What is your least favorite HH novel?

[Scribe]

1. That is the truth of the setting.

 

2. There is no dichotomy between Good and Evil. Again, that is a foundational truth of 40K/30K/WHFB Mythology.

 

3. Grey vs Black Morality and Behavior is, again, the point.

 

4. The Emperor was not diminished.

 

5. No, he simply illustrates what was already there. Logically.

 

6. I'm sorry, but you are completely incorrect. He has changed, nothing. Nobody cares more about being coherent with the lore than ADB.

 

EDIT: Like I'm sorry, I really am. I dont want another thread to get locked like the 'Who is good' thread did, but this just has to be stated.

 

The GW Mythos is not Good vs Evil. It's roots are in other genres, other tropes. It is Grey vs Black AT BEST, and often is Black vs Black.

 

This is not an Epic Fantasy setting, it is the Trope Maker of 'Grimdark'. It is satire, it is exaggeration, it is not, and never has been, about Good, vs Evil.

 

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CrapsackWorld

 

This is a setting, in which the faction that most gives me pause, that makes me wonder 'are we going too far here, this is kinda gross' is the Sisters of Battle.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Scribe

[b1soul]

The Emperor is a utilitarian species survivalist in a universe where Chaos Gods exist along with other voracious or malicious xenos threats. If the end is humanity's survival, the end justifies any means. The Emperor is never going to let notions of kindness and love distract from his ultimate goal. He will torture a billion infants if necessary for the rest of humanity to rise above Chaos. Ultimately he's trying to reduce mankind's collective suffering and maximise its collective power.

 

Despite (or perhaps because) all that, the Emperor is "good" by the standards of the setting. In a similar vein, Guilliman is also "good". There have been quite a few real-world rulers less pleasant than someone like G-man of Ultramar.

Edited May 7, 2020 by b1soul

[Atlantic]

I'm not disagreeing with most of what you said.

 

The lore and setting absolutely have changed and been revised over the last thirty years. They are in fact creating more as they write.

 

Before the HH series this stuff was all vague notions about what may have happened and why it did.

 

Everything in 40k was a mess because of how badly things went and how terrible the situation was - not because of the absence of some kind of moral spectrum.

 

I'm fine with 90 percent of everything being gray. You just can't really define anything without something that isn't gray to compare it to.

 

Contrast is important.

 

With that said, I say Damnation of Pythos stunk and I move on

Edited May 7, 2020 by Atlantic

[b1soul]

40K is grey, but so is the real world. There are definitely lighter and darker shades of grey in 40K.

[Scribe]

I'm not disagreeing with most of what you said.

 

The lore and setting absolutely have changed and been revised over the last thirty years. They are in fact creating more as they write.

 

Before the HH series this stuff was all vague notions about what may have happened and why it did.

 

Everything in 40k was a mess because of how badly things went and how terrible the situation was - not because of the absence of some kind of moral spectrum.

 

I'm fine with 90 percent of everything being gray. You just can't really define anything without something that isn't gray to compare it to.

 

Contrast is important.

 

There is a contrast between Grey and Black.

 

While the HH series has obviously illustrated a bit (I wont even say a lot because most of the series is filler and useless) but the main point of contension is you saying that ADB changed things.

 

He changed nothing. You want to call out Abnett or Thorpe for changing things, I will be right there behind you supporting you. ADB doesnt change things thats actually why many are fan's of what he writes.

 

40K is the story of how Humanity is it's own worst enemy, and that for all the 'evil' of the universe, Humanity is right there, doing the same. Chaos is merely its reflected evil.

 

Its a dark satire, and the 'good' is not the contrast, any 'good' is the exception, and it never works out well for them because that is not the tone/genre of the setting.

[b1soul]

You could make arguments that certain sects of Chaos are not more "evil" than certain sects of the Imperium.

[Scribe]

40K is grey, but so is the real world. There are definitely lighter and darker shades of grey in 40K.

 

This is fine, but when authors and editors are bemused on their twitter over the 'community' response being 'but the emperor loved his sons!' you have to start wondering who exactly missed the boat.

 

It's not the collective creatives. Its the people who decided that their head canon was real, and that the hyper totalitarian galactic empire that feeds on itself is 'good'.

[DarkChaplain]

There is no immutable fact in a fictional setting, not even stuff in the "history" of that setting. The future is even less clear.

 

At one point, people would have said a dead Guilliman in stasis is absolute fact and he'll never come back.

 

...which is a terrible example, as Guilliman's return was teased for generations. They always put in lines like "his wounds are said to be slowly healing" and what not, clearly leaving it open-ended. He was never dead, just preserved moments before death. Unlike Sanguinius, who is really really doubly dead, yet people are still crying for him to get brought back for... reasons? Wanting a model, I guess.

[Scribe]

The Emperor is a utilitarian species survivalist in a universe where Chaos Gods exist along with other voracious or malicious xenos threats. If the end is humanity's survival, the end justifies any means. The Emperor is never going to let notions of kindness and love distract from his ultimate goal. He will torture a billion infants if necessary for the rest of humanity to rise above Chaos. Ultimately he's trying to reduce mankind's collective suffering and maximise its collective power.

 

Despite (or perhaps because) all that, the Emperor is "good" by the standards of the setting. In a similar vein, Guilliman is also "good". There have been quite a few real-world rulers less pleasant than someone like G-man of Ultramar.

 

This is only 'good' if the survival of humanity is a worthy goal.

 

The beauty of this setting is that its reasonable to look at it, and actually argue 'No, it would probably be better if the Imperium died, and took this filth of humanity with it.'

[Marshal Loss]

 

 

8. ADB has an agenda - meaning he has a vision he is trying to push into the series and lore which makes his work untrustworthy even at it's most awesome

All authors have a vision that shapes how they portray the setting. Characterizing that as an agenda is ridiculous; declaring his work to be untrustworthy even more so. These are works of fiction.

The only time I've seen any such "agenda" come up is when he's talked about "casting". The whole "most Terrans are gonna be brown-skinned in 30K", making it less of a sausage-fest... which I don't object too, in all honesty.

 

At risk of getting political and real-world, I should stress that I'm the kind of guy who, to gesture towards some survival-horror war movies, wasn't bothered by a lack of minorities in Dunkirk but had no objections to the Sikh soldiers being in 1917 either.

 

And if we're talking solely in terms of how character and theme are treating, "preserve it the way it always was" is clearly an "agenda" as well. As is "chart a middle course, keeping what works and adding things to improve it".

 

 

I think in misunderstanding my point you inadvertently agreed with it. I'm distinguishing between the characterization of his vision as an agenda relative to all other authors in the setting. All writing in every conceivable context has some kind of intent and bias behind it. That's fact. Your post has an "agenda", just as mine does, just as OP's does. But there's a significant difference again between this and an agenda loaded with negative connotations, e.g. an ulterior motive, which is clearly what OP was drawing upon.

 

Post Modernism can be fun, but absent the existence of some kind of objective truth or goodness in the setting - everyone just becomes a self interested individual muddling around in the weeds.  

That's not at all true, and I say this as a historian whose style is anything but postmodernist. Objectivity cannot exist in a setting that is an amalgamation of countless different minds working across a period of decades.

 

5.  More than any author - ADB has pushed the Emperor as being a negative force.  It's not quite but almost a bit like that show Ancient Aliens.  All this stuff happened - must be because the Emperor is a dick

This is an opinion, not a fact, and one I strongly disagree with. ADB's depiction of the Emperor is ambiguous. That's the whole point - in maintaining fidelity to original lore, as Scribe has outlined in places, ADB has sought to preserve the original characterization of the Emperor, which was never wholly positive. How you view that is your own business but to describe his Emperor as being a "negative force" is just...wrong. It may not be as glowing a portrayal as some others, certainly, but that doesn't make it negative.

 

People that freaked out over Master of Mankind invariably did so because they didn't understand the way things were. It really wasn't the shocking development that it is often made out to be.

[bluntblade]

Ah, I rather misinterpreted you then. So I think we're in agreement?

[Marshal Loss]

Ah, I rather misinterpreted you then. So I think we're in agreement?

Yeah. That's on me, I should have been more explicit in my original post

[b1soul]

@ Scribe

 

"No, it would probably be better if the Imperium died, and took this filth of humanity with it."

 

You could make a semi-reasonable argument for that in the real world, based on how destructive our species has been up to the 21st century

 

@ DarkChaplain

 

A lot of that was brushed aside as in-universe propaganda/wishful thinking by devout pilgrims...as Guilliman was placed in stasis "at the moment of death" or somesuch wording, which sounded a lot like they had frozen a corpse.

 

Back in the day (late 2000s/early 2010s) many posters on the old forums insisted GW would never bring back what was essentially a dead Primarch and thought those suggesting it were dreaming

[Scribe]

@ Scribe

 

"No, it would probably be better if the Imperium died, and took this filth of humanity with it."

 

You could make a semi-reasonable argument for that in the real world, based on how destructive our species has been up to the 21st century

 

 

Would it surprise you to hear that I have indeed made that argument lol?

[StrangerOrders]

Honestly? MoM is probably my least favorite, despite it being a superbly written book. But it switches with Betrayer regularly.

 

You have to be honest with these things and I do not think my not liking something makes it somehow poorly written. It just makes it my least favorite.

 

I will try to articulate why, but I hope that it is noted that I at no point think he is a poor author. He just has quirks that can tip the taste from excellent to horrid for me.

 

The first is probably language choice.

 

I will say that it is unfair to lay this solely on ADB but he is one of the worst about it.

 

Almost every author in the setting has a severe case of 'absolute'-itus. The language of the books, even when it is from a narrator has a bad habit of saying 'always' rather than 'in this case' or 'maybe', it is one of the things that can make Khayon a bit of a setting tumor. The guy likes to say 'always'.

 

Now ADB had a habit of saying in afterwards and twitter and so on that his characters shouldnt be trusted or that 'x was just a pov'. But that doesnt jive with the story when there is little in the work itself to clue you into the character being unreliable. 

 

Which has lead to countless arguments and setting contradictions, like the famous excerpt of him saying that the Emp's talks in MoM weren't reliable but stating this outside the actual body.

 

Granted, you can also pick a bone out of BL for never bothering to include Afterwards in audiobooks (which seem to increasingly be a big part of the fanbase). 

 

That does tend to have a cascade effect. Especially when alot of authors do it.

 

Not particularly interested in even trying to take a stance on 'right' and 'wrong' in a universe that works on different paradigms to ours though. 

 

But for me, I will say that if someone tries to say that Astartes are legitimately child soldiers one more time, imma throw something heavy at em (barring the one-year inductees, but FW has made the rather good point that those tended to be pretty shoddy and can't be fairly deemed the intended product). Its one of the more annoying of ADBs habits. The argument leaves a rather horrid taste in my mouth and tends to decrease my enjoyment of his works.

 

First of all, I rather dislike cross-applying cultural standards and perspectives because it does tend to make one seem a bit of an ass. That's the side I fall on pretty heavily (I know some fragments of academia favor it, I welcome you to the PoV) and I am not horribly impressed when you try to handwave an Astartes as a child in armor. By that logic a medieval knight cannot be judged for his actions because he was trained from a young age to his role or a great number of samurai couldn't be held accountable on the premise that fourteen was a legal adult age during the Sengoku Jidai. 

 

Moreso since it contradicts the posthuman idea of an Astartes, since they dont stay children but grow into something altogether different. Its irksome in the extreme frankly because it tends to cripple my ability to be interested in a character when they are constantly treated as if their own culture didn't frequently state that they would have been put through the meatgrinder at that age anyway.

 

There's more to it but that's it on a surface level. The entire idea falls flat on its face on the level of what an actual child soldier is and on the level of the presented idea of a posthuman. Especially when compared to characterizations such as French, Abnett or Wraight.

 

His prose are too good for any work of his to be 'bad' though. It makes them some of my least favorite to be sure, but I'm not sure that's a worthwhile condemnation. It is just my opinion honestly.

[Scribe]

I think there is something there StrangeOrders that could be dug into for sure.

[Marshal Loss]

Now ADB had a habit of saying in afterwards and twitter and so on that his characters shouldnt be trusted or that 'x was just a pov'. But that doesnt jive with the story when there is little in the work itself to clue you into the character being unreliable. 

 

Which has lead to countless arguments and setting contradictions, like the famous excerpt of him saying that the Emp's talks in MoM weren't reliable but stating this outside the actual body.

That's not ADB's fault and this criticism can be (unjustly) leveled at countless other authors. The fault lies with the fanbase reading a novel and then going "(x) character saw this happen in a certain way and described it as (y), making (z) a fact". In a setting like 40k/30k contradictions are inevitable. People shouldn't need to be clued into the fact that any given character is unreliable, because all views are unreliable. Always, in every context. Even the most reliable account is still inherently derivative.

 

Take Khayon, given he was your example of an egregious outlier. How on earth is it not obvious that he's an insanely biased narrator? He contradicts himself from one book to to another ("the gods hate us" "the gods don't hate us"). He summons daemons, consorts with aliens, commits murder on a horrific scale without blinking, seeks to tear down humanity's empire, is an avid follower of the setting's anti-christ, etc, etc. I mean, come on.

 

This isn't a phenomenon unique to 40k/30k. Fans want to know how something happened. They buy a book and expect every word on every page to be canon. Many of us are guilty of this at times. ADB's approach plays up the idea of perspective a lot and I don't think that's a bad thing at all even if it apparently does confuse some people.

 

For the record, I'm not criticizing anybody for not enjoying ADB's work. To each their own.

[bluntblade]

 

 The fault lies with the fanbase reading a novel and then going "(x) character saw this happen in a certain way and described it as (y), making (z) a fact".

Careful now, we've already had that running battle.

[Phoebus]

A few random thoughts:

Dembski-Bowden’s characters saying “always” isn’t a reflection of his beliefs. It’s a reflection of their beliefs, and this setting is in the state that it is precisely because its primary actors are brainwashed super-soldiers, megalomaniacs, psychopaths, religious zealots, and so on. Yes, these people would have absolutist views — a good author should convey this.

 

Re: good and evil in the 31st Millennium:

 

“The war is over, Diocletian. Win or lose, Horus has damned us all. Mankind will share in his ignorance until the last man or woman draws the species’ last breath. The warp will forever be a cancer in the heart of all humans. The Imperium may last a hundred years, or a thousand, or ten thousand. But it will fall, Diocletian. It will fall. The shining path is lost to us. Now we rage against the dying of the light.”

Excerpt From
The Master of Mankind
Aaron Dembski-Bowden

Having read this, consider the Afterword in John French’s Slaves to Darkness.

 

The Emperor isn’t cruel, evil, or inhuman in the dictionary sense. His morality is on the macro scale. He doesn’t not care about individual people so much as he recognizes the existential threat the collective species’ actions, emotions, and psychic resonance pose to it. He sacrifices the liberty and well-being of countless billions of human beings, but it’s not because he’s indifferent to the suffering inherent in his Imperium; it’s because the alternative is the nightmares of the Age of Strife. It’s not a case of whether the Emperor is the good guy and Chaos is the bad guy, then. It’s a matter of Chaos inevitably skewing toward violent extremes, which — when given the opportunity — intrude on the material universe with catastrophic results.
 

The Cabal propose an alternative in the extinction of the human race, but as readers who have some insight into the workings of this universe, we know that’s utter nonsense. Chaos isn’t coded to Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Human beings could go away, but the underlying cosmic mechanic wherein what sentient creatures do, feel, and think feeds destructive godlike forces wouldn’t. Slaanesh existed and didn’t exist before M29, but it was the Eldar hitting maximum levels of cruelty and decadence that led to it becoming what we know it as.

Anyways, what is my least favorite Horus Heresy novel? It’s probably a toss-up between Descent of Angels and The Damnation of Pythos. I tried to check my subjective tastes in writing when deciding, and really what it came down to is what novel did the least to contribute to the chronicle of Horus’s rebellion against the Emperor of Mankind. At best, Descent initiates a conflict internal to a legion that played a peripheral part in this war. At best, Damnation serves as a prequel to a plot device from a later novel. I won’t even get into the good and the bad where writing, pacing, characters, etc., are concerned. They just contributed so little to the epic itself.

Edited May 8, 2020 by Phoebus

[Roomsky]

The Damnation of Pythos.

 

Phoebus.

 

I trusted you.

[bluntblade]

Spirited defence time?

[Fedor]

Atticus endures!

[Marshal Loss]

Hats off Phoebus, great post.

 

edit: as for my own least favourite HH novel...I can't decide. I've read everything except for The Buried Dagger, which I avoided because from what a trusted friend told me it would probably result in my death. There are many I'm not exactly fond of. Dishonourable mentions go to Unremembered Empire, Prospero Burns, and Old Earth. I still have PTSD from a Justaerin being killed when some bloke pegged a sword at his head. But Damnation of Pythos was the first time I became genuinely frustrated at the direction of the HH series so the trophy has to go to Annandale.

Edited May 7, 2020 by Marshal Loss

[Indefragable]

When it comes to authors explaining things in Tweets and whatnot, for what it's worth, as a matter of personal taste/styling/belief/ethos/choice of beer/whatever, I am a firm believer in that Shakespeare line "The play's the thing!". 

[Scribe]

Most of us dont need the extra tweet's of clarification. I remember finishing Master of Mankind, coming back to the thread here, and thinking 'what in the name of khorne are these people worked up over, this is accurate'.