The Siege of Terra: The First Wall

[Moonreaper666]

Statistically speaking they are correct, though. Horus' rebellion would frankly not have mattered if the Imperial Army and Mechanicum didn't schism as well. The primarchs are in command, sure, but works like Titandeath show the limited marine presence that must have been spread across hundreds of worlds.

But Horus had access to Cultists, Mutants/Beastmen, Pirates and Daemons. He was 'pardoning' prisoners in exchange for their allegiance. For good reasons, the Imperium is not conscription some of its prisoners so that they could betray them and join Horus at first sight

 

The Alpha Legion and Word Bearers have destabilize entire worlds with just a few words.

Edited March 7, 2020 by Kelborn

[Kelborn]

I recommend to stay away from such comparisons.

We get your point without them. No need to draw in such stuff.

[caladancid]

 

-very good post-

 

Great post, but I disagree.

 

The normal human parts can be excellent.  Like I said, the part in Pharos I highlighted remains a standout from the whole series to me.  But what makes the 'normal' parts great is that they highlight the main point of the Horus Heresy, which is what the Astartes did, are doing, and will do.  The fact that the writing quality of those Astartes has not improved over the time the series has been written doesn't change what the Horus Heresy is about.

 

From an in-universe perspective saying the Horus Heresy was about something other than Astartes is like saying the Great Crusade was the result of normal humans because without them the conquered worlds would not have stayed conquered.  Maybe that is true- but the important actions were Astartes run.

 

The various FW black books make it clear- if you were normal you couldn't choose to not take part.  Either you chose or the choosing would be done for you.  Didn't matter how you felt about Horus or the Emperor, make a choice or die.  So that's my point here.  I think the idea that this was a civil war independent of the Astartes is just wrong.

 

For another example look at a non-HH novel- Titanicus.  Abnett has normal people in there and they serve an interesting role, but a dependent role.  The huge problem with First Wall is that the humans take waaay too much screen time.

[mc warhammer]

i really appreciate the human perspective in the heresy, but could also see the argument that it's an astartes tale in the way the silmarillion is elvish.

[Moonreaper666]

Astartes take heavy casualties in big battles throughout history, they were the spearpoint and the heavy lifters of heavy burdens. In the right moment a single person can make a difference. A single Marine's difference is ten thousand fold

 

A few dozen Marines can win battles that a few hundred thousand Guardsmen (or a few million) would lose. There is this short story in which a Mordian Iron Guardsman commits suicide after seeing most of his regiment as well as the Lamenters slaughtered within minutes

[b1soul]

On the ratio of Astartes to humans...

 

There's only one Emperor and one Malcador compared to the masses of humanity. There are only 18 primarchs. Do those numbers diminish their importance to the Heresy setting?

 

Those 2 million Astartes and their hardware represented a disproportionate chunk of the Imperium's galaxy-changing power. Can't just look at the number of bodies.

 

Could the HH be told from a more mortal perspective? Of course, but to me, the main HH series is like The Iliad. The focus will be on the Titanic struggle involving the ubermensch/heroes and the Gods of Olympus. Common foot-soldiers and civilians, though numerous, are not the main focus.

 

That said, would a spin-off about the common man during the Trojan War be interesting. Yes, it would and we might be getting that in the EC Siege novel

[rookie40K]

During the end game it is somewhat interesting to get the perspectives of what it is like for regular humans. I do think it is important, but they’re getting way too much screen time, or at least Astartes are not getting enough. Why does it have to be that Astartes and Primarchs only feel like exciting little tidbits or cameos. I’ve liked the Siege books so far, but damn why can’t the majority of the focus be on what brought us all here in the first place? I don’t care about some 17 year old girl or and elderly woman or some dude who is fighting for the first time. I’d rather read about Loken taking a crap and reading the news. Where the hell is Loken anyway? At least build up some new unknown Astartes for their heroism. Instead of 3/4 of focus on regular humans, how about 1/4 dedicated to give us the feel of what it is like. Sorry everyone for the rant. I just got a little triggered. I’m just fearful the end will be all about Jon G and not much on the Big E.

[Marshal Rohr]

It’s probably going to end up the Emperor doesn’t get much screen time and very little character development during the series.

[SkimaskMohawk]

I really don't don't think it's the sole fact that it's a human perspective thats the issue with first wall. The conscript in LatD and Oliton in Solar War were very compelling. But that's because they actually were part of those books plot. Oliton was trying to navigate the ongoing conflict of the solar war; conscript took part in the build up to the first attack. zenobi and co are very much separate from the rest of the plot; they feel like they belong in LatD.

[Fire Golem]

Yeah. I don’t really care whether a story is told from a Marine or a human PoV, I’ve certainly enjoyed both throughout the series, but I didn’t really enjoy the human sub plot of The First Wall. I thought there was too much buildup for the payoff, and then the payoff didn’t even really affect anything. 
 

That said, I thought the First Wall was only really okay, whether that’s the human side or the Marine side. I found it a bit of a slog to get through. 

[RedFurioso]

 

 

-very good post-

 

is like saying the Great Crusade was the result of normal humans because without them the conquered worlds would not have stayed conquered.  Maybe that is true- but the important actions were Astartes run.

 

It's debatable even in-universe.

 

"Such is their [Titan Legions] might that it is whispered by some that it is they, not the Legiones Astartes, that have truly won the Imperium's domain in the fires of battle." (HH-5 Tempest)

[Fedor]

It seems to me like these first 3 Siege books ( especially the last two actually mainly set on Terra) are very much doing the water carrying and laying an unflashy solid foundation, and that BL is intending the vast majority of the bigger vital plot points, classic scenes, revelations and fanservice bits for the bigger name/more popular authors over the last half. They are the kind of books that could well read much better for many once the series is complete.

 

Abnett doing the next one surprised me a bit though, but i guess he feels now would be a good time to get all his players like Oll and Grammaticus in place. I'm interested in seeing what he tackles as far as the wider battle goes though. Last Wall was mostly Fists and Iron Warriors....we need more Blood Angels soon!.

Edited March 8, 2020 by Fedor

[Moonreaper666]

It seems to me like these first 3 Siege books ( especially the last two actually mainly set on Terra) are very much doing the water carrying and laying an unflashy solid foundation, and that BL is intending the vast majority of the bigger vital plot points, classic scenes, revelations and fanservice bits for the bigger name/more popular authors over the last half. They are the kind of books that could well read much better for many once the series is complete.

 

Abnett doing the next one surprised me a bit though, but i guess he feels now would be a good time to get all his players like Oll and Grammaticus in place. I'm interested in seeing what he tackles as far as the wider battle goes though. Last Wall was mostly Fists and Iron Warriors....we need more Blood Angels soon!.

I just hope the later books starting with Saturnine are as good as Solar War or better

[Noserenda]

Just finished this one, overall great work, though I did guess Zenobis twist early which kept me a bit more on my seat looking for the jump :)

 

My main criticism is the jumping around in time, just got completely. Mixed up when various assaults were happening, especially given the unusual nature of the battlefield.

 

That and basically every single Ironwarrior character is in the Honsou series so there is zero tension as to their fates, that's McNeils fault rather than Thorpes though.

[JH79]

Well that was a good read, more enjoyable by far than The Lost and the Damned, this really felt like part of the wider Heresy saga with no glaring errors in continuity. Iron Warriors were great, having just re-visited Angel Exterminatus it was nice to have so many tips of the hat to that novel. I can't imaging i will revisit anytime soon but things certainly do seem nicely set up for Dan to hopefully kick things into high gear in Book 4.

I think my only real gripe is having to sit through yet another Wolf in Sheep's Clothing plot thread which, shock horror, has the Imperials on the back foot once again at the most unfortunate of moments. It almost feels like such a waste to have so much great character work put into it only for my resounding opinion to be what a bunch of stupid     . While here it was quite obvious early on that something wasn't right, hats off still has to go to John French for really surprising us with *you know who* popping out at just the right time in Solar War. While that was enough to make me eye roll and push pause for 2 days while i stopped shaking my head in annoyance, here it just felt inevitable and somewhat disappointing.

 

It's hard to put into words, but re the traitors it just feels like I'm watching someone play Doom on Ultra Nightmare, but using IDKFA, IDDQD & SAMUS all punched into the DOS prompt at the same time. It's a strange one to reconcile and completely my own fault for expecting not to be assailed by turn coats and the warp messing things up at just the right time.

Still it is what it is, and for me i give it a decent 6.5/10.

Edited March 11, 2020 by Kelborn
added spoiler tags

[SkimaskMohawk]

This book was a weird one. I liked some parts a lot and some character interactions, but there was a lot that just felt one dimensional or dumb or pointless or un-researched.

One of the first things that jumped out at me was how Gav seems to not understand that there's 10000 years between the siege and 40k for some of the characters. Khârn shouldnt be a mindless khorne devotee yet; the descent doesn't follow the previous shorts, and his personality in Anthony Reynolds book is far more calm and collected. Kroeger similarly doesnt need to be worshipping khorne at this point. Forrix doesn't need to be embittered about fighting.

Speaking about that, his disillusionment really rubbed me the wrong way. He gets upset at seeing the Iron Blood coming down to land at the space port and thinks his primarch is coming to swoop in and steal the win after him and his troops went through the grinder, in a parallel to how the Iron Warriors were always used. But in the previous cases, it was always at the War Council's or Horus' demands that they take high-casuality missions. It was Forrix' idea to attack the port in first place; the entire point was to capture it and land titans and other supplies extremely close to the walls. Then, perturabo tells him that he needs to go along with any disastrous plans of kroeger's; he explicitly says that it will bungle dorns strategy. But forrix gets mad at perturabo. Okay.

Things I thought were dumb.

Khârn and his antics; the jumping and punching and chopping were dumb.

The plot point that they needed to summon corbax to weaken the psy-shield to take the port, but then completely didn't need him in any way to do that was dumb; by extension, abbadon and layak's presence at the port was dumb as well.

Zenobi's story; I liked it a lot as a stand alone story, but it's over-all impact was covered by dorn being told that his main relief force would be delayed. She gets a good third of the book dedicated to her, the final thing you hear is that theyre going to be traitors and then that's it. Until dorn's told she got killed off screen, without us seeing her reaction to the whole "secretly a traitor" thing. That's dumb.

Dorn not understanding strategy. This is going to be a long one, because it's basically the whole reason for the book. Dorn really wants to keep the port operational; he doesn't destroy it while fortifying, he doesn't allow ran to sabotage the lifts, he doesn't have some sort of failsafe installed like on the moons. He wants it so the imperial reinforcements can land support. But, realistically, for that to happen he would need the following;

1. Orbital supremacy
2. Main traitor anti-air weapons neutralized
3. The space port in imperial occupation

But if all that has happened, then they've already won. They wouldn't need titan and mass armour support. Then, dorn tells his officers that he never intended to hold the space port and that they had held it longer than he thought they would. So he was always going to give them titans and armour formations on the palace door step? He talks down to perturabo for spending a million lives to take the port, but that's so strategically short sighted; he gave them a bastion and the ability to ferry down the largest weapons possible right next to their ultimate goal. It seems like he didn't even have a plan for the port other than have the siege lines attacked by his hidden forces, but at that point it wouldn't have stopped the port from being seized. After 7 years of planning, that was the whole idea for the port; just let them have it. When Dorn and Pert were trading insults at the end, Pert should have told him "oh ya, my worst commander was able to take your port, completely on his own, without any help from me or daemons. Now I got titans; what we're you doing for the last 7 years?". This is the same character that told alpharius how his insurgent tactics could have been optimally refined, but fails to understand the basics of strategy. That's really dumb.

Edited March 11, 2020 by Kelborn
added spoiler tags

[aa.logan]

Spoilers, people!

[KhorneFlakes]

finished this the other day. was disappointed. a lot in there felt like filler.

 

the whole zenobi story line took up a chunk of the novel but the end result was a bit 'meh'...could see it coming. did not deserve that much of the story to be taken up

 

the Dorn v Perturabo face off...some comments then one party buggers off

 

Khârn...very strange interpretation

 

in fact most of the major characters came across as odd given what has been written before

 

there seemed to be an intention to build up to something then it ended on..nothing...with better editing it should have been a novella

[StrangerOrders]

Just finished reading through it and it was my favorite book in the Siege so far.

 

Which would be a good thing if it was not my favorite due to being the funniest thing I have read from BL in the longest time.

 

Where to even start, alright lets start with Perturabo.

He seems to have gone full man-child, I literally started laughing when I saw the book literally make him stomp around a hologram of the palace and unironically made a godzilla reference. We also saw his STRATEGIC GENIUS, otherwise known as having a guy do it for him and show up to gloat at Dorn as if that proved something. Not even going to go into the fact that the space station fell principally due to warp nonsense (BEHOLD THE TECHNOPHAGE) and the Imperial Fists not remembering that small fighter craft are a thing.

 

Dorn seems like a temperamental baffoon, but that is par for the course at this point. The Siege books really convinced me so far that any of the Loyalists would have made a more effective use of seven years than the guy whose biggest feat seems to have been antagonizing the populace to the point where they side with gut-magicians rather than help him.

 

Speaking of gut-magicians, we had Layak (the most inexplicably powerful sorcerer on record) and Abaddon still desperately trying to convince us that BL isnt trying to desperately back-peddle on the fact that the latter is a one-dimensional ball of topknots and anger. To their credit, they are succeeding. I know think he is a ball of topknots, anger AND edgyness. I am becoming increasingly convinced no one other than the top tier authors should be allowed anywhere near him. I hate everything about Layak, mostly because he was actually enjoyable and shockingly nuanced in Slaves to Darkness and he seems to have sold his depth in exchange for power.

 

Forix is now Terran, for some reason, because heavens forbid that someone in high command of a Legion other than Abaddon be non-Terran. I could have sworn that he literally dwelled on his childhood on Olympia in Pert's novel, but I am not checking. He is one of the funniest characters in the book, being somehow sniveling, treacherous and an irritating manchild at once.

 

We can't discuss manchildren without discussing Siggy of course. He is still way more interested in his ego than his alleged faith (anything resembling giving a damn about Dorn is just told to us a best). The most effected he is in the entire book is when he loses to Khârn and most of that page count goes into sulking over his loss and Dorn not letting him be a special boy, rather than any seeming awareness as to the actual war to protect the man he insists he worships. Sort of an encapsulation of self-serving faith rather than anything resembling selfless piety.

 

Speaking of Piety, I am convinced at this point that Malcador is a secret chaos-supporter as written. Either that or the book just accidentally made Amon be 100% right and Malc lacks basic pattern recognition. 'Faith can also defeat daemons!' is a weak as hell argument when it was directly used to bring down the Phalanx, has a PROVEN history of killing expeditionary fleets, Monarchia and in that book alone cost him a number of his increasingly few Custodes (recall that they have a function acting force of 500) and his priceless tech. And that is ignoring the number of people it is killing. Folks talk about plot armor but Keeler seems to have some sort of stupidity field generating more plot armor than most Primarchs.

 

Speaking of idiocy and plot armor. Khârn now operates on a different gravity than the rest of us. Jump several dozen meters, being thrown several dozen meters, being super strongm etc. He seems to be trapped in a bouncy castle more than a battlefield at this point. Still the smartest Khorne supporter given that Kruger was waving his arms around literally and everything out of his mouth was funny as hell.

 

And I literally have no idea why we are still spending the bulk of our HH climax on random mortals. Not even interesting or high ranked mortals but a YA protagonist that somehow got hurled into the future. I am intrigued by her politics though, given that it takes balls to associate anyone in 40k with freedom.

 

Overall, I am really hoping Saturnine rights this ship as it plows through several iceburgs.

Edited March 15, 2020 by StrangerOrders

[Scribe]

Distressing, but not unexpected.

 

Did Khârn at least take the breach, or is that a later plot point?

[Fedor]

Regarding Khârn, i suppose we had to start making that transition into  him being boosted by the gods to be unrealistically unstoppable for a Marine in melee at some point, though i always had the idea it didn't really happen until after he "died" . We kind of already got it when he beats down the already observed as an excellent duellist Erebus as if he was a normal man in Betrayer, something i have my doubts would have been a fan favourite scene if Gav or god forbid Kyme had wrote it.

[bluntblade]

I think there are degrees to that, and agree with you that it would fit best if his final step to becoming the true murderbeast came upon his resurrection.

[StrangerOrders]

He is literally 

Jumping dozens of meters in the air, swolling so much as to burst power armor and punching rhinos to death before flinging the wreckage a dozen meters away (for some reason everything in the book about Khârn is a dozen meters exactly), he is even being THROWN by Primarchs a dozen meters (so I guess he also buffs his attackers?)

how much of a murder beast do you want? He is already making his 40k version seem tame and tasteful.

 

Also, the book doesnt use anime imagery. There isnt things like blurs of movement or a low glide forward. He is literally doing arcs in the book like an astronaut or a child a bouncy castle.

 

Kinda just have to accept that this is the hand we got dealt. Still better than the absolute mauling the characterization that the Fists are getting. The Scars are being made to seem to have a better grasp of siege warfare atm. That most of their characters seem somewhere between pompous and outright juvenile makes it worse.

 

Its getting to the point where I am stuck clinging to Praetorian and Crimson as the only time the Fists got some dignity in the HH.

[Scribe]

Ugh.

[DarkChaplain]

That's.... one way to frame the novel, I guess. A most uncharitable way that misses out on most of the subtleties of certain characters' arcs, but a way nonetheless. For what it's worth, and I don't mean to offend, with how often characters in the book are described as manchildren there, had I read this summary on reddit or 4chan, I'd have probably dismissed it on the same grounds.

 

Khârn's transition is rapid, I'll agree there. I wouldn't be surprised if we'd end up with a story plugging the hole; however, I haven't kept precise track of how long fighting has been going on at this point, and it's easy to forget that the Siege lasted months already, and Khârn, while still clinging to shreds of sanity, has been close to losing control by Slaves to Darkness already, despite a lack of overt Khorne worship.

 

As for Layak.... I think I've made my misgivings about him clear elsewhere.