Dawn of Fire is a Bad Series

[caladancid]

Just finished reading The Iron Kingdom. And while this is somewhat about that book I thought it was going to be divergent enough for a separate topic. 
 

Book Five is a meh novel. Just like the novels before it, with the exception of Mr. Thorpe’s, it’s definitely a written book. None of them have been awesome, and I probably wouldn’t continue to read them if not grouped into  series that presumably makes them more interesting over time. 
 

Which does bring me to my main point. The series is not good. It’s meandering at best, pointless at worst given it seems as though the in-universe story has moved on through sourcebooks. This wouldn’t always be the case, see HH where we all read even though we ‘know’ the ending. But this story just isn’t compelling. 
 

Book 5 introduced more characters doing maybe significant things? Or maybe not and now they are introduced we won’t see them again until Book 8. I’m reminded of The Beast Arises, and not in whatever small good ways that might be. Is it a story about Abaddon? Guilliman? Or is it about the smaller players- and if so probably we should narrow the cast some. 
 

I might give the series one more book to get in order- but even as I type that I think, why after five novels am I still willing to give it a chance? 

[OpossumStrong]

1 hour ago, caladancid said:

Just finished reading The Iron Kingdom. And while this is somewhat about that book I thought it was going to be divergent enough for a separate topic. 
 

Book Five is a meh novel. Just like the novels before it, with the exception of Mr. Thorpe’s, it’s definitely a written book. None of them have been awesome, and I probably wouldn’t continue to read them if not grouped into  series that presumably makes them more interesting over time. 
 

Which does bring me to my main point. The series is not good. It’s meandering at best, pointless at worst given it seems as though the in-universe story has moved on through sourcebooks. This wouldn’t always be the case, see HH where we all read even though we ‘know’ the ending. But this story just isn’t compelling. 
 

Book 5 introduced more characters doing maybe significant things? Or maybe not and now they are introduced we won’t see them again until Book 8. I’m reminded of The Beast Arises, and not in whatever small good ways that might be. Is it a story about Abaddon? Guilliman? Or is it about the smaller players- and if so probably we should narrow the cast some. 
 

I might give the series one more book to get in order- but even as I type that I think, why after five novels am I still willing to give it a chance? 

 

You got some points, I started to read it as a prequel to Dark Imperium and expected some info about primaris and how did the Imperium gone trough primarch return etc, nothing too important but still interested me. 

I found some interesting bits in every book, except Wolftime, couldn't finish it, dropped it after 150+- pages. 

Edited February 28, 2023 by OpossumStrong

[Scribe]

It seems clear to me at this point, GW/BL cannot manage a series across several authors. They can hardly manage with a single author.

[caladancid]

29 minutes ago, OpossumStrong said:

 

You got some points, I started to read it as a prequel to Dark Imperium and expected some info about primaris and how did the Imperium gone trough primarch return etc, nothing too important but still interested me. 

I found some interesting bits in every book, except Wolftime, couldn't finish it, dropped it after 150+- pages. 

Yes, Wolftime is not even mediocre. 

[Astartes Consul]

34 minutes ago, Scribe said:

It seems clear to me at this point, GW/BL cannot manage a series across several authors. They can hardly manage with a single author.

 

Not a new problem as such, but having series editors who also write some of the books seems like a terrible idea to me. Editing and writing are very different things, for starters. But it also leads to terrible narrative decisions. 

 

And that is without the awkward fact that these multi-author series seem to be seen as a way for giving BL old hands a book or to a year to churn out. With what seems to be no editorial oversight because either they are also the editors (see above) or because they run the place.

[cheywood]

I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a bad series, but I agree it’s disappointing in comparison to what was promised. The books themselves are readable enough, but they lack a sense of gravity that such an ostensibly significant series should demand. For me it comes down to the fact that none of the marquee writers have contributed yet (if ever?) and the series is in an awkward place in the setting. Like the Heresy we know how DoF will transpire to a degree (no matter how many times Haley insists we don’t) - the Imperium will survive, Guilliman will head to Ultramar to fight the plague wars and the Primaris will continue to spread throughout the Imperium. Emps will still be on His Throne and Abaddon will still be out there menacing. The Horus Heresy can get away with that degree of audience foreknowledge because it’s the mythic foundation of the setting and fans of 40k have long been curious about those ancient days. DoF doesn’t have any of that curiosity around it. As a result the books themselves need to be consistently compelling to grant the series the gravity it claims to possess. Kinda hard to do that when Wraight, ADB, Abnett, French and most of BL’s other truly talented prose stylists aren’t contributing. 

[caladancid]

I think we are saying the same thing. The books are fine, mostly (maybe). But as a series, it is bad. No clear path, no standout characters or development of them, and no real reason to care at all. 

[Roomsky]

Taste accounts for everything, of course, but I think it's the best multi-author series out of Black Library AS A SERIES. The Heresy has better individual entries, but is a setting (and is made WORSE by reading them all.) The Beast Arises is more interconnected, but self-destructs well before DOF's current wordcount.

 

DOF is everything I want out of a multi-author Black Library series: a sequence of books that can be read on their own, but are enriched by reading in sequence. The Iron Kingdom reads fine as an Indomitus-era Knight World book, and it carries along well from Gate of Bones if you've read everything til now.

 

Also the authors at play, while hardly all-stars, are performing better than their average IMO. Gate of Bones is Clark's only work I enjoy, and Haley's entries have been entertaining where I usually find his books annoying (and they're both miles ahead of the Dark Imperium trilogy.) I know it's an unreasonable ask but Wolftime improves immensely after those first 150 or so pages, too.

 

I'll admit I'm not one to be bothered by "lack of stakes" though, as that's a problem that infects every Black library novel involving an important character. I like learning about the early Indomitus Crusade, I like the Historitors, Rostov's conspiracy, Colquan's constant bad mood, etc. It's fun! And perhaps I'm just glad the series is showing some bloody restraint for once instead of more drama between unkillable characters going nowhere.

[OpossumStrong]

The series is fine, I can agree, but they promised like what, 13 books or so? cant quite remember by now, and if I recall it correctly they even rephrased it.

 

The one negative side I can see for this series is that probably they chose DoF over something else. I mean I enjoyed The Great Work and The Twice Dead King, I wish they made them a trilogy same as Dark Imperium, but as I said, they probably bet on DoF. 

[cheywood]

15 minutes ago, OpossumStrong said:

The series is fine, I can agree, but they promised like what, 13 books or so? cant quite remember by now, and if I recall it correctly they even rephrased it.

 

The one negative side I can see for this series is that probably they chose DoF over something else. I mean I enjoyed The Great Work and The Twice Dead King, I wish they made them a trilogy same as Dark Imperium, but as I said, they probably bet on DoF. 

BL has never explicitly stated how many books DoF is. I think an Amazon listing for Avenging Son said 9 books before it was taken down, but who knows what’s happening now. 
 

Haley might’ve been delayed writing more Cawl novels by his responsibilities on DoF, but he’s said a few times that he’ll return to the character.

 

I don’t think there’s much of a relationship between Twice Dead King and DoF. Crowley isn’t involved in the latter series and I believe Twice Dead King was originally commissioned as a single novel, but Crowley went so long they split it in two.

Edited March 1, 2023 by cheywood

[Moonreaper666]

I enjoyed Gate of Bones but I only read the first two

[Nagashsnee]

Like the Heresy DOF suffered by being sold to us as a series rather then a setting. DOF would have been great if it was sold as book set in the first XX years. Then have each book focus on 1 aspect of the crusade. A knight book ( like Iron Kingdom) a Mech book, a Imperial Navy book.  Have some underlining themes and maybe a character or two that jumps books but dont make people feel they need to read the previous 3 book for book 4.  They kinda did this but ( so wolf time focusses on space wolfs) but still pushed it as a series.

 

The HH has burned ( or so i see them mention on forums like this) allot of people out. The desire to jump on another series before the siege and hence the HH is even done is not as  high as it could have been.  This could and for me SHOULD have been launched 6 months after the last siege book. 

 

Now for the book themselves, having read up to throne of light, i have nothing really bad or good to say. Some are better then others, some have some great parts ( Terran Vellum wars should have been a entire book and i will fight anyone who says otherwise). But i re sold all of them after reading, and forgot most of it pretty fast. I dont feel like i know anything more about the indomitus crusade, the state of the Imperium or the galaxy then i would have by the general codex/campaign/general books.  Neither do i feel we got to see/read about anything that would not be covered anyhow. I still dont know what the point of the series is. 

 

So overall pretty meh.

Edited March 1, 2023 by Nagashsnee

[DukeLeto69]

Agree with the posts in this thread. The ultimate question is “what is DoF meant to be?”

 

BL need to be clear with themselves about whether it is a setting or sequential series. If the latter then you need a core set of characters and plot lines that are carried on by each author. Handing over the baton so to speak.

 

That could have been achieved without making things seem “smaller” by having, for example, three running plots/characters:

 

A. Focus on RG and his inner circle (to show strategic picture).

 

B. A baseline human (guardsman or voidsman) to show impact of great rift and primarchs return etc on normal folk.

 

C. A Primaris to show their journey and acceptance/non-acceptance by Space Marine Chapter(s) and the impact of new better marines.

 

Just suggestions. Point is a continuing set of character arcs can be used to explain the Indomitus era.

 

OR

 

As suggested above, accept that it is a setting and allow any books and plots to be published in that time frame with a focus on specific factions. We do have other books that are contemporaneous with DoF (ish) so just have all of these labelled “era indomitus” and maybe only Haley should have written a smaller series (trilogy or two) focused on the crusade itself.

[DarkChaplain]

I'm honestly baffled about the mass of negativity here. DoF are some of the best times I've had with BL the past couple of years. I always find interesting tidbits, appreciate the way the "new status quo" is being painted and the political intrigue - something that's going on in The Iron Kingdom as well - is generally engaging to me in the way many BL novels, including some that are generally lauded here, are not.

 

One of the best things about the series for me is how it acts as "connective tissue" between a bunch of other stories from years past, framing them into the new indomitus era where before they could've been shrugged off as non-canon, once the Rift made it into the fluff. Heck, even the appendices of the novels (not in the audiobook versions, sadly, which is a massive oversight on BL's part) contribute to sketching out the crusade and the state of the galaxy; The Iron Kingdom even brings up stuff from Psychic Awakening, couching something that GW threw at a wall without really telling us when it's happening, right into ongoing events during this era.

 

The novels themselves stand both as "important" events of themselves to the Crusade, certain milestones, but also as exemplary for the wider course of the indomitus era. The Iron Kingdom, for instance, is the Imperium reaping what it sows by its unreasonable - but nonetheless necessary - demands. Throne of Light and Wolftime both deal with Chapters' rejection of Cawl's Primaris or Guilliman as a new lord commander. This is stuff that a few years back, I remember reading here people wanted to read about.

 

It's an episodic slow-burn, sure. But that's exactly why I enjoy it so much as a series. The scope is growing gradually while still following thematic lines, and while The Iron Kingdom seems like a sidestep, it also plays the ball back to the overarching nemesis being built. And as far as series go, it's quite frankly incomparable to the Heresy, which was like a pinball table experience, bouncing back and forth with no rhyme or reason. I think we conveniently forget just how many books in that series there really are, and how little they directly contribute to anything. We'd much rather condense the discourse about the HH down to a few highlights from our favorite authors.

 

And I'd vehemently disagree about DoF not following character arcs or relay-plotlines. It does. The Iron Kingdom picks multiple of these back up, from Messinius from Avening Son over the Mordians from Gate of Bones, and one of the Historitors is also right there again. Those Historitors are a large part of that throughline and have been from the start, with Guelphrain at the center - and I expect him to be the bridge for the series to venture into Imperium Nihilus and blow the mystery open some more. In the Heresy, people still think that Remembrancers should've played a bigger role - as evidenced by the reactions to the Sanguinius Primarchs novel. Here, we have remembrancers in all but name being in the middle of the Indomitus Crusade, witnessing and describing, but also meddling with galactic affairs. It's great stuff, and I'm more invested in Fabian and Primaris Lucerne than in the dealings of most Primarchs during the Siege of Terra.

Then we have the Custodes plotline with Colquan and co. Again, The Iron Kingdom features returning faces from Gate of Bones. Wolftime, too, aside from its surface conflict, featured Historitors searching for clues on what happened in the prior Gate of Bones, and Throne of Light also progressed that plotline by way of Rostov, who again was carried over from Avenging Son.

 

We have multiple plotlines, recurring characters (including army and navy folks, with their own quirks or tendency to drink a little too much, and interpersonal relationships), but they're not necessarily a part of each book. They cycle. They'll skip a book here or there while the focus lies elsewhere, on another part of the war, another fleet. But even then we'll find recurring characters and elements from before.

 

There are clear throughlines.

 

 

Either way, Dawn of Fire has gone a really long way towards making the Indomitus Era feel plausible and interesting to me. And things are moving along, even if it's obvious that we have certain beats and an end point to hit. I'm not concerned with those as much as the overall journey, however.

Edited March 1, 2023 by DarkChaplain

[Nagashsnee]

5 minutes ago, DarkChaplain said:

I'm honestly baffled about the mass of negativity here. DoF are some of the best times I've had with BL the past couple of years. I always find interesting tidbits, appreciate the way the "new status quo" is being painted and the political intrigue - something that's going on in The Iron Kingdom as well - is generally engaging to me in the way many BL novels, including some that are generally lauded here, are not.

 

One of the best things about the series for me is how it acts as "connective tissue" between a bunch of other stories from years past, framing them into the new indomitus era where before they could've been shrugged off as non-canon, once the Rift made it into the fluff. Heck, even the appendices of the novels (not in the audiobook versions, sadly, which is a massive oversight on BL's part) contribute to sketching out the crusade and the state of the galaxy; The Iron Kingdom even brings up stuff from Psychic Awakening, couching something that GW threw at a wall without really telling us when it's happening, right into ongoing events during this era.

 

The novels themselves stand both as "important" events of themselves to the Crusade, certain milestones, but also as exemplary for the wider course of the indomitus era. The Iron Kingdom, for instance, is the Imperium reaping what it sows by its unreasonable - but nonetheless necessary - demands. Throne of Light and Wolftime both deal with Chapters' rejection of Cawl's Primaris or Guilliman as a new lord commander. This is stuff that a few years back, I remember reading here people wanted to read about.

 

 

 

 

Well you answer your own question, not everyone has read/remembers 'a bunch of other stories from years past'.  Psychic Awakening Was a campaign/rules expansion. Many people will have no context for the positives you are describing, and they shouldn't have to.  These factors are of course great to have, but are more like bonus features. 

 

As for the milestones, this could have worked if it was a setting, buts its a series and these milestones dont really that well connected between each other when going from book to book. Iron kingdom connects to gate of bones but that was 3 books ago (not to mention the time passed IRL). 

 

You are again right I for one wanted to read about chapters and primaris interacting and interconnecting YEARS AGO. Back when primaris came out and it was fresh and interesting and people were talking about it and wondering how it would happen. But its been practically 2 editions,  things have moved on. The ship for many people has long sailed. It been covered either in other books, or in codexes/campaign books etc. 

 

I remember when the 13 black crusade global event was launched years back, i got my codex, and got some new minis that i themed around the fighting on and around cadia etc. And i waited for the BL tie in books, and waited, and waited, and waited.  Then they did it again, 13 black crusade 2 electric bugaloo! This time. This time for sure, we even got 3x more campaign books! Holy heck HUGE events are happening on/around Cadia, surely some tie in fiction will happen!  Well it never did. Now it does get touched on here and there ( Bless the Lords of Silence for showing the opening stages of the Agripinna campaign).  The thing is even if they did this now, i dont care anymore, it been kinda sorta covered in so many places i am over it.  Allot of the indomitus/primaris stuff is ( for me of course) like that, and DoF suffers for it. 

[OpossumStrong]

8 hours ago, cheywood said:

BL has never explicitly stated how many books DoF is. I think an Amazon listing for Avenging Son said 9 books before it was taken down, but who knows what’s happening now. 
 

Haley might’ve been delayed writing more Cawl novels by his responsibilities on DoF, but he’s said a few times that he’ll return to the character.

 

I don’t think there’s much of a relationship between Twice Dead King and DoF. Crowley isn’t involved in the latter series and I believe Twice Dead King was originally commissioned as a single novel, but Crowley went so long they split it in two.

Not sure then where from i got the number, i was thinking from the first preview maybe, but then I've read so much about it when they announce it,

So probably it's some other unreliable source.

 

About other books like Twice Dead King, i meant that they are spending resources and writers time to write DoF, when they could write some standalone books.

 

It's just most of the good books I've read in the last years are non-series books .

Edited March 1, 2023 by OpossumStrong

[DarkChaplain]

59 minutes ago, Nagashsnee said:

 

 

Well you answer your own question, not everyone has read/remembers 'a bunch of other stories from years past'.  Psychic Awakening Was a campaign/rules expansion. Many people will have no context for the positives you are describing, and they shouldn't have to.  These factors are of course great to have, but are more like bonus features. 

 

As for the milestones, this could have worked if it was a setting, buts its a series and these milestones dont really that well connected between each other when going from book to book. Iron kingdom connects to gate of bones but that was 3 books ago (not to mention the time passed IRL). 

 

You are again right I for one wanted to read about chapters and primaris interacting and interconnecting YEARS AGO. Back when primaris came out and it was fresh and interesting and people were talking about it and wondering how it would happen. But its been practically 2 editions,  things have moved on. The ship for many people has long sailed. It been covered either in other books, or in codexes/campaign books etc. 

 

I remember when the 13 black crusade global event was launched years back, i got my codex, and got some new minis that i themed around the fighting on and around cadia etc. And i waited for the BL tie in books, and waited, and waited, and waited.  Then they did it again, 13 black crusade 2 electric bugaloo! This time. This time for sure, we even got 3x more campaign books! Holy heck HUGE events are happening on/around Cadia, surely some tie in fiction will happen!  Well it never did. Now it does get touched on here and there ( Bless the Lords of Silence for showing the opening stages of the Agripinna campaign).  The thing is even if they did this now, i dont care anymore, it been kinda sorta covered in so many places i am over it.  Allot of the indomitus/primaris stuff is ( for me of course) like that, and DoF suffers for it. 

 

See, I don't read the campaign books or codex releases. I'm aware of them. I get the cliffnotes. If there's something important in there, it'll be posted online anyway. But I am a "novels first" bloke - which is also why I dislike the ForgeWorld Black Book retcons that happened so late into the Heresy.

 

I care about the overarching narrative being told more than about the cliffnotes on events, though. For me, those Psychic Awakening events aren't relevant or exciting until they are either adapted by BL or acknowledged by the novels - I know they exist, but the top-down Codex/Campaign Book PoV doesn't interest me anymore. I want characters, not the roughest of battle reports. It's the Historitors trying to make sense of galactic events that I'm invested in, not the events themselves.

 

I saw some similar complaints on the Angron thread, though; that it "doesn't add" much that isn't known from Arks of Omen: Angron, or that it's filling a gap that, having read the AoO book, wasn't strictly necessary. And I'll disagree with that assessment, because that narrative being told, the surface-level perspectives and arcs, are much more appealing to me than, again, the cliffnotes lore bible.

 

At the end of the day, I'm unlikely to ever buy another Codex in my life. I'll probably end up buying an ultimate release of Visions of Heresy, but that's basically it for the top-down books. As somebody who doesn't give a tosh about the tabletop game anymore, since long before 8th, my needs on this era are being fulfilled perfectly fine by Dawn of Fire and the stories branching off or being embraced by it.

 

This includes Kyme's Knights of Macragge, Haley's Dark Imperium, Dante trilogy, Cawl's Great Work, or Thorpe's Ashes of Prospero, or Saga of the Beast, or Prophet of Waaagh, or Wraight's Vaults of Terra & The Emperor's Legion, or Lords of Silence.... Dawn of Fire brings structure into a chaotic era of Black Library and GW studio works. It ties together the literature into a more cohesive whole, where external factors are both accounted for and played forward. It's laying the foundation for the coming years of story arcs and standalone works, and it does that through samplers of events without narrowing down too much overall, and while maintaining the human element.

 

Resulting from that, I do not at all consider DoF as something that unnecessarily ties down authors or editorial staff, or production capacities. If anything, it justifies other stories being told in this era, around the central spine. It establishes a ground floor that the setting hasn't had for a long time, and it doesn't shut down possibilities doing so.

 

The series will eventually link up to Dark Imperium. After that, we may see a second phase so to say that expands beyond Godblight, leading into The Devastation of Baal and more Nihilus content, as well as Cawl's Great Work. And when/if it does, works that are a little further into the Indomitus Era will most assuredly also be tied together again. It's an approach that BL has shun for so long, letting books and trilogies basically exist on their own, without ever concerning themselves with one another, and often contradicting things between them. Dawn of Fire, under Haley's supervision, is aiming to straighten this approach out while still accounting for divergences. And that's rather nice.

[wecanhaveallthree]

This feels like the quintessential setting v. narrative argument that's been kicking around since time immemorial.

 

Do you like a more cohesive Warhammer narrative? You probably like Dawn of Fire. Do you like Warhammer as a loosely-connected setting? You probably don't like the plodding. For my money, both are good in moderation. My issue with Dawn is that the setting and the narrative have both moved on, moved far on at this point. I just don't care about the Era Indomitus. For me, it was a functional time-skip to get to the new, more interesting status quo of an Imperium apart and Chaos rising with all sort of new (and old) gribblies crawling out of the crack. I find that very exciting. The potential for both narrative and setting interests me. I like the 'new normal'. 

 

So why would I want to take several steps back for books that have been, charitably, mediocre? None of them are blowing the top off. There aren't any 'must-reads' here. I think it was a laudable idea, but the direction of the franchise kneecapped it thoroughly. Perhaps I'm extra-sensitive to 'setup books' coming out of The End And The Death Volume One Chapter The First: The Series. But Dawn doesn't feel like it's going anywhere fast, and that lack of momentum or destination just kills any last effort at interest for me.

[Nagashsnee]

I 100% understand where you coming from.   I get why you like the series. What i am saying is that if you are 'I'm honestly baffled about the mass of negativity here.' you need to put yourself in other peoples shoes and then their issues with the series is allot more clear. 

 

 

[Dried]

I really liked the first book. Everything made more sense with it, the human level stories were really great (but the battle in the end not so much...) and we saw some important bits of fluff happen in real time (the discovery of the primaris and the Cawl-show).
But with each book my interest is waning a little.
The second book was toying with the faith thematic. It was interesting, but it was one big conflict that bored me a little. And the villain (Tenebrus) felt really uninspired.
The third book was about the integration of Primaris in some chapter (using one of the most reluctant one: the Space Wolves). I had a really hard time getting into but in the end the thematic was interesting... But a lot of the important stuff was happening "off-screen" and implied, it was a bit frustrating.

The fourth book... It was a pain to finish for me. It's talking again about primaris integration in a reluctant chapter and we still follow the most uninteresting villain I read in a BL book since a long time. On the good side it had some little interesting foreshadowing for the lore.
I didn't read The Iron Kingdom yet but I'm not too hurried to say the least.

[Felix Antipodes]

I’d been quite happy with DoF initially and have found it okay as a setting.  My biggest gripe with DoF is that it isn’t what I remember being promised in various articles and interviews ie it would show vignettes of all the Indomitus fleets as the crusade expanded across Sanctus, giving us a snapshot of the current status of the regions still receiving the light of the Astronomican.  At least that’s what I remember being promised but it wouldn’t be the first time i got the message wrong 

[DukeLeto69]

Ok ok @DarkChaplain that is a convincing argument. Time to ruminate! 

[caladancid]

4 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

I'm honestly baffled about the mass of negativity here. DoF are some of the best times I've had with BL the past couple of years. I always find interesting tidbits, appreciate the way the "new status quo" is being painted and the political intrigue - something that's going on in The Iron Kingdom as well - is generally engaging to me in the way many BL novels, including some that are generally lauded here, are not.

 

One of the best things about the series for me is how it acts as "connective tissue" between a bunch of other stories from years past, framing them into the new indomitus era where before they could've been shrugged off as non-canon, once the Rift made it into the fluff. Heck, even the appendices of the novels (not in the audiobook versions, sadly, which is a massive oversight on BL's part) contribute to sketching out the crusade and the state of the galaxy; The Iron Kingdom even brings up stuff from Psychic Awakening, couching something that GW threw at a wall without really telling us when it's happening, right into ongoing events during this era.

 

The novels themselves stand both as "important" events of themselves to the Crusade, certain milestones, but also as exemplary for the wider course of the indomitus era. The Iron Kingdom, for instance, is the Imperium reaping what it sows by its unreasonable - but nonetheless necessary - demands. Throne of Light and Wolftime both deal with Chapters' rejection of Cawl's Primaris or Guilliman as a new lord commander. This is stuff that a few years back, I remember reading here people wanted to read about.

 

It's an episodic slow-burn, sure. But that's exactly why I enjoy it so much as a series. The scope is growing gradually while still following thematic lines, and while The Iron Kingdom seems like a sidestep, it also plays the ball back to the overarching nemesis being built. And as far as series go, it's quite frankly incomparable to the Heresy, which was like a pinball table experience, bouncing back and forth with no rhyme or reason. I think we conveniently forget just how many books in that series there really are, and how little they directly contribute to anything. We'd much rather condense the discourse about the HH down to a few highlights from our favorite authors.

 

And I'd vehemently disagree about DoF not following character arcs or relay-plotlines. It does. The Iron Kingdom picks multiple of these back up, from Messinius from Avening Son over the Mordians from Gate of Bones, and one of the Historitors is also right there again. Those Historitors are a large part of that throughline and have been from the start, with Guelphrain at the center - and I expect him to be the bridge for the series to venture into Imperium Nihilus and blow the mystery open some more. In the Heresy, people still think that Remembrancers should've played a bigger role - as evidenced by the reactions to the Sanguinius Primarchs novel. Here, we have remembrancers in all but name being in the middle of the Indomitus Crusade, witnessing and describing, but also meddling with galactic affairs. It's great stuff, and I'm more invested in Fabian and Primaris Lucerne than in the dealings of most Primarchs during the Siege of Terra.

Then we have the Custodes plotline with Colquan and co. Again, The Iron Kingdom features returning faces from Gate of Bones. Wolftime, too, aside from its surface conflict, featured Historitors searching for clues on what happened in the prior Gate of Bones, and Throne of Light also progressed that plotline by way of Rostov, who again was carried over from Avenging Son.

 

We have multiple plotlines, recurring characters (including army and navy folks, with their own quirks or tendency to drink a little too much, and interpersonal relationships), but they're not necessarily a part of each book. They cycle. They'll skip a book here or there while the focus lies elsewhere, on another part of the war, another fleet. But even then we'll find recurring characters and elements from before.

 

There are clear throughlines.

 

 

Either way, Dawn of Fire has gone a really long way towards making the Indomitus Era feel plausible and interesting to me. And things are moving along, even if it's obvious that we have certain beats and an end point to hit. I'm not concerned with those as much as the overall journey, however.

 

I saw that you were confused but there were some really good responses,  hopefully they helped. I will add a few thoughts/questions.

 

Just picking a couple of these. What character development or plot development would you say Messinius goes through in Iron Kingdom?

 

Same with Colquan and the Custodes? With them I am even less clear what the development has been overall- and certainly they had none in Iron Kingdom.

 

I think its fair to say we look at this series quite differently. You enjoy that after five books the "overarching nemesis" is still being built; I find that not a slow burn but a sign that we've barely lit a match and are really just hoping for something to happen.

Edited March 1, 2023 by caladancid
Clarity

[phandaal]

4 hours ago, Nagashsnee said:

You are again right I for one wanted to read about chapters and primaris interacting and interconnecting YEARS AGO. Back when primaris came out and it was fresh and interesting and people were talking about it and wondering how it would happen. But its been practically 2 editions,  things have moved on. The ship for many people has long sailed. It been covered either in other books, or in codexes/campaign books etc. 

 

Yeah, it was a fresh take (if not a welcome one) back when Primaris first launched, but it is not a difficult concept to understand. Bigger/stronger/faster. Chapters react about as you would expect them to, depending on how they feel about Guilliman and/or McGuffinus Cawl. Got it.

 

The frequency with which it still gets brought up in novels and short stories tells me it must be some kind of directive from on high. Or maybe they really do think people are so dumb that we still do not understand it after all these years.

[DukeLeto69]

Well what might have worked/been good IMHO is if the DoF series had rolled out in line with the studio releasing rule books, campaign books, and codexes. ie the live setting.