The End and the Death Part I, II, III, ...

[EverythingIsGreat]

19 hours ago, Roomsky said:

Spoiler

The Style
It's been stated in a few places this reads like Abnett's attempt to imitate and outdo Fehervari. Having finished, I don't actually think that's the case; I think he's trying to imitate Watson. The scale, the schizophrenic focus, the complete breakdown of conventional narrative structure - in places, it reads like The Inquisition War come again. A complaint of mine regarding most of the Siege up until Mortis is that the Chaos invasion of Terra didn't feel very grand compared to any other Chaos invasion. I certainly can't lobby that complaint here, it genuinely does feel like the End and the Death of humanity. Also like with Watson's writings, I occasionally felt like I was going-half crazy reading this (not helped by the time I first thought "hey, where's Argonis," and then turned the page to find Argonis. The book's reading me!) but all, somehow, in a good way. I also appreciate that the prose isn't quite so up its own ass this time.

 

Spoiler

Is anyone shouting telepathically, ++LIKE THE EMPEROR DID WHEN TALKING TO ZAQ DRACO IN THE THRONE ROOM++. That would be fun.

Also, any indication that the non-narrative style may develop victorian/cyberpunk undertones so that the last chapter of TEATD Part 3 is also the 1st chapter of Pandemonium.

 

[Scribe]

43 minutes ago, EverythingIsGreat said:

Also, any indication that the non-narrative style may develop victorian/cyberpunk undertones so that the last chapter of TEATD Part 3 is also the 1st chapter of Pandemonium.

 

 

"Anyone have any ideas on how we can make the setting/lore even smaller?"

[DarkChaplain]

Did anybody else pick up on the first Valdor chapter in Vol.II literally being titled "Pandaemonium"? wink wink, nudge nudge, Abnett is cooking his soup. If he doesn't get to announce a release of Pandaemonium after Vol.III launches, I'll be upset.

[Dornfist]

33 minutes ago, DarkChaplain said:

Did anybody else pick up on the first Valdor chapter in Vol.II literally being titled "Pandaemonium"? wink wink, nudge nudge, Abnett is cooking his soup. If he doesn't get to announce a release of Pandaemonium after Vol.III launches, I'll be upset.

I haven't read the Bequin books, but I just listened to that chapter and the one of Caecaltus and his companions being "puppeted" by Emps. I definitely caught on to the reference though lmao.

[grailkeeper]

Just realised you can skip all the Valdor bits and lose nothing from the story. I found the use of seconds in his bit interesting at first but it rapidly became very irritating. Particularly when he describes a scream going on too long, before saying that only 3 or 4 seconds had passed in the entire scene.

Edited November 12, 2023 by grailkeeper

[Fedor]

On 11/9/2023 at 2:54 AM, tgcleric said:

Yeah...

 

I think the only satire is people pretending they are reviewing the books and not just comparing synopsis to their headcannon of rule books for a toy game. 

 

Prospero Burns is just a great book. Period. I gave it to a few friends who don't care about warhammer and just like Scifi to read and they loved it. It's maybe Abnetts best book period. 

 

And yes. The two books post Horus Rising completely dropped the ball. Loken and Horus and the whole mournival are more or less the same non characters that frequent most of the black library. 

 

I mostly respond to the feedback loop echo chamber leading up to these books even before they release. I went back to see if it was this was before other abnett books came out and before I even knew of this website. And yeah. Same vibes. 

 

 

 

Look, i get it...your posts in this thread (particularly this and the one immediately after it) show you're fundamentally ashamed to read tie-in fiction, but can't quite transcend that inner manchild toy game fan. So to retain intellectual respectability, you elevate your favourites to a massive degree, bestowing legitimacy upon them. The rest can barely string a sentence together.

 

" i gave x and y to actual scifi fans who don't even like toys any more and they loved it!!"

 

 One of my 40k playing/reading friends is an ex English Professor, and a literary fiction editor/reviewer of extensive experience. Also a huge Scifi and Fantasy fan. He likes McNeill and probably a few others more than Abnett, but he's also generally happy with the standard of most BL books he picks up (as relates to wider published space opera/military scifi)....big feckin deal. Fans of the wider Scifi/Fantasy scene liking BL, as a whole, or just particular books they've been given, doesn't elevate or validate :cuss:.

 

Just let it go. Accept people criticising Abnett's ending of the siege (or 40k writing in general) might actually be doing it for literary reasons. Not just as poorly read tie-in fiction consuming plebs, entirely unable to recognise the genius of the one legitimate master author willing to cast pearls among swine.

[DarkChaplain]

I had actually missed those two posts back there and I don't even know how to approach the arguments he's making anymore. Suppose I'm not a real scifi fan for, what, liking subjectively "bad" pulp fiction / criticise a lack of internal and external consistency between works of every other author and his favorite. Somebody should've let me know beforehand that liking 40k and PKD, Asimov, Cixin Liu or Strugatsky was somehow mutually exclusive. Who knew.

 

And just because 40k is a burger rather than a proper Schnitzel, that doesn't mean the burger need not be in order. I like the meat and salad between the buns, not lying next to the plate, thank you very much. 40k is a shared sandbox, and if one of the participants repeatedly knocks over the others' sandcastles without urgent need to do so, things get annoying real quickly.

 

Anyhow, I find it rather silly to throw such bold statements and flimsy authority arguments around while belittling a supposed echo chamber community (have you actually READ our discussions here? Bloody hell do we disagree on a lot of stuff, and that usually leads to some cool exchanges and reviews). If you're getting so much flak, tgcleric, then maybe it's because your arguments and attitude, meaning your unwarranted antagonism, are poor enough to earn that sort of response?

[Lord Lorne Walkier]

On 11/10/2023 at 4:43 PM, Scribe said:

Considering

 

  Hide contents

That bit about Loken being confirmed to not be a psyker.

 

I guess that side plot is put to bed?

 

Ahh we are talking about the guy who..

ends the book with his only weapon being a force sword, right?

[Scribe]

18 minutes ago, Lord Lorne Walkier said:

 

Ahh we are talking about the guy who..

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

ends the book with his only weapon being a force sword, right?
 

 

 

 

I thought it was the work of a certain other powerful individual?

[Noserenda]

I think when it comes down to the final scenes on the Vengeful spirit we are going to need a perspective from the Emperor, after all Horus famously does not see its end :D 

Awww but hes going to jam Loken in there isnt he? Just to mirror the start of the series and the line he loves so much, i mean its a good line, but still...

[wecanhaveallthree]

Quote

English Professor... literary fiction editor/reviewer of extensive experience... he [has nothing but endless and praise and devotion for] McNeill

 

McNeillchads... we won...

 

Nobody will ever be critical of Vengeful Spirit again... it's over...

 

I really can't wait for his Horus novel, but I do worry that there isn't really much mystery left to explore and may simply be something of a retooling of False Gods (or, possibly, a bridge between Rising and Gods, that clarifies Horus' position on the Crusade a bit more). 

[SkimaskMohawk]

3 hours ago, Lord Lorne Walkier said:

 

Ahh we are talking about the guy who..

 

  Hide contents

 

 

ends the book with his only weapon being a force sword, right?
 

 

 

 

After he looked in the camera and said "I'm not a psyker, someone else is channeling power through me"

[Lord_Caerolion]

The only way they could make Loken more of a Not-Psyker is have him turn to the camera and say “I’m a Null”. 
 

Spoiler

Him having a force sword at this stage really doesn’t enter into it. Anyone can pick them up, it’s powering them that only psykers can do, and he’s outright saying “I cannot power this, it has been someone else powering it”. How you can twist that into “oh he’s STILL a psyker, though” is just… I don’t get how.

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by Lord_Caerolion

[Marshal Rohr]

8 hours ago, Lord Lorne Walkier said:

 

Ahh we are talking about the guy who..

 

  Hide contents

 

 

ends the book with his only weapon being a force sword, right?
 

 

 

After so, so many years what will you do when Abnett finally ends the speculation and Loken isn’t a psyker?

[Lord_Caerolion]

I mean, that’s literally what happened in this book. 

[DarkChaplain]

At this point, I actually hope Abnett gives us something big and shocking about the Emperor's supposed theft on Molech during the showdown between Him and Horus. The thing has been talked about enough so far, including by Malcador, that I'm just not satisfied with a simple "the Emperor stole power/fire from the gods".

I want it to have some impact, something that may actually condemn the Emperor's actions, something that was both vital to humanity/His plans (and not just because he wanted to make better superhumans!) but also a digression big enough that things had to go belly-up.

 

The whole "he stole power"-angle is just too flat. The Emperor was powerful enough to live through dozens of millennia, he achieved plenty, he had the science on lock and was building galactic armies. Just giving him a little more power to get there a bit faster has no weight anymore. He needs to have gained something worth the risk. I want Horus to call Him out on it, ask Him if it was worth it, and for the whole matter worthy of debate again.

[Kelborn]

I'll laugh my butt off if it turns out how some had theorized: Big E stole/ dominated 20 minor warp gods and shuffed them into the Primarchs.

 

Would make sense in a way but also let a lot go surely switch on their Angron mode. 

;)

Edited November 12, 2023 by Kelborn
Typo

[DukeLeto69]

Ok so my copy just arrived. Now you guys said this was a big book but blimey, this is a BIG book! Massive! I could weight train with this book! Or get wrist strain!

[Ubiquitous1984]

2 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

At this point, I actually hope Abnett gives us something big and shocking about the Emperor's supposed theft on Molech during the showdown between Him and Horus. The thing has been talked about enough so far, including by Malcador, that I'm just not satisfied with a simple "the Emperor stole power/fire from the gods".

I want it to have some impact, something that may actually condemn the Emperor's actions, something that was both vital to humanity/His plans (and not just because he wanted to make better superhumans!) but also a digression big enough that things had to go belly-up.

 

The whole "he stole power"-angle is just too flat. The Emperor was powerful enough to live through dozens of millennia, he achieved plenty, he had the science on lock and was building galactic armies. Just giving him a little more power to get there a bit faster has no weight anymore. He needs to have gained something worth the risk. I want Horus to call Him out on it, ask Him if it was worth it, and for the whole matter worthy of debate again.

I don’t know about anyone else but I have been waiting through the entirety of both books so far for a Molech flashback scene, al la the BA flashback chapters from book 7.  It seems so vital to our understanding of Chaos, The Emperor and their relationship with the Dark King.

 

It really wouldn’t surprise me if book 3 started with Molech, to set up the (presumed) Emperor Vs Chaos/Horus theme of the final book.  

 

Anyway, I’ve been holding off reading this thread and I feel almost hesitant to admit that I enjoyed the book.  Some of you are a lot smarter than me and clearly more adept at identifying flaws in an authors work.  I’m a simple man, and although the first half of the book felt a bit of a slog, the micro-chapters (which I initially did not enjoy at all in book one) helped, as any boring chapter would inevitably be over so soon without something more interesting taking over.

 

I am looking forward to listening to the audiobook, which I will do when the release of book 3 is imminent.  I did a listen to the audiobook of book 1 just before starting to read book 2, and it really helped me remember plot lines that flowed directly into book 2, and Keeble just elevates everything that he reads anyway.

 

Can’t wait for the conclusion.  I feel lucky that I still enjoy the HH, and I feel sorry for those who feel the series has been a let-down or waste of time.  

[DarkChaplain]

I want to pick up my earlier "Abnett teases Pandaemonium"-post again, because Valdor, for as little as he actually does in the book (being stuck in that minute-long battle scene stretched across what, a thousand pages now?), he's definitely getting setup.

 

In volume 1, Valdor emphasizes his curiosity, his thirst for knowledge and understanding. He thinks that might be part of why the Emperor gave him the Apollonian Spear. We had a bit more insight on the spear in Two Metaphysical Blades, and know that Valdor has bent the rules during the Siege already, too.

 

Horus, meanwhile, has a wholly different view of Valdor right now: He thinks he is stuck, rigid, doesn't actually innovate or question, and is barely more than a puppet, unthinking for his own sake. That's why he assigns Valdor to the Tzeentchian throne - to invite change,

Quote

For stern Constantin, the liberation of change, allowing him to renounce the harsh and blinkered strictures of his life and become more, become emancipated, no longer a blindly obedient servant but instead a free-thinking being, alert with the secrets that were always kept from him.

[...]

Of Constantin, you have graver hesitation, for his doubts have been there since before you were born. His envy of you and your brothers runs too deep. He would have had you killed long since, you and all your kind. But then, he isn’t really a man. He has so little free will, so little understanding. He is the way your father made him, just an instrument. A fine one, no doubt, a peerless one, but you might as well command a sword to stop being a sword or a spear to stop being a spear. Poor Constantin is merely duty and obedience in human form, and he doesn’t know enough about anything to know any better.

 

But we know this is inaccurate. Even going back to Valdor: Birth of the Imperium, we can see him making controversial choices, taking liberties, and he does so in the Heresy series as well. Even back in Nemesis, on the topic of the assassinonrum, his views were a little more nuanced than Horus gives the bloke credit for. He is cooking the Fo-Soup, and even if Malcador confirms that this was known, not secret from him and the Emperor, it's still Valdor's own initiative in play - and he has doubts.

 

At this point, I don't think Horus is actually aware of what the Emperor did with regards to Valdor and the spear. I believe Valdor, for as fridged as he is in the plot right now, will be in some way vital to volume 3 that sets up Pandaemonium - because he is clearly shown to be or have changed already beyond what Horus knows of him. It's something that we are led to believe Horus isn't seeing coming, and it'd be very, very poor writing to introduce this discrepancy, this potential encounter, without following up on it with some sort of purpose.

 

The fridging by way of time bubble is supremely awkward, but there is something cooking.

 

....either that, or Valdor actually submits, takes the Tzeentch-Throne and gets extremely butchered as a character to make Bequin's finale more shocking. Which would ruin so bloody much.

[Scribe]

3 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

At this point, I actually hope Abnett gives us something big and shocking about the Emperor's supposed theft on Molech during the showdown between Him and Horus. The thing has been talked about enough so far, including by Malcador, that I'm just not satisfied with a simple "the Emperor stole power/fire from the gods".

I want it to have some impact, something that may actually condemn the Emperor's actions, something that was both vital to humanity/His plans (and not just because he wanted to make better superhumans!) but also a digression big enough that things had to go belly-up.

 

The whole "he stole power"-angle is just too flat. The Emperor was powerful enough to live through dozens of millennia, he achieved plenty, he had the science on lock and was building galactic armies. Just giving him a little more power to get there a bit faster has no weight anymore. He needs to have gained something worth the risk. I want Horus to call Him out on it, ask Him if it was worth it, and for the whole matter worthy of debate again.

 

I've been saying this for a long time. I really hope it gets picked up on in Book 3.

 

I'm also very worried about Valdor. :(

[EverythingIsGreat]

Throughout the HH Series and the SoT climax there are numerous examples of how little insight is exhibited by characters with great power and knowledge. Their mental and physical prowess is truly magnificent. Intelligence meanwhile (from the Latin: inter-leggere [the ability to read] “between the lines”) is magnificently lacking. 

 

That much seems to have been handled well by BL. Reminded, a propos of nothing, because I was just watching the world news.

Edited November 12, 2023 by EverythingIsGreat
typo

[1ncarnadine]

36 minutes ago, DarkChaplain said:

....either that, or Valdor actually submits, takes the Tzeentch-Throne and gets extremely butchered as a character to make Bequin's finale more shocking. Which would ruin so bloody much.

 

Well, I'd also like to point out that so far, we've seen three Daemon Princes of the Ruinstorm, and three overt phases of the Siege where the power of one god is ascendant (with some overlap). Samus (Khorne), Cor'bax (Nurgle), and the six-fold angel in the Hollow Mountain (I guess it's named Vassukella, of Slaanesh).

It stands to reason there's a fourth, and I can't think of a moment of the Siege that's more Tzeentch-ascendant than the ultimate betrayal by Chaos of Horus. It would be a moment that involves pride, deceit, change, power, hope... all qualities generally linked to Tzeentch. So for Valdor to have a Tzeentch-throne moment and be involved in a general flux in the warp in the last act towards the Great Deceiver would make a ton of sense.

Or Abnett just drops that Ruinstorm Prince thing that the other books set up and does his own thing. At this point, who knows.

[Ubiquitous1984]

It’s a long time since I read it and my memory is hazy, but didn’t we already see Valdor leave Terra post-Siege alongside Russ in Wraight’s short story?

[wecanhaveallthree]

Quote

But we know this is inaccurate. Even going back to Valdor: Birth of the Imperium...

 

With the greatest respect to my learned fraters, surely at this point, one must accept that what came before is of fantastically little interest to Abnett. He has an idea of what Valdor should be, and it suits his narrative for this to be so - and so it is. Valdor is now a changeless automaton until he receives whatever impetus (or insight, or corruption) that gets him to be what Abnett needs him to be in Abnett's next book.