Rate what you Read, or the fight against Necromancy

[wecanhaveallthree]

 

 

 It may be technically brilliant but it made the read unenjoyable.

 

This is definitely a matter of taste, but I think just about everyone here has had at least a brush with 'hard' sci-fi - Baxter, say, or Niven, or something similar - where a lot of the fun is in the systems. The details. I'll call out Wraight for this because it's a big part of what makes him so interesting to read. There are endless comments about how fun his random tangents are, like when he just rambles on about the logistics of parchment on Terra for some stupid reason. But it's comfy. People like comfy. It's like... when you're in a conversation with a friend, and they're talking about something they really, really like or are interested in, and their sheer enthusiasm (and a reasonably interesting subject) makes it time well spent even if it doesn't really go anywhere.

 

I want to pop in a little bit from Seth Dickinson's The Monster Baru Cormorant here (go read everything he's written, right now, because he's great).

 

 Why do people do the things they do? If there are reasons for their acts, reasons like threads which trail back into the snarled silk of a life, how can we deduce those reasons from the acts?
 Begin with a hashing function.
 A hashing function is a one - way equation. How can there be such a thing? If two and two make four, then four is made of two and two, isn’t it?
 No. Given only the number four you do not know if it was made from two and two, or three and one, or four and nothing. You cannot easily go in reverse.

...

Baru thought: What I see of other people is the output of a hashing function.
 I’ll never know anyone’s true self, will I? Their thoughts and memories, the selfness of someone, the me - ness of me: that’s like a true name, a person in all their formless awesome grandeur. But we do not see that grandeur. We see each other only in the shapes we are forced to assume. Words constrain us, and also our laws, and our fears and hopes, and the wind, and the rain, and the dog that barks while we’re trying to speak, all these things constrain us.
 We all force our true selves into little hashes and show them like passwords. A smile is a hashing function, and a word, and a cry. The cry is not the grief, the word is not the meaning, the smile is not the joy: we cannot run the hash in reverse, we cannot get from the sign to the absolute truth. Maybe the smile is false. Maybe the grief is a lie.
 But we can compare the hash to a list, and guess at the meaning.

 

I am not an accountant. I actually dropped math as soon as I was able for more classes about YELLING ON THE INTERNET. I don't know anything about hashes, or cartouches, or passwords. But the author does. And the character, Baru, is an accountant, so this insight into her thought process - delivered via some very modern phrasing for a fantasy novel, I wot - resonates with me. It's abstract. It's artsy. But it resonates with me: I can feel it, feel it showing me something, telling me something. I understand a dimension of the character better because of this language. Obviously from context clues we get that Baru is, frequently, not great at dealing with people. That's 'good enough'. But this flowery writing, this technical insight, truly deepens the experience. It is art combined with function. It is a complex subject matter as a metaphor. It is both technical and enjoyable.

 

Abnett, for the most part, feels like he's just puffing his chest out. He uses epic language because, he says, this story is an epic. It should be read as such. It's a mythic retelling, so it requires mythic language. But it doesn't wax and wane. It doesn't just 'turn on' when appropriate, or trying to tell me something. It's just purple prose for the sake of it, rather than enhancing the story. It is technical and it detracts from the work.

[Roomsky]

I'm a sucker for ambitious prose and I actually find it to be one of the book's strong suits IN A VACCUUM. In the context of the series at large, it was 100% not the time or place for such a shift. If Abnett had indeed been handed the whole Siege... sure. As the finale to a finale that doesn't match it in presentation (including, I might add, another book by Abnett) it definitely strays into a flex nobody asked for.

Edited September 17 by Roomsky

[Scribe]

I mean props for reading it again. Its absolutely in the dumpster for me @Roomsky and unlike a lot of other works and authors, that one is just getting WORSE for me. I'll probably flip out over it in a decade, randomly.

[Roomsky]

Okay so attempting to keep an open mind and not work myself into an annoyed fit over a book I do think is good and enjoy - I've come around a bit on everything being from Malcador's POV on the throne. The clocks have stopped, space is warped and time is bendable, chapters from his perspective preceeding him sitting on the throne are fine by me. He refer to Horus as "you" repeatedly in one of his first-person chapters, so I suppose it's not so inconsistent as I first thought. It's another totally unneeded flex, but once again it's kind of neat as well.

 

Fo, as is his habit in this book, undermines the quality of this device by interjecting with his own first-person observations, though. I know Abnett's other work gets centre stage here, but even by that metric Fo is a baffling plot tumor. He was in a single short story before the Siege! Abnett gives him more love and care than Aximand!

Edited September 19 by Roomsky

[wecanhaveallthree]

>Fo is a baffling plot tumor. 

 

Fo is the ultimate Abnettism. He is the head of the pimple. I hate Fo. He's the evolution of the Cabal, Grammaticus, Oll - he's a character that does not belong. His initial appearance served one and only one function: Fo is from a Different Time. He has Different Sensibilities. He is Fun and Quippy and he Knows Things. He exists to say to Horus (and the reader) that if you didn't remember that the Emperor had a shady past and that Unification (and pre-Unity) was a bad time, here's your refresher. OK. Goodbye, Fo.

 

But somehow, Basilio Fo returned. To continue to stand outside the narrative and say quippy things and make smart comments and insinuate things and just be insufferably smug and smart in general. This is not inherently bad. There are characters whose self-confidence is enormously enjoyable (as is their inevitable comeuppance - half the fun of Bile is having the man go NUH UH I DON'T BELIEVE IN GODS I AM THE SMARTEST DUDE ALL OFF MY OWN BACK while Slaanesh just rolls her eyes at him). But we are - just like with the Cabal, with Grammaticus, with Oll - constantly reminded that Fo Is Important. He has a Secret Weapon that will Change Things. We spend more and more time with him, and he becomes more and more insufferable because everything just goes his way, all the time, because everyone becomes an idiot around that sociopathic genius, Basilio Fo. He's so smart. He's so good at manipulating people. And he wins, of course! How could he not win? And he doesn't just win in the sense that he escapes, or that his weapon is unleashed, or his plot succeeds - he becomes a founding member of the Inquisition. Abnett grafts a character he dreamed up for a short story into the fundamental construction of the Imperium. In fact, he gets two, because he snuck another of his Long Companions in there at the end. And we're not even counting Sindermann here (he was there the day the Emperor slew Horus, dontchaknow) or Keeler (aieeeeeeee). 

 

Abnett's characters must all be Important and Different. Look no further than Erda cropping up without even a hint of her existence prior to be the most unsatisfying answer to 'who scattered the Primarchs' possible. 'Dude, actually, there was actually another super-powerful Perpetual who, like, helped the Emperor make the Primarchs because he was too dumb to do it himself, and like, she has awesome nature powers never seen before, and she can take on the best greater daemons because she's so strong, and...'

 

I HATE IT.

 

>Aximand

 

Aximand is, I think, the character done dirtiest through the entire series and his random unceremonious death along with everyone else who might get in Abaddon's spotlight in Saturnine still infuriates me.

 

Though not as much as Abaddon's lander turning back to Luna Wolves colours at the end. Piss off, Abnett. 

[Roomsky]

 

somehow, Basilio Fo returned. 

 

Actually cackling right now.

[Scribe]

 

>Fo is a baffling plot tumor. 

 

Fo is the ultimate Abnettism. He is the head of the pimple. I hate Fo. He's the evolution of the Cabal, Grammaticus, Oll - he's a character that does not belong. His initial appearance served one and only one function: Fo is from a Different Time. He has Different Sensibilities. He is Fun and Quippy and he Knows Things. He exists to say to Horus (and the reader) that if you didn't remember that the Emperor had a shady past and that Unification (and pre-Unity) was a bad time, here's your refresher. OK. Goodbye, Fo.

 

But somehow, Basilio Fo returned. To continue to stand outside the narrative and say quippy things and make smart comments and insinuate things and just be insufferably smug and smart in general. This is not inherently bad. There are characters whose self-confidence is enormously enjoyable (as is their inevitable comeuppance - half the fun of Bile is having the man go NUH UH I DON'T BELIEVE IN GODS I AM THE SMARTEST DUDE ALL OFF MY OWN BACK while Slaanesh just rolls her eyes at him). But we are - just like with the Cabal, with Grammaticus, with Oll - constantly reminded that Fo Is Important. He has a Secret Weapon that will Change Things. We spend more and more time with him, and he becomes more and more insufferable because everything just goes his way, all the time, because everyone becomes an idiot around that sociopathic genius, Basilio Fo. He's so smart. He's so good at manipulating people. And he wins, of course! How could he not win? And he doesn't just win in the sense that he escapes, or that his weapon is unleashed, or his plot succeeds - he becomes a founding member of the Inquisition. Abnett grafts a character he dreamed up for a short story into the fundamental construction of the Imperium. In fact, he gets two, because he snuck another of his Long Companions in there at the end. And we're not even counting Sindermann here (he was there the day the Emperor slew Horus, dontchaknow) or Keeler (aieeeeeeee). 

 

Abnett's characters must all be Important and Different. Look no further than Erda cropping up without even a hint of her existence prior to be the most unsatisfying answer to 'who scattered the Primarchs' possible. 'Dude, actually, there was actually another super-powerful Perpetual who, like, helped the Emperor make the Primarchs because he was too dumb to do it himself, and like, she has awesome nature powers never seen before, and she can take on the best greater daemons because she's so strong, and...'

 

I HATE IT.

 

>Aximand

 

Aximand is, I think, the character done dirtiest through the entire series and his random unceremonious death along with everyone else who might get in Abaddon's spotlight in Saturnine still infuriates me.

 

Though not as much as Abaddon's lander turning back to Luna Wolves colours at the end. Piss off, Abnett. 

 

And CUT. Wrap it up. Go to Print. This is the one.

[Rob P]

Flesh and Steel

 

4/5

 

Felt like an episodic detective / buddy cop series that has plenty of stories to tell.

 

40k tells much more bearable stories when an obligatory big battle scene is absent.

 

I felt the characterisations were good and the back stories aided the plot.

 

The overall framing creates suitable intrigue. E.g.What happens to characters x and y after this book?

 

Minor quibbles. The characters seem to know too much of the wider imperium. The main character knows who the primarchs were and how many. And tiny quibble on consistency,: another character corrects the main character for calling servitors cyborgs and then does the same in a chapter or 2 later

 

Overall good. Gave me a better impression of what Guy Haley can do than the standard 40k novels.

Edited September 21 by Rob P

[DukeLeto69]

 

Flesh and Steel

 

4/5

 

Felt like an episodic detective / buddy cop series that has plenty of stories to tell.

 

40k tells much more bearable stories when an obligatory big battle scene is absent.

 

I felt the characterisations were good and the back stories aided the plot.

 

The overall framing creates suitable intrigue. E.g.What happens to characters x and y after this book?

 

Minor quibbles. The characters seem to know too much of the wider imperium. The main character knows who the primarchs were and how many. And tiny quibble on consistency,: another character corrects the main character for calling servitors cyborgs and then does the same in a chapter or 2 later

 

Overall good. Gave me a better impression of what Guy Haley can do than the standard 40k novels.

Loved it. For ME this is Haley’s best book. Such a shame it appears WH Crime might be dead! So much potential. This book was crying out for a sequel!

[aa.logan]

I’ve just finished reading The End and The Death.

 

I’ve just finished reading the Horus Heresy.

 

 

I quite liked it.

 

7/10