Black Library fiction The End and the Death - Volume III

[Sky Potato]

 

18 minutes ago, 63-19 said:

Hardback and le have released together since warhawk. it will probably remain that way for the next two books. nothing got delayed.

Legiones Imperialis - the new version of Epic - has been delayed. It was supposed to launch this month.

 

The original joke was that the LE version of The End and the Death Vol 2 would clash with the launch of LI - thus crashing the website and causing epic dramas for everyone.

 

With LI being delayed, the chances of TEATD and LI launching simultaneously are now much higher.

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

24 minutes ago, 63-19 said:

Hardback and le have released together since warhawk. it will probably remain that way for the next two books. nothing got delayed.

LI (not the LE of eatd 2) got delayed and my fear is they'll be released for pre-order at the same time further exasperating the website issues that normally happen when these books get released on their own.

 

Edit: Damn too slow, potato beat me to it :p

Edited August 3, 2023 by Mechanicus Tech-Support

[The Emperors Champion22]

On 8/2/2023 at 7:23 AM, Nagashsnee said:

Parts 9 and 10 of the 8 part series.  We will see if there is an 11th, not like they ever lied about how many book the siege will be before right?...

 

 

'I’m dying for people to get out there and read the whole thing as one piece' 

 

Should have just released them all at the same time then surely? I would have dying or not. 

 

After reading part 1 i can already say the bloat is real and this is very much 1-2 books MADE into 3. 

 

Edit; In the spirit of fairness i will say if i was the one getting the royalty checks i would have fought for a 5 book ending .

why complain about getting more stuff?

[Scribe]

24 minutes ago, The Emperors Champion22 said:

why complain about getting more stuff?

 

Because quantity != quality.

[Fire Golem]

And it’s not like we’re getting more stuff for nothing either. We’re paying for this overlong, both in words and time, final book. ‘Why complain that the final book in the series is thrice the price and spread over a year?’

Edited August 4, 2023 by fire golem

[Osteoclast]

At least it isn’t four?

[Nagashsnee]

46 minutes ago, Osteoclast said:

At least it isn’t four?

 

The End and the Death vol  3  part II could still happen, give them time. 

 

Edited August 4, 2023 by Nagashsnee

[DarkChaplain]

17 hours ago, Nagashsnee said:

 

The End and the Death vol  3  part II could still happen, give them time. 

 

 

Isn't that just called Pandaemonium? :')

[TrevorLoLz]

It’s just naked profiteering and gouging the customer.

 

Book 1 absolutely could have been trimmed down a fair bit and still been a cracking book. 
 

Three monster volumes suggests to me not a whole lot of editing is being done and Abnett is being told “go off king” so they can keep propping up Black Library sales.

 

Did I enjoy Vol 1? Yes! Could it have been trimmed down? Yes! Could this have been a 2 part series? 100%. 

[theSpirea]

On 8/2/2023 at 2:29 PM, SkimaskMohawk said:

 

This is really funny. 

 

It's a 6(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.6(d) sized book with....592 pages. My hardback copy of dance of dragons hits 1000 pages. My copy of "The Lost" omnibus of gaunts ghosts passes 1000 pages. My mass market paperback copy of crippled god hits 1200.

 

They definitely can't make a mega book, but if each volume is ~600 pages, they certainly could fit it into two books instead of three. And that's just based off black library's proven capabilities.

 

I remember when I was young and my much anticipated book 12 of wheel got split into 3 volumes due to size; those three books ended up being just shy of 2900 pages, with the first two hitting 1800. 

 

It got split into three parts because it makes the most money for the author and the publisher.

Absolutely no chance to print 450K words as Limited Edition. The binding is already struggling as it is and the previous entries are around 150K words. So technically not possible unless they would lower the font to unreadable and change page margins. That's a hard no for me.

 

They can do so for paperbacks. If you're fine reading tiny font and silly-looking margins.

[Tymell]

On the one hand, I didn't come out of Volume I feeling it was overly padded (there was some, but not a ton). On the other hand, I did come out of it thinking, 'Wow, I wonder how he's going to spin what's left out over a whole other book." And now he's going to spin it out over two books? I'm certainly sceptical, but we'll see.

[Doghouse]

The history of the Heresy is written by the unreliable narrator. For the final battle for me that has always been and always will be William King regardless of how many books they write or how many retcons they add.

[SkimaskMohawk]

12 hours ago, theSpirea said:

Absolutely no chance to print 450K words as Limited Edition. The binding is already struggling as it is and the previous entries are around 150K words. So technically not possible unless they would lower the font to unreadable and change page margins. That's a hard no for me.

 

They can do so for paperbacks. If you're fine reading tiny font and silly-looking margins.

 

But you understand that that's a self imposed problem right? Like, going back to the non BL books, none of those compromised their word and page count to sell an extra premiumly priced, mediocre quality product.

 

Maybe it's been a while since I bought brand new, large page count books, but back in the day the binding consideration for hardbacks. A limited, special, edition was special for both the customers and the manufacturer; a high end, premium version of the book for the people who really loved it. Thank Christ Tor didn't decide the last three wheel of time books (already split for length) didn't need to be split further to make low quality special editions for "the fans enjoyment"; maybe have the Last Battle as it's own standalone, you know? But somehow, they bound A Memory of Light into a 900 page hardback when TEATD struggles with 600. 

 

Also, the options arent just mass market and sub-par special edition, which is why black library sells omnibuses in other formats (with larger page count than 600, like the 1000 pages of the Lost I mentioned earlier). 

Edited August 6, 2023 by SkimaskMohawk

[Vogon]

One of the things that makes me chuckle is that the entire three book Epic that is The End And The Death was written as a single 2 page spread in White Dwarf back in the day. 

#nospoilers

 

Cheers

 

Vogon 

[Bev'an]

Opened with a trilogy, finishes with a trilogy … how did anyone not see that plot hole ;-)

[DukeLeto69]

The nerdache is strong in this thread! Why not wait until all three books have actually been released and we actually have read them to decide if they are actually any good?

[Cactus]

1 hour ago, DukeLeto69 said:

The nerdache is strong in this thread! Why not wait until all three books have actually been released and we actually have read them to decide if they are actually any good?

I think a sizable portion of people wanted the Siege of Terra to be covered in a trilogy ten years ago. At this point they can't be pleased.

 

Personally I haven't read anything by Dan that I didn't enjoy and that includes his work for 2000AD as well as BL. The slow pace of release is frustrating and the hassle of ordering books from GW's flaky website is painful but I'm looking forward to reading however many words Dan has written, even if he invents a dozen new ones.

[Sabadin]

The biggest source of frustration is that the hard cover version of Volume 1 makes it very clear that at the time of printing the "story" was already written and split into 2 parts for binding purposes. Which implies that sometime between sending Volume 1 to the printers and the digital version releasing they went back to Abnett "Hey...can you actually stretch Volume 2 out into a 3rd book?"

 

I don't know if the rest of the BL catalogue wasn't doing so well and they wanted to add another sure seller to next year's releases,  but it would be a lot less frustration if they had just been forthcoming about it being 3 volumes from the beginning. 

[TrevorLoLz]

11 hours ago, Cactus said:

I think a sizable portion of people wanted the Siege of Terra to be covered in a trilogy ten years ago. At this point they can't be pleased.

 

Personally I haven't read anything by Dan that I didn't enjoy and that includes his work for 2000AD as well as BL. The slow pace of release is frustrating and the hassle of ordering books from GW's flaky website is painful but I'm looking forward to reading however many words Dan has written, even if he invents a dozen new ones.

 

For my part, I do not mind if it is in trilogy provided that it justifies being one.

 

I enjoyed reading the first one but there were definitely sections where it was almost a chore to get through. It really needed to be trimmed down and kept far more focused than it was. 

 

Additionally, it is pretty clear that Games Workshop outright lied to its customer base. Is it the end of the world that they did? Not overly, other than reinforcing the general belief of mine that Games Workshop doesn't respect its customers.

 

I'll still buy both volumes, which is what Games Workshop cares about at the end of the day. I'll still probably enjoy them, 'cause I have not yet read a Dan Abnett book I have not enjoyed. It is what it is.

Side note, and at the risk of drifting into a different topic, I wonder how Black Library is performing now that Horus Heresy series is effectively done (saved Vols II and III of EatD)? If there is a thread for this, please let me know and I will wander into there.

[Redcomet]

On 8/3/2023 at 1:23 AM, Emperor Ming said:

Its a massive ship, and 40k gives the word massive a new meaning, it has many bridges

 

Maybe there is a tour on the way, vending machines, depending on where you arrive it prob takes weeks to transverse around that ship

 

Page 201, the Emperor makes his choice, slaaneshi cola or Nurgle hot pot 

 

Page 202, the Emperor doesn't have the right change for the vending machine

 

and so on

There is a zoo too. Saw it in a movie once

[irlLordy]

I don't think the Horus Heresy is "done" as a setting, even if the main series is finished.

 

We've already seen a HH book released outside the series (Cthonia's Reckoning), and I would bet we'll continue to see tie in novels/short stories for HH game and LI, or novellas to finish off plot lines.

 

What will be interesting will be whats the next "big" series for BL, will they continue the siege with a scouring series? Go back to the great crusade and the missing primarchs? Or jump forward in time to Badhb War, or the Age of Apostasy? Or another Indomitus era series? Two of their bigger series are almost finished (2 books left in SoT, 1 book in primarchs series), which presumably frees up authors to work on other stuff.

[Lord Marshal]

And we have a cover.

 

[skylerboodie]

Not sure about those red ribbons; tripping hazard.

[VanDutch]

Those white feathers… #TooSoon 

[Petitioner's City]

I think this is my second favourite of Roberts's three extant versions of the scene

 

Favourite:

 

 

Second:

 

 

Third: