Black Library fiction The End and the Death - Volume III

[MasterDeath]

Surprising, but as i am really enjoying this series, not unwelcome. Its like getting a directors cut directly.

[Nagashsnee]

50 minutes ago, Carach said:

 

On the contrary, despite the length of the first, it didn't feel bloaty to me vs some entire novels in the series previously that were entirely unnecessary.

 

 

Reaaaaaly setting the bar low there aint you?

 

 

[Cyrox]

I hope its not 3 books because of numerous over done B-plots featuring non marine characters!

 

In some books its perfect, but this is the Siege. 

[soviet1337]

I thought this was obviously a trilogy when they revealed the first one and didn't say the one after was the last. 

[Redcomet]

This is absolutely hilarious 

[Prot]

I'm torn here. Bare with me....

 

I read almost every HH novel, and got sick of it being drawn out. So many side stories that were just ill conceived and inconsequential.

 

That being said the true 'meat' of this story is fascinating to me. The 'end' of it is not something I'm looking forward to. I don't see the heart of the HH story being revisited in the future with any meaning outside of a "Henry Cavill Miracle" (IE: bringing it to streaming/movies). So this is it.

 

When Abnett deep dives into some of rabbit holes of the Emperor's existence, the history, the cast of strange and stranger characters, I find it fascinating. What's truly happening to the main characters, everything from Horus to Abaddon to the Primarch's and their captains... it's all really a great read for me. 

 

That being said you can only write so many pages without any real development in the story before you lose the audience. I am looking forward to book 2, but I have my reservations about it actually showing us anything of real significance. 

 

At this point maybe it should be renamed, "The Never Ending Death"?

 

Still I would be lying to say I won't be all over this on release day. lol

Edited August 2, 2023 by Prot

[Rain]

The year is 2029. The Primaris range has just begun to be replaced by the Augustian Marines, to much uproar among the community for preservation of iconic Primaris kits. The game is in its 12th edition, which did away with measuring, as numbers are complicated, and all ranges are now listed as “dang close”, “pretty far”, and “whatever, just roll.” An 18 page errata  and FAQ follows explaining how to interpret the new range system.

 

The End and Death part 17 has been announced. The Limited Edition sells out in .03 seconds due to advances in AI scripting.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Prot said:

I'm torn here. Bare with me....

 

I read almost every HH novel, and got sick of it being drawn out. So many side stories that were just ill conceived and inconsequential.

 

That being said the true 'meat' of this story is fascinating to me. The 'end' of it is not something I'm looking forward to. I don't see the heart of the HH story being revisited in the future with any meaning outside of a "Henry Cavill Miracle" (IE: bringing it to streaming/movies). So this is it.

 

When Abnett deep dives into some of rabbit holes of the Emperor's existence, the history, the cast of strange and stranger characters, I find it fascinating. What's truly happening to the main characters, everything from Horus to Abaddon to the Primarch's and their captains... it's all really a great read for me. 

 

That being said you can only write so many pages without any real development in the story before you lose the audience. I am looking forward to book 2, but I have my reservations about it actually showing us anything of real significance. 

You are a far better wordsmith than me... But yeah pretty much how I feel.

[Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla]

2 hours ago, grailkeeper said:

I wonder if this well tone down the purple prose. Given that he describes it as a continuation I doubt it. The use of lexiphane words spoiled my immersion. Its hard to keep in the flow of the thing if you are reading a description and have to look up what smaragdine means ( or lexiphane).

 

I hope Abnett will use this to give us lengthy and excruciatingly anatomical descriptions of Sanguinius' blood and sweat drippind down his bulking muscles during the fight with Horus. I want to see his hair sticky, his saliva building up in his mouth. I want to feel his every muscle moving, I want to hear his every grunt, every sigh. Like 150 pages at least, easily. In 1-2 pages long microchapters.

[Son of Rawl]

I had hoped that I would only have to enter the Pre-Order Thunder Dome one more time. This is definitely the last time I collect a limited series from GW.

[Marshal Rohr]

Oh boy, I can’t wait to read another volume of the End and the Death. 

[Redcomet]

If there is one story I don’t want to read and know every excruciating detail off, and retcon off, it is this. I WANT the death of the Emperor to be a myth. Here say told by Dorn and others to suit their needs. The true story can remain in the dark for me. Some stories don’t get better for knowing everything.

[Dornfist]

This news has made me so livid that I had a Flash canyon scream moment :

 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Dornfist

[Mr Farson]

Volume 3-55 confirmed to be the entirety of the heresy from the emperors perspective including his internal musings of what to have for space god dinner

 

[Dornfist]

2 hours ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

To a lot of you:

 

Yes, there's been terrible filler in the heresy series. There's no doubt or argument about that.

 

But that really doesn't justify a lot of the bloat in end of the death. The rann and zephon passages are awful, and they're used to break away from the more interesting parts like the vengeful spirit assault, or loken and friends, or ol' and friends. Its absolutely a slog, and I personally dread what other nonsense filler made it past the editors (I'm sure it's a lot; they couldn't even catch striking character and location inconsistencies that abnett shoveled in).

Agreed. I don't want more Zephon and Rann or random soldier x passages or frankly ANY "fragments" passages. That will destroy the average reader...

[Scribe]

What an embarrassment.

[skylerboodie]

46 minutes ago, Redcomet said:

If there is one story I don’t want to read and know every excruciating detail off, and retcon off, it is this. I WANT the death of the Emperor to be a myth. Here say told by Dorn and others to suit their needs. The true story can remain in the dark for me. Some stories don’t get better for knowing everything.

Don't read it then? Seems pretty simple.

[Scribe]

I really have to wonder how some of you justify this extra brick of a door stopper.

 

We are already on the VS.

 

Now, that brushes over the fact that the DOOR WAS ALREADY CLOSED AND THE SHIELDS WERE DOWN, at the end of the actual best book of the SoT series (Echos) and Abnett simply need to pick up the thread from there.

 

It ignores the fact that mischaracterized and bloated out the first of this 'well planned and collaborative' extra trilogy.

 

The Emperor is ON THE SPIRIT.

 

This is going to be 600 pages of absolute 'what? why are we talking about this' until Sanguinius gets to Horus to get punked.

 

Then we will have ANOTHER 600 whatever pages of the Emperor getting there, and getting sat on a Chair.

 

And this is somehow good?

 

Note: The above assumes there will be no 'grand reveals' aka hideous retcons.

 

An absolute travesty. I'm going to walk my dog.

[Imprudent Decision]

Realistically, I will listen to all three audio books as my commute will not change any time soon.  That said, this did not need to go to three books.  Two was already too much.  
 

 

 

[grailkeeper]

4 hours ago, EnsignJoker said:

This is like Luke Skywalker grabbing his lightsaber from Palpatines throne, ready to fight Vader, and the movie cutting away to Ewoks for the next 45 minutes. 

 

 

The end and the Darth?

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

It is what it is, still going to try and complete my collection *shrug* raging isn't going to do anything 

My fear considering they haven't announced the release date for the second novel is that its going to be the same pre-order weekend as LI and the website will cry and slow to crawl. 

[Kastor Krieg]

More Abnett? AWESOME.

[Urauloth]

The clocks actually never run out.

[Toxichobbit]

Ahh yes, The Horus Heresy/Siege of Terra series. More filler than Katie Price and now more endings than The Return of the King.

 

Bill King did it better in a half-dozen page WD article a few decades ago. 

 

Edit: Still going to buy the damn things, because I have almost every other book and I hate leaving a series incomplete. I might even finish reading them sometime before I die... maybe.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Toxichobbit

[m_r_parker]

I thought it at the time when I saw the Dramatic Personae of vol 1 of The Death and The End - "This needs a stronger editor. There's no way all these characters can get any development, a lot of these must be chaff.". Having read vol 1 I wasn't wrong, on either account.

 

Does this announcement surprise me? No. It annoys me greatly that this has become a thing. A tighter editorial stance on the entirety of this series would have improved things greatly, and not left us in a position where the last "book" in the series has become three, and part one was already longer than any other book in the series (I'm realising I don't actually have the numbers in terms of page count, but visually it looked the biggest - if someone can prove me wrong I'd appreciate it).

I don't understand why a lot of the plot lines and characters are part of the overarching SoT numbered series and not instead individual novellas. I've always thought that a final book set after the duel between Horus and the Emperor would make sense, comprising of around 4 to 6 short stories set around some of the ancillary characters showing how they end up rather than having it spread across the main series. If you're interested in these characters, great - have some closure. If you 're not interested, well it won't be affecting the main page count and you don't have to buy it.

 

But most annoying of all - I have TWO Saturday morning fights the GW webstore against scalper bots to get my hands on the Limited Editions when I though I only had one of those hells to deal with. Because I'll be damned if I have all of the LE's up to this point and not finish them off...