Reading the first two HH again?

[TorvaldTheMild]

Its been more than a decade since I read the first three novels again and reading it again is so much more eye opening than the first time.  The first time I was enthralled by Horus' immensity and I read him with awe (due to the amazing writing) but I never new how much I never caught on while reading.  Abnett gave so many hints at Horus' character faults that made him turn to Chaos, like when Maloghurst refused to tell him about Vivar Petronella thinking that he was too important to listen to or deign to waste time on remembrancers and Horus getting angry with him telling him that he 'should' be biographized for his ego (subtextually that is).  Anyone else re-read HH novels and found a new appreciation or revelation from re-reading?

[TorvaldTheMild]

What I also forgot is how sad it was to hear how lovingly and humbled Horus spoke of the Mournival.

[Bobss]

I'm very slowly rereading Horus Rising this winter, and what always strikes me is how complex the book is for something that was written around 2006. At the time all Dan could've drawn upon were several editions of codices, collected White Dwarf articles and some general embedded fluff - alongside talking to the design team in Nottingham and reverse-engineering the core themes of 40k (obviously). What he created was an extremely insightful exploration into the lives of primarchs, space marines and humans in the 31st millennium. This book isn't plastic men thumping each other, it's a window into a totally alien and uncanny Imperium. It is a distinctly not-40k experience unlike many later titles which become 40k-but-slightly-less-bad. The themes of the book, like Right Makes Might and this bizarre situation where ghosts are actually real and begin to tear down a secular galactic order are also really distinct and help give the early Horus Heresy novels a strong sense of philosophical identity. The only book to really match this tone has been Chris Wraight's Valdor: Birth of the Imperium. I expected to read about the Emperor throwing thunderbolts at techno-vampires, but instead it is a snapshot of life in the early Imperium, but one that is just as alien and uncanny to the Great Crusade as the Great Crusade is to 40k. It is a terrific monument to Chris' imagination and extrapolation of the material available to him

 

Meanwhile, nowadays, there is so much material out there exploring the Horus Heresy and 30k at large, from even more codices to detailed Forge World supplements and of course the core book series itself, that any mid-tier author can crank out a decent book by simply falling back onto this wealth of references (I'm looking at you, The Primarchs books). If you're writing Guilliman, it's probably going to be Dan's Guilliman, for example. I also think Dan set the bar just right for things like foreshadowing which sadly hasn't been kept consistent, such as making mention of Abaddon's Justaerin looking like a 'black legion' Vs. this prophesised Abaddon guff which has not only tarnished excellent books like The Talon of Horus, but is actively harming Horus' grandeur during his ultimate limelight

[theSpirea]

I re-read the first three books last year and Horus Rising aged well. It's still a damn good book and definitely one of the top HH novels. I cared about all characters and wanted to know more.

 

Then McNeill showed up and took a big dump on all Abnett's characters building in his False God novel. I mean, Horus actual fall took only a page or two. McNeill was just trying too hard to throw around wanna-be cool and edgy one-liners. I couldn't give a damn about a single character, they all felt the same and weren't really going anywhere.

[cheywood]

I re-read the first three books last year and Horus Rising aged well. It's still a damn good book and definitely one of the top HH novels. I cared about all characters and wanted to know more.

 

Then McNeill showed up and took a big dump on all Abnett's characters building in his False God novel. I mean, Horus actual fall took only a page or two. McNeill was just trying too hard to throw around wanna-be cool and edgy one-liners. I couldn't give a damn about a single character, they all felt the same and weren't really going anywhere.

Reread Horus Rising last year as well. I’d read and somewhat forgotten the first half of the Heresy and figured I’d just reread it all before I read the second half. Loved Dan’s writing just as much as the first time. That goes for all his Heresy novels except Unremembered Empire. I got about 4 chapters into False Gods before I realized I’d need to be more selective about what I reread. Edited December 19, 2020 by cheywood

[byrd9999]

Horus Rising was the first BL book I ever read, about 4 years ago. I didn't play Warhammer, and I'd been reluctant to read any of their fiction because I "knew" exactly what it would be like.

 

My local library had a copy of Horus Rising, and so I took the plunge (actually my wife took the plunge and read it before I did). I had no idea of the bigger picture. When the book started with "I was there the day Horus slew the Emperor", I thought they were just dispensing with the build-up and getting straight into it, assuming the rest would be told in flashback. It turned out that wasn't the real Emperor, but I was hooked.

 

Dan Abnett managed to craft such an enticing, well-plotted story with just the right amount of pathos at Horus' fall, and the Greek Tragedy angle of the Leader that Horus could have been. I could tell that Dan was a real author, using literary techniques that real authors use, and not just some schmuck writing about toy soldiers.

 

If I had read any other book, I doubt I would still be reading BL 4 years later.

[Bobss]

Horus Rising was the first BL book I ever read, about 4 years ago. I didn't play Warhammer, and I'd been reluctant to read any of their fiction because I "knew" exactly what it would be like.

 

My local library had a copy of Horus Rising, and so I took the plunge (actually my wife took the plunge and read it before I did). I had no idea of the bigger picture. When the book started with "I was there the day Horus slew the Emperor", I thought they were just dispensing with the build-up and getting straight into it, assuming the rest would be told in flashback. It turned out that wasn't the real Emperor, but I was hooked.

 

Dan Abnett managed to craft such an enticing, well-plotted story with just the right amount of pathos at Horus' fall, and the Greek Tragedy angle of the Leader that Horus could have been. I could tell that Dan was a real author, using literary techniques that real authors use, and not just some schmuck writing about toy soldiers.

 

If I had read any other book, I doubt I would still be reading BL 4 years later.

 

Great post

 

Fwiw I don't consider False Gods to be thaaat bad, especially compared to the :cussheap that was Galaxy in Flames, but it is without a doubt a step down from Horus Rising and in the same way Horus Rising started several good trends in the series, False Gods started several bad ones

[DigestPantheon]

Wow I can't believe those books are over ten years old. Not sure why I thought they were newer.

[b1soul]

Horus Rising was released in 2006?

 

Ah...feels not that long ago but also ages ago

[Indefragable]

Horus Rising is the only HH book I've read more than once, mostly b/c they keep passing out the audiobook version in every bundle and Humble Bundle (Fear to Tread is the other one, but b/c again it was a "free" Audible credit at the time). As they say about the first hit....

 

I agree it's nuanced more than it gets credit for. It's not perfect by any means, but it set an interesting tone and mark for what was to come and is still coming. Moments that stick with me:

 

• I was there the day Horus slew the Emperor (brilliant!) 
• Horus' charm on full display...no other work feels it even attempted to capture that
• The logic the Iterator (Sindermann, if I recall) uses to justify the Might is Right attitude of the Imperium. This is something I love to unpack with fellow fans and I do not think enough attention is paid to the contradictions of a society that is downright religious about its commitment to secularity...just how much is packed into those bits is amazing. Truly wonderful tongue-in-cheek undercurrent that 40k has had since its inception. Reminds me of some of the elements of DPRK's state philosophy
• Horus and Sanguinius hanging out having a beer in Horus' private chambers. At the time it felt so natural that two bros would....well.....bro it out. But as the series has gone on and gotten more and more popular and pompous it feels almost brave in hindsight to have such a casual scene 
• That cover. That hair. I don't know whether to laugh with it or at it. 40k started in the 80's and this cover never forgets that. 

[DarkChaplain]

The scene where Loken "sits in" on Sindermann's lesson to the new iterators is brilliant, I concur. One of the most memorable and powerful scenes in the entire series, especially because of meta-knowledge, the mounting contradictions once you dig deeper - especially with the knowledge that society has been lied to in the first place.

[R_F_D]

I often wonder what it would have been like if they knew what they’d had from the beginning, and tightened everything up 

 

 

I had this very thought yesterday whilst re-reading Descent of Angels. (I'm very slowly doing a full series read through as I've only ever read up to Scars.)

 

The tonal shift of Horus Rising away from the 40k stuff before (and since) is still so so noticeable even when re-reading it six months ago.

 

I think I had more objections to False Gods in earlier read throughs than I did this last time.  I understand the criticism about Horus' fall, and have felt it myself, but this last read I thought it worked.  I guess there is only so much torturing of the soul (to poorly coin a phrase) you can put on the page before it gets a bit repetitive.

[Indefragable]

 

I often wonder what it would have been like if they knew what they’d had from the beginning, and tightened everything up 

 

 

I had this very thought yesterday whilst re-reading Descent of Angels. (I'm very slowly doing a full series read through as I've only ever read up to Scars.)

 

The tonal shift of Horus Rising away from the 40k stuff before (and since) is still so so noticeable even when re-reading it six months ago.

 

I think I had more objections to False Gods in earlier read throughs than I did this last time.  I understand the criticism about Horus' fall, and have felt it myself, but this last read I thought it worked.  I guess there is only so much torturing of the soul (to poorly coin a phrase) you can put on the page before it gets a bit repetitive.

 

 

At the last (2019) HH Weekender, James Swallow commented about how in hindsight, after fifty-four books in the HH series...the one thing all the authors collectively agree on is that if they could go back and change anything they would have coordinated much more and mapped things out much much much more. The impression that people had ideas for stories and the fact that they lined up at all was almost more of a coincidence is apparently true, because that's essentially how it was. That's the bad news. The good news is that mistake looking back is what directly led to the writers' room gathering before any pens touched ink for the Siege of Terra series and how Guy Haley is now wired into the main design studio to produce the latest Indomitus-era novel series. Everyone makes mistakes, but how you learn and build from them is what matters. 

[SkimaskMohawk]

Unfortunately the siege still has some awfully disconnected character portrayals and arcs.

[DarkChaplain]

Wish that Swallow himself had learned his own lesson and written a good Mortarion/Death Guard book instead of... The Buried Dagger.

[R_F_D]

 

 

At the last (2019) HH Weekender, James Swallow commented about how in hindsight, after fifty-four books in the HH series...the one thing all the authors collectively agree on is that if they could go back and change anything they would have coordinated much more and mapped things out much much much more. The impression that people had ideas for stories and the fact that they lined up at all was almost more of a coincidence is apparently true, because that's essentially how it was.  

 

 

 

I think I've heard this at the BL Weekenders as well.  The other thing was that they expected the whole series to be seven(ish?) or so books at most?

 

 

 

 

Everyone makes mistakes, but how you learn and build from them is what matters. 

 

 

I agree wholeheartedly with this.   Although my friends have speculated that the Beast Arises series had more of an impact on the creation of writers rooms? (Not read TBA but have a rough idea of the issues readers have reported on.)

 

I do also wonder if the fact that GW Studio(correct term?) is now pushing the wider narrative and timeline along means that there does need to be a more defined writers room framework within BL? 

 

Anyways, getting off topic. 

 

@TorvaldTheMild thanks for starting this thread, like you I'm reading them again and getting new appreciations/understandings of the HH - for better or for worse!

Edited January 5, 2021 by R_F_D

[DukeLeto69]

Never heard the “HH was going to be 7 books long” before but have variously heard 9 and 12.

 

If you follow a classic 3 act structure then 9 or 12 means that Isstvaan falls at roughly at the right point for the end of Act 1 (the turning point in the narrative).

 

Clearly if HH had been planned as 50-60 books to begin with then Isstvaan would have happened around book 15 and that would have balanced out the series better.

[R_F_D]

My bad, wasn't sure which is why I put seven(ish?) - just knew it was less than 10.

[DukeLeto69]

Actually if you look at first 4 books, they perfectly fit the 3 act structure approach ending Act1 with GiF with the story in FotE being a perfect fit for opening Act2.

 

I think it was with Fulgrim that BL first started deviating from original plan as the story starts to get increasingly tangental.

[TorvaldTheMild]

Yeah but after Prospero burns is when the series became so bad in comparison.  The first 4 novels will always be the best and everything before Prospero Burns will be the golden age of HH novels to me.

[DarkChaplain]

Including Battle for the Abyss? Or the divisive Descent of Angels (which I still enjoy a lot, personally)? Or Fallen Angels? Nemesis, which threw out its most interesting plotline barely a quarter in, while making up Null-Daemon-Assassins? I wouldn't even call Flight of the Eisenstein one of the better books, actually.

 

Meanwhile, after Prospero Burns, we had Know No Fear, Betrayer, Scars - just to name novels from the next batch of 15 - and a ton of great shorts and novellas on top, via Shadows of Treachery, Mark of Calth, The Primarchs, Age of Darkness and Legacies of Betrayal.

 

The major difference between pre- and post-PB publications would be that we got a lot more anthologies and limited edition novellas, later collected in said anthologies. But even then, up until Shadows of Treachery, all anthologies (including Age of Darkness and The Primarchs, after PB) included entirely original stories, rather than being ebook collections. Even Shadows of Treachery had two major new novellas, and Mark of Calth was again fully original, with the exception of one short story that they threw out individually anyway as it tied into Anthony Reynolds' Word Bearers trilogy.

 

It took til Legacies of Betrayal for anthologies to be fully pre-published material, and even then I find it hard to argue that they're bad books as a result. All anthologies include stories I'd rate very highly, even compared to fan-favorite novels.

[TorvaldTheMild]

The beginning of battle of the abyss was a horrendous boring nightmare to read but the end was amazing and I loved descent of angels, as a space wolves player descent of angels was one of my favourite HH novels, which is saying a lot.  I loved fallen angels and Nemesis.  Betrayer is my favourite bar none, age of darkness was awesome as well.  I think people are far too hard on a lot of the novels up to prospero burns (there are a lot after which are awesome) but I think people have faulty memories they think the HH series started getting bad far before it actually did.  After the first 4 many of the novels were up until prospero burns and after were mostly stand alone from the main story arc and were fantastic novels, I loved them hated few, after prospero burns its mostly been a :cuss show and you'll find one gem in every 6 you read but before prospero burns they were awesome even the worst of that lot are infinitely better than the majority of post prospero burns though, its literature so its all relative and just opinion.  

[DukeLeto69]

@DC think you are replying to @Torvald but my comments were purely structural rather than addressing my personal opinion on quality of books. Personally I thought FG and GiF were a progressive step down from HR but did enjoy FotE.

 

I would certainly agree that some of the BEST single HH books came around that mid-section with my personal fav being KNF.

[byrd9999]

There are gems and duds scattered throughout the entire series, right from the start (Galaxy in Flames is such a significant step down after the first two).

 

I like that the Heresy became a setting rather than a straightforward narrative arc, but the main problem for me is that the series became flabby after the initial success.

 

The side stories and arcs (Imperium Secundus) could have been tightened up.

[Bobss]

Including Battle for the Abyss? Or the divisive Descent of Angels (which I still enjoy a lot, personally)? Or Fallen Angels? Nemesis, which threw out its most interesting plotline barely a quarter in, while making up Null-Daemon-Assassins? I wouldn't even call Flight of the Eisenstein one of the better books, actually.

 

Meanwhile, after Prospero Burns, we had Know No Fear, Betrayer, Scars - just to name novels from the next batch of 15 - and a ton of great shorts and novellas on top, via Shadows of Treachery, Mark of Calth, The Primarchs, Age of Darkness and Legacies of Betrayal.

 

The major difference between pre- and post-PB publications would be that we got a lot more anthologies and limited edition novellas, later collected in said anthologies. But even then, up until Shadows of Treachery, all anthologies (including Age of Darkness and The Primarchs, after PB) included entirely original stories, rather than being ebook collections. Even Shadows of Treachery had two major new novellas, and Mark of Calth was again fully original, with the exception of one short story that they threw out individually anyway as it tied into Anthony Reynolds' Word Bearers trilogy.

 

It took til Legacies of Betrayal for anthologies to be fully pre-published material, and even then I find it hard to argue that they're bad books as a result. All anthologies include stories I'd rate very highly, even compared to fan-favorite novels.

 

Speaking only for myself and several people I know who have voiced their opinions on this, the Anthologies Without End period of time during the mid-2010s is/was hated thanks to a combination of anthology spam and a drop in main-series releases (and also, arguably, a drop in the quality of what few main-series releases we had; The Damnation of Pythos and Deathfire are, in my opinion, two of the most-disliked/worst-received entries in the entire series, and Pharos seems to be mixed at best). We all know why this was the case in retrospect thanks to interviews from various figures like Goulding and ADB, but it wasn't particularly enjoyable at the time to be a fan between, say, Vengeful Spirit and The Path of Heaven - and it's worth saying that Vengeful Spirit was the first major instance of a main-series title requiring the reader to cast their net into the soup of shorts and audios beforehand which was divisive at the time. There was also the extra kick in the balls with eagerly-anticipated events like the Battle of Tallarn (and the sequel to Deliverance Lost, I guess) being broken up into greedy little novellas which helped give the Anthologies Without End a, perhaps unfair, reputation. Looking back on events, I think BL deciding to publish all of its Horus Heresy-related material was definitely the right one (though I would argue the sheer traffic of shorts, audios and whatnot contributed to the series' staggering bloat, but I digress), but I can't fault people for seeing the 'pre-Prospero Burns' or, IMO, pre-Age of Darkness period fondly (even if the period between Fulgrim and A Thousand Sons was bloaty and inconsistent for its time) because it is like comparing a crystal-clear lake to an oil spill