SoT book 7: Echoes of Eternity - Aaron Dembski-Bowden

[Nagashsnee]

@DarkChaplain i feel allot of your issues with the book are routed more in the HH as a series then this novel. Why did a siege book have to have BA flashbacks? Cause BL failed to give ANY actual character to a legion in 50+ books. Why did the watch pack have to be done quickly? Cause they left over a billion plot threads to the last 8ish books and then got to book 7 of said 8 and STILL had not dealt with them. Etc etc.

 

Your solution of just make the people pay for a couple dozen more short stories is not very good. 1) They had 50 book, i know i say this often but i find too many people gloss over just how badly BL failed when they had 18 legions and yet 56 books in we still have some with no real depth, noted characters we know ( oh look its Blood Angels terminators captain....and he is gone, Bel Saputis i hardly knew you). But at least they gave some depth to the Mechanicum/Dark Mechanicum, Imperial army, etc right?.... I dont think  X number of  siege short stories that one would have to read to get the full picture would not only piss allot of people off but would also signal the return to bloat...well more then the last book splitting into X number has.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Arkangilos]

2 hours ago, Nagashsnee said:

@DarkChaplain i feel allot of your issues with the book are routed more in the HH as a series then this novel. Why did a siege book have to have BA flashbacks? Cause BL failed to give ANY actual character to a legion in 50+ books. Why did the watch pack have to be done quickly? Cause they left over a billion plot threads to the last 8ish books and then got to book 7 of said 8 and STILL had not dealt with them. Etc etc.

 

Your solution of just make the people pay for a couple dozen more short stories is not very good. 1) They had 50 book, i know i say this often but i find too many people gloss over just how badly BL failed when they had 18 legions and yet 56 books in we still have some with no real depth, noted characters we know ( oh look its Blood Angels terminators captain....and he is gone, Bel Saputis i hardly knew you). But at least they gave some depth to the Mechanicum/Dark Mechanicum, Imperial army, etc right?.... I dont think  X number of  siege short stories that one would have to read to get the full picture would not only piss allot of people off but would also signal the return to bloat...well more then the last book splitting into X number has.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

This. I’m glad that it had the flashbacks and all that because 1) it’s relevant to the characters and 2) my favorite legion was severely neglected, with the only novel focused on them being Fear to Tread. And now that I’ve read Sanguinius: the Great Angel, while I loved it, I still would have felt cheated because it was from the point of view of a cynic trying to show why we *shouldn’t* love the legion or primarch. It has no flashbacks. It had no pre-primarch days, it had none or the internal thoughts of any of the Blood Angels, it had none of the stuff I wanted as a BA fan. I already know how the imperium sees the BA, and I already deal with people who make arguments for why they are fake. 
So if DC had it his way and the BA flashbacks were cut out just so he could have a condensed book, the BA would have nothing of any real value throughout the series (besides Malevolence from Forge World).

[DarkChaplain]

I think we can all agree that Fear to Tread was.... a bad book that did more of a disservice to the Legion (and daemonkind!) than it helped them. But it's not like the Blood Angels never got featured again. Azkaellon, like I mentioned, had many moments in the sun - he even got the dubious honor of being slapped about by Curze. He was the star of multiple short stories in which Sanguinius and his Legion's duality was presented. Of course, a few of these earlier titles wouldn't be able to pick up on ForgeWorld fluff that hadn't been added to the setting yet by that time.

 

But Azkaellon is a prime example of a headscratcher. Here's a bloke that we'e been accompanying, somebody close to the Primarch. Somebody we know survived, thanks to the Smillie Flesh Tearers books where he is one of the grieving members of the Legion after the Angel goes the way of the dodo.

We have Raldoron, who is not only first captain or whatever the BA call the job, and who is going to lead the Chapter later, and he's a blank slate even here.

Amit works for showing the savage side, but he's been juxtaposed with Azkaellon as the glory boy in previous works, and Echoes gave up on that thematic pair.

 

And I would argue if Howl of the Hearthworld is a victim to the left over plotthreads issue, they should not have been featured at all. It wouldn't be the first time a plot thread had been absent from the Siege - heck, I just described one in this very book. It's really just their creator wrapping them up - and lest we forget, they were introduced in a short story, one of those "pay extra" situations.

 

That point, too, isn't exactly what I said - I did not advocate for "a couple dozen more" individual short stories. I want an anthology to round off the Siege. That's one book extra in a world where we had three novellas/short novels so far AND the finale is already split into at least two volumes, so hardly fattening up the cash cow much further. And I want it precisely because remnant plotpoints and characters like Howl of the Hearthworld exist and have no real place left to them. Because an anthology is exactly how you can zip around the place the way Echoes does in many sections, without having to care about ongoing, unfolding events and can zoom in on people like Dawynne Coto, Ja-Hen Uquar and co. I'm not advocating for removal of everything, either - just for the the amount of this stuff being trimmed back to leave the throughline of the Siege to be able to breathe, develop and.... be included.

 

Likewise, I'm not against having flashbacks. It's their sheer volume in the novel, all bunched up together for the entire middle section of it, that I find most problematic. Had they been spaced out more, rather than tucked away a short bit after events finally start to happen, after two parts of the book being primarily setup for characters (or wiping the slate of them), they wouldn't have interrupted the Siege the same way.

 

And to go back to this point:

3 hours ago, Nagashsnee said:

Why did the watch pack have to be done quickly? Cause they left over a billion plot threads to the last 8ish books and then got to book 7 of said 8 and STILL had not dealt with them. Etc etc.

 

The same could be said for all the things that now break The End and the Death into at least two volumes. Why did Dan have to deal with so much narrative baggage? Because the other books didn't pick up on it. And Echoes of Eternity is culpable of that even more than other entries in the Siege series, because it explicitly set out to not feature that narrative debt. For all that folks may complain about Abnett's book being split - Echoes of Eternity is, what, the third longest book in the series so far but also the most limited in terms of plotlines and ongoing events. You could argue - and I do - that it's a book that didn't carry the torch of the Siege authors on to its successor. It carried on the sparks that it wanted to, primarily the author's own dangling threads, and let the torch itself skip over it almost entirely.

 

For all that I criticize Dan for being a firestarter, an ideas and setup guy who struggles a tad to line up with the rest of 'em when his turn comes back around again, or his endings, I think he really got the short end of the stick here. The narrative debt got increased by Echoes of Eternity, not lessened.

 

And those two paragraphs also apply to this point, come to think of it:

 

6 hours ago, Scribe said:

The man can only salvage so much, its not as if he's going to write 3 books here. ;)

 

 

But at the end of the day, this comes from neither a fan of the Blood Angels, nor of the World Eaters. To me, they're both factions in the sandbox, both players in the Siege with roles to fill, but in the end, and especially at this point of the series, I'm more interested in the Siege and narrative threads being developed further than Legion fluff.

Edited December 13, 2022 by DarkChaplain

[Arkangilos]

5 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

But Azkaellon is a prime example of a headscratcher.

Agreed. That’s the downside I have to the book, is that there’s no mention of Azkaellon and Raldoron.

 

I think the difference is where as you think the flashbacks shouldn’t be there, I think they should be and that the book should have just been longer. I was sad when the book ended because I thought it portrayed everything near perfectly. 
 

Honestly I wish it would have been ADB that had the two-three part ending, with part one being this part, part two being the final battle, and part three being the mop up. I only hope I have for Abnette ending the series is that he ends it with Loken “I was there the day Horus killed the emperor.” But I doubt that will happen, lol.

 

Like, I’d be a lot more receptive to your criticism if this wasn’t the end and if there was a guarantee we would have the BA portrayal we got through the flashbacks.

6 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

Likewise, I'm not against having flashbacks. It's their sheer volume in the novel, all bunched up together for the entire middle section of it, that I find most problematic. Had they been spaced out more, rather than tucked away a short bit after events finally start to happen, after two parts of the book being primarily setup for characters (or wiping the slate of them), they wouldn't have interrupted the Siege the same way.

Oh… yeah, I agree with this.

[Nagashsnee]

Ok last one because we are going way off topic. The BA as a legion never got a chance to shine, saying i need to hunt down snipets and short stories AND still just get a named character or two is silly. The hh series FAILED, it failed allot, and certain legions had to bear the weight of that. It also did allot right and those lucky few got to party. But this book had to FACE that failure. It had to deal with the fact that the CENTRAL player of several CENTRAL scenes was a cardboard cutout with a string that made him say 'i do not die this day'. And a legion who was made of wood and the hopes of dreams of old wd articles and FW black book lore.  It had to look the utter and in my view mindboggling decision to have Sanguinius beat his arch demonic nemesis in the book they introduced him in and throwing out decades of lore.  It had to do this AND be a siege book. 

 

I 100% agree with you that an anthology would be nice, like the iirc second war of the beast book, a whole book showing short self contained parts of the warzone. I agree with you that lots of plothreads in the siege are being rushed and over/under developed. But here is the thing this book is just a one book, it cannot solve all those issues, BL as a team already dug that hole too deep years ago.  And their bad planning, bad editing, and atrocious project greenlighting ( will never miss a chance to bass the Kyme salamder trilogy) once with the HH and in my view twice now with the siege ( announcing 8 books to great fanfare before they knew how many books was...brave if nothing else). But at this stage MORE books and MORE short stories and MORE whatever aint going to fix it. Its fundamentally broken.  The hh by way of the siege needs to END. They need to sit down and take stock, and actually LEARN the lessons they claim they already learned. I would 100% support a future 'Tales of the Heresy' series that takes the chance to go back and right some wrong. But future, and planned not 'planned'. 

 

You say you look not by faction but as a whole. But most people cant do that with heresy books. They look at the White Scars and the World Eaters and the Word Bearers etc and the fact their faction lost its one great chance in this era gnaws at them. The fact that some got it and it was utterly wasted infuriates.  So for Blood Angel players/fans that fact that this book came in at literally the eleventh hour and FINALLY gave the people what they want in a book, not in tatters of snippets and short stories. Not in a 'if you ignore x then its allright' is priceless. Echoes of Eternity gave a group of the fanbase what they wanted since the first time the eternity gate stand was written about and I for one am just happy that after 57 book and too much money spent i finally got the HH blood angel story i always wanted and had to be honest given up hope on.  All my issues with the series remain, but this book could never fix them, and the fact that it took a stand to tell the story it wanted to tell rather then sacrifice even one page of Blood Angel goodness for perpetuals, keeler, loken or whatever will always be a positive in my eyes.  

 

 

[Scribe]

7 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

I'm more interested in the Siege and narrative threads being developed further than Legion fluff.

 

Granted, its a BA 'look in at the Legion' book in part, but as a WE fan, its not. He already did that earlier in the series.

 

It absolutely is a Siege book, and that was the focus.

[Scribe]

7 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

Why did Dan have to deal with so much narrative baggage?

 

Because he added it.

[DukeLeto69]

On 12/13/2022 at 3:48 AM, Scribe said:

The man can only salvage so much, its not as if he's going to write 3 books here. ;)

The irony is that ADB* (the author that some on here worship to an almost vomit inducing level) actually exacerbated the problem and likelihood that the final volume would end up being too long and need to be split and Abnett had that gig (as vocally advocated by ADB all along) from the beginning. The other irony is that (I think) all the people moaning the last book has been split and us being written by Abnett are big ADB fans. It feels like tribalism to me and your boy made the need for a “too big book so it needs to be split” more of a reality!

 

*Just to be clear, IMHO ADB is a fabulous author and some (not all) of his books are amongst my favourite BL releases. I just never understood the hero worship he gets. He’s great but he isn’t God! None of them are. Not even Fehervari! Although he is perhaps a Demi-God lol

[Scribe]

7 hours ago, DukeLeto69 said:

The irony is that ADB* (the author that some on here worship to an almost vomit inducing level) actually exacerbated the problem and likelihood that the final volume would end up being too long and need to be split and Abnett had that gig (as vocally advocated by ADB all along) from the beginning. The other irony is that (I think) all the people moaning the last book has been split and us being written by Abnett are big ADB fans. It feels like tribalism to me and your boy made the need for a “too big book so it needs to be split” more of a reality!

 

*Just to be clear, IMHO ADB is a fabulous author and some (not all) of his books are amongst my favourite BL releases. I just never understood the hero worship he gets. He’s great but he isn’t God! None of them are. Not even Fehervari! Although he is perhaps a Demi-God lol

 

I'm not going to put the issue of myriad unnecessary subplots at ADB's feet, when he has factually corrected other author's missteps multiple times already.

 

Abnett was the driver for adding all this stuff, now he gets to deal with it, or not. As ADB proved, a great book can be written without all the extraneous fluff.

 

And its rich talking about tribalism and Abnett. The guy can apparently walk on water and we are all lucky he has raised 40K lore out of the abyss or something lol.

[DukeLeto69]

38 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

I'm not going to put the issue of myriad unnecessary subplots at ADB's feet, when he has factually corrected other author's missteps multiple times already.

 

Abnett was the driver for adding all this stuff, now he gets to deal with it, or not. As ADB proved, a great book can be written without all the extraneous fluff.

 

And its rich talking about tribalism and Abnett. The guy can apparently walk on water and we are all lucky he has raised 40K lore out of the abyss or something lol.

I have not really witnessed the same kind of devotion to Abnett as I see for ADB.

 

People who consider Abnett as one of BL’s best writers generally all concede he has sometimes taken a bit of liberty with the setting and on a few occasions has botched the endings to his novels and indeed written one stinker The Unremembered Empire. 

[Scribe]

3 minutes ago, DukeLeto69 said:

I have not really witnessed the same kind of devotion to Abnett as I see for ADB.

 

People who consider Abnett as one of BL’s best writers generally all concede he has sometimes taken a bit of liberty with the setting and on a few occasions has botched the endings to his novels and indeed written one stinker The Unremembered Empire. 

 

Methinks your glasses have a rosy hue. ;)

[DukeLeto69]

Just now, Scribe said:

 

Methinks your glasses have a rosy hue. ;)

Methinks you are blinkered and down a rabbit hole of confirmation bias but we can be fraternal and agree to disagree ;-)

 

[Scribe]

1 minute ago, DukeLeto69 said:

Methinks you are blinkered and down a rabbit hole of confirmation bias but we can be fraternal and agree to disagree ;-)

 

 

lol the irony brother. Theres a thread here all about the abnett verse. People (you?!) have actively petitioned for him adding even more of his personal fluff into what was supposed to be a controlled series. Near everyone raises him up on some pedestal above all others.

 

And you want to talk about ADB fans?

[Kelborn]

Methinks that this is already way to off-topic and if you want to continue this personal debate about your well being and your personal preference regarding authors and their contribution to the overall narrative, then please continue via the pm function.

 

Now, back to topic.

Edited December 14, 2022 by Kelborn

[Scribe]

No need.

[skylerboodie]

Finally got the chance this month to read Echoes of Eternity (having had to hold off in view of study/exam). and I really enjoyed it I agree with Roomsky (and others) re: this working really well as a novel, though less as an entry in the ongoing Siege series as completely ignores a lot of threads

 

My main discussion points (on which feedback welcome!): -

 

Spoiler

• I like Aaron's writing in this book a lot, so only have a few points to highlight (which appear mostly negative but aren't reflective of my overall satisfaction):
  • Normally I want limited deviation from canonical lore, but - given that Ka'Bandha had already been faced twice and defeated in Fear to Tread, I think it would've been better to just exclude him here, rather than the back-to-back 1-v-1s Sanguinius had with him and Angron. Canon-wise it would've been closer to ditch the Angron fight instead (and leave him to 'shake his fist' upon Siege retreat), but storywise that match-up had more meaning than Ka'Bandha so I would've preferred to just see vs Angron instead
  • the 4th Primarch line discussed, which seems to be an unfortunate error
  • I'm really surprised that no one else took issue with Angron quipping "Hark, the dying Angel sings" after stabbing Sanguinius; I mean, I can't see 'normal' Angron ever even saying 'Hark', let alone daemonic-mindless-rage Angron saying this whole phrase, which appears to be a riff on a 20th century Christmas carol lyric?! So jarring and such a bizzare choice, I found
  • Enjoyed the Amit and Kargos story - yet getting a bit tired of characters being 'killed' only for later 'not really'! Though this actually applies more to Zephon for me
  • Zephon himself felt a bit soulless characterwise (same as Vulkan, but that's less ADB's fault)
  • Glad to see loose thread for 'Howl of the Hearthworld' get addressed, but agree it would've been better to give them a separate short story send-off; I'm sure that could've been fitted into Xmas Advent easily if wanted to
  • the missing Sanguniary Guard / Azkhellon / Raldoron is irritating, with not even at least a reference as to where/why
  • Magnus/Vulkan story I didn't mind, though surely Magnus is smart enough to realise after a few Vulkan regenerations to try just dismembering him down to a head'n'torso so he's still alive but 'armless? Also, making 'Fury of Magnus' less clear now felt unnecessary
• Loved Transacta-7Y1 and the Lotarra arc!
• Surprised Vengeful Spirit shields down so soon to be honest, with (at least?) two books from Dan still to come; looking forward to them though!

 

[Arkangilos]

6 hours ago, skylerboodie said:

Spoiler

Normally I want limited deviation from canonical lore, but - given that Ka'Bandha had already been faced twice and defeated in Fear to Tread, I think it would've been better to just exclude him here, rather than the back-to-back 1-v-1s Sanguinius had with him and Angron. Canon-wise it would've been closer to ditch the Angron fight instead (and leave him to 'shake his fist' upon Siege retreat), but storywise that match-up had more meaning than Ka'Bandha so I would've preferred to just see vs Angron instead

 

 

Spoiler

I disagree, mainly because KaBanda is canonical and as for keeping Angron, it came at a point where my Space Wolf playing friend was having our semi usual “my primarch is better” spat, so the fights being back to back helped my cause.

 

Practically everything else you said I agree with (or would if I read the whole series, but this is the first book since fear to tread so I can’t be tired of the revivalism since I haven’t experienced it but I’m with you in principle)

Spoiler

[skylerboodie]

3 hours ago, Arkangilos said:

 

  Hide contents

I disagree, mainly because KaBanda is canonical and as for keeping Angron, it came at a point where my Space Wolf playing friend was having our semi usual “my primarch is better” spat, so the fights being back to back helped my cause

 

Spoiler

I suppose if the Ka'Bandha section had been better executed I would've been happier about its presence, especially as it's canon, but I felt like ADB didn't want him in the book really and that it shows, in the way he only showed up just for the obligatory fight and then is promptly dispatched, with no real impact on the story,  just ticking the box really.

 

Also lol.

 

[Moonreaper666]

From Echoes:

Spoiler

The wall was honeycombed with defensive turrets, reinforced with layer upon layer of plasteel and rockcrete, turned into a rampart manned by over a hundred thousand defenders stationed around the Inner Sanctum. Custodians. Sisters of Silence. Blood Angels. White Scars. Imperial Fists. Imperial Army soldiers. Refugees. Civilians. All of them, shoulder to shoulder, standing in the shadows of the Titans watching over them.

 

From Mortis

 

"In times of peace, the great space ports of Terra had moved billions of tons of cargo and millions of people from orbit to surface and back every hour. Now they were turned to a single purpose: to move every scrap of remaining men and materiel from the Warmaster’s fleet to the surface of Terra. The cycle of ships and landing craft turned tirelessly, each one locked into a schedule and pattern that ran to the minute. Iron Warriors helmsmen and tugs guided the ships of those forces that were too far gone to meet the Lord of Iron’s requirement and precision."

 

"Thunder shivered up and down the orbital spires as ships came in or broke dock. Rust and caked corrosion flaked free from tower sections the size of mountains. Vibration compensators sang as they worked to stop the mountains of metal shaking apart from competing forces. In the docking limbs and landing pads everything was movement and the clangour of machines and labour. Crews of servitors and whipped slaves dragged containers of shells, cylinders of plasma, boxes of rounds. Tanks rolled directly from the guts of ships into macro hoists. War machines stalked, skittered and dragged themthemselves into transit chambers and began the drop down to the lower levels. Regiments of troops, herds of things that had bred in the shadows of the warp, and a tide of the lost and the damned flowed down to the surface of Terra. On and on it went, like water gushing from an opened sluice, like blood pumping from a beating heart."

 

EVERY HOUR. In just Mortis alone, Horus has countless Millions of Traitors on Terra. Countless Daemons on the planet as well

 

Even with Perturabo gone in Warhawk they still are landing MILLIONS of troops in both Spaceports! There is no way the White Scars/Loyalist Tanks killed more than tens of thousands of Traitors AT MOST!!!

 

They are still landing Traitors during Echoes. (And even both parts of Dan's novel!)

 

The Abbaba Regiments are not the only ones that turned traitor during the Siege. That's a few million more Traitors in Echoes

 

Spoiler

The defenders are outnumbered 21600-one!!!

 

Spoiler

The rampaging World Eaters can't stop Traitor Titans and Artillery from blowing a tank-sized hole in Eternity Gate

 

Once the hole is made the World Eaters will go in and hunt Loyalists to sate their bloodlust. After they go in the Traitor hordes can attack as well

 

Spoiler

The Traitors can also burrow down and blow up Eternity Gate. Similar to Perturabo's tactic in the Old Lore

 

[Roomsky]

Regarding the lack of ongoing Siege plotlines in this book, until we get further light shed on the authors' process, I don't know if it's wholly fair to blame ADB for their lack in Echoes. Bear in mind, many of these threads seem to be Abnett's creation, and he likely requested a certain world state be in effect by the time The End and the Death came around. Obviously I don't KNOW this, but when we look at the end of Warhawk and see:

• Ollanius, now with his backstory explained, has been reunited with John and joined by Actae and Alpharius. They're are on their way to the palace
• Fo escaped, revealing that Andromeda is a spanner in the works. Fo is recaptured by Valdor who seems to be on board with his genophage plan.
• Loken, Katsuhiro, and Keeler have assembled and are marching with the new faith
• Sindermann and Co. are out on an adventure

I'm not saying ADB had NO say in his books content (I wouldn't be surprised if he requested Wraight and French have these points in place before Echoes,) but I think it's just as likely that Abnett underestimated just how long it would take for him to tell his big finale. Add to that that Abnett must have started TEatD while ADB was still writing, it looks likely to me that there'd have been no time to correct too much being left for the last book. I'm not sure what ADB would even have written about for most of these characters in Echoes, beyond a check-in stating "yep, they're still doing what they were doing."

[DukeLeto69]

Putting aside all the ADB ignored plot progression and Abnett needs to sort it as he added some of it yadda yadda...

 

What a bloomin shame we are even having these discussions. What a shame the HH series meandered, side tracked, and bloated the way it did. What a shame BL et al thought we needed an 8 novel mini series to wrap it up that then grew to probably 9 (or even 10) novels and 3 novellas. 

 

What a shame we aren’t all just excited about the finale rather than debating all the pros and cons.

 

What a shame that so many of us just feel worn out and jaded. I reconciled with myself some years back that for me the HH was a setting rather than a story (sort of) and started buying but skipping some books (based on reviews etc). 

 

I have even found the SoT a slog but intended to binge read Warhawk, EoE and tEatD back-to-back. Again a shame it feels like a big commitment rather than something to be excited about (ie 3 of my 4 favourite BL authors back-to-back).

 

*sigh*

Edited December 25, 2022 by DukeLeto69

[Roomsky]

18 minutes ago, DukeLeto69 said:

Putting all the ADB ignored plot progression and Abnett needs to sort it as he added some of it yadda yadda...

 

 

That wasn't my intention. I just mean that if people assume ADB didn't want to deal with Abnett's ideas, it's equally likely Abnett wanted to take as much on in the finale as he is, and if they realized later he took on too much, it was too late to change it.

 

I only say it because many are acting like it's a given that ADB refusing to play ball is why TEatD is being split, when we don't know that.

 

And as much as I agree with Scribe on most things, I am super excited for the finale. A silly Reddit brainworm is just squatting in my mind now, whispering dark thoughts about Sanguinius. But the series didn't disappoint me with Aximand-Shields guff so perhaps I'm being unfair.

Edited December 25, 2022 by Roomsky

[DukeLeto69]

@Roomsky that wasn’t aimed at you or anyone specifically, more a general comment. As a fandom we are (or plenty of us are) worn out and jaded. And getting grouchy with each other about something we ostensibly share a love for.

 

Just hoping my binge read will be enjoyable (though I will not wait for book 9 or even 10 to be released). 

[lansalt]

9 minutes ago, DukeLeto69 said:

What a shame that so many of us just feel worn out and jaded. I reconciled with myself some years back that for me the HH was a setting rather than a story (sort of) and started buying but skipping some books (based on reviews etc).

 

The Heresy series really needs several curated reading guides. Tryng to read it all in the official default order it's terrible between all the jumps, meaningless filler stories, and key plot points in random places.  Without lexicanum to find out things, I would have given up long ago.

 

 

 

 

 

[Carach]

Finished the book last night. 

 

Reading some of the comments in here, it seems some authors are damned if they do, damned if they don't.

 

People simultaneously complaining of bloat, but also complaining that ADB didn't include some threads in his book?

 

Personally, I am glad he managed to narrow down the scope whilst keeping a lot of 'epicness' in play. The book may be big, but is largely lacking in needless bolterporn and absurdly, equally needless bean counting. You almost feel things speeding up to the fated end of sorts with the last part of the book (the retreating and running battle)

 

I think, like MoM, he managed to world build effectively with background/lore etc, and move the plot on effectively, having had to follow on from some real slogs in story from other books. Warhawk also did well in managing to... correct the course of this 'mini-series' in a similar manner.

 

You don't *need* everyone's threads in every novel of a story spanning billions of people, covering a huge area.

 

Considering where we are at the end of Echoes, I would.. echo (lol) Roomsky's thoughts regarding Abnett being set up to tell and conclude those threads he introduced, in the mega-novel/2parter whatever-we-get conclusion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 29, 2022 by Carach