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

[DarkChaplain]

I wasn't advocating for Fehervari writing HH, his time is better spent not writing the mainstream cashcow with pre-established expectations. But he nails the loss of sanity and unravelling of the materium. Something that Abnett's finale has been missing by a country mile, imo.

[Nagashsnee]

1 hour ago, DukeLeto69 said:

Good points but imagine the majority of the HH fanbase completely losing their if Fehervari had been let loose to write tEatD! We’d probably all need counselling afterwards! 

If they wanted to go the experimental and daring root (which these books did) then i fail to see how going to their best author when it comes to experimental and daring is the bad choice?  Like either you take the plunge or you don't.  

 

Ill tell you what I really think, if they had given Fehervari total freedom and three books he would have given the heresy the truly chaotic grim dark ending it deserved. No need for weird twists or sudden lore dumps, just well written gothic warp horror with a story that may appear crazy but is actually planned out and gets to its points in appropriate fashion.

 

It may very well have been the magnus opus of the entire heresy. Tho perhaps not the one the community was expecting.  The man is a different playing field when it comes to chaos/warp/horror then anyone else BL has.  But experimental and daring are always alienating to many.  

 

 

Tho more realistically what they really really really really needed was an editor .

[DukeLeto69]

32 minutes ago, DarkChaplain said:

I wasn't advocating for Fehervari writing HH, his time is better spent not writing the mainstream cashcow with pre-established expectations. But he nails the loss of sanity and unravelling of the materium. Something that Abnett's finale has been missing by a country mile, imo.

I know you weren’t and I agree that PF should be left alone to focus on The Dark Coil and given free rain to blow our minds. GW/BL are not brave enough to do that with their flagship (and probably wouldn’t make good business sense). But one can dream (nightmare) nonetheless!

[EverythingIsGreat]

Good day,

 

If it may again be pointed out, the notion of time being "flexible" goes back to the beginning of BL fiction, in Watson's Inquisition War trilogy. Even the protagonist's death is a mystery, as it happens in a Webway nexus where time is malleable and can be reversed. The Webway apparently inheriting Warp-related time fluidity, as the Webway is described in partaking of both dimensions (real & warp) while being a reality apart. Another element in Inquisition War is the use of consciousness-transference which may also be relevant in the whole Golden Throne business.

One can convincingly argue that these elements were rather poorly explained in these books, or that the explanations felt terse and rushed. They were groundbreaking stories regardless, that could be enjoyed notwithstanding obvious gaps.

These elements in some form or other have been part of BL fiction ever since, if only in passing and in brief.

As has been pointed out, Abnett dedicates this work to Watson. He may also be bringing these notions of fluid time and fluid consciousness to their obvious logical endpoint. Many pieces are still missing.

[DarkChaplain]

3 hours ago, EverythingIsGreat said:

Many pieces are still missing.

 

Which is a bit of a problem in and of itself, after 7 novels in this particular final series and around, what, 1500 pages in print already for this final volume?

At this point, Abnett would need to wrap up a :cuss: ton of stuff in a satisfying way without stepping on decades of works that came before, in another 600-700 page book which would probably end up making it even more jarring that all these themes and quirks only came into play at the final hour of the series, without even having been seeded in Dan's own predecessor 4 books earlier.

 

"Many pieces are still missing" is precisely the problem with The End and the Death. It's the finale, the climactic event 60+ books in the making, yet it tries to be so very mysterious by adding another convoluted mess on top of it all, right out of left field, and to make it even worse: It doesn't bother focusing on that at all. It throws it at the reader, trying to awe them, and then goes back to telling you about Rann, Zephon, Amit, and a host of other random dudes nobody actually cares about. After TWO volumes and a bunch of stuff to prepare his "arc", we still have no payoff on Fo, for example. He's been created for Abnett's sake, and yet he's so unimportant and his plotline so terribly isolated even now, what gives?

 

At this point I'm really just expecting very little of this stuff to be properly wrapped up in TEATD 3. It's Abnett's increasingly elaborate and out of place setup for another trilogy which he started writing over a decade ago and has been on ice for almost as long.

[EverythingIsGreat]

Fair enough. Can we at least agree that this whole exercise makes waiting for volume 3 somewhat interesting?

[Taliesin]

Its definitely very interesting to think about what the 3rd volume will cover, how it covers thing we expect, and how far it goes timeline wise.

Will it have a long epilogue that covers quite some time into the future, or will it show nothing at all of the aftermath ( unlikely in my opinion).

 

And I think there will be some surprises in the way Abnett covers the Emperor vs Horus Ascended confrontation. Its listed at a comparatively modest 500 pages on Amazon, so perhaps this one will be quite pacy and streamlined.

[wecanhaveallthree]

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will it show nothing at all of the aftermath

 

I expect it to end with the Emperor on the Throne and 'I was there...' - can anyone genuinely not see a Scouring series coming hot on the heels of the Siege, though? I imagine we'll likely see the immediate aftermath in a novel of its own that generates the various Primarch plotlines going their separate ways.

[Taliesin]

I do hope we get that soon but the total absence of any words from BL on a Scouring series ( or even just a trilogy) the last few years has me worried. 

Possible they have been waiting until the Siege is over to announce it....

[Felix Antipodes]

We can only hope that BL has learnt from the mistakes of previous series and makes any prospective Scouring series a setting rather than a timeline.  This would allow the authors the freedom to pick the stories they want to tell.

3 hours ago, Taliesin said:

I do hope we get that soon but the total absence of any words from BL on a Scouring series ( or even just a trilogy) the last few years has me worried. 

Possible they have been waiting until the Siege is over to announce it....

 

[Lord_Caerolion]

9 hours ago, EverythingIsGreat said:

Fair enough. Can we at least agree that this whole exercise makes waiting for volume 3 somewhat interesting?

… Not really? I can guarantee you nobody has finished book one and said “boy golly, I sure am glad I need to wait a year to finish this book the author says works best when read all at once! Time to start waiting with veritable glee and a smile on my face!”

 

If anything it’s made it more frustrating. Not only are the individual books bloated with pointless padding, but they’ve managed to do the impossible and pad the book out across time itself to make the books physically take longer to finish reading fully. The clocks truly have run out. 

[DukeLeto69]

5 hours ago, Lord_Caerolion said:

… Not really? I can guarantee you nobody has finished book one and said “boy golly, I sure am glad I need to wait a year to finish this book the author says works best when read all at once! Time to start waiting with veritable glee and a smile on my face!”

 

If anything it’s made it more frustrating. Not only are the individual books bloated with pointless padding, but they’ve managed to do the impossible and pad the book out across time itself to make the books physically take longer to finish reading fully. The clocks truly have run out. 

I am really glad I held off reading SoT after Mortis. Started a back-to-back read of Warhawk-EoE-tEatD1&2 and really enjoying it.

 

tEatD is frustrating as definitely bloated and some of the sub plots should have been removed and put into a novella. But so far it is clear (to me) that contained within that bloat is a pretty awesome novel (although that will only be confirmed by vol 3).

[wecanhaveallthree]

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a setting rather than a timeline. 

 

I think it lends itself to that very well, because there are self-contained arcs to follow Your Favourite Dudes. The Restructuring Of Caliban (We Didn't Need The Rest Of The Planet, Stop Asking Questions), the Iron Cage - though it's honestly funny to think that unbreakable, unshakeable Desert!Dorn is then going to make the kind of mistake that leads to that - the Legion Breaking, the Primarchs wandering off, etc.

[Lord_Caerolion]

1 hour ago, DukeLeto69 said:

I am really glad I held off reading SoT after Mortis. Started a back-to-back read of Warhawk-EoE-tEatD1&2 and really enjoying it.

 

tEatD is frustrating as definitely bloated and some of the sub plots should have been removed and put into a novella. But so far it is clear (to me) that contained within that bloat is a pretty awesome novel (although that will only be confirmed by vol 3).

That’s what makes the whole thing the most disappointing to me. There ARE awesome bits, Dan is a good author, there IS a good novel in there. 
It’s just that it’s buried under so much unnecessary bloat and padding, that it makes the books painful to get through. 
 

If there had been more restraint, tighter controls on setting up the Dark King ahead of this instead of popping out of nowhere and seemingly being discarded just as quickly, while simultaneously the Fo arc is dragging on and on and on, etc, this could have been amazing. 

[Dornfist]

7 hours ago, Lord_Caerolion said:

That’s what makes the whole thing the most disappointing to me. There ARE awesome bits, Dan is a good author, there IS a good novel in there. 
It’s just that it’s buried under so much unnecessary bloat and padding, that it makes the books painful to get through. 
 

If there had been more restraint, tighter controls on setting up the Dark King ahead of this instead of popping out of nowhere and seemingly being discarded just as quickly, while simultaneously the Fo arc is dragging on and on and on, etc, this could have been amazing. 

This summarizes most of my gripes perfectly.

 

I hope that the last volume will be shorter which will be more laser-focused in wrapping up: Emperor kills Horus and falls mortally wounded (Leetu and Loken will probably die), Dorn comes too late and takes his father's corpse back to Terra, Fo's arc has an actual pay-off, Emperor entombed, Guilliman arrives with his fleet and kicks the reeling traitors out of the sol system.

[DukeLeto69]

22 minutes ago, Dornfist said:

This summarizes most of my gripes perfectly.

 

I hope that the last volume will be shorter which will be more laser-focused in wrapping up: Emperor kills Horus and falls mortally wounded (Leetu and Loken will probably die), Dorn comes too late and takes his father's corpse back to Terra, Fo's arc has an actual pay-off, Emperor entombed, Guilliman arrives with his fleet and kicks the reeling traitors out of the sol system.

Well if (big IF) Abnett is following a classic three act structure then vol 3 should be similar length to vol 1 and shorter than vol 2.

[cheywood]

3 minutes ago, DukeLeto69 said:

Well if (big IF) Abnett is following a classic three act structure then vol 3 should be similar length to vol 1 and shorter than vol 2.

Volume 2 is very slightly shorter than volume 1 on kindle. The page count is extremely deceiving because of the short chapters, but I think all three books will come out to a similar length in the end.

[Dornfist]

14 minutes ago, cheywood said:

Volume 2 is very slightly shorter than volume 1 on kindle. The page count is extremely deceiving because of the short chapters, but I think all three books will come out to a similar length in the end.

I guess Mr. Abnett was right: time and length did lose their meaning after all. The warp is affecting us thus fraters!

[DukeLeto69]

1 hour ago, cheywood said:

Volume 2 is very slightly shorter than volume 1 on kindle. The page count is extremely deceiving because of the short chapters, but I think all three books will come out to a similar length in the end.

Ah really. I was going by the std HB.

[LemartestheLost]

On 1/3/2024 at 5:06 PM, Taliesin said:

I do hope we get that soon but the total absence of any words from BL on a Scouring series ( or even just a trilogy) the last few years has me worried. 

Possible they have been waiting until the Siege is over to announce it....

 

I think that somehow BL will find the only sensible bone in its body and wait a whole year after Vol. 3 before announcing/releasing The Scouring series. One can only hope.

[Felix Antipodes]

6 hours ago, LemartestheLost said:

 

I think that somehow BL will find the only sensible bone in its body and wait a whole year after Vol. 3 before announcing/releasing The Scouring series. One can only hope.

 

I don't think we will see an announcement (if it happens) before the 2025 BL celebration event, which would fit your suggested time scale.  They will want to make a big splashy reveal if it happens.

[wecanhaveallthree]

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They will want to make a big splashy reveal if it happens.

 

'And don't worry, we've learned from our mistakes with the War of the Beast, Horus Heresy, Siege of Terra, Dawn of Fire and this time it won't turn into a horrid inconsistent mess, pinky swear.'

[Karhedron]

Does the Scouring need a whole series? How many engagements of note took place? The only major one I can think of the is the Iron Cage. There may have been the battle of Eskrador but the UMs claim to have no record of that so the entire thing may be Alpha Legion fabrication.

[Felix Antipodes]

23 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

Does the Scouring need a whole series? How many engagements of note took place? The only major one I can think of the is the Iron Cage. There may have been the battle of Eskrador but the UMs claim to have no record of that so the entire thing may be Alpha Legion fabrication.

 

They didn’t have very much to go on for the HH but still managed to stretch it out for over 60 books.  If the first few sell well they will find something to fill it out.  I would like it to just be the hits (retreat to the EoT, Iron Cage, 2nd Founding, fate of the Primarchs, Caliban) and end with the ‘death’ of Guilliman.

[Karhedron]

Detailing the fates of the Primarchs might constrain future storytelling opportunities to bring them back. The status of most loyalist Primarchs is still unconfirmed. My hunch is that they will not nail down the disappearance of each Primarch until they are ready to reintroduced them to 40K. The closest we have come to that so far is probably Corax who was shown hunting Lorgar in the Eye in Shadows of the Past (and even that is set fairly soon after the end of the Heresy).