Black Library Siege of Terra - Garro: Knight of Grey

[Ubiquitous1984]

9 hours ago, Sothalor said:

I'd love to know some of the "behind the scenes" details about stuff like this. Was there some significant scheduling delay that arose from COVID or supply chain infrastructure or another cause?

 

How committed was the BL staff to having James Swallow be the one to conclude Garro's story? Were there scheduling conflicts there? (He does a lot of other work, after all)

 

Was Knight of Grey planned before or after Warhawk was completed? Did Swallow end up writing KoG without full details of other plot points and timelines and character arcs?

I don't have my copies of mortis/warhawk and garro to hand to check, but it would be interesting to note what date the respective authors sign off their afterword's on.    

[Ubiquitous1984]

On 3/22/2023 at 11:10 AM, Ubiquitous1984 said:

I don't have my copies of mortis/warhawk and garro to hand to check, but it would be interesting to note what date the respective authors sign off their afterword's on.    

I just checked my LE’s.  Warhawk’s afterword was written a full year before Garro’s afterword.  

Edited March 24, 2023 by Ubiquitous1984

[DarkChaplain]

I still stand by my theory that Garro: Knight of Grey was not intended to be released in print but as an audio drama. Corporate (and covid) ditched the format, necessitating a full printrun that wasn't originally scheduled. I doubt they'd have added an afterword to the audio drama release at all, hence the late dating.

[Nagashsnee]

13 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

I still stand by my theory that Garro: Knight of Grey was not intended to be released in print but as an audio drama. Corporate (and covid) ditched the format, necessitating a full printrun that wasn't originally scheduled. I doubt they'd have added an afterword to the audio drama release at all, hence the late dating.

 

Yeah but does not 1) fix any of the story issues, especially the Khan Vs Mortarion copy paste ending. 2) Excuse anything, they are still charging us full price so i expect them to go back and make the needed changes to the story/writing to make it work.  I mean for the delay and total page count they could have re written from scratch. 

 

If it was a audio drama crammed into a novel body then that makes it for me at least WORSE. As for the grand finale for the grand series to have such cash grab antics simply diminishes the whole. 

 

 

[DarkChaplain]

Of course it doesn't, but it would explain why it was released so late and out of order.

[Fedor]

5 hours ago, Nagashsnee said:

 

Yeah but does not 1) fix any of the story issues, especially the Khan Vs Mortarion copy paste ending. 2) Excuse anything, they are still charging us full price so i expect them to go back and make the needed changes to the story/writing to make it work.  I mean for the delay and total page count they could have re written from scratch. 

 

If it was a audio drama crammed into a novel body then that makes it for me at least WORSE. As for the grand finale for the grand series to have such cash grab antics simply diminishes the whole. 

 

 

 

To be fair to Swallow, it's not as if he's alone in lazily using the BL/GW special to resolve fights. Between 30k/40k books and campaigns, you can be sure a minor variation of it will pop up somewhere. ADB dutifully rolled it out to kill Angron, barely a book after the Khan's.

 

Loads of the writers clearly see it as an easy way to give both combatants "their due", without having to come up with a more creative battle/fight, and regardless of how much sense it makes in relation to the abilities/styles of those fighting. One variation allows the one who loses to get in a last quip/blow that humiliates/ruins the victory; the other allows the author to suggest the loser was just as good/stronger, and could have won on another day, so needed a very risky gambit to take down.

 

This one just ended up being worse than usual because of Mortarion being involved twice back to back. The Swarmlord gets similar treatment in his appearances against Dante and that Custodes short.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Fedor

[b1soul]

Swore off James Swallow ever since Fear to Tread...sounds like I made the right decision.

[Moonreaper666]

12 hours ago, b1soul said:

Swore off James Swallow ever since Fear to Tread...sounds like I made the right decision.

 

JS best and worst books? How does KoG compare?

[TrevorLoLz]

I would have preferred Loken stayed dead after Galaxy in Flames.  He's since been a pretty benign character, in my opinion.  A lot of what Loken has done could have been perfomred by Garro in some manner or another.

 

Garro himself was also someone who, for me, his story really could have ended after Flight of the Eisenstein.  The point of the story was that the "ordinary" Astartes decided to go against their Primarchs and the cult of personality surrounding them so they could warn the Imperium, which itself was a huge thing.  The tales afterwards of Garro recruiting the initial Grey Knights was fine, a Legionnaire without a Legion recruiting for another "Grey Legion".  But, it lost steam pretty quickly, in my view, and he otherwise became a background character.

 

If Garro had to die in his own novella (which is ok, having a book to tie together the various old Index Astartes: Death Guard outcomes), having it be some legendary fight against Mortarion isn't it, for me.  It should have been against Typhus, who in reality was really Garro's big bad guy nemesis in the Death Guard. 

[Carach]

Just got round to reading this.

 

The story is fine in itself, but I would probably echo some of the other stuff mentioned here in that the timing of the release is poor, and that Loken's out-of-nowhere return way back when has kind of trodden on Garro's toes, stolen his thunder. The overall arcs are poorer for it. 

 

Almost everything Loken has ended up doing since returning, could have been Garro. Could have been used to flesh out Garro even more. Loken's Galaxy In Flames is cheapened by his return, and Garro's experiences are cheapened in turn. 

 

It is a shame, because individually I liked them both a lot - Loken is iconic for the OG HH story, Garro's has been a great run at times after taking up that torch - but the galaxy wasn't big enough for the both of them. 

 

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by Carach