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Sonoftheforest Battle-Brother

Sonoftheforest

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Posted
I've read all the siege books upto now but can't remember before Mortis if it was mentioned about the Astronomicon being or the hollow mountain being lost was mentioned. Seems a pretty big plot point to have not been mentioned much considering a huge part of Dorns strategy revolved around delaying until his brothers could arrive
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Scribe Venerable Brother

Scribe

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Sounds like this book is a miss for me. Unfortunate.

 

EDIT: OK, read the spoiler (thanks for posting that) and yeah, 100% miss for me. God I absolutely despise, the Perpetual arc. 

Edited by Scribe
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DarkChaplain Veteran

DarkChaplain

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I'm about halfway through this, and I have absolutely no idea what is going on with the Perpetual Arc. Is there a summary somewhere recapping what happened before the Siege? 

 

John Grammaticus used to work nine-to-five as a homemade Perpetual for the Cabal, a xenos conglomerate that forsaw the Heresy and Chaos swallowing up the galaxy. Their solution was to let Horus win, which they figured would make humanity go extinct, because Horus' nobility would return long enough for him to nuke himself too. Brief Chaos ascendancy, but then humanity would go the way of the dodo and leave Chaos without nourishment.

 

That plan didn't go so well, for various reasons, like the Alpha Legion that was supposed to make it happen going against the plan. John wanted out, but got sent to do some more jobs first, like going to Ultramar to retrieve a weird crystallized shard of the Big E's power, which would be enough to kill a Perpetual. It was used on Vulkan, but John cut ties with his employers and gave his perpetuality to allow Vulkan to return later. He made friends with Eldrad Ulthran, also a former Cabal actor, afterwards.

 

Damon Prytanis was also there to execute Vulkan back when John was running about with the crystal thingy, and Prytanis was a jackass hunter who wanted to add another trophy to his collection. Of course, he was hired by the Cabal. Before that point, he'd gone and kidnapped Cyrene from the Word Bearers - who resurrected somehow and may have become Perpetual too - but now he's just there to be a jerk and serve as a foil to John's own dubious morality.

 

Together with Eldrad, John went and executed every Cabal agent they knew of, before John left for Terra, popping back up during the Siege.

 

Before the whole Vulkan thing, John also made a call to Calth, where Ollanius Persson was hanging out being a farmer. He warned the dude, who apparently was there throughout all of human history and may be older than the Emperor, that Calth would blow and they should go for a drink on the Throneworld.

Oll wasn't thrilled, but left with some refugees anyway, and has been time-space-hopping with a magical knife for the past 4-5 years in publishing history. He's pursued by Alpha Legion, it seems, and says "Okay" a lot, which is an anachronism that his fellow refugees pick up as a catchphrase too.

Oll also doesn't like the Emperor because reasons. We find those out in the Siege, kinda.

 

Alivia Sureka, meanwhile, was buddy buddy enough with the Emperor to be left behind to take care of the weird chaos gate temple thingy on Molech after papa emps left. She finally found a family to fit in with, including kids (not her own) and was rather upset about Horus invading her world. Her defense of the thingy failed, and she got killed, but revived aboard the refugee ship her family was on. Instead of a nice family reunion, her daughter got abducted and she meets a Knight Errant dude who helped her get the girl back. She then spends years (in-universe) travelling to Terra on this spaceship, having bad dreams of her old flame John Grammaticus, who also tries to hit her up again via psychic communication, and they have a chat about Oll, who is super important to John's plans. But Liv is no longer a fan of Johnny, because he stood her up once in a bar that got bombed. Awesome.

 

Malcador tries to recruit Alivia to his inner circle, but she just flat out refuses his agent after landing on the Throneworld, deciding to spend time with her family instead. Until she gets sick of teenage girls and goes to meet with Malcador anyway. Maybe she just likes Regicide.

 

Erda is a new totally surprising addition to the roster in Saturnine, so she didn't do anything on-page before that book.

 

So that's basically it. The Perps all seemingly know each other, John had a fling with Alivia, John had a change of heart, and Oll says Okay a lot and was buddy-buddy with various mythological and historical characters it seems like. That's about it.

Edited by DarkChaplain
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Bobss Battle-Brother

Bobss

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not here to defend perpetuals

 

but if we boiled down a lot of heresy plots to just their dot points, i'd wager most would sound as silly if not worse

 

Kinda this

 

I'm not a fan of Perpetuals either (although conceptually I like them and I think Abnett especially writes them, as mysterious characters, well enough to justify their existence), but Oll showing up on the Vengeful Spirit has been known and expected for almost ten years now - whether we like it or not. I totes get why people don't like and reject these characters, but it's sort of shouting into the wind at this point in time. For example, I don't like that ADB turned Angron into a Demon Primarch 1/2 years into the Heresy because it locked the World Eaters Legion into acting like plonkers for the rest of the war, but Betrayer dropped in 2013 and that book/plot point has been built on several times now, including one of my favourite scenes in the Heresy (Angron Vs. Perturabo) so I rarely moan about it

 

Meanwhile the Basilio Fo episode of The Sindermann & Keeler (& Amon) Show isn't even a year old yet and given what we know about 40k it is almost guaranteed to go nowhere significant, sucking up pages in the process that could be given to other things. Yes, there are a few possibilities about where this could lead in the next few books as aa.logan alludes to, but I struggle to believe this will justify its inclusion when all is said and done

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Arendious Veteran

Arendious

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Frankly Perpetuals shouldn't be handed out to most of GW's writers.

 

Just let Abnett do this thing with them.

Unfortunately, this just leads to "Oh, that's not 'Warhammer', it's 'Abnett-hammer'. (Though I'll admit to feeling like Abnett set up a bunch of subtle/mild 'surprises' in Legion that then became flanderized as the series went on...)

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Preliminary Bombardment Veteran

Preliminary Bombardment

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The one thing I will say is that perpetuals are marginally more interesting than the Sinderman and Keeler show. I mean really I thought we dealt with the origins of the Imperial cult in the Lost and the Dammed, conclusion was "not for now" and Keeler goes to jail. In this book it looks like they are wanting her to revive it what... 4 weeks later? Who cares!
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Gongsun Zan Battle-Brother

Gongsun Zan

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So I finished this. and I think it's one of those books that is greater than the sum of its parts. Specific plot threads aren't that great (I skimmed the entire Perpetual Arc), but on a big picture level, I think it captures the feel and atmosphere of the Siege, and serves its purpose in moving the Siege to its next phase. 

 

I'd put it above TFW/LATD for sure. 

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Scribe Venerable Brother

Scribe

Posted
Posted

 

Frankly Perpetuals shouldn't be handed out to most of GW's writers.

 

Just let Abnett do this thing with them.

Unfortunately, this just leads to "Oh, that's not 'Warhammer', it's 'Abnett-hammer'. (Though I'll admit to feeling like Abnett set up a bunch of subtle/mild 'surprises' in Legion that then became flanderized as the series went on...)

That would be better than people building on his poor foundations. We at least then could ignore it without issue.

 

His ideas flow through and taint the whole series. Just unfortunate at this point.

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bluntblade Venerable Brother

bluntblade

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So I finished this. and I think it's one of those books that is greater than the sum of its parts. Specific plot threads aren't that great (I skimmed the entire Perpetual Arc), but on a big picture level, I think it captures the feel and atmosphere of the Siege, and serves its purpose in moving the Siege to its next phase. 

 

I'd put it above TFW/LATD for sure. 

I'm reminded of the enormous brouhaha which preceded Saturnine coming out, when that book was flawed for me but still immensely enjoyable. At this stage, I don't care for plot summaries as an indicator of quality, when most of it's down to the execution for me.

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Ubiquitous1984 Battle-Brother

Ubiquitous1984

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I finally finished the book last night.  It certainly rewards an intense knowledge of the HH and wider lore (Psi-Titans, Emperor's flagship etc. etc.)

 

I did find it confusing at times and I have spent a good hour or two catching up with the thoughts of way smarter people than myself, such as in this thread and on 40k lore.

 

French himself acknowledges in the afterword (which was excellent btw) how this book is a transitional book, used to get the places to where they need to be for the Final Act.

 

I'm not sure I like the direction that it is going with the perpetual arc as it is confusing as hell.  I also don't like how the Selenar plays such a key role, when they was a feature from a novella and not a main line novel.  

 

But it is still great fun and I can't wait for book 6.

 

I note that John finished the book in July 2020.  ADB has been quite vocal about his Siege meetings recently.  Mr Wraight, comparatively, has been quiet.  Perhaps book 6 is closer to release than we may believe? (unless they sneak out another novella in the mean time?)

Edited by Ubiquitous1984
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