just go read it. Or go read it again.

Criticisms are minor things, mostly up to taste. Argel Tal is a bit snowflakey in this one. I don’t know, maybe it’s the wings. Hard to complain considering how his arc ends, however. I also found the sequence of events on the journey to Nuceria a bit more stunted than the rest of the book, but only because everything else had such good flow. Again, minor things.

 

ANR: 9/10

Must Read (sometimes I’m tempted to only own ADB and Wraight’s contributions to the Heresy, because the quality is so high and even)

[Fedor]

Outcast Dead had an unusual but pretty cool out-of-time feel to me. Like it was some unearthed text from the pre-BL days of Watson and Newman that they just decided to stick into the middle of the HH series, timeline errors, sudden Thunder Warriors still alive and heavy handed Samurai inserts be damned. Definitely one of the more unusual HH books and a mess at times, but i like a lot of it as well.

[Roomsky]

** Dan Abnett Quadruple Feature **

 

Blood Pact

One of the best Gaunt's Ghosts, bar none. The series got much quieter in it's second half, and I'm loving it. Sorry to everyone who liked The Founding and The Saint, I wish it had been more like this from day one. Everything from the Ghosts feeling they're getting sloppy after a brief retirement, to the inverted premise of Traitor General, to just the sheer amount of attention paid to what makes the cast tick, it's a wonderful character driven piece in a series that excels at lovable characters. It's also the first time the Blood Pact live up to their alleged "elite" status, so that's nice. Mabbon is a fun new character, and I give the book extra props for finally making me notice that Ban Daur had a personality. This was the point I went from thinking "this series is good" to "I love this series, I finally see what everyone raves about."

 

ANR: 9/10

 

 

Salvation's Reach

This has some of the strongest and most powerful moments in the entire series. Normally a pre-finale wrap-up comes across as forced or disappointing, but this was absolutely gut-wrenching in a way the rest of the books have only tried and failed to be. You can see the characters we're going to lose from the book's beginning, and all the while you just hope against hope it isn't going to end like you know it will. Much more effective than character X or Y taking a hit in the last 10 pages. Like Blood Pact, the focus is on character dynamic here, and it makes for a very memorable experience. The action isn't really anything to write home about though, and some of the plot points like a certain character's fakeout "death," and a startling amount of time devoted to Elodie drawing the most unsympathetic, paranoid conclusions over basically nothing sort of drag it down a notch. Still a great read.

 

ANR: 8/10

 

 

The Unremembered Empire

Ouch. Maybe it's because I read this in the middle of some of Abnett's best, but this didn't work terribly well for me. I mean, it's still Abnett; Guilliman continues following Abnett's path to character rehabilitation, and the Lion is treated with far more dignity than he normally is. While basically being a plot device instead of a character, I liked his portrayal of Curze's abilities. Too often the focus is on a Primarch's strength in a 1 v 1; Abnett writes Curze (and Guilliman) as far more physically vulnerable than most authors, but also able to make a much larger footprint across a city or battlefield, and it's a vision I much prefer to stuff like Mcneill's Dragon Ball Z primarchs. I also have to give credit to Abnett for addressing so many plotlines in the first half of the book without ever feeling like he's cutting detail or mangling the pacing, if nothing else the book is extremely economic.

 

Unfortunately, the overall structure is completely insane. The second half of this 400 page novel is characters fighting Konrad Curze, who is ultimately vanquished because Damon Prytanis met the most incompetent daemon in the warp. Grammaticus seems weirdly stripped down from Legion, and while the book doesn't truncate anything, neither does anything get a chance to breathe, which is bizarre because Abnett of all people must be allowed to exceed 400 pages. The Pharos is mastered to teleport Guilliman and the Lion back to Macragge, where they proceed to do nothing for the rest of the book. Why did you engineer a crisis that had a resolution with no impact on the narrative? They could have just flown back instead of raising questions about the Pharos' functionality during certain pertinent events in the future.

 

Unfortunately, a bit of a mess. But sort of a beautiful mess, all the same.

 

To Taste

ANR: 6.5/10

 

 

The Warmaster

I sympathize with everyone who read this after such a long break, only for it to be half a book they couldn't immediately continue, I really am. But I read it right after Salvation's Reach, and started The Anarch the day I finished it, so ha-ha. More politics, more character, and more characters whose names start with an M being colossal arseholes. Brilliant, really. And, in fairness, when I say half a book I don't mean it in the Khârn: Eater of Worlds way where it just stops, it's more that it has less resolution than one might hope, because it's all setup for the big finale. But man, it's just so intriguing, the status quo is chewed up and spat out by the end of it, really adding the feeling that next time, no one is safe. The whole building subplot about a certain child is very effective, because it's just so bizarre you have no idea what's going to come of it. All I can say is, as one reading the series back to back, I'm left chomping at the bit for what comes next.

 

ANR: 8/10

[StrangerOrders]

Despite his reputation for making Astartes relatively weak, I've always found that Abnett is perhaps more the single most inconsistent author with regards to the threat of an Astartes (and by extension, Primarch).

 

It is true that in many cases he writes Astartes in a way that makes the stories of the Legions stretch credulity to the extreme since they seem laughably fragile and incompetent. But by that same token he has also written characters like that Ultramarines from Unremembered Empire who sustained some of the most graphic injuries ever described in detail while fighting a Primarch and yet lasted for a while longer before his death. I have seen some authors make Astartes out to be supermen and then have them topple over dead at a single las bolt (including Abnett), but that Chapter Master loses most of his internal organs, a fair portion of his skull and I think a few other things and is still holding together enough to fight. This being from wounds dealt by Artificer Lightning Claws that go through armor like butter. 

 

This extends to Primarchs, Guilliman, the Lion, Russ, Horus and Kurze are not very offensively impressive to be sure in Abnett books but their sheer durability and multiplier abilities are through the proverbial roof compared to other authors (barring those that opt to outright make a Primarch a Perpetual, of course). This ranges from Guilliman being infamously able to laugh (rage?) off vacuum to punch the heads off of Word Bearers to Kurze literally being able to flick his soul off and perform feats which make the fact that he considered Corax his superior in stealth sort of laughable. 

 

I think the idea of him writing weak Astartes comes down more to Gaunt than his Heresy work, to be sure they die in his Heresy books but they are killed by things that could kill just about anything rather than baseline equipment (unless one considers ramming a warship at lightspeed into a planet baseline). 

 

By my own mileage, I tend to prefer books that portray Astartes and Primarchs as immensely deadly but far from immune to harm. My favorite example is from Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix, this book portrays a dozen or so Astartes with their Primarch ripping through an army with the sort of superhuman might that makes the Crusade credulous as long as you are not a professional logistician, engineer or many strands of scientist (in which case you should likely be used to enduring it). This book also shows those same humans outwit and almost kill a Primarch by exploiting his ego and luring him to an atomic weapon (if it takes a Dark Age Superweapon, we will get one) and also bring an Astartes to his knees almost trivially. 

 

The Astartes is not brought to his knees through some handwaved skill or luck but by the humans being smart. They knew that they werent an obvious threat to the Astartes, so they observed him and his style for weeks (each time using a different duelist for him to humiliate and pretending to not be correcting for each flaw found). By the time they moved, he was a known quantity who was used to severely underestimating them. He only survived by dint of a rescue by his Primarch and is heavily wounded. 

 

Different authors do it differently but there is also a certain factor of the settings evolution I think we need to consider when we review. Astartes are one of the more extreme examples of the hardening of the setting's nature and rules but they do tend to lurk about. 

 

On the subject of Unremembered Empire, Roomsky's points are very well taken with regards to the structure being all over the place. Yet I find that moments in it have stuck with me in the way many other (some definitely better on the whole) books have failed to do. I love Guilliman's 'not mother', the Space Wolves are by far among the most likeable in the Heresy, the Dark Angels are allowed to be their own thing and impress and Vulkan seemed curiously a more interesting and impressive figure as a mindless killing machine bent on revenge than in his numerous other entries.

 

Your 6.5 is very fair but it is a weird 8 for me in ways that I can't quite determine.

[b1soul]

Outcast Dead was the first book to introduce the potent but volatile TW concept (violent insanity, catastrophic physical failure).

 

Before then, everyone thought TW were just short-lived watered-down SM.

[DukeLeto69]

@Roomsky I totally concur with the ratings/reviews of Blood Pact, Salvation’s Reach & Warmaster. Anarch is a very fitting climax to that 4 book arc too. Awesome!

[mc warhammer]

Outcast Dead had an unusual but pretty cool out-of-time feel to me. Like it was some unearthed text from the pre-BL days of Watson and Newman that they just decided to stick into the middle of the HH series, timeline errors, sudden Thunder Warriors still alive and heavy handed Samurai inserts be damned. Definitely one of the more unusual HH books and a mess at times, but i like a lot of it as well.

yeah...same. as a fairly consistent critic of mcneil; i flat out enjoyed OD.

[Red_Shift]

Thanks for the reviews Roomsky. I didn't enjoy outcast dead, I remember thinking it was a bit of a mess. In general I agree with you regarding Gaunts Ghosts, namely that I spent the fist four or five books wondering what everyone saw in the series and then it got much better later in.

 

I just read Man of Iron by Guy Haley. Whilst it's nothing ground breaking, it managed to make the setting of the Blackstone Fortress really interesting, which the Blackstone novel just didn't. The robot is obviously fully sentient but needs to keep this quiet, so replies in cheerful stock phrases including 'compliance' which in my mind just echoes with flight of the navigator. It's an interesting basis for a novel but I think would need a character for the iron man to confide in or interact with more fully to not get stale.

[Roomsky]

A few extra Gaunt's Ghosts observations:

 

The Victory, Part 1 omnibus is basically required for the reading order, as opposed to individual books (unless you have that hard to find anthology). Why Abnett decided to have the content of Family and Ghosts and Bad Shadows as short stories some readers may miss is beyond me. They set up some extremely important plot details for The Warmaster and Anarch, and definitely should have been lumped into an actual novel.

 

I switched over to Audio once they became available with Salvation's Reach. I enjoyed all 3 narrators from Salvation's Reach to Anarch, though James Cameron Stewart muddles an otherwise strong narration in The Warmaster with an incredibly grating falsetto for the female characters, and especially Yoncy. I thought it was amusing that Mabbon's voice got progressively deeper between each book, especially funny in James Macpherson's narration where he spoke in high-pitched Queen's English. This is in contrast to Blenner, who had essentially the same voice across all 3 narrators, despite their showing no signs of having consulted the others' vocal choices before choosing their own.

 

I also felt especially gratified when BL veteran Toby Longworth gave Mabbon exactly the voice I had always imagined him using, based on his performances from Ravenor.

[SkimaskMohawk]

Yea I gotta say I was confused by how warmaster started referencing plot points I'd never read and attached so much importance to this mystery plot.

[DukeLeto69]

To be fair though there was a big gap between release of Salvations Reach and Warmaster. That was one reason they did the anthology and at the time (and in author foreword in book itself) Abnett said his short stories were essential reading for the various plots.

 

However, good idea to include in omnibus.

[Fire Golem]

Double Eagle - Dan Abnett

 

I actually picked this up years ago from a charity shop but the subject matter (Imperial Pilots during the Sabbat Wars) didn’t really interest me at the time. With the re-release of Aeronautica Imperialis, the whole pilot/aircraft side of 40k suddenly seems to have grabbed me where it didn’t however many years ago. I dug my copy out and read it over the last week or so.

 

I was really very impressed. I don’t know why I’m surprised because it’s very rare that I’m not impressed with an Abnett novel, but it was probably one of the best 40k novels I’ve read for a while (and I’m quite picky with sticking to certain authors I know I like). It’s a great look at a different side of war in 40k that isn’t often explored, that I’ve read anyway. Some parts were really quite tense, mainly because I really cared about the various characters and because it does a good job at showing the danger of this kind of warfare. I really felt like each flight could be people’s last, and I liked all of the characters enough to care.

 

I also never really gave a thought to the physical danger to the pilots in a dogfight, past the plane being shot down or exploding. Turns out there’s various inventive ways to quite horrifically injure the pilot without necessarily destroying the whole aircraft. I also found certain parts quite emotional, particularly the very last paragraph, which ends the novel quite poignantly.

 

Would recommend to any AI fans, Abnett fans who’ve missed this, or anyone who wants a different look at warfare in 40k.

 

9/10 - Must Read (IMO)

Edited September 18, 2019 by fire golem

[Red_Shift]

I also re read double eagle recently. I remembered not really enjoying it the first time and I had a similar experience this time around. It's well written, I just found constant action was not to my taste. I wasn't really invested in any of the characters, with the exception of Vitry.

[Fire Golem]

I also re read double eagle recently. I remembered not really enjoying it the first time and I had a similar experience this time around. It's well written, I just found constant action was not to my taste. I wasn't really invested in any of the characters, with the exception of Vitry.

Oh yeah, there’s a lot of action. I didn’t mind it because it’s not the usual Bolter porn - like I said it’s not really a type of warfare I’ve read about much else. It’s the same reason I liked Tallarn, I’ve not read much about tank crews so it was a different view to what I’m used to.

 

And I felt quite invested with all the characters where you weren’t, for whatever reason. Viltry was definitely a goodun, though. Jagdea, Marquall, Darrow and Blansher were also standouts.

[DukeLeto69]

I am another one who really loved Double Eagle and really hope/wish Abnett will get around to writing Interceptor City (the follow up).

 

Interesting @Red_shift didn’t get invested in the characters because I felt this was one of the stronger areas?

[bluntblade]

 

 

The Unremembered Empire

Ouch. Maybe it's because I read this in the middle of some of Abnett's best, but this didn't work terribly well for me. I mean, it's still Abnett; Guilliman continues following Abnett's path to character rehabilitation, and the Lion is treated with far more dignity than he normally is. While basically being a plot device instead of a character, I liked his portrayal of Curze's abilities. Too often the focus is on a Primarch's strength in a 1 v 1; Abnett writes Curze (and Guilliman) as far more physically vulnerable than most authors, but also able to make a much larger footprint across a city or battlefield, and it's a vision I much prefer to stuff like Mcneill's Dragon Ball Z primarchs. I also have to give credit to Abnett for addressing so many plotlines in the first half of the book without ever feeling like he's cutting detail or mangling the pacing, if nothing else the book is extremely economic.

 

Unfortunately, the overall structure is completely insane. The second half of this 400 page novel is characters fighting Konrad Curze, who is ultimately vanquished because Damon Prytanis met the most incompetent daemon in the warp. Grammaticus seems weirdly stripped down from Legion, and while the book doesn't truncate anything, neither does anything get a chance to breathe, which is bizarre because Abnett of all people must be allowed to exceed 400 pages. The Pharos is mastered to teleport Guilliman and the Lion back to Macragge, where they proceed to do nothing for the rest of the book. Why did you engineer a crisis that had a resolution with no impact on the narrative? They could have just flown back instead of raising questions about the Pharos' functionality during certain pertinent events in the future.

 

Unfortunately, a bit of a mess. But sort of a beautiful mess, all the same.

 

To Taste

ANR: 6.5/10

 

 

Having read this for the first time I'm broadly in agreement - you can feel Abnett labouring under the weight of material, and if Guilliman and the Lion were kept off Macragge it'd add to the stakes even with them safe, as it leaves Astartes trying to contain a two-Primarch running brawl. I'd also add that the dialogue often ends up a bit too verbose and wordy for my liking, especially in the tenser sequences where, in my mind, everyone should drop a certain amount of detail in their descriptions.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Only issue I had with Unremembered Empire is that Curze's abilities have never worked that way before or since. I like Curze being more of a "disruption" than the standard Primarch portrayal as a beatstick, but it's just... not how his powers work, at all.