Changes to the Horus Heresy Fluff - The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

[Fedor]

On 12/8/2022 at 6:21 PM, Scribe said:

 

I honestly believe he has more pull to alter things than anyone else, and often has the desire to do so, without regard for what makes more sense.

 

Perpetual, Cabal,  Emperor's Executioners, Ol is a Catholic, Superhero Buddy Adventure.

 

Nope.

 

So if he can get us over the finish line without adding more to that esteemed list?

 

Great.

 

If you thought the Emperor's Executioners was excessive, wait till you find out what they did with the Dark Angels!

[Scribe]

45 minutes ago, Fedor said:

 

If you thought the Emperor's Executioners was excessive, wait till you find out what they did with the Dark Angels!

 

I dont read DA stuff, and so was spared what it seems was a pretty bad arc based on all the criticism I've seen.

[Fedor]

It's not so much their full HH series arc (which was indeed a mess) but rather the Forgeworld background from the last black book. Stuff derived from it (pre-release) did start to appear in the series from about Angels of Caliban or so, but it's not the focus. The true excess and obnoxiousness is in the black book Crusade itself, and the Primarchs book based entirely around it.

 

Basically, Abnett might have set the Wolves up as the executioners of things big E wanted to make a public example of, but the DA were the EXTERMINATORS that were actually taking on all the deadliest, most existentially terrifying threats of the Crusade in secret. Defeating all the stuff too cosmically terrifying to even be recorded with their Emperor gifted DaoT weapons caches and fleet of glorianas, while the other legions took on the easy compliances and pleb work. they are also the sanction against the mechanicum possibly rebelling, as having all the DaoT only tot ake on all the uber xenos wasn't enough for the writers. As a theme, it takes the idea of them being the original template legion and turns it into essentially the "simpsons did it first" joke...everything you thought was unique, or a distinct strength of a certain legion/primarch? Dark Angels or the Lion did it first and/or just as well (in their opinion).

 

I get that it was trying to set them up as having been at one time the big pre-eminent cheese of the legions, so as to contrast with the shame of the fallen (and it does have a good core to it) but christ do they go all in on it with no editing or trimming of over the top ideas whatsoever. A very different tone from the earlier black books, even the initial post-bligh Malevolence.

Edited December 27, 2022 by Fedor

[SkimaskMohawk]

Crusades depiction of thramas also kinda ran counter to that of the lion's from Savage Weapons, also very heavily in the dark angels favour.

 

 

[darkhorse0607]

2 hours ago, Fedor said:

A very different tone from the earlier black books, even the initial post-bligh Malevolence.

 

 

I think that's an underlying issue with the Heresy as it's written now for most of the legions/characters though, not just with the Dark Angels

 

When ADB writes the Night Lords, he portrays them as murdering psychopaths, but he also goes through the effort of giving them characters and traits that make them at least semi-credible as a conquering force. When Thorpe writes them/Curze (referencing Angels of Caliban here), Curze might as well be a mustache-curling cartoon villain. Haley's depiction of them, while not as comical as Thorpe's, also leaves a bit to be desired.

 

When French writes the Iron Warriors (barring Slaves to Darkness), they're portrayed as fairly incompetent that makes you wonder how they were able to do much other than decimate themselves. When McNeill writes them, they're given character, tactical competency, Perturabo is shown to actually care about the lives of his men (a little bit at least), etc. And then Thorpe goes and undoes that in The First Wall.

 

The Ultramarines range from Abnett's depiction in Know No Fear to Kyme's relatively mundane depiction of them in his short stories

 

Etc.

 

I guess my point before I inadvertently turn this into just complaining about authors inconsistencies/favoritism (because yes, I do believe that's a sizeable role here as well), is that depending on when you got into the series, and with what author/book, the  series can take an entirely different tone

Edited December 27, 2022 by darkhorse0607

[Sothalor]

I don't really get peoples' hangups over this "the Space Wolves were retconned into the Emperor's Executioners" angle.

 

That particular narrative was pushed in Prospero Burns - the entire narrative POV is from a remembrancer whose had his brains and memories scrambled to bejeezus by warp shenanigans, trauma, hypno-conditioning, and then goes full "I spent a summer in Norway and I am now a cringe neo-pagan with a man-bun and a totemic animal, bro" for the Sixth Legion.

 

He's a guy who falls for the cult recruitment hook, line and sinker. The dude drank all the kool-aid. ALL OF IT. He gets gaslit to the point that Scientologists are looking at him and saying "you're going a little hog-wild there, buddy". 

 

He's a damaged, broken person who gets sucked into the Space Wolves own spin: their own self-aggrandizing lens through which they see themselves and others. Prospero Burns was showing how Hawser bought into the narrative a bunch of gene-forged child soldiers tell themselves to make them feel better than their siblings.

 

The point of Prospero Burns wasn't that the Space Wolves were some hyper-elite, better-than-Space Marines-Space Marines, it was that the Space Wolves had convinced themselves that was the case - and look how it all ends up. 

 

Prospero Burns wasn't about how the cool alpha jocks went and kicked in those loser nerds' teeth, nor was A Thousand Sons about how a bunch of idiot barbarians went and ruined civilization's last library. It was that BOTH LEGIONS were self-absorbed narcissists who couldn't see past their own narratives to avoid catastrophe. THAT was the point. That they were always cultivating the seeds of their downfall within themselves. That pride and vainglory and contempt of our brothers is a wide and fast road to destruction.

 

[Lord_Caerolion]

I think it was the fact that it was combined with author interviews where Dan was portraying it as very much truth. One of the interviews he gave he stated something along the lines of “you look at the Space Wolves, and they’re such a dangerous Legion. Why would the Emperor allow them to keep existing? To kill another Legion”.

The whole “it was mostly in their heads/it was also relating to their culling of civilians after the Rangdan Xenocides” is post-hoc justification. When it came out, it was (at least seemingly) intended very much literally. 
 

Personally, I don’t mind the idea of the Dark Angels being the “Men in Black” Legion. My issue was that their novels were finally a chance to get away from their 40k portrayal where everything comes back to the Fallen, but instead from the very beginning it feels like the author is mugging at the reader going “hey, it sure seems like these guys are gonna have a civil war, right? That’d sure suck, right? If these guys fought? Luther and the Lion? Right? The Lion seems to fight with Wolves a lot too, huh? Wonder if there’s any other Wolves he might end up fighting? Huh? Seems like it, right?”

[Nagashsnee]

Thats a 30k wide issue that got worse and worse.  BL could not stop trying to make 30k into 40k light, the church got shoved in, faith became a big theme. Book after book told us how AcTuAlY the great crusade sucked and everyone was no better off then 40k. Which is funny because then the heresy really loses its tragic themes of what could have been, 

 

The real kicker is during the shame period 40k started to become more and more like the original 30k. Primarchs are back, the imperium is launching a crusade to make everything better.  Legions of grey marines are bounching around, technology is making leaps and bounds ( the latest dante book has the BA building a new type of Battle Barge that is better in every way). Hover vehicles are back, logic and reason are pushing back at the chruch etc. 

 

One of the flaws that many hh books did is trying to make the legions into slightly different versions of their 40k selves, forgetting, that they are 10000 years of time for them to take their final forms, and that the absolute devastation of the Siege and scouring is where it would made the most sense for the foundations of their current character to be laid.  It would have been nice to have them have 1-2 major differences that would only make sense in the context of latter events and gigantic timelines. 

[Arkangilos]

10 hours ago, Sothalor said:

I don't really get peoples' hangups over this "the Space Wolves were retconned into the Emperor's Executioners" angle.

 

That particular narrative was pushed in Prospero Burns - the entire narrative POV is from a remembrancer whose had his brains and memories scrambled to bejeezus by warp shenanigans, trauma, hypno-conditioning, and then goes full "I spent a summer in Norway and I am now a cringe neo-pagan with a man-bun and a totemic animal, bro" for the Sixth Legion.

 

He's a guy who falls for the cult recruitment hook, line and sinker. The dude drank all the kool-aid. ALL OF IT. He gets gaslit to the point that Scientologists are looking at him and saying "you're going a little hog-wild there, buddy". 

 

He's a damaged, broken person who gets sucked into the Space Wolves own spin: their own self-aggrandizing lens through which they see themselves and others. Prospero Burns was showing how Hawser bought into the narrative a bunch of gene-forged child soldiers tell themselves to make them feel better than their siblings.

 

The point of Prospero Burns wasn't that the Space Wolves were some hyper-elite, better-than-Space Marines-Space Marines, it was that the Space Wolves had convinced themselves that was the case - and look how it all ends up. 

 

Prospero Burns wasn't about how the cool alpha jocks went and kicked in those loser nerds' teeth, nor was A Thousand Sons about how a bunch of idiot barbarians went and ruined civilization's last library. It was that BOTH LEGIONS were self-absorbed narcissists who couldn't see past their own narratives to avoid catastrophe. THAT was the point. That they were always cultivating the seeds of their downfall within themselves. That pride and vainglory and contempt of our brothers is a wide and fast road to destruction.

 

As another says, the “just in their head” narrative isn’t real, and is contradicted by several books. Just look at the wolf packs sent to spy on the legions and be within striking distance of the primarchs.

[Sothalor]

1 hour ago, Arkangilos said:

As another says, the “just in their head” narrative isn’t real, and is contradicted by several books. Just look at the wolf packs sent to spy on the legions and be within striking distance of the primarchs.

 

Ah yes, those wolf packs. Like that one The Unremembered Empire which is seen by everybody else around them as a puffed-up insult at worst and a ridiculously pre-ordained lost cause at best?

 

Like all those wolf packs which surgically and efficiently eliminated, let's see, Konrad Curze, Angron, Perturabo, Fulgrim, Mortarion, Lorgar, etc.?

 

They certainly didn't change the course of the war. Arguably their one notable contribution was stopping Curze from killing Euten, Guilliman's mother figure - and it's debatable just how impactful that was at all.

 

I'd posit that the whole deployment of the wolf packs is a point about how the Space Wolves saw themselves. They're not the actions of a sober-minded organization carefully thinking things through. They're the actions of a group of self-deluded warriors who think they're the hot :cuss:.

 

Which, incidentally, is not to say that the Sixth Legion weren't used as a blunt instrument in some hitherto unthinkable conflict or against one of the lost legions or whatever. It's not "just in their head" - it's that they then ideated, mythologized, and integrated that wholesale into their collective identity. 

 

You can have an objective set of events that occurred - and you can have a narrative that grows out of that which takes on a life of its own and can become its own monster. We see this all the damn time in our own world, and it triggers everything from interpersonal misunderstandings to generational family traumas to ethnic conflicts to continental wars.

 

 

In fact, this is a pretty foundational element in how the tragedy of the Horus Heresy as a setting plays out: the Primarchs - the vast sways they had over their legions of Space Marines as father figures, their own relationships with their father the Emperor, and their self-identities.

 

We see it from Sanguinius and his self-consciousness about the thirst for blood forming a gilded masquerade veneer for his Legion - "you will be Angels."

There's Curze and his own twisted sense of terror as justice and vice-versa and how that shapes the Night Lords.

Angron, the Butcher's Nails, and the World Eaters - 'nuff said.

Perturabo and his need for emotional validation twisted into self-denying, "I am the one who conducts warfare by calculation, cold reason, and all else is folly" transposed onto the Fourth Legion.

 

And Horus - "I am the Emperor's favored son."

[Scribe]

13 hours ago, Sothalor said:

I don't really get peoples' hangups over this "the Space Wolves were retconned into the Emperor's Executioners" angle.

 

That particular narrative was pushed in Prospero Burns - the entire narrative POV is from a remembrancer whose had his brains and memories scrambled to bejeezus by warp shenanigans, trauma, hypno-conditioning, and then goes full "I spent a summer in Norway and I am now a cringe neo-pagan with a man-bun and a totemic animal, bro" for the Sixth Legion.

 

He's a guy who falls for the cult recruitment hook, line and sinker. The dude drank all the kool-aid. ALL OF IT. He gets gaslit to the point that Scientologists are looking at him and saying "you're going a little hog-wild there, buddy". 

 

He's a damaged, broken person who gets sucked into the Space Wolves own spin: their own self-aggrandizing lens through which they see themselves and others. Prospero Burns was showing how Hawser bought into the narrative a bunch of gene-forged child soldiers tell themselves to make them feel better than their siblings.

 

The point of Prospero Burns wasn't that the Space Wolves were some hyper-elite, better-than-Space Marines-Space Marines, it was that the Space Wolves had convinced themselves that was the case - and look how it all ends up. 

 

Prospero Burns wasn't about how the cool alpha jocks went and kicked in those loser nerds' teeth, nor was A Thousand Sons about how a bunch of idiot barbarians went and ruined civilization's last library. It was that BOTH LEGIONS were self-absorbed narcissists who couldn't see past their own narratives to avoid catastrophe. THAT was the point. That they were always cultivating the seeds of their downfall within themselves. That pride and vainglory and contempt of our brothers is a wide and fast road to destruction.

 

 

I wish this was correct, but there are multiple supporting points of view, not just Legion inflated self importance. The book you are describing, would have been fine, but Dan failed to balance it.

 

It took other authors, later books, to fix this flawed view.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Yes, the Wolf packs, a program devised by Malcador, a figure famous for buying into Legion propaganda. 

[SkimaskMohawk]

23 hours ago, darkhorse0607 said:

When French writes the Iron Warriors (barring Slaves to Darkness), they're portrayed as fairly incompetent that makes you wonder how they were able to do much other than decimate themselves. When McNeill writes them, they're given character, tactical competency, Perturabo is shown to actually care about the lives of his men (a little bit at least), etc

 

Uh, did we read different books from French? Likke ya, the iron warriors get hosed in the crimson fist.

 

But tallarn? They're relentlessly described as precise, competent, professional, and deadly. The biggest mark against them is that argonis thinks that they're kinda robotic (and is shown to have been let go by vorx, making his opinion a bit tinged by the sons of Horus superiority). But they still triumph over the alpha legion, and were on course to win on tallarn before they got ordered out. And the entire conflict was to secure power to stop the iron warriors from being manipulated and betrayed again.

 

Slaves to darkness continues that characterization and that quest to find power to not be used by others. 

 

Solar war doesn't really touch on them much, but it does have them make the most headway out of the two traditional assaults from the wormholes or whatever they were. 

 

 

[Arkangilos]

13 hours ago, Sothalor said:

 

Ah yes, those wolf packs. Like that one The Unremembered Empire which is seen by everybody else around them as a puffed-up insult at worst and a ridiculously pre-ordained lost cause at best?

 

Like all those wolf packs which surgically and efficiently eliminated, let's see, Konrad Curze, Angron, Perturabo, Fulgrim, Mortarion, Lorgar, etc.?

 

They certainly didn't change the course of the war. Arguably their one notable contribution was stopping Curze from killing Euten, Guilliman's mother figure - and it's debatable just how impactful that was at all.

 

I'd posit that the whole deployment of the wolf packs is a point about how the Space Wolves saw themselves. They're not the actions of a sober-minded organization carefully thinking things through. They're the actions of a group of self-deluded warriors who think they're the hot :cuss:.

 

Which, incidentally, is not to say that the Sixth Legion weren't used as a blunt instrument in some hitherto unthinkable conflict or against one of the lost legions or whatever. It's not "just in their head" - it's that they then ideated, mythologized, and integrated that wholesale into their collective identity. 

 

You can have an objective set of events that occurred - and you can have a narrative that grows out of that which takes on a life of its own and can become its own monster. We see this all the damn time in our own world, and it triggers everything from interpersonal misunderstandings to generational family traumas to ethnic conflicts to continental wars.

 

 

In fact, this is a pretty foundational element in how the tragedy of the Horus Heresy as a setting plays out: the Primarchs - the vast sways they had over their legions of Space Marines as father figures, their own relationships with their father the Emperor, and their self-identities.

 

We see it from Sanguinius and his self-consciousness about the thirst for blood forming a gilded masquerade veneer for his Legion - "you will be Angels."

There's Curze and his own twisted sense of terror as justice and vice-versa and how that shapes the Night Lords.

Angron, the Butcher's Nails, and the World Eaters - 'nuff said.

Perturabo and his need for emotional validation twisted into self-denying, "I am the one who conducts warfare by calculation, cold reason, and all else is folly" transposed onto the Fourth Legion.

 

And Horus - "I am the Emperor's favored son."

That went right over your head.

 

The argument isn’t “they are so awesomeness” “only in their head do they think that!”

 

The argument is, “They are made to be the Emperor’s executioners” “no; that’s only what they say to themselves”.

 

Whether they are successful or not is not important, what is important is that I provided evidence that the Imperial Governance *sees them as the Emperor’s executioners*.

[Nagashsnee]

To be fair i  found after some time and thought from the books that introduced it  the moniker 'executioner' hilarious. As traditionally an executioner is just the person who kills an already beaten, captured, tried and sentence foe. So sayin they are the emperors executioners is to me akin as saying they are the emperors mop up bois. 

 

The prospero incident really reinforces this as they are not sent in to just kill everyone one, they are sent in to escort a self beaten and Emperor judged magnus to terra, and if it comes to a fight better send custodes and silent sisters and all sorts with them. 

[Sothalor]

8 hours ago, Arkangilos said:

That went right over your head.

 

The argument isn’t “they are so awesomeness” “only in their head do they think that!”

 

The argument is, “They are made to be the Emperor’s executioners” “no; that’s only what they say to themselves”.

 

Whether they are successful or not is not important, what is important is that I provided evidence that the Imperial Governance *sees them as the Emperor’s executioners*.

 

Point conceded about the watch packs.

 

However, the argument I was trying to make was not that it's "only in their head do they think that!"

 

It was that the Space Wolves had adopted that narrative into their self-identity, and that should be kept in mind for Prospero Burns and how it's read. I have observed a tendency amongst some segments of the Black Library readership to treat the novels like game codices or encyclopedias or historical monographs to derive some kind of "facts about the setting."

 

But they aren't those things; they're novels. They're stories constructed from sequences of scenes. And the vast, overwhelming majority of BL novel scenes are written from limited third-person or first-person narrative perspectives. Character viewpoints, biases, and limitations are integral to reading novels.

 

Not just novels, really. Histories, encyclopedias, documentaries - hell, scientific and medical studies - they're all subject to human biases and different interpretive frameworks, at personal, institutional, and broader cultural levels.

 

To bring it back to Prospero Burns; that particular novel had a very specific narrative POV. The protagonist underwent a series of experiences and interactions that shaped his worldview a particular way. It was the story of one man getting immersed to an extreme degree in a tribal warrior society - and they were constantly pushing him towards that for their own ends. Furthermore, he himself is a mind-tinkered, manchurian candidate mess of a man. His memories keep changing on him. The name he thinks he has isn't even his name. Hawser is an incredibly unreliable viewpoint - through no intent of his own.

 

And again, that's not necessarily saying that the Space Wolves didn't have a role as the Emperor's Executioners or some similar purpose, or that it was only in their heads - it's that Prospero Burns, by its nature, is presenting a distorted image filtered through several heavily-tinted lenses. Treating it (or any other novel) as if it were an academic treatise about a facet of 40k is like using a screwdriver as a hammer.

[Moonreaper666]

I get the feeling the vast majority of Traitor Marines on Terra will survive the Siege. This possible retcon might be GW/BL's way of explaining why so many Heresy veterans are still alive in the 42nd Millenium

 

Mortis states that the Spaceports can move Millions of people every hour and the Traitors held both for several days!

 

To be fair not every Traitor Marine from the SoH, WE, DG, EC and TS fought on Terra so they could have less difficulties going to the Eye of Terror

[System Sound]

Plot hole: exists

 

BL: "The Warp Did It!"

[wecanhaveallthree]

The idea of Imperium Secondus is a good one. Terra might very well be gone. Horus might be redecorating the Chamber of Rule as we speak. The obvious solution is, yes, re-establish a seat of Imperial power and consolidate around it, and the most logical place to do so is in the most stable realm (Ultramar) with already-working logistics and governance. It's cool! I like it! But uh, trying to tell a story that necessarily required a solid page length, introspection and establishment of mini-factions within the overarching narrative - a narrative that was on a reasonably strict time limit - was never going to work, and should have obviously not been attempted. There just wasn't the space to do it. 

 

Now, you know where an Imperium Secondus storyline would really work, in a very similar fashion? Imperium Nihilus, with no hope of reinforcement and no news from Sanctus, Dante has the title, the military and the mandate to 'do it right'. He's not just holding out until Guilliman can relieve him, that's not gonna happen with the Great Rift existing. The Imperial remnants need cohesion and leadership now, and who is better-placed than the reluctant regent himself?

 

The fact that we haven't seen Secondus recycled for Dante, following in his Primarch's footsteps, yet it keeps coming up in Guilliman's stories (where it does not in any way matter) really crumples my cog.

[DukeLeto69]

6 hours ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

The idea of Imperium Secondus is a good one. Terra might very well be gone. Horus might be redecorating the Chamber of Rule as we speak. The obvious solution is, yes, re-establish a seat of Imperial power and consolidate around it, and the most logical place to do so is in the most stable realm (Ultramar) with already-working logistics and governance. It's cool! I like it! But uh, trying to tell a story that necessarily required a solid page length, introspection and establishment of mini-factions within the overarching narrative - a narrative that was on a reasonably strict time limit - was never going to work, and should have obviously not been attempted. There just wasn't the space to do it. 

 

Now, you know where an Imperium Secondus storyline would really work, in a very similar fashion? Imperium Nihilus, with no hope of reinforcement and no news from Sanctus, Dante has the title, the military and the mandate to 'do it right'. He's not just holding out until Guilliman can relieve him, that's not gonna happen with the Great Rift existing. The Imperial remnants need cohesion and leadership now, and who is better-placed than the reluctant regent himself?

 

The fact that we haven't seen Secondus recycled for Dante, following in his Primarch's footsteps, yet it keeps coming up in Guilliman's stories (where it does not in any way matter) really crumples my cog.

Agree with this. Imperium Secundus WAS a great idea that did have a LOT of potential but it was totally fluffed.

 

While not all the blame sits with Abnett (and I say this as someone who loves most of Abnett’s BL output) The Unremembered Empire is awful. It feels like a superhero smack down comic. 

 

There was no NEED for all those Primarchs to be in Imperium Secundus. Curze’s rampage was not needed. We had the perfect set up for some political drama and questioning of loyalty to focus on (and explain the Ultramarines not being part of much of the HH but no, BL required their action quota (though that could have been achieved by mopping up the left over Word Bearers etc) 

[jaxom]

20 hours ago, DukeLeto69 said:

There was no NEED for all those Primarchs to be in Imperium Secundus. Curze’s rampage was not needed.

Need? No, but it was a useful location to plop them to explain where they were (conservation of locations, in narrative terms). Extending the Heresy meant having to answer what the traditionally overlooked legions and Primarchs were up to. IS gave the authors a single place for these characters to interact, rather than have to come up with new separate, material for all of them. Signis Prime wasn't enough time even with warp shenanigans, and Thramas  - if the black book is to be believed - would have been even shorter if the entire First Legion was present so padding it out longer wasn't an option once someone decided Thramas was what we read about.

[DarkChaplain]

Imperium Secundus suffered most from its release schedule and being axed before it could actually get off the ground than anything in terms of actual content (though TUE is still a candidate for my least-favorite book in the series).

 

It got teased in a short story in Age of Darkness (book 16), then didn't actually manifest til book 27, when it immediately dropped off the radar, with Scars being critically acclaimed and overshadowing it - both because it was serialized before TUE released and then generally released not long after, sandwiching a bad book in-between a great one. Then we went to Molech, to Pythos, to an anthology, and then Imperium Secundus comes back for the first section of Deathfire, just long enough for introductions to be made and the Salamanders to bugger off to their odyssey.

 

After another anthology, the actual second book in the arc is Pharos, book 34. We just jumped from 27 to 34 with a minimum amount of coverage in 32, leaving Imperium Secundus largely unexplored. And by the time of Pharos, the sun was starting to set already. The next outing was book 38, which literally ended the arc for good. In-between Pharos and Angels of Caliban we had two more anthologies - one of which had a few Imperium Secundus shorts, but those were mostly about Know No Fear's Aeonid Thiel - and The Path of Heaven - another acclaimed novel.

 

This is the era that I experienced as the low point in the fandom. I got so sick of reading the complaints about "never getting to Terra" in every single comment section on sites like BoLS at the time. Pessismism was rampant, anthology fatigue was a real thing, and on top of all of that, there was the massive release gap due to the ~2015 corporate shenanigans between GW and BL. Books did not get published for quite some time. It took an entire year from Pythos to Deathfire, and another half a year until War Without End.

 

By the time Pharos rolled around with its early digital christmas release (because that's something BL used to do....), it's been over two years since The Unremembered Empire introduced IS, and it'd be two more months on top til Pharos saw its hardback release.

 

IS is very much the product of terrible corporate decisions - but not simply because it might be considered "filler", but because it got introduced just to be immediately fridged and then quickly abandoned without ever having a chance to live up to the narrative potential they must have originally envisioned. It sucks because it was set up to do so by the higher ups, not because it was inherently worthless.

[grailkeeper]

Itd be interesting when the series is done to see what scores people give each novel.

 

For me the worst was Damnation of Pythos. Up till that point I had read every book. That was the point where I thought "I'm not going to bother any more". There might be a few other worse ones since but from that point on I only read the ones by authors I liked. 

 

 

[wecanhaveallthree]

Funnily enough, 40klore over on Reddit is talking about Damnation right now and everybody loves it!*

 

*'Everyone' being roomsky and I, the only authorities one should need on such matters.

 

If you can't find it in your heart to love 40K Does Turok, then I mourn for you. Mourn!

[grailkeeper]

It might have done as a good 40k book, but there was no need for it in 30k.