Siege of Terra - Saturnine by Dan Abnett

[Marshal Rohr]

I kinda wish they do it the way the expanse novels are narrated. Just a guy reading.

[StrangerOrders]

Its kinda funny but as much as I can enjoy audiobooks, narrating an entire one sounds like a nightmarish job. 

 

Already said my piece on accents and a bit tired of the subject, I will say though that I hope more stuff moving forwards gets what the Custodian books for some reason seem fairly unique in.

 

I rather like having multiple readers and alternating chapters.

 

Since someone already brought up the expanse, I will say what I really want.

 

I'd love to see BL try for multi-author books, yes its hard to do but it would fantastic to see a book split between ADB and Abnett for example and having them write the competing sides of a war. Things like Corey are obviously hard to pull off but man even seeing the attempt with some of the stronger BL writers would be a massive treat.

 

EDIT: Might as well say this as well, while the accent is the newest incarnation of it, it feels like Keeble gets next to no slack from people for things you can lay at the feet of most any narrator or things that are not even his fault. 

 

Granted, the same goes for alot of the actual writers (some people act as if Haley is to blame for how hamfisted Primaris are to name one thing) but it feels especially egregious here.

Edited July 24, 2020 by StrangerOrders

[ninja6fett]

I want to point out that Abnett calls out the slaughter of the EC and the SoH at the end of the book in his afterword. He states he first intended to make it a drawn out epic fight. But he reconsidered for a specific reason: anything less than a slaughter makes Dorn look dumb and the giving up of the Spaceport has less meaning. It wasn't a flawless victory, guys still died - especially at the hands of the Justaerin. So the traitors got some shots in, but there was no way they could win. Dorn outplayed Pert. Completely. But only because Dorn heard an off-hand remark from Sindermann.

[b1soul]

The EC lost

 

tens of thousands at Saturnine... so this is almost like a Prospero-level event for them

[StrangerOrders]

The EC lost

 

tens of thousands at Saturnine... so this is almost like a Prospero-level event for them

Well, not really at all.

 

The EC by this point do not really care about anything, sort of the point.

 

They do not care even slightly that the Lion burned Chemos and unlike the DG or really most other Traitor Legions ever tried to make pantomime of it in the Eye. 

 

They do not care that they are literally kicked in the teeth more than most other Traitors.

 

Most do not even care that much that Fulgrim opted to bugger off and leave basically orphaned.

 

Nothing really matters with them, even trying to capture the impulse to care is sort of the driving thrust of the first two Fabius books (with predictable results).

 

Their not caring about the events of Saturnine or the false allegations that are constantly hurled at them across the Chaos books regarding Terra could not possibly be more in character.

[mc warhammer]

 

The EC lost

 

tens of thousands at Saturnine... so this is almost like a Prospero-level event for them

Well, not really at all.

 

The EC by this point do not really care about anything, sort of the point.

 

They do not care even slightly that the Lion burned Chemos and unlike the DG or really most other Traitor Legions ever tried to make pantomime of it in the Eye. 

 

They do not care that they are literally kicked in the teeth more than most other Traitors.

 

Most do not even care that much that Fulgrim opted to bugger off and leave basically orphaned.

 

Nothing really matters with them, even trying to capture the impulse to care is sort of the driving thrust of the first two Fabius books (with predictable results).

 

Their not caring about the events of Saturnine or the false allegations that are constantly hurled at them across the Chaos books regarding Terra could not possibly be more in character.

 

not totally disagreeing with the general thrust of the above but doesn't the latest fabius book have fulgrim

 

recreating chemos

 

and i got the idea that enough of the third are still interested in (or at least in love with the idea of) returning to their previous glories from those books too, though it's a lost and broken cause.

[b1soul]

Yeah...Prospero-level as in that legion took massive losses. Not talking about how much they "cared"

[Noserenda]

Nostalgia is a sensation too :D 

I dont think anyone can sensibly separate any specific battle during the siege regards casualties, all of the Legions involved take horrific maulings, though a significant percentage of those will be the mass produced "newborns" that literally noone cares about. Especially in the World Eaters and Emperors Children, both of whom have already disintegrated as coherent commands by now. 

That said i suspect Saturine is the last big action for the Emperors Children before they split up and go rogue all over terra rather than following the Warmaster.

[bluntblade]

I find myself liking more and more how Loken's part was played. It was good to see the Luna Wolf resurgent, and to remember that even the most restrained of them still counts as a "mad :cusstard" in the eyes of the Imperial Fists.

[drooling blood]

Ef it deleted.

 

Edited July 25, 2020 by drooling blood

[Lord Lorne Walkier]

i to liked how Garvil was portrayed.  I was ready to dive back into Loken derangements zone when 

 

 

Garo steals the show.  Is Libertas, Excalibur?  I have thought it was some kind of force weapon, but that seems to under sell it.  

[bluntblade]

Libertas is an old and exceptionally potent power sword - I don't know if the BL books have used the term, but the FW fluff describes them as "Paragon Blades". Sigismund's Black Sword and Aximand's sword Mourn-it-All are also examples.

 

In a better Flight of the Eisenstein Garro's sword could have been a symbol of the divide between him and his Barbaran counterparts.

Edited July 25, 2020 by bluntblade

[Lord Lorne Walkier]

Libertas is an old and exceptionally potent power sword - I don't know if the BL books have used the term, but the FW fluff describes them as "Paragon Blades". Sigismund's Black Sword and Aximand's sword Mourn-it-All are also examples.

 

In a better Flight of the Eisenstein Garro's sword could have been a symbol of the divide between him and his Barbaran counterparts.

Yes, all this.  But.... 

there is a "sword in the stone" moment.  Libertas seems to be sentient. 

[bluntblade]

Err... I missed that.

[Lord Lorne Walkier]

Err... I missed that.

bottom of pg 464- top of 465

[Noserenda]

Magic does not mean sentient, thats quite a big leap :D 

[bluntblade]

 

Magic does not mean sentient, thats quite a big leap  

 

So... faith thing?

 

Are weapons held to have any kind of Machine Spirit, actually?

[deepsix81]

5, 10, ?? years down the line and Camba Diaz's line in the rockcrete will be one of the handful of unforgettable moments in this whole damn series. Whatever nits are picked with this book, I'm happy as hell that I get to take that with me. 

[bluntblade]

I'd say this book has several truly golden moments, and those will endure.

[m0nolith]

Just finished it last night and I thought I’d give my thoughts on it.

Before I start I have to say that I haven’t gone thought the thread and read other people’s opinions due to it inevitably colouring how you perceive a book, movie, game ect ect. I was aware that people like it due to the high score it has on Goodreads, and I unfortunately one thing with Erda was spoiled for me a few weeks ago. That being said;

 

Saturnine is the best Horus Heresy book.

Period

 

After having gone though a massive 72 Horus Heresy books, I was surprised to find that the 73rd was the best one.

 

Apologies if this is too simple of a review, but this thread is 42 pages right now and anything I could say I’m sure has been already said, analyzed, explored and repeated.

 

I loved this book

12/10

Edited July 31, 2020 by m0nolith

[DarkChaplain]

I'm currently trying to figure out if I'm just feeling apathetic about the Siege in general, for various reasons, or if it's the book that makes it hard for me to get excited.

 

Frankly, I really don't like Keeler here so far, a quarter in. She's petulant, disingenuous, and lacking in all that supposed serenity she'd been set up with for the past, I don't know, 50 books? This ain't the saint speaking to Garro and Loken, or Sigismund, and definitely not the same mysterious woman accompanying Amon last time. This is Keeler the photographer, full of resentment and conversational sparring.

 

Similarly, I'm having a hard time with Sindermann. This is more of the Kyril whose Iteration in Horus Rising I loved, the one speech and following conversation with Loken that - for me, back then - established the Great Crusade as a setting so perfectly. It might even partially be the character we know he'll have to become. But it's not the Sindermann from the rest of the Heresy, the faithful proponent of the first saint, who'd cling on and spread the faith with his powers of well-posed speeches. I thought Sindermann as a character was mostly underplayed, forgotten and "weak" over the last couple of years, but that had more to do with the lack of focus authors put on him existing anymore. It feels jarring to me that he'd just have shrugged off his faith the way it is presented here, mostly in-between books, or even between prologue and chapter one.

 

Considering how much of the early chapters actually deals with these two characters, jarring is the right term in my opinion. It feels like Abnett is resetting his characters to where he wants them to be, rather than transitioning them from where they last were (mere weeks ago, in-universe) to where he wants them to go.

[Noserenda]

I think Sinderman certainly needed it, his eventual fate is pretty well known but so far for most of the heresy he had basically just been a wind sock floating around and badly needed a boot out of that frame to get going. Being left alone, planning the thing he planned and then having that critical meeting in the garden was a significant boot, it was absolutely no small thing he was attempting there i assure you.

As for Keeler, she seemed about right to me. I suspecting being in her situation rather than where she would like to be is as much making the best of things? She also got quite the world view beating last book too as i recall?

That she was essentially correct but that it was actually a genuine problem

 

Nearly managed without the tags Edited July 31, 2020 by Noserenda

[SkimaskMohawk]

High-quality whiplash for sure. If saturnine dropped with no prequel novels it'd be better.

 

As for the best novel in the entire series and 12/10. Well I'm sorry but it's not, tons of characters and archetypes acting oddly means that it has flags. It doesn't build on or combine other's works like say Hammer of Olympia, its just the way abnett wants, like dark chaplain stated. It's aggressively standalone.

[Sothalor]

Having finished it some days ago and stewed over it a bit, Saturnine reminds me of a particular bit from Ravenor Returned: Gideon's old shivered sword, the incredible blade that's slightly out of sync with time and material reality.

 

That's Saturnine to me.

 

As its own novel, this is absolutely my favorite work out of what we've got from the Siege so far. The character beats, the prose, the pacing, the variation between the different fronts to keep what would otherwise devolve into repetitive bolter porn interesting and engaging, the themes - holy crap I love the themes going on here.

 

But as many have already pointed out, it's got quite a few issues as an entry of a larger, ongoing body of work that is supposed to be maintaining a consistent continuity. As much as I enjoyed the parts with Keeler and Sindermann, they are definitely very different from the established characterizations we last saw. There's a ton of seemingly new lore like Erda, Krole's blank effects, Basilius Fo's plot thread (I know, he was in a short story in a limited release Primarchs anthology - but come on, expecting the bulk of readers to have read that is a stretch that would make a contortionist cry), the Primarchs have developed sudden potty-mouths, etc.

 

Hence, the shivered sword. Like Ravenor's monstrously effective cutter, but you look at it and something's off about it. If you handed me this book and told me that Abnett's Horus Heresy stuff all took place in an alternate continuity, I'd be hard-pressed to disagree with you.

 

But for me, like the sword, it's very good at what it does in its own right. And frankly, after slogging through the aggressive mediocrity of The Lost and the Damned and the complete masturbatory flatulence that was The First Wall, I'll take desynched continuity with great writing, characters, and thematic exploration any day.

[m0nolith]

As for the best novel in the entire series and 12/10. Well I'm sorry but it's not, tons of characters and archetypes acting oddly means that it has flags. It doesn't build on or combine other's works like say Hammer of Olympia, its just the way abnett wants, like dark chaplain stated. It's aggressively standalone.

Given the fact that it has the highest rating based on user reviews of all the Heresy series on Goodreads, it seems that a lot of people agree with me. The book isn’t perfect, no book is, but as far as Heresy books go it’s a masterpiece. You’re of course welcome to your opinion as is anyone else, including me.

 

12/10