The Siege of Terra - Can I Skip Mortis?

[Wormwoods]

Between the new website being garbage and my local store only keeping the first and last books in stock I've run into the situation where I'm up to Mortis, with no way to get a copy any time soon. 

 

I do, however, have a copy of Warhawk burning a hole in my shelf. 

 

So, do I need to read Mortis? It's a titan book, so I assume the A plot won't do much for me, but do I need to just grit my teeth and wait anyway, because someone important has something to say between chapters of giant robots doing giant robot things?

 

This is a little tongue-in-cheek, but I've yet to read any titan stuff that warranted a whole book. What's the verdict on this one?

[Scribe]

Its really not a Titan book. I personally (unpopular opinion) think its a fine entry. Is it Echoes? Absolutely not. Is it on par or better than the rest of the series? I think so.

 

Can you skip it? I mean I skip a lot of books, and yeah you could, but there is some connective tissue in there, and maybe I need to re-read it, but I think you'll miss some little things.

 

It also does more for the Oll arc, than anything else written. Actually gave the guy a purpose, so there is that.

[Wormwoods]

On one hand, the best way to make me not want to read a Warhammer book is to remind me that perpetuals exist...

 

But I do need that connective tissue. Ugh.

[Scribe]

5 minutes ago, Wormwoods said:

On one hand, the best way to make me not want to read a Warhammer book is to remind me that perpetuals exist...

 

But I do need that connective tissue. Ugh.

 

Honestly for me it was the first time they actually had any kind of relevance to the story. So if your are going to end up finishing the series its kind of a 'might as well'.

[Karhedron]

I would say Mortis is both a pretty good story and pretty important. Saturnine ends with the Chaos forces on the back foot. The Sons of Horus have lost a lot of their elites and Fulgrim has withdrawn from the Siege in a pout. Also Corswain and the DAs have just arrived in system so things are actually starting to look up for the loyalists.

 

Mortis is how Horus regains the initiative and seeks to break through the largest defence line at Mercury Wall.  Warhawk starts in a very different place than Mortis.

 

Just on a personal note, I enjoyed Mortis more than Warhawk as it seemed better paced and written. But personal taste like that is very subjective. 

[tgcleric]

You may or may not like it. 

 

I found it to be beyond difficult to get through and rank it easily the worst SoT book.

 

But others like it, so you might. 

 

Can you skip it though? Yes. If you glance at a wiki article synopsis you'll be fine. Nothing in it will stop you from enjoying warhawk. 

 

Life is short. Go read warhawk. 

[Cactus]

I don't think you lose much by reading Warhawk now and catching up on Mortis later.

[DukeLeto69]

Hmmm I wouldn’t skip any of the SoT novels personally. It may be that reading some are like subjecting yourself to some Slaneshi masochistic torture, but the journey remains as important as the destination. And after-all, you may as well!

[Krelious]

I honestly could not stand French's writing and I skipped both Solar War and Mortis after getting about 150 pages deep in each book and felt like I missed nothing.  I think in general the series is so bloated that unless you have the memory of a genetically engineered elephant man theres going to be stuff in the novels you forget or stuff authors mention from previous books as part of tie ins. I'd imagine most of the BL authors are contractually obligated to skim each others work and compliment each other because no one is going to say something like Gav Thorpe is a terrible author.