What's the Point of the Horus Heresy Now?

[Scribe]

I think that would be fine too, but I'm talking more first hand. But really then you are looking at some stand alone, pre-imperium view which would be odd.

[Noserenda]

I think old night is quite well covered as a bad time across the series, though i may well be including other sources in that. (Mostly the FW books)

[Scribe]

Oh for sure, I just think we would have had a better time seeing the tragedy of the Heresy, if we had been shown a bit more, and not have to just infer that it was bad.

[WrathOfTheLion]

I would rather the Old Night stayed a mystery for the most part. In the setting, we basically know nothing, as nobody else in the setting does either.

I think there are other ways they could have made the contrast a bit more stark.

In general though, it is the 'future' that was lost in the HH. Humanity had escaped the Old Night, Terra was united, and there was hope for the future for the first time in thousands of years. And even with the power of the Emperor and millennia of planning, it all just comes crashing straight down and the hope is gone. You're left with the bleak outlook, humanity's future is either to survive or die. Nothing more.

[Lord_Caerolion]

In a way we do get some stories of Old Night, when we get stuff set about the Primarch before they were reunited with the Imperium. 

[b1soul]

I think the tragedy of the Horus Heresy would have been better driven home if the series had been preceded by something to firmly set up the glory of Great Crusade. Horus Rising wasn't enough to do that despite being a great book.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Perhaps if the series started at Ullanor?

[Rodiger]

I have only read 17 of the Heresy books. First time I tried a fair few years ago, I read them in release order and got up to Legion before giving up. I was remarkably frustrated that there was a nice progression to the Flight of the Eisenstein, then 2 books just out of left field that didn't directly carry on the story. I have tried reading them again this year and I have tried to do extensive research on what are 'key books' and try to read those. Even with this approach I have missed some and I am still unsure what Horus does directly after the original trilogy. I am not alone in this, it is a very common problem, and it is one of the series biggest failings, it should not have started with a trilogy of books that follow on nicely from each other, then abandon that approach.

I shouldn't, and neither should anyone else, have to do extensive research to work out what book to read through, and it is unreasonable to expect people to read 55 books, I have read other series of books that have a lot less books than that, are much better written and have a coherent narrative.

Anyway that's my major criticism and even with the offical reading orders it is not easily fixed.

 

I also thought Horus's reasons for his Heresy were really weak, it has been built up for decades, 'the most beloved son, betrays his father' and we find out, and it's like that was it? Just about every other traitor primarch had better reasons for betraying the Emperor, some were really well done. Magnus and Lorgar, heart broken sons dealing with rejection and the threat of annihilation for loving their father too much, or Cruz and Angron, broken people dealing with being made 'good' when they aren't at all.

 

I'll add as well the over use of the term 'second to none' there is one author who uses it all the time especially. And the overuse of describing a huge series of thoughts and plays happening in a 'fraction of a second' or 'the time it took to blink an eyelid'. Every book.

 

Positive things.

I did largely find all the books I read enjoyable, they are fun fast reads. I read a lot of books and I'm not picky what I read, I'll read anything, literature to trash, and I enjoyed some of these much more than some literature I've read.

 

I was a teenager in the 90's playing 2nd editon 40k and the Primarchs were these wondrous mythical figures no one really knew anything about and they certainly weren't a clothes shop. It has been great to see them fleshed out, given personalities, stories etc. I have honestly been excited when I knew a particular primarch was in a book because I always wondered about that one, or have found myself liking others I never gave a second thought too.

 

I like how some things seemed like relatively new things, then I would pick up a 2nd edtion codex and it is all there written down, the expanding of the lore in some cases has been great.

 

Reading through here and other places, everyone has gotten something different from it. Some people love certain books and authors and some hate the same ones and vice versa. Even on here the book I thought was the best out of all of them, someone was saying was awful. Such a mixed bag of opinions means it has done a good job. And it has given us stories for all the Legions, I found myself changing my likes and dislikes from previous opinions on certain Legions based off reading the books.

I didn't expect none Space Marines to appear in the stories, but there are a huge array of them, and some of them end up being the best characters. Anyway I'm not disappointed I've read some of it, but I will probably never read all of it.

TL/DR

Negatives

Shouldn't have changed approach to structure of series, then became indecipherable on what to read next.

Weak reasons for Heresy.

Some poor writing.

Positives.

Fun, fast reads.

Developing old mysterious characters and events into good stories.

Some nice surprises.

[b1soul]

Frankly, I would have the series start at pre-Monarchia with a focus on Lorgar

 

Ullanor would come later

[Ishagu]

When I think about the fact that only 6 or 7 of the 55 books are actually worth a read, I just get sad about the wasted time and potential.

 

This isn't an attack on any author, they were instructed to bloat it out. I also think about all the people who read the whole series instead of far better BL novels thar exist outside of it...

[Roomsky]

When I think about the fact that only 6 or 7 of the 55 books are actually worth a read, I just get sad about the wasted time and potential.

 

This isn't an attack on any author, they were instructed to bloat it out. I also think about all the people who read the whole series instead of far better BL novels thar exist outside of it...

 

*Stutters incoherently*

 

6 or 7?

 

I'll give people that it's a bloated mess of a series, but only 6 or 7 are worth a read?

 

I mean now you've gotta say what they are.

[Kelborn]

Hm....it all comes down to personal preferences for sure, but I highly agree with Roomsky:

 

- Horus Rising

- False Gods

- Galaxy in Flames

- Alpha Legion

- A Thousand Sons

- Prospero Burns

- Know no Fear

- Scars

- Path of Heaven

- Praetorian of Dorn

- Slaves to Darkness

- Angels of Caliban

- Pharos

[...]

 

And those books (not even mentioning novellas and such) are just from what I read and I focused only on those of interest to me. Just sayin'.

[bluntblade]

Hm....it all comes down to personal preferences for sure, but I highly agree with Roomsky:

 

- Horus Rising

- False Gods

- Galaxy in Flames

- Alpha Legion

- A Thousand Sons

- Prospero Burns

- Know no Fear

- Scars

- Path of Heaven

- Praetorian of Dorn

- Slaves to Darkness

- Angels of Caliban

- Pharos

[...]

 

And those books (not even mentioning novellas and such) are just from what I read and I focused only on those of interest to me. Just sayin'.

I'd add that many of the shorts and novellas are actually really good too. Little Horus, Wolf King, Savage Weapons and Templar are all excellent, and I'd say just about everything Wraight has written for the Scars and the supporting players in their stories is great.

[aa.logan]

Liar’s Due is, to my mind, the best Heresy Short. Absolutely essential reading for understanding and appreciating the impact on the wider Imperium.

[Xisor]

What's the point of anything? :cuss.

 

None of it is necessary, all of it is superfluous and indulgent. All of it is irrelevant.

 

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

 

The 'point', like the point of any book, is to publish the book an author thought some people might like to read. (Or at least that they wanted to write.)

 

With a big publisher-determined thing like that, you can bundle in 'the publisher thought people might want to buy' too.

 

They publish books. What's the point in books?

 

 

 

---

 

For my money, the huge error made after, say, Nemesis (and indeed even within Nemesis) was to more uniquely focus on Space Marine stories to the exclusion of all else.

 

I vaguely remember the editorial spin - "this is a Space Marine civil war, who cares about Gary Guardsman?" or whatever.

 

The sad realisation is for me: that's a self-consuming spiral.

 

Space Marine stories, Primarch stories, are enhanced by the variety. When you're diet's almost entirely tedious flavours of Space Marine, you wait a very long time between books as singular as Prospero Burns, Scars and Path of Heaven.

 

There was a period of particularly strong entries - having a run that goes A Thousand Sons, Nemesis, The First Heretic, Prospero Burns is always gonna be a difficult one to follow up on. Which makes entries like The Outcast Dead seem doubly, intensely egregious.

 

But even having the series go False Gods, Mechanicum, A Thousand Sons, The Outcast Dead wouldn't resolve those difficulties. For a small-world universe, that even an author as well liked as McNeill couldn't keep things straight is - I think - a telling issue with trying to do anything like this.

 

For my part, I don't actually mind. The actually tractable problems come from one place: GW's early 2010s decision to focus on tie-in stuff, and most particularly their desire to really push BL to restrict their publishing.

 

In doing that, even when the floodgates re-opened again (2016? I forget the specific dates), people's goodwill had been squandered (writers, editors, fans all), the deeds were done, and the track now was to reconstitute things heading for Terra.

 

I'm not sure how a long series can guard against fundamental/meta changes at the publisher.

 

But I do think it cost the series - fixing tie-in directly to only existing models meant that a lot of the bigger, more out-there stories just couldn't be touched with a bargepole.

 

Maybe they could have with delicacy and forethought, but as I said - I think bridges got burnt.

 

One can't replace bridges with wishes and could-have-beens. (Not unless you're an actual psyker.)

 

---

 

Which reminds me: jeez though, for all the importance of 'telling the true story' and 'getting to the heart of it' and it being the only setting they even existed in for a while, and how the hell did we never get a Sisters of Silence mini-series within the series? What the heck?!

[DarkChaplain]

John French's Warmaster alone is worth all the "bloat" we got from short stories (which I still consider a bad thing at all, in the first place).

[bluntblade]

For my part, I think leaning into the short stories allows for interesting possibilities when the writers exploit the format. Arvida's story gets its own self-contained resolution, for example, when it would likely be incongruous anywhere else.

 

It's not far off what one YouTuber suggested Marvel use Disney Plus for; embracing the short film to do small, supplementary character pieces that inform the larger whole.

 

This isn't to say that there aren't shorts and novellas like AD-B's Thramas diptych that frustrate me by not being feature-length, but there are instances where the short or novella format is right for the story being told.

[b1soul]

Savage Weapons and Prince of Crows should have been upgraded two novels expanding upon Thramas

 

Kyme's Vulkan Lives, Deathfire, and Old Earth could have been dropped entirely with little loss to the series

[bluntblade]

Savage Weapons and Prince of Crows should have been upgraded two novels expanding upon Thramas

 

Kyme's Vulkan Lives, Deathfire, and Old Earth could have been dropped entirely with little loss to the series

I'd say Thramas ought to have been a diptych novel. Just the one, with focus on the two Legions and maybe capitalising on the heavy Mechanicum presence too.

[DukeLeto69]

Back on the point about making HH/30k feel more like its own thing and distinct from 40k I think there are a couple of things I head cannon..,

 

1) No Astronomicon - that ONLY became possible with Emperor’s ascension (clearly this doesn’t gel with Webway ambitions). Instead warp capable ships are restricted to short jumps.

 

2) No Astropaths - because they use the Astronomicon as a point of focus to send messages and it doesn’t exist. Instead Imperium relies on ship bound couriers.

 

Both help increase the sense of isolation and being blind to what is happening during HH - cos unless a courier arrives nobody knows! Hugely increases paranoia and fear.

[Scribe]

That would have been an interesting change for sure.

 

I've been thinking on this topic (the OP's topic) for the week, trying to piece together what my own head canon thinks of the setting (30K) what made it a tragedy, and so on, and I think we are just expected to do so, its up to us all to fill in the blanks, to assign the importance of parts we deem necessary, and to disregard or ignore that which we cannot reconcile.

 

So whats the Heresy, to you?

 

I'll have to work this out for myself, but in short what I want, is some real exposition about/by/from the Emperor, and his dealings with Chaos. I want it made clear that he is a hypocrite of the highest order, and that the Imperium worships a false god. :p

[mc warhammer]

i just want a good story. i'm weird

[Moonreaper666]

That would have been an interesting change for sure.

 

I've been thinking on this topic (the OP's topic) for the week, trying to piece together what my own head canon thinks of the setting (30K) what made it a tragedy, and so on, and I think we are just expected to do so, its up to us all to fill in the blanks, to assign the importance of parts we deem necessary, and to disregard or ignore that which we cannot reconcile.

 

So whats the Heresy, to you?

 

I'll have to work this out for myself, but in short what I want, is some real exposition about/by/from the Emperor, and his dealings with Chaos. I want it made clear that he is a hypocrite of the highest order, and that the Imperium worships a false god. :p

As Dan Abnett would say the Emperor is a False God but a necessary one. Thought that is one viewpoint of the 'truth' that he presents. People make lies to get through the :cusstyness that is life

 

Kryil Sinderman stated that gods are nothing but there should be mysteries in the galaxy left to be discovered. I really like that

 

So long as there are interesting mysteries to be unraveled in a good way I am okay. Explore many things such as the only two times Dorn have been scared his entire life

[Scribe]

i just want a good story. i'm weird

I mean so do I. What is or is not good, is the unfortunate issue here.

 

Thinking on it a bit.

 

I believe that the Heresy really needed to be many things.

 

A story of what it is to breed monsters, and then not have a plan for dealing with them. (Astartes and Primarchs)

 

A story of the Emperor, what he did, if not who he was, and what lengths he went to for his plans. Plays into breeding monsters.

 

A story of humanity, just lay it out there that this is a commentary on the human condition, it's satire, but just really put it out there.

 

A story that confirms the truth of the setting/mythos, which thankfully we got.

 

If all those can be wrapped before then ending, fine, it's done what I have hoped.

[Moonreaper666]

 

i just want a good story. i'm weird

I mean so do I. What is or is not good, is the unfortunate issue here.

 

Thinking on it a bit.

 

I believe that the Heresy really needed to be many things.

 

A story of what it is to breed monsters, and then not have a plan for dealing with them. (Astartes and Primarchs)

 

A story of the Emperor, what he did, if not who he was, and what lengths he went to for his plans. Plays into breeding monsters.

 

A story of humanity, just lay it out there that this is a commentary on the human condition, it's satire, but just really put it out there.

 

A story that confirms the truth of the setting/mythos, which thankfully we got.

 

If all those can be wrapped before then ending, fine, it's done what I have hoped.

Have you read Saturnine and Vengeful Spirit? They cover those things