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

[Lord_Caerolion]

You keep saying stuff like “we know the Loyalists can’t have killed that many Traitors”, but that’s just the thing. We know they DID, it’s told to us over and over both in the setting lore and the books of the Siege of Terra series. 
The Traitors at the end of Echoes of Eternity are not a force that has thousands upon thousands of fresh troops to spare. They’re broken, and barely holding on. 
As for the Loyalists not being able to kill that many, you know how sieges work, right? The whole point of fortifications is that they make you able to take on far superior numbers without being overwhelmed. The Loyalists, throughout the Siege, have had defensive advantages. They’ve had curtain walls, they’ve had perfectly-plotted firing lines, they’ve had expertly-ranged artillery bastions, they’ve had shield protections. All of these, throughout the entire Siege series, have been shown costing the Traitors far, far more in lives and materiel to break through than it’s taken the Loyalists to hold. 
And when that defensive line finally gets breached, the Loyalists fall back to the next Dorn-crafted defence line, and the work begins all over again for the Traitors. 
I don’t know where you’re getting “100k defenders” from, the Imperial Fists alone probably were at that number at the start of the Siege, plus lets say an extra 100k for the combined Blood Angels and White Scars. You’ve then got the fact that the entirety of the Terran population was pressed into arms, which to use your terminology would have been TRILLIONS. 
This is not a war that has gone well for the attackers. Sieges very rarely do, and the Siege of Terra is no exception. 
 

Have the Emperors Children taken part in the attacks on the Eternity Gate? Sure, maybe token forces, but we’re explicitly told that they departed the Siege. Absolutely nothing shows that the EC numbered a few thousand, we just know they were there. The Iron Warriors have largely left. The World Eaters have been on the front line of every single warzone, and they have been bled dry and are broken. The Death Guard are shattered after the banishment of Mortarion, and drawing back. The Sons of Horus are in almost as untenable a position as the World Eaters, having taken just a heavy a role, but with more restraint. They’re still not in a good place. 
 

You say, correctly, that martyrdom is the Loyalists theme to the Siege, but you’re forgetting what the Traitor theme is. Implosion. The Horus Heresy has seen all the Traitor forces wormed through with weaknesses, which they tried to convince themselves was strength. The World Eaters gave themselves over to their rage, and have become unthinking animals. The Death Guard let their desperation to survive cost them everything, and are now consumed with apathy. The Emperors Children are slaves to their egos, and abandoned the entire war because it bored them. The Iron Warriors are overcome with bitterness and self-hatred, also leading them to abandon everything they’ve fought for once again. 
 

Each and every Traitor Legion is imploding in on itself, drawn into the Heresy by the whims of their Primarchs, that over time have turned to madness. They sold their souls for power, and found uncaring Gods twisting their minds and destroying everything they once were. Horus was once the greatest of the Primarchs, and now he’s a consumed husk, barely a fragment of his former self, instead only a literal puppet of the aptly-named Primordial Annihilator. 
The Legions don’t care about their wider goals any more. It was only the charisma of Warmaster Horus who bound them together, but that being is gone. Even Perturabo, Horus’ most loyal Primarch, has turned on him. Angron, Mortarion, Magnus, all banished. Lorgar, exiled in disgrace. Fulgrim, abandoned the war the moment the hand on his leash slipped and something else shiny caught his eye. Curze is trapped in temporal prison, bound to the fate he ran head-long at despite his protestations of wanting anything else. Alpharius has lost all control of his Legion, so devoted to proving his own superiority that his Legion grew beyond his control, each cell fighting for its own idealized image of the Legions goals, even as they conflict with each other. 
 

The Legions are no better. A third have abandoned every desire to continue the Siege, the World Eaters will destroy themselves against any defensive position that has souls behind it. The Night Lords only care to kill, the Thousand Sons are a dwindling force, the Word Bearers will sacrifice anyone they see if they think a Daemon will thank them for it. 
 

The Traitors may have beaten the Loyalists back, but they are absolutely, in no way, shape, or form, in as strong a position as you’re making out. 
This book series will end as we have always known. Horus’ gambit will fail, and with his death, his war will die too. The Traitors will no longer be broken, they will rout, they will flee, and be hounded across the galaxy until they reach the one haven the Loyalists will not pursue them in, the Eye of Terror. 
This will happen, because despite your protestations, despite your endless claims, Chaos is not strength. It is a literal devils bargain that gives you what you think you want, and takes absolutely everything from you. 

[Scribe]

On 12/5/2022 at 3:32 AM, Lord_Caerolion said:

It is a literal devils bargain that gives you what you think you want, and takes absolutely everything from you. 

 

Yep.

[SkimaskMohawk]

I'm rereading Echoes, still close to the very start and here are some lines moonreaper should probably try to reconcile:

 

Spoiler

Quote

The Conqueror’s scanners, when they functioned at all, couldn’t cut through the dust. Terra didn’t look like Terra. It looked like Venus. It choked under a similar tainted sky.

   Choppy reports analysed the clouded atmosphere. The marble dust in the air was enough to destroy any reliability with the vox

 

Quote

They probably didn’t know who’d died either; squads were scattered, the vox was down, and the dust was a great equaliser on that score, turning them all into ghosts of themselves. Who was who hardly mattered now.

 

Quote

It was a tide. Hundreds of thousands of warriors and soldiers and daemonic entities merging into a wave of god-soaked intent. Rank meant little now among the mortal castes of this horde; military cohesion had almost broken down into myth

 

Quote

Establishing a firm hierarchy was impossible without the vox, and without knowing what regiments were where; what Titan Legios had managed to haul themselves up and through the wreckage of the Ultimate Wall; what Astartes forces had assembled in the fallen districts of the Inner Palace....The names of First Captains were spoken, and their absences marked. Ahriman. Typhon. Abaddon. Embattled elsewhere or already dead? None could say.

 

It's also important to note after this passage that the observers make some assertions about things they do "know". Magnus will break the emperor's shield, and angron will kill sanguinius; these absolutely don't happen. The traitors on the ground are just drinking the coolaid but have no actual knowledge.

 

 

Quote

Other Titans retreated to their coffin-ships, resolving to airlift onto the plateau. Few met with any success, with the dust chewing through engine intakes and crippling most of the landers that made the attempt. Some unleashed their weapons on unbreached sections of the wall, melta-boring rockcrete, atomising stone and conversion-beaming holes through Rogal Dorn’s greatest defences.

   Time, time, time. It all took time. 

 

Quote

For now, World Eaters and Death Guard and Alpha Legionnaires ran before Hindarah in a ceramite flood. No gunships backed them up from above – the air-support phase of the war was adamantly over 

These are all from the first three chapters, and all of them slam the concepts of communication, army coherency, time/speed, available assets, who could do what, etc... that have been core of the many assertions. 

 

Obviously, obviously, stuff wasn't read.

 

Edited December 6, 2022 by SkimaskMohawk

[Brother Lunkhead]

=][=

 

While it's perfectly acceptable to challenge/disagree with ideas posted by fellow fraters, snarky comments aimed at the allegedly offending frater are not conducive to constructive discourse and violate the spirit of the rules of conduct of the B&C, so....

 

IXNAY ETHNAY ARKSNAY

(Nix the snark)

 

=][=

[Arkangilos]

Just finished listening to it and wow. 
I loved every bit of it. It also did everything I’ve been wanting recently.

Having not read anything since Fear to Tread (and I read that when it came out), I don’t know if these things had been done or answered but just last week I was wondering if Amit was pre-Sanguinius and wanted his background. Check.

I was hoping to see stuff regarding pre-Sanguinius BA culture. Check.

I wanted to see the reunion. Check.

It was all done beautifully, and now all I want to see is the middle period between the two cultures and to see how it was during the first years of Sanguinius. But to be honest, there are only two authors I trust with that (ADB and Haley).

 

Story wise I think the only question I have is what was happening with Raldoron as this was going down.

[lightinfa]

Are there any images of the map from the LE floating around the internet? GW has apparently forgotten to keep their Siege of Terra website up-to-date:

https://siegeofterra.com/

[63-19]

Don’t expect the map anytime soon. They sporadically update siegeofterra.com. Last update was around a year ago. The last time they fully updated the site was almost 2 years ago.

Edited December 11, 2022 by 63-19

[DarkChaplain]

I finished the rest of the novel at long last and sadly, I still don't think I liked it all that much. For all that people complain about The First Wall having "redundant" plotlines, I feel like a large chunk of Echoes could've been cut and trimmed down without affecting the book much if at all. So much stuff that would've been better off in a short story or Primarchs novella.

 

Like, I don't think much would change with the novel if you were to cut all the Lotara content and paste it into another short story, Rose Watered With Blood-style. She's so divorced from the main events of the Siege here, she's at best a PoV that provides some additional scope at the very end. Heck, one of her sections is basically just a frame to show the last council, so we wouldn't have to see it from right in the middle of it.

Then we have, for example, chapter 29, more than half of which was concerned with showcasing individual fates among both sides - characters that were just introduced for a page and removed from play. This stuff would've been better suited to a vignette-style short story in a Siege anthology we should have gotten by now. Instead sections like these (and there were plenty more throughout) bogged the narrative down.

 

That weird middle section of flashback chapters too ticked me off, because it shouldn't have been here. It has its relevancy to the Blood Angels fluff, but it's relevancy for the Siege was rather limited. Had it been part of Chris' Sanguinius Primarchs novel, or a Primarchs short story, I'd have been happier with it. As is, it interrupted the Siege for too long. It didn't help that we get the Amit/Kargos flashbacks after we are led to believe Kargos is a goner. It's only after that Amit mentions that he didn't finish the job. In my eyes, there was no point in having these two meet twice - either do the final battle as it happened, or move their duel to the pre-flashback part. Kargos coming back through plot armor didn't feel satisfying. Especially since he actually did get killed despite Khârn: Eater of Worlds mentioning him leading a warband of his own. What's with all these canon conflicts in the Siege?

 

Technically, it's a great achievement, but it really failed to draw me in through its characters and ongoing narrative. A lot of the book feels static - and even though this is a backs-to-the-wall situation, it shouldn't feel that way. There weren't enough moving cogs. Even Vulkan, who went on an actual journey of his own into the Webway, didn't actually move much. The destination was a duel that never needed to be, not after Fury of Magnus - which it even partially attempted to retcon for no good reason. There were what, three chapters about the Vulkan vs Magnus confrontation? And not short ones either. It dragged, even though their conversations were one of the book's highlights for me.
 

....and yes, where the f is Azkaellon? We've had so much setup for him, and he's nowhere to be found in the Blood Angels novel of the finale? No Sanguinary Guard? A token mention of Dorn at Bhab, that's it? Sanguinius never even thinks about or worries over Jaghatai. Raldoron is exactly as one-note uninteresting as he's ever been. Even Zephon feels... dull and faceless. There were some endearing moments of him realizing that his thralls were good people worth caring about, but in the end he passes the task of actually doing so off to Arkhan Land anyway.

 

And then there was Howl of the Hearthworld... or, well, actually there wasn't, because they all died. Oops. That really was just a throwaway chapter. Heck, I don't think we even saw Sanguinius yet by that point. Not only should this have been another bloody short story - just like the story that introduced the pack years ago! - but it also contributed nothing to the plot - just another showcase of "look how bleak this is". It's a chapter-long axing of an unwanted group of characters and a plotline that some fans kept asking about but obviously had no place in the book anymore.

 

There was honestly very little for me to cling to in terms of characters, and Land's out-of-place nature on the wall, the cynicism and surprise emotions can only go that far.

 

I get that ADB was going for the tiring grind of the Siege, the exhaustion, the fatigue, both physically and mentally, among all participants. But I don't particularly want to feel the same way reading the book. It's simply so bleak and such a meat grinder that it sucked the enjoyment out of the experience. On a prose level, it's great. It's also got great setpieces. But as somebody who is tired enough of action sections in BL novels at the best of times, this nonstop balls-to-the-walls, everybody-loses, there-is-no-hope novel might be my antithesis.

Edited December 13, 2022 by DarkChaplain

[Roomsky]

`Tis unfortunate you weren't in love with it. The Roomsky Broken Record returns to say "different strokes" once again.

 

I've always been one for the "jettison what's not working" approach. Obviously its awesome when writers can salvage a poor character or story, but that approach always gambles pumping out further mediocrity (Descent and Fallen Angels, anyone?) And I recognize this position is hypocritical of me, because I obviously defend the choice to rescue Sanguinius from the void of character he was trapped in instead of just ignoring him, but hey, I'm and ADB fan. His writing elevates what should be a mess. And I totally get the position that a bunch of Sanguinius flashbacks would be more at home in his Primarchs novel, but this is a time where that small part of me I bury to enjoy these books to the fullest leapt out and screamed "stop making me read supplemental :cuss: for the narrative gravity of this situation. A sub-series cannot make the Heresy good any more than SW Legends EU can make the prequels good."

 

But I think it's a good review, DC, and fully justifies most of your issues. Though for the life of me, I will never understand your bone to pick with Zephon or Argonis.

[Scribe]

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

[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.