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

[EverythingIsGreat]

I hope there is a bit more to come about the Webway.

 

Spoiler

Malcador’s thought-specter believes that the Throne has a dual use: to sustain the Emperor, and be sustained by the Emperor. According to Malcador in TEADT/3 only the Emperor could do it. Everybody else, including Malcador is a temporary solution. The Throne apparently is part of the protocol that keeps the Terran portal to the Webway closed. This according to Malcador known to two characters: himself and the Emperor.

 

If you remember, the Emperor had to leave the Webway War and shortly, ascend to the Throne, sitting there constantly, and almost fully engaged. This last part after the Imperial forces lost the Webway War and were forced to retreat, with the portal closing. Per the story, Magnus was amplifying the damage in the Webway rampaging before Vulkan dealt with him. The rips into the Webway by Chaos/Traitors and thence to Realspace is said to be a reason, or THE reason for the Chaotic/Warpstuff leaking into Realspace around Terra, and eventually saturating it.

 

Going on the Webway angle as presented in the stories, the Heresy had two thrusts:

1. The realspace/warpspace campaign by Horus

2, The Wabway campaign for Chaos ingress to Terra. The Palace real/warpspace environs have extremely strong warding against Chaos

 

To refresh:

The 4 allow the unknowingly already corrupted Magnus to witness Horus’ betrayal as it happens, but too late to warn the Emperor in any other way except by sorcery. He takes the bait and “discovers” (or rather is guided) to the Webway. He rips it open (something that apparently Chaos cannot do) and finds the Terran portal, doing all kinds of damage. His actions neatly (for Chaos) doom any hopes for reversal. Even though Magnus and his Legion are perhaps the most suitable and capable force to undo the damage and chase Chaos out they simply cannot be trusted.

In the meantime, following Magnus’ “work” the Chaos incursion in the Webway begins, and the first front in the Siege of Terra opens under the Imperial Dungeon, soon requiring the Emperor’s commitment, well before the second front (Horus) arrives.

 

What happened post Horus' death?

 

Why does the Emperor need to sustain the Throne (and keep the portal closed)? Is there still a danger? Didn’t Chaos/Warpstuff withdraw or rather run away like demons from the battle as soon as Horus died? Are they back in somehow still-breached sections?

 

The Imperial top echelon knows all about the Webway War. Don’t they do mop-up there post-Heresy? At least try to seal it off or even destroy the parts open to the Warp?

 

The Inquisition (Malleus) the closest thing post-Heresy to a replacement of the old shamans who became the Emperor does not make this the no. 1 priority? And what happened to the Ordo Sinister?

 

Isn’t the Webway self-healing? If Magnus’/Chaos’ damage was so great, doesn’t the Webway “disconnect” from the diseased sections? According to lore, it can happen.

 

Did Chaos whisper to Horus to drop the shields on VS in order to get the Emperor off the Throne, knowing he would not resist the proffer? Whoever ascends in his place is a temporary, much lesser solution. No matter what happens on the VS, Chaos given enough time can breach the portal and destroy the Throne forever, permanently leaving Terra without a potent anti-Chaos device to be discovered again 30000 or 300000000 years hence.

 

Keeping in mind that per the stories we don’t know whether Chaos knows about the Talisman and Vulkan’s ultimate mission.

 

For your consideration.

[Dornfist]

@Roomsky You just reminded me of the passage where Lorgar seems to now trust Erebus while he is in exile. And it's like "What about when he disowned him in "Betrayer""? It's a small thing, but I get the minor annoyance of the inconsistency. I was also surprised we never got a mention of Fulgrim even though we know he is on Terra still.

 

I also loved the revelation of Loken's purpose to be used against Horus. Though yes, we don't have enough evidence to show why Horus loved Garvi so much aside from him saying something like Garviel is "his Sanguinuins" in vol. 1.

Spoiler

Agh, I hated his death though I get this is in line with the beginning of grimdark timeline 40k. I loved though Ezekyle and Loken talking like old brothers now that the Heresy is over with Lupercal's death. It would make a great what-if story if Abaddon did take up Loken on his offer to speak to Dorn for peace talks.

 

[lansalt]

1 hour ago, Dornfist said:

Spoiler

It would make a great what-if story if Abaddon did take up Loken on his offer to speak to Dorn for peace talks.

 

Spoiler

For me that was completely out of character and made no sense given how this setting works. It's if like Loken had become delusional in his grief even if that wasn't Abnett's intention. After what they did from Isstvan to Terra, there was no way any of the traitor legionaries got any mercy after being defeated, and everybody knew it.
In fact, besides all the well know loyalists from traitor legions, I think there's only one know traitor that repented and surrendered - the Anchorite from Apocalypse by Josh Reynolds, and he only survived because it happened before the war ended and Guilliman took an interest in him.

 

[Lord_Caerolion]

Anyone else find the ending really jarring? As in, it feels like there should be at least one more sentence after it?

 

Spoiler

Since “raising arms” isn’t really an Imperial Faith thing. 
 

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Abnett writes the first Scouring book about the start of the Imperial Faith taking root on Terra, and the first sentence is “Keeler makes the sign of the Aquila”.

 

Edit:  has Keeler been a shoddy pun on Keeler/Aquila this whole time?

 

Edited February 8 by Lord_Caerolion

[Felix Antipodes]

2 hours ago, Lord_Caerolion said:

Anyone else find the ending really jarring? As in, it feels like there should be at least one more sentence after it?

 

  Hide contents

Since “raising arms” isn’t really an Imperial Faith thing. 
 

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if Abnett writes the first Scouring book about the start of the Imperial Faith taking root on Terra, and the first sentence is “Keeler makes the sign of the Aquila”.

 

Edit:  has Keeler been a shoddy pun on Keeler/Aquila this whole time?

 

 

That would be jumping the gun a bit, since the Temple of the Saviour Emperor didn’t evolve into the Adeptus Ministorum until approx another 1000 years (early M32).  There isn’t any real proof that Keeler was a Temple member (although they later canonised her).

I was half expecting an appearance by Temple founder(?) Fatidicus, who claimed to be an ex-military officer who fought in the Siege, though.  maybe he turns out to be Phikes 

I wish one of the authors would pitch a book covering the first War of Faith, between the Ministorum and their rival the Confereration of Light…

[Dornfist]

On 2/7/2024 at 2:30 PM, lansalt said:

  Hide contents

For me that was completely out of character and made no sense given how this setting works. It's if like Loken had become delusional in his grief even if that wasn't Abnett's intention. After what they did from Isstvan to Terra, there was no way any of the traitor legionaries got any mercy after being defeated, and everybody knew it.
In fact, besides all the well know loyalists from traitor legions, I think there's only one know traitor that repented and surrendered - the Anchorite from Apocalypse by Josh Reynolds, and he only survived because it happened before the war ended and Guilliman took an interest in him.

 

Spoiler

I don't think it was that far out of left field. Both sides of the conflict have already been drained and are bone-exhausted (at least on Terra). Loken made Abaddon's choices very clear: either attempt a truce, or run but condemn yourself to never-ending war (wink* wink*). And it seems Loken believed Guillliman and Dorn would be practical and at least hear out the traitors. Loken could also make the case of how the traitors, particularly Horus, were led astray by Chaos to go to these measures. I thought it was fascinating that Loken wanted to give his Legion another shot, but then Erebus ruined that possibility. Because the fact is, the war against the traitors is never-ending for the next 10,000 years. A truce could have allowed the Imperium to breathe and make ready for future xenos threats. Instead, they used up more resources and manpower to hunt down the traitors during the Scouring.

 

In short, I found the moment touching. Even Abaddon seemed tired of spilling blood, even that of his own Legion.

 

[Dornfist]

A bit of an aside note, but if Alfabusa returns to TTS, gosh I would love a podcast covering "TEATD Vol III", especially when they get to the card game between Horus and the Emperor. Emps will most likely be denying that he got beaten that badly so many times during the duel, and probably continue blaming Horus and "Chaos contrivances". Gosh what a laugh that would be. (Am a big fan of TTS lol).

[Preliminary Bombardment]

Well that's it done, my thoughts aren't too different from the general consensus:

 

Spoiler

Just about an ok book, it did the Horus / Emperor fight well. I think I was too burnt out by the mess of the first two volumes to care much. I mean apart from The Dark King bit I can't really remember anything from those other books.

 

After the collapse of the warp I would have liked a bit about the coherent Traitor forces splintering/ glitching. Then realising they were outnumbered by a combined Loyalist fleet edge of system slowly blasting their way through the back defences they set up after The Solar War. I don't believe there would have been enough loyalist alive on the surface by this point to chased off the overwhelming traitor forces that were literally all over the planet. More should have been made of 3 full strength, fully armed legions being the reason the traitors fled. Ah well 

 

[Moonreaper666]

Guess there is going to be one more Siege Novella to cover

 

Spoiler

The many, MANY unfortunate Loyalist 'martys' that have to fight the Named Daemons and their underlings from Vol 1

 

Be'lakor, Doombreed, N'Kari and others

 

[DarkChaplain]

By the way, did anybody else pick up on Horus talking about the Emperor's "30,000 year plan" a bunch throughout his PoV scenes? Like, the Emperor didn't start his plans at 0 AD. He's been around far longer than that, and has achieved a whole lot before that time marker. I wouldn't be so bothered by this if Abnett hadn't brought that timeframe up repeatedly when talking about the Emperor's lifespan and such, as if Horus was talking with authority on this point.

[DarkChaplain]

I actually gotta ramble for a bit. It may sound harsh, but at this point, I am supremely frustrated with the full work.

 

Going over the Horus scenes again, I have a real issue with the second person style chosen for them, too. Obviously, it invokes Horus coping with his actions and choices, on the other it also tries to feel like voices in his head telling him what they want him to think.... but it doesn't really work, even if we completely ignore Slaves to Darkness.

 

One thing in particular stood out: When talking to Loken, Horus says out loud a phrase that he had been using in his PoV sections over and over - and still uses the "your" instead of "my" when referring to the Emperor. At that specific point, it just feels strange to phrase it like that, just to keep the callback.

 

But generally, I think the perspective is too ill-defined. Had Abnett mixed first person and second person, or at the very least shown us Horus engaging more often outside of his head - with Sanguinius, with the Emperor, not just the Loken we got in the end - we could've seen a discrepancy in how he acts/speaks and how he thinks he does. But we don't, not really. We get scenes of characters feeling horrified looking at him (though that again was a bit undermined by the Oll artwork), but we don't spend nearly enough time with Horus-as-observed.

 

And that's most assuredly down to the missing Emperor PoV.

 

We didn't need to get inside the Emperor's head like we do for Horus - I wouldn't want that - but we needed the perspective shift to truly paint what has become of Horus - particularly when Abnett is so adamant about dialing his plot developments and character development back to almost Horus Rising in many places. Loken's call out comes very late, and isn't properly underlined by the reader's experience of events, because we're constantly shown a version of Horus that is trying to be sympathetic, justified, magnanimous. We know Horus is drinking the Chaos kool aid, but for his distorted lenses to work, we needed a more immediate look at things without his "bloodlight"-tinted glasses.

 

The Emperor almost becomes a non-entity in the second half of the novel. He serves as a punching bag for large parts, as do his defenders, with the only truly meaningful exchange happening between Horus and Loken. The Emperor is protected again and again, with characters sacrificing themselves for him left and right, but he himself has very little to no presence outside of Horus' delusions.

 

Going back over those parts of the book really makes me feel like the tension built up is pretty artificial, not really earned, and not grounded in the struggle. Heck, I don't think I've felt Horus' pressure at all throughout the confrontation - he just whoops the Emperor, Guilliman can't arrive, time has stopped, the court is technically sealed. The only reason Horus doesn't win immediately in the second half is that he's full of himself, defying the gods by grandstanding like a stereotypical mustache-twirling villain. Despite the sacrifices of various characters, the reason the Emperor lives isn't because of Loken, Oll, Leetu, Dusk, Keeler or anybody else - it's because Horus got retconned.

 

And yes, Horus defying the gods at all goes completely against what his arc in Wolfsbane, Titandeath and Slaves to Darkness has been all about, with the extension of the Siege, particularly French's novels. Horus was a marionette for the Gods. His sense of honor, loyalty and goodness was erased. There was no going back anymore. It was his third and possibly most important turning point - Davin made him turn, Molech made him bargain with the powers, and Russ/Maloghurst forced him to confront his new reality and submit to it. Cutting off any chance of redemption, eradicating the Horus we knew, the Horus who knew regret, the Horus who was still defying the Gods. Slaves to Darkness marks the absolute triumph of the Pantheon, the mastery of their exalted puppet. The non-Abnett Siege accounts for that. TEATD dials it back to the start, returning a Horus who can no longer exist.

 

And THIS is the entire reason he loses in part three. Not that the Emperor was more powerful. Not that Sanguinius put a chink in his armor. Not that he allowed his death in a tiny moment of clarity. Not that Guilliman was about to arrive and he had to rush things.

 

It was that Horus wasn't the Horus he was built up to be at this point in the series, but the one Abnett prefered to write about.

 

That's something that runs through the entire TEATD (and also Saturnine), with many characters. Sindermann is back to his iterator days, rather than the bloke who saw too much. Keeler apparently doesn't fully buy her own preaching anymore. Ahriman is just all manner of weird. Sigismund acts the way he would have pre-Emperor's Champion, when he became the instrument of vengeance. Valdor is pretty much unrecognizable (and Dorn's lengthy assessment of his nature directly contradicts established works featuring Valdor, too).

 

At many points, I felt like Abnett made the characters fit the story he wanted to tell with them, rather than making the story fit the characters we've had raised, defined and developed over dozens of books before he came back to the series. If something didn't fit, he discarded that aspect, or dialed back time. In a way, it's the exact thing I was afraid would happen when Abnett's finale was confirmed. Abnett is fantastic, almost unparalleled, at getting things off the ground - but he's not a team player the likes of many others writing for BL. He puts his personal vision before established lore and the works of other authors in their shared sandbox, and that has caused problems time and again. It's also resulted in some really good stuff, but it's always felt a bit disrespectful to the works preceding his own. He's no Haley, or Josh Reynolds, or Wraight, who take what came before and try to tie it together, even the conflicting parts, and solidify those things in their own works.

 

But the finale of the series? The End and the Death? I think that's the first time I felt like Abnett's selective disregard for what's come before actually disrespected me as a reader who has trucked through, what, 65 books, plus uncollected novellas, plus the Primarchs, plus short stories.

This sounds overly dramatic, I know, but that's what it feels like when the finale of such a long series that I've followed for over 15 years ends up so disjointed from even big plot points and beats. It makes me feel like nothing written really mattered if Dan didn't think it fit with what he wanted to do, no matter how important it was. And going by all we've heard and read, it's not like editorial oversight was much of a thing this time around.

 

Once the shock value of the duel scenes wears off, the brutality of some scenes isn't as immediate and unexpected anymore, I find myself disappointed with what we got, because of all the things we didn't get from a book that was far, far longer than it had any right to be - and that's in large parts continuity.

 

....and that's another 1200 word essay I got myself into instead of doing what I was supposed to.

Edited February 11 by DarkChaplain

[Roomsky]

Despite my positive review of the novel, I agree wholeheartedly with DarkChaplain.

 

If I had to recommend how to read the series to a newcomer at this point (outside my usual go-to of "read the 4 ADB novels and then get back to me if you want more") I might be tempted to have them read Abnett's stuff by itself, let them know there will be things they have to intuit about what occurred between them, and then provide all the other entries as expanded universe material. Not because they're worse, non because it's fair, but because Abnett's books include the beginning, the ending, and don't seem to care about what other people have written. Perhaps it's better enjoyed as a few big puzzle pieces full of mystery a reader can explore on their own? Because if you don't treat everything else as an expanded universe, the alternative is reading a lot of build-up to... nothing, really.

 

It's another reason why I thought every Siege book should have followed the Echoes/McNeill Novellas format. Let the authors tie up their own stuff. Don't have them touch anything Abnett will be using, and don't allow Abnett to conclude anything in someone else's bag. We might have gotten a stronger "series" out of it.

[DarkChaplain]

The worst part is that Horus actually acknowledges Maloghurst "waking" him. Like, it's not an oversight. Abnett knew this happened. He pays lip service to it. But it's still not followed through on.

[EverythingIsGreat]

4 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

By the way, did anybody else pick up on Horus talking about the Emperor's "30,000 year plan" a bunch throughout his PoV scenes? Like, the Emperor didn't start his plans at 0 AD. He's been around far longer than that, and has achieved a whole lot before that time marker. I wouldn't be so bothered by this if Abnett hadn't brought that timeframe up repeatedly when talking about the Emperor's lifespan and such, as if Horus was talking with authority on this point.

 

Quite. And apart from the fact that nobody has bothered to explain what year 0 would stand for, another mystery.

[Marshal Rohr]

It’s well known the Emperor had no aspirations for shepherding the human race until he was mistaken for another religious leader in the Middle East while he was still going by the name Brian under the reign of Pontius Pilate and his friend Biggus. That’s why the 30,000 years starts at 0. 

Edited February 12 by Marshal Rohr

[EverythingIsGreat]

5 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

the finale of such a long series that I've followed for over 15 years ends up so disjointed from even big plot points and beats.

 

True, but there are some minor joints that are intriguing

 

Spoiler

 

All emphasis is mine.

TEATD Part III, the Emperor kills Horus:

 

"Your father looks at the knife.
+I wait for you and I forgive you.+
He drives it into your heart."

 

The athame turns to dust.

 

Athame by John French

 

The Narrator, speaking to the blade

 

Prologue:

 

"If you were alive then I would forgive you for what is to come."

 

Epilogue

 

"That you will reach here is not certain, just as it was not certain that it would be you that would play this role. [snip] Fate only exists in retrospect, but the road is now set, and though it may be long it will end, as all things must.
And I wait for you."

 

 

[Lord_Caerolion]

10 hours ago, Moonreaper666 said:

Guess there is going to be one more Siege Novella to cover

 

  Reveal hidden contents

The many, MANY unfortunate Loyalist 'martys' that have to fight the Named Daemons and their underlings from Vol 1

 

Be'lakor, Doombreed, N'Kari and others

 

They’ve never written a snuff novel like you want before, why would they start now? Doombreed/Be’lakor etc have had precisely zero impact on the plot, WHY would there be a novel of “and then they each killed gajillionty-six people each!”

 

Every story needs plot and something to give it purpose beyond “and then that guy died too”.

[DukeLeto69]

12 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

I actually gotta ramble for a bit. It may sound harsh, but at this point, I am supremely frustrated with the full work.

 

Going over the Horus scenes again, I have a real issue with the second person style chosen for them, too. Obviously, it invokes Horus coping with his actions and choices, on the other it also tries to feel like voices in his head telling him what they want him to think.... but it doesn't really work, even if we completely ignore Slaves to Darkness.

 

One thing in particular stood out: When talking to Loken, Horus says out loud a phrase that he had been using in his PoV sections over and over - and still uses the "your" instead of "my" when referring to the Emperor. At that specific point, it just feels strange to phrase it like that, just to keep the callback.

 

But generally, I think the perspective is too ill-defined. Had Abnett mixed first person and second person, or at the very least shown us Horus engaging more often outside of his head - with Sanguinius, with the Emperor, not just the Loken we got in the end - we could've seen a discrepancy in how he acts/speaks and how he thinks he does. But we don't, not really. We get scenes of characters feeling horrified looking at him (though that again was a bit undermined by the Oll artwork), but we don't spend nearly enough time with Horus-as-observed.

 

And that's most assuredly down to the missing Emperor PoV.

 

We didn't need to get inside the Emperor's head like we do for Horus - I wouldn't want that - but we needed the perspective shift to truly paint what has become of Horus - particularly when Abnett is so adamant about dialing his plot developments and character development back to almost Horus Rising in many places. Loken's call out comes very late, and isn't properly underlined by the reader's experience of events, because we're constantly shown a version of Horus that is trying to be sympathetic, justified, magnanimous. We know Horus is drinking the Chaos kool aid, but for his distorted lenses to work, we needed a more immediate look at things without his "bloodlight"-tinted glasses.

 

The Emperor almost becomes a non-entity in the second half of the novel. He serves as a punching bag for large parts, as do his defenders, with the only truly meaningful exchange happening between Horus and Loken. The Emperor is protected again and again, with characters sacrificing themselves for him left and right, but he himself has very little to no presence outside of Horus' delusions.

 

Going back over those parts of the book really makes me feel like the tension built up is pretty artificial, not really earned, and not grounded in the struggle. Heck, I don't think I've felt Horus' pressure at all throughout the confrontation - he just whoops the Emperor, Guilliman can't arrive, time has stopped, the court is technically sealed. The only reason Horus doesn't win immediately in the second half is that he's full of himself, defying the gods by grandstanding like a stereotypical mustache-twirling villain. Despite the sacrifices of various characters, the reason the Emperor lives isn't because of Loken, Oll, Leetu, Dusk, Keeler or anybody else - it's because Horus got retconned.

 

And yes, Horus defying the gods at all goes completely against what his arc in Wolfsbane, Titandeath and Slaves to Darkness has been all about, with the extension of the Siege, particularly French's novels. Horus was a marionette for the Gods. His sense of honor, loyalty and goodness was erased. There was no going back anymore. It was his third and possibly most important turning point - Davin made him turn, Molech made him bargain with the powers, and Russ/Maloghurst forced him to confront his new reality and submit to it. Cutting off any chance of redemption, eradicating the Horus we knew, the Horus who knew regret, the Horus who was still defying the Gods. Slaves to Darkness marks the absolute triumph of the Pantheon, the mastery of their exalted puppet. The non-Abnett Siege accounts for that. TEATD dials it back to the start, returning a Horus who can no longer exist.

 

And THIS is the entire reason he loses in part three. Not that the Emperor was more powerful. Not that Sanguinius put a chink in his armor. Not that he allowed his death in a tiny moment of clarity. Not that Guilliman was about to arrive and he had to rush things.

 

It was that Horus wasn't the Horus he was built up to be at this point in the series, but the one Abnett prefered to write about.

 

That's something that runs through the entire TEATD (and also Saturnine), with many characters. Sindermann is back to his iterator days, rather than the bloke who saw too much. Keeler apparently doesn't fully buy her own preaching anymore. Ahriman is just all manner of weird. Sigismund acts the way he would have pre-Emperor's Champion, when he became the instrument of vengeance. Valdor is pretty much unrecognizable (and Dorn's lengthy assessment of his nature directly contradicts established works featuring Valdor, too).

 

At many points, I felt like Abnett made the characters fit the story he wanted to tell with them, rather than making the story fit the characters we've had raised, defined and developed over dozens of books before he came back to the series. If something didn't fit, he discarded that aspect, or dialed back time. In a way, it's the exact thing I was afraid would happen when Abnett's finale was confirmed. Abnett is fantastic, almost unparalleled, at getting things off the ground - but he's not a team player the likes of many others writing for BL. He puts his personal vision before established lore and the works of other authors in their shared sandbox, and that has caused problems time and again. It's also resulted in some really good stuff, but it's always felt a bit disrespectful to the works preceding his own. He's no Haley, or Josh Reynolds, or Wraight, who take what came before and try to tie it together, even the conflicting parts, and solidify those things in their own works.

 

But the finale of the series? The End and the Death? I think that's the first time I felt like Abnett's selective disregard for what's come before actually disrespected me as a reader who has trucked through, what, 65 books, plus uncollected novellas, plus the Primarchs, plus short stories.

This sounds overly dramatic, I know, but that's what it feels like when the finale of such a long series that I've followed for over 15 years ends up so disjointed from even big plot points and beats. It makes me feel like nothing written really mattered if Dan didn't think it fit with what he wanted to do, no matter how important it was. And going by all we've heard and read, it's not like editorial oversight was much of a thing this time around.

 

Once the shock value of the duel scenes wears off, the brutality of some scenes isn't as immediate and unexpected anymore, I find myself disappointed with what we got, because of all the things we didn't get from a book that was far, far longer than it had any right to be - and that's in large parts continuity.

 

....and that's another 1200 word essay I got myself into instead of doing what I was supposed to.

So you liked it then?

[DukeLeto69]

7 hours ago, Marshal Rohr said:

It’s well known the Emperor had no aspirations for shepherding the human race until he was mistaken for another religious leader in the Middle East while he was still going by the name Brian under the reign of Pontius Pilate and his friend Biggus. That’s why the 30,000 years starts at 0. 

He's a very naughty boy!

[DarkChaplain]

4 hours ago, DukeLeto69 said:

So you liked it then?

 

I am once more in agony over the lack of the crying reaction.

 

That Life of Brian joke cracked me up, though. I'm rewatching that movie every easter, or at least try to make the time, so now I can't get the picture out of my head.

[Scribe]

20 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

At many points, I felt like Abnett made the characters fit the story he wanted to tell with them, rather than making the story fit the characters we've had raised, defined and developed over dozens of books before he came back to the series. If something didn't fit, he discarded that aspect, or dialed back time. In a way, it's the exact thing I was afraid would happen when Abnett's finale was confirmed. Abnett is fantastic, almost unparalleled, at getting things off the ground - but he's not a team player the likes of many others writing for BL.

 

Everything you said is great in this post, but this is really the key that has been called out by almost everyone, even his diehards who support it.

[tgcleric]

^

I'm guessing people would call me a Abnett "diehard" whatever that means. I just like his books. But I definitely think him being a team-player is one of his strengths. I find it absolutely perplexing people on this forum (and as far I can tell only on this forum) somehow think Abnett doesnt bend over backwards to work with the rest of the BL team. Especially since assuredly every author in the BL would disagree. Especially reading his afterward and seeing how much care and concern he has with connecting to other books, even rhyming there language and so on. Anyways. More silly conjecture with no evidence.

 

Finally finished the audio book and a read of EotD Vol 3.

 

I really liked it. It is far better than I thought any finale for this overbloated series would be. It was emotional, the battles were brutal and wonderfully written, and most importantly, I cared about the characters through out. 

Absolutely adore the final images with John Grammaticus. Sort of wish that was the final image, though I really like Keeler kneeling in the foundations of the new imperium and praying. Felt like a perfect beginning to 40k. 

 

Anyways. I ended up not feeling like I wasted my time. I think Abnett performed a bit of a miracle with TEoTD. It's not as good as Saturnine/Rising/Prospero IMO. But that sort of beyond the point. 

I actually cared as these two big demigods fought. I enjoyed some cosmic incredible imagery. And Abnett actually made it a human tragedy between father and son. Loved it.

 

And "in the end, its just a man killing his son with a stone."

 

[Scribe]

1 hour ago, tgcleric said:

I find it absolutely perplexing people on this forum (and as far I can tell only on this forum) somehow think Abnett doesnt bend over backwards to work with the rest of the BL team.

 

Then you have either missed, or dismissed the multiple posts which illustrate that a lot of development that happened over the course of the series, was dismissed or ignored or reverted, for the ending.

[Lord_Caerolion]

4 hours ago, tgcleric said:

^

I'm guessing people would call me a Abnett "diehard" whatever that means. I just like his books. But I definitely think him being a team-player is one of his strengths. I find it absolutely perplexing people on this forum (and as far I can tell only on this forum) somehow think Abnett doesnt bend over backwards to work with the rest of the BL team. Especially since assuredly every author in the BL would disagree. Especially reading his afterward and seeing how much care and concern he has with connecting to other books, even rhyming there language and so on. Anyways. More silly conjecture with no evidence.

 

I mean, we do have evidence, though?

 

As an example, Horus had a multi-book plot arc of how his “humanity” was in conflict with his “Chaos-side”, so Horus/Maloghurst ritually killed the remaining humanity and sentimentality inside him. 
However, Abnett wanted a sentimental Horus, so that whole plot arc gets ignored so that Horus can weep over how he doesn’t want to kill the Emperor. 
 

Edit: it’s hardly only in this forum either. There’s a reason why his books are commonly referred to as being in the Abnett-verse, given how much he does things his own way. 

Edited February 12 by Lord_Caerolion

[Cactus]

@Lord_Caerolion, E Keeler / aquila is such a DAbnett pun I'm amazed I haven't seen it before.

(My favourite pun name is still Philly O'Fish from Sinister Dexter.)