The Horus Heresy - A Retrospective?

[Emperor's Angel]

56 minutes ago, DukeLeto69 said:

It is sad we have fans that now think that way. Understandable but sad.

 

However, surely you wouldn't burn Horus Rising, Legion, A Thousand Sons, The First Heretic, Know No Fear, Betrayer, Scars, The Path of Heaven, The Master of Mankind, Saturnine, Warhawk, Echoes of Eternity!

 

I would say all if those can hold their own against anything BL has ever put out! 

I could take The Crimson Fist and Saturnine and skip all the rest.  And Know No Fear.  
 

But do those hold a candle to The Nightlords Trilogy… or Helsreach?  No way.  

 

And for me… if I had to hand my kids one book to be their intro into 40k… and I wanted it to hook them… it would be Angels of Darkness.  And I feel the same way about which book I would turn into a screenplay for the first live action movie.  And in my eyes… none of the HH stuff came even close to that novel.  In fact it just ruined what made it cool.

 

All the HH books ultimately did is burn me out on Primarchs.  And new 40k is all about returning Primarchs and space marines that just look like updated HH marines.  How many Primarchs truly benefited from the HH novels?  Dorn and Khan?  The rest sucked.  And they ruined Sanguinius for me.  The Shattered Legion stuff and their Primarchs never landed for me either.  And they built Perturabo up to be so cool… just to flub him off at the end?  He just takes his ball and goes home?  And now we have to wait for the Dorn and Perty showdown that was teased and never delivered at the Siege?  And don’t get me started on the Dark Angels… the HH convinced me the best thing about the Dark Angels is after Caliban blows up and before the return of the Lion.  Honestly, the Space Wolves only get better after Russ leaves as well… and it actually has me NOT wanting to see the Wolftime.

 

30k and post Primaris 40k feel like the same thing.  New 40k is just HH 2.0.  Guilliman took a nap.  Now he’s back.  The Lion too.  Russ came back and might have fleas.  Heck we are even getting Hints that Sanguinius and Ferris Manus are still on the table.  And Corax is a shadow demon in the eye.  
 

Im already bored.  The best 40k has to offer was already written.  The only hope we have is the Iron Cage (and I’m not confident on that one anymore) and ADB finishing the Black Legion Trilogy.  That’s it.  
 

Man the magic is gone.  The HH killed the mysteries, lies and half truths that we all used to have fun arguing about.  The Lion is better as a long lost hero who may or may not have been a traitor… and his sons are killing people to hide that fact.  Guilliman was cooler as a shrine whose sons worshiped his greatest work as a holy Bible.  Now even he throws it out like it’s a piece of paper.

 

What the Horus Heresy actually did, in hindsight… is show me that 40k as a setting, was better off without it.  

[darkhorse0607]

I do think there is a lot to be said about the 40kification of the Heresy, and 30kification of the 40k setting. GW has clearly tried to capitalize on the popularity in the 40k setting with how they're treating space marines now and I think it is a detriment. A prime example of this is how Primaris squads are set up. In 40k, Chapters are not supposed to function like legions, while squad types do have certain specialties (Devastator, Assault, etc), they still need the tactical flexibility to respond to different situations because there is simply not enough of them to function as the legions did with specific loadouts for different squads (missile squads, plasma, volkite, etc). GW, in its infinite wisdom, walked that back with the primaris because "look it's like the Heresy, you guys like the heresy right?"

 

As Emperor's Angel pointed out, you can see that same sentiment echoed through a lot of the setting now. Most of the big setting pushes lately have been tied to the Heresy in some way. The biggest players for the most part have ties to the Heresy (Cawl, the Primarchs, Bile, Abbadon, even Eldrad was said to have met with Guilliman, the Necrons met with Sangiunius, etc) and it's become the default excuse for introducing the next big thing. Of course Vashtorr's secret evil planet had to be Caliban. In a universe with near-endless opportunities for new horrors, what is the most common one for big moments? Primarchs. Angron is rampaging but they need to fight him off successfully? The Lion can pop out of nowhere and hit him with a magic shield. Etc.

 

This is also true of the Heresy, and looking back it's one of my biggest complaints. While certain moments (the final duel, Signus, Imperium Secundus) needed Primarchs front and center to provide that leader figure or the opportunity to fight Horus, we went from the first few books featuring the Primarchs very little and focusing more on the marines which were, IMO, more compelling, to it being saturated with them. Some decent examples of the balance I'm talking about would be Horus Rising, Flight of the Eisenstein, and Know No Fear. Primarchs are there, they do things, but the majority of these stories are focused on the marines themselves.

 

At the beginning of the series, it very much felt like BL was ok with the Heresy being its own thing and telling the story of a different time period, maybe it has some echoes/foreshadowing to the current setting, but it felt different enough to justify it. As the series ground on, it feels as though they lost that. So much of it started feature connecting elements to 40k, Sons of the Selenar is a good example. How do we wrap up the Shattered Legions arc? By connecting it to Primaris. If the timing of these two settings were different, and 40k was the next chapter, then I would be more ok with it but it reeks of "well we don't have any books in between these two events so everything must connect." As much as we have beaten the dead horse of The End and the Death, it's also guilty of this. It couldn't just be the final story of the Heresy, it also had to connect with Abnett's current work, whether that was his or BL's decision isn't important, it's just another example.

 

I'll wrap up here and while I could go on all day about my thoughts of the Heresy, diving down each separate part of it, a lot of what I have to say has already been said by others.

 

Final thoughts though about how I feel looking back, and this is going to be filled with copium.

 

Do I think it was worth it? Yes. I got into the hobby in 2016 so I don't have the attachment to the "old mysteries" that some do. I've been open about it on here before, but since then life has had more downs than ups and the Heresy gave me something to focus on, especially post-Primaris where I felt like things were changing in 40k that I didn't like and that part of the universe started losing some of its allure for me. I also think the heavy hitters of the Heresy gave us really great stories/characters that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise. Do I wish that it had been shorter and more focused, maybe? Do I wish that it didn't have the drift towards primarch-centric novels outweighing the number of marine stories, yes.

 

(Here comes the copium) Do I blame the Heresy itself for this? No. I blame Black Library/Games Workshop. In the end, I don't think that most (not all, but most) of the authors sat down writing plot points for their Heresy novels with the intent of "oh yes, I need to make sure I make this reference or tie in this character (Cawl for example) to make sure it sets up 40k." I think that it was a BL mandate/request. I also think that as the series grew, it needed more of a guiding hand, which while the Siege is a headlining example of this, the need existed long before, but BL didn't do it. They were happy to sit back and let it spiral so they could cash in, just like they're willing to change 40k marines (as discussed above) to cash in, regardless of the lore or what makes sense. Is that the Heresy's (setting) fault? No, it's Black Library's

 

In the end, I wish things had been different. But that isn't going to outweigh the good times I've had in the setting and the characters I've grown attached to for that I'm thankful to the Heresy.

 

[Scribe]

6 hours ago, DukeLeto69 said:

It is sad we have fans that now think that way. Understandable but sad.

 

However, surely you wouldn't burn Horus Rising, Legion, A Thousand Sons, The First Heretic, Know No Fear, Betrayer, Scars, The Path of Heaven, The Master of Mankind, Saturnine, Warhawk, Echoes of Eternity!

 

I would say all if those can hold their own against anything BL has ever put out! 

 

I'm not going to burn them, but I am going to reduce my collection and try and sell of the SoT and some random books here and there.

 

Dont get me wrong, ATS, First Heretic, KNF, Betrayer (BETRAYER!) all of that stuff is great, but honestly I'm not sure I need this in my space anymore. The HH was an era of my life, but so much of it is just a missed opportunity for me.

 

The End and the Death was...pretty much as I expected he would deliver and its left me pretty cold.

[DukeLeto69]

15 hours ago, Scribe said:

 

I'm not going to burn them, but I am going to reduce my collection and try and sell of the SoT and some random books here and there.

 

Dont get me wrong, ATS, First Heretic, KNF, Betrayer (BETRAYER!) all of that stuff is great, but honestly I'm not sure I need this in my space anymore. The HH was an era of my life, but so much of it is just a missed opportunity for me.

 

The End and the Death was...pretty much as I expected he would deliver and its left me pretty cold.

I am in awe of people who can actually let their stuff go! I can’t. It’s one reason I have to keep buying a bigger house. To store all my stuff I can’t let go of! I like collecting. Over the years I collected a wife, a kid, a dog, with all their collected stuff too! And I kept collecting the things I like…books, games, CDs, vinyl records. You should see my garage and loft! Still when I eventually pop my clogs I will get my own back on my kid for the sleepless nights and stress they caused as they will need to spend weeks sorting out all my stuff ha ha revenge!

Edited February 7 by DukeLeto69

[Scribe]

7 hours ago, DukeLeto69 said:

I am in awe of people who can actually let their stuff go! I can’t. It’s one reason I have to keep buying a bigger house. To store all my stuff I can’t let go of! I like collecting. Over the years I collected a wife, a kid, a dog, with all their collected stuff too! And I kept collecting the things I like…books, games, CDs, vinyl records. You should see my garage and loft! Still when I eventually pop my clogs I will get my own back on my kid for the sleepless nights and stress they caused as they will need to spend weeks sorting out all my stuff ha ha revenge!

 

I've done a few moves, when its on you to sort stuff and pack it, and move it, and then unpack it, one is motivated to downsize. :D

[Moonreaper666]

It's strange that Madai hasn't shown up post-Heresy when the Sanguinator is still present. Guess that Daemon is so OP that Guilliman and the Old Lion together wouldn't last a few seconds against him

 

Samus should show up post-Heresy in more novels, especially in the Black Legion series

 

Spoiler

Abaddon is fated to be a Chaos God, but he isn't the only one

 

Drach'nyen, Be'lakor and Vashtorr will also ascend at the same time and event as he becomes the 5th Chaos God!!!

 

[Scribe]

40 minutes ago, Moonreaper666 said:

Samus should show up post-Heresy in more novels, especially in the Black Legion series

 

Why? The most repetitive, useless, boring Daemon of all time.

[darkhorse0607]

22 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

Why? The most repetitive, useless, boring Daemon of all time.

 

He for sure went from "oh this is pretty cool and kind of spooky" when he first showed in Horus Rising to

 

"Oh no. Poor Samus, here again" for most of the rest of the series. Poor dude peaked early

[TheArtilleryman]

1 hour ago, Scribe said:

 

Why? The most repetitive, useless, boring Daemon of all time.

Guess Samus got a bit Same-ey :p

[Scribe]

2 minutes ago, TheArtilleryman said:

Guess Samus got a bit Same-ey :p

 

Foreshadowing Volumes 1 and 2 of the End and Repeating Tropes.

[Moonreaper666]

1 hour ago, Scribe said:

 

Why? The most repetitive, useless, boring Daemon of all time.

 

He was about to kill Dorn until Melisadae sacrificed herself. Had she hesistated the Praetorian would have died. He also killed hundreds of Imperial Fists and thousands of Solar Auxilia on the Phalanx

 

Loken was the only weakness Samus had

 

And there can be a lore reason why Samus is stronger post-Heresy

 

Spoiler

As Abaddon grows in power so does Samus

 

[Malkydel]

2 hours ago, Moonreaper666 said:

It's strange that Madai hasn't shown up post-Heresy when the Sanguinator is still present. Guess that Daemon is so OP that Guilliman and the Old Lion together wouldn't last a few seconds against him

 

Samus should show up post-Heresy in more novels, especially in the Black Legion series

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Abaddon is fated to be a Chaos God, but he isn't the only one

 

Drach'nyen, Be'lakor and Vashtorr will also ascend at the same time and event as he becomes the 5th Chaos God!!!

 

Quite funny because by the 41st Millennium he was stuck in the head of a member of the Blood Pact as a 'particularly noisy spirit.'

[DarkChaplain]

3 hours ago, Moonreaper666 said:

It's strange that Madai hasn't shown up post-Heresy when the Sanguinator is still present. Guess that Daemon is so OP that Guilliman and the Old Lion together wouldn't last a few seconds against him

 

Samus should show up post-Heresy in more novels, especially in the Black Legion series

 

  Hide contents

Abaddon is fated to be a Chaos God, but he isn't the only one

 

Drach'nyen, Be'lakor and Vashtorr will also ascend at the same time and event as he becomes the 5th Chaos God!!!

 

 

First, it's Madail, not Madai. Considering how obsessed you seem with all things daemonic big names, this seems strange.

 

Secondly, the Damnation Cache at Pythos is the first major Grey Knights action after they return to the Imperium, and Abaddon gambled for reopening it during the Pandorax campaign (although his real goal was apparently the Dark Angels-GK founder).

 

If Samus shows up again, let alone in Black Legion, I'll flip a table.

 

Also, again, fanfic.

[Roomsky]

So, the Siege of Terra.

 

It's the big pay-off. All the background we've had about the Heresy stemmed from Horus and the Emperor killing each other in single combat. Of course, it was bound to become more than that following up a 54 novel series. As an ending to a book series, I think it fell short. As a representation of established fluff, I think it's a mixed bag. As a miniseries of it's own? Fell short also.

 

Before I tear into it, credit where it's due:

 

• We got some brilliant books when taken on their own. Echoes of Eternity is, in my opinion, the best written Heresy novel. Saturnine is a high-energy romp that recaptured some of the Heresy's early feelings of excitement. Solar War and Warhawk were both successful in a good 80% of what they were trying to do, in my opinion, and no book is in the unreadable pile (except Garro, for me personally, but it's so inconsequential I'm just going to ignore it from here on out.)
• The specific moments we knew about the Siege from old fluff were either done great justice or subverted in clever ways, in my opinion. The Khan does indeed ride a tank, just not in the context you expected. Sanguinius gets his time to shine at the Gate before being slaughtered by Horus. The Horus vs the Emperor fight was actually fantastic for several reasons. Divorced from the series at large, I give top marks for the "big moments". My issues with lore representation have more to do with the general atmosphere and newly added plot points.
• One of the things those big group planning sessions succeeded in, in my opinion, was giving each present legion something meaningful to do. This is divorced from the quality of execution - I'll talk about that more later - but conceptually? The Scars are the outriders. The Fists were the strong central core. The Blood Angels could easily pivot as needed. The Iron Warriors were the backbone of the early siege. The Emperor's children massed a huge feint for an attempted spear-thrust, and even after they lost cohesion, set up Paradise to erode the defenders' morale. The Night Lords were shock troops going further into the enemy line, and faster, than anyone else. The World Eaters were your more typical Chaos berserkers sent to overwhelm. The Death Guard controlled a key tactical resource and undermined the defences with their despair-magic. So on and so forth. It felt like they pulled off something much greater and more complex than "the defender's were stuck in a fortress. They couldn't leave because of the overwhelming numbers of the enemy."

 

That's not all the positives, but I don't want to spend all day saying "I liked this scene. And I liked this scene." I enjoyed my time with the Siege, it was good fun for the most part.

 

The other thing I'll say before discussing negatives is that my criticisms aren't directed at the character of the authors or the editors, nor at the effort they put in to it. Messy or not, what we got is clearly the product of a monumental project and a ton of hard work and love for the material. I'm not as skilled an author as the Siege writers are, nor have I ever created something so lengthy or grand in scope, but I can speak from experience as an artist that keeping track of details in your own work is far, far more difficult than it is observing someone else's. I'm not excusing it, rather saying that something obvious to us, such as the Fidelitas Lex having been destroyed in Betrayer, was probably just 1 of 6000 things for the authors to keep track of. People often forget that penning the connective tissue between big moments can take just as much, if not more, effort as said big moments. I also think the effort did show, but less in the way of the Siege being a grand culmination of the Heresy, and more in that it didn't devolve into complete nonsense considering the scope involved. I also absolutely won't be accusing any authors of having a grudge against a faction or character because I thought their portrayal in the siege was lacking. Any commentary that seriously suggests such a thing should probably be ignored.

 

Next post will be critiques.

[wecanhaveallthree]

Quote

If Samus shows up again, let alone in Black Legion, I'll flip a table.

 

I don't think Abnett was being metaphorical when

 

Spoiler

Erebus tells Abaddon that Samus will always be behind/attached to him.

 

It seemed reasonably explicit that's how it would be going forward, unless of course something happened between then and Talon of Horus.

[DukeLeto69]

For some reason every-time I read Samus I actually see “Same us” not sure why?

[TheArtilleryman]

6 hours ago, DukeLeto69 said:

For some reason every-time I read Samus I actually see “Same us” not sure why?

Is that not how it’s said? Or is it “Shamus?” I’ve never really known.

[darkhorse0607]

3 minutes ago, TheArtilleryman said:

Is that not how it’s said? Or is it “Shamus?” I’ve never really known.

 

It's Sam-us

[Karhedron]

I usually work on the assumption that made up names are to be pronounced phonetically but sometimes names are historical or literary references so that is only a rule of thumb.

[TheArtilleryman]

2 hours ago, darkhorse0607 said:

 

It's Sam-us

Like the name Sam? That is just odd

[DukeLeto69]

I think my “Same Us” joke was too subtle - ie the daemon keeps cropping up so becoming a bit samey! Ok I’ll get my coat.

[lansalt]

You may joke, but now I'm 100% convinced that was always Abnett's intention.

[Roomsky]

When attempting to write a finale for 54+ books by different authors, it's inevitable there'll be some elements the creators look back on and view as mistake. This could be something the fandom dislikes, authors having divergent views on the setting, or simply your typical artist's self-critique. So, of course, there's some things that they'll want to quietly sweep under the rug. To do that, I believe there's 2 tenets that should be observed:

1. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater
2. Don't unambiguously fly in the face of what's been written

Point 1 is fairly straightforward. Expand on good ideas and move away from bad ones, even if present in the same work. Sometimes, those good ideas will be rather essential to a character's arc or motivations. Point 2 is a bit more complex. Basically, you want dedicated readers to feel rewarded for their time put in where possible, even if they think a work is bad. In a series with fairly unambiguous continuity, that means you'll want to shift focus off of something ill-received, or if trying to retcon it, inject that ambiguity. Don't have a character do or say something that makes it seem like that story couldn't have happened, because I guarantee there will be no works in a series like this that has 0 fans. I like The Outcast Dead, despite how maligned it is. I can appreciate if you don't want to make it an essential read, I just don't want to see some of its better ideas actively contradicted. I think Fear to Tread is mediocre at the best of times, but don't make Amit, one of that book's highlights, act like his lowest point from that book didn't happen (in TEATD, he seems more upset that he lost control and tore through traitors than when he did it on Signus and killed several loyal Space Wolves.)

 

The Siege is guilty of going against both of these ideas, sometimes affecting extremely important plotlines.

 

Let's go back to The Outcast Dead. In that book, the Emperor has some key scenes outlining his outlook moving into the Heresy: his plans are all on fire, he needs to consider not jut how to win, but how to prevent a total loss. He knows he could die, and he knows humanity itself is in the balance; so the stalemate option needs to be considered. His death needs to be planned for. Then, come The End and the Death, failing to win but preventing a loss suddenly seems to be a novel concept to the Emperor. And sure, The Outcast Dead is criticized all the time, but elements from it are already woven into other stories, like Nagasena in The Crimson King. So we can't just pretend it didn't happen, clearly it did! Our alternative, because of this active contradiction, is to either accept that the Emperor is explicitly stupid, or to accept that the series preceding the Siege doesn't actually matter. It's a no-win formula. "Sorry folks! We know we had a thing going with the Emperor up til this point, but Abnett's very popular and he has a different idea of what he thinks and how he acts, so we're just rolling with it." The baby has been ejected and the rather important details have been actively contradicted. You can see why some folks might be ticked off.

 

And unfortunately, Horus and the Emperor, the two most important figures, suffer from this the most.

 

Heresy series Emperor: Kept intentionally vague so that all the contradicting accounts can coexist semi-harmoniously. The authors were generally better at tiptoeing around his thoughts than articulating them, but you could still build a portrait of the man: he's very old and has no patience for mayflies questioning his wisdom, and probably doesn't feel like explaining himself for the 1000th time. He rarely actually speaks, but instead projects intent into people in a way they find pleasing, this is why he's warm and personable to Kai Zulane and Horus, but cold and calculating to the Custodes and Arkhan Land. He is extremely arrogant, is unwilling to listen to others' points of view, and will pay any price for the ascendancy of humanity, up to and including striking a deal with the Gods of Chaos.

 

Siege Emperor: Speaks through his puppets like Vulkan or the Custodes, which puts off literally everyone he talks to. Despite acknowledging a civil war as a possibility, appears to have taken no active steps against it besides having Dorn fortify the palace. Becomes so lost in the sauce that he almost annihilates humanity, because he'd rather both sides lose than letting Horus win. The idea he may have miscalculated is a revelation brought about by a 5 minute conversation with a man who betrayed him the last they met.

 

Oh boy, so glad I kept up with him in the preceding novels, it informed so very much of his actions in the finale. This is basically Denaerys burning King's Landing because the writers were more concerned with an end state than how we actually got there.

 

Horus is a bit different, in that while the authors portraying them had rather different levels of skill, he's been essentially the same character the whole way through. His issue is plot related.

 

So, Davin sets Horus on the path to rebellion, and Molech has him embracing some of that warp juice in earnest. Russ' spear forces a bit of perspective into Horus about what he's giving up for the power of the warp, and that contradiction is killing him. While this is happening, he's convinced it's an issue he can handle himself; he asks no one for help, and doesn't seem to be fully aware he'll just die if his internal struggle keeps up. Maloghurst acts of his own volition to try and solve the issue, and ultimately kills himself and the facet of Horus' personality that was resisting the Gods. This makes him the empty shell he was typically written as come the Siege.

 

So, in TEATD we learn 2 things. 1: Horus was just pretending to be a Chaos sock puppet as part of a gambit to lure the Emperor into a direct confrontation. 2: Horus is fully capable of casting off the Chaos Gods at any time, if he desires it.

 

Neither of these points make any sense.

 

Firstly, The Solar War and Mortis both demonstrate that Horus is fully cogent. If he is an empty shell, the Gods continue to use his personality effectively enough to goad the Emperor. If that's the case, the Emperor has no reason to believe he's especially vulnerable. He is in fact doing the worst possible play, because he's being articulate to the Emperor and rambling incoherently to the people he's actually supposed to be commanding. The Emperor should take that as a sign not to confront Horus directly, and to let him squander his resources instead.

 

Then, come TEATD, we learn that Horus the man is in fact still in there, and that this was his plan. That's like saying finding a winning lottery ticket on the side of the road was your plan, none of the events leading to this point could possibly have been planned for; Maloghurst was acting of his own volition! I suppose you could say: Horus cooked up a plan with the Gods to trick Maloghurst into stabbing a part of him that wasn't actually a part of him to make people think he had become an empty shell, which would be a very odd plan because Maloghurst then died before telling anyone about what he did.

 

Then, atop all that, he can just cast them off because fake Loken pricked his pride? Huh??? It doesn't even seem to take much effort, he just takes it off like a rain coat. Then what was killing him Slaves to Darkness??? Every other character whom Chaos has their tendrils in gets a violent "no refunds" message when they try to reform. This is dumb. The best you could do is say "skip Slaves to Darkness, then," which would be a problem, because the extremely important event of Lorgar being banished happens in that book. So, once again, the lead-up doesn't matter.

 

The best my copium can do is this: Maloghurst killed the noble part of Horus that rejects the Gods out of principle, which kept him from self-destructing. The Gods thought it would be funny to break Horus' spirit again, so they kept a small kernel of his personality until the end of the Siege. They then convinced this shred of Horus that everything leading here was his plan. Then, they retracted their power to make Horus think it was a decision he made, just so they could rub salt in the wound that he's actually their slave forever.

 

I don't buy that, because when Slaanesh did that to Fulgrim, it was just as cruel without actually allowing the possibility of Fulgrim's opponent to stand back up and murder him. It is, at best, unnecessarily contrived for the sake of a moment that could have been achieved in a more straightforward fashion.

 

The reason I don't give the same guff to Echoes of Eternity or Warhawk, both of whom soft rewrite events, is that they both create straightforward devices for fans to choose their preferred version of events. Vulkan is actively possessed by the Emperor in Echoes, he could have seen what the Emperor wanted him to. The Emperor would do this because Vulkan has a kind heart and may react unpredictably to the events of Fury of Magnus. The Remnant's version of the Doom of the Death Guard is literally the account of a daemon trying to assuage Morarg's doubts, and Mortarion's reminiscing about letting Typhus do his thing could just be pride speaking. Neither needs the reader to concoct a 5-step-plan for characters who had no good reason to make one. "Vulkan is wrong" is a valid reading of Echoes. The Chaos Gods deciding to prank Horus' ghost by giving their opponent a metaphorical loaded gun borders on nonsense.

 

More to come.

[Roomsky]

The last big thing I want to touch on is the lack of cohesion regarding the goal of the Siege. Is it a conclusion or is it a proper miniseries with a beginning, middle, and end? The authors themselves don't seem to be of one mind about it; some are focused on giving closure to plot threads and others are focused on sowing new plot threads for Abnett's grand finale. All the while, some threads just fizzle out instead of actually going anywhere! It's all a bit frustrating.

 

As a conclusion:

As I mentioned last post, the major character disconnects keep this from feeling like a proper concluding arc; much of what happens doesn't follow from the main series. Perturabo's depiction continues to be at war with itself, regressing to rage-boy whenever French isn't writing him. Dorn forgets he's mad at Sigismund halfway through, and Siggy himself spontaneously develops and ego so it seems like he evolves when he becomes stoic… like he was already. Dorn himself somehow becomes less cynical than before once the walls start crashing in. Wraight puts MAXIMUM EFFORT into reconciling his Mortarion with Swallows and only half-succeeds, and Valdor pupates into an entirely different person in TEATD. The established Heresy characters seemed to be written with dramatic irony in mind, but without an enthronement scene and a quick glimpse into the Scouring, most of the loyalists get no payoff for all of their set-up. Even characters invented for the series suffer from this: Sindermann doesn't seem any closer to becoming Veritas by the end, Keeler reverts to her Horus Rising characterization, and Corswain seems to be here just so the Dark Angels have something to do.

 

There are, of course, exceptions to this floundering ending. Characters firmly under one author's thumb generally came out fine (Angron, Jaghatai and Illya, etc.) A few exceptions I found where multiple authors managed to keep things cohesive:

• Shiban Khan never feels like a wildly different character between books, and I actually liked his journey under French's pen the most!
• Sanguinius remained fairly on point his impending death is one of the whole points of the Siege
• Ollanius' little gang mostly keep consistent from the time they show back up in Mortis. Actae's actual motivations remain completely opaque but she does seem to have a similar voice in each entry.

Some plot threads and ideas also get killed in what feels like an afterthought. I'm not talking Krole getting splattered by Khârn, Saturnine gives her more characterization than anywhere else, and Abnett is making a point about the uncaring scale of the slaughter with her unnoticed demise. I mean :cuss: like Tormageddon, who received far too much build-up as Loken's actual nemesis just to be accidentally force-sworded in a duel with no dialogue. Like why bother at that point, I'm still shocked he didn't come back in TEATD (especially because his presence might have spared us more Samus.)

 

As a representation of the lore

As I said, high marks for individual moments. Jaghatai's tank funeral bier. Horus vs Sanguinius. Malcador the hero. Horus vs the Emperor. Sigismund's rampage. All were somewhere between acceptable and great, I can't say I was truly let down by any of them.

 

But the myths of the Siege repeatedly hammered home how dire this all was for the loyalists. The only thing working against Horus was time, which is why the big duel took place. This should be mankind's darkest hour.

 

I'd argue only Mortis, Echoes, and TEATD really got that part, and only TEATD gets especially high marks from me. Mortis' focus on humans stresses the apocalyptic scale of the horror they're all trapped in. Every triumph in Echoes is followed with a "but it will probably be pointless in the long run." TEATD's breakdown of spacetime on Terra, and the idea that humanity is about to commit Slaanesh, is the only time the series really sets it apart from other Chaos incursions. This is helped by the fact that, as long as the Astronomican is out and Horus is alive, Guilliman won't ever be arriving. Abnett really captured "rage against the dying of the light" instead of  "desperate struggle for ground, however small the gain."

 

 Meanwhile, all 4 aligned Chaos primarchs duel a loyalist primarch and lose. Sigismund kicks Eidolon off a wall and kills Khârn. Raldoron kicks the Night Lords commander off a wall. The Word Bearer's commander gets exploded and Perturabo rage quits halfway through. Curze and Lorgar never even came, neither did Omegon (probably.) Only Sigismund's item (in spirit, if not in detail) was present before now. The loyalists seem to be losing because Chaos is cheap, and by sheer weight of numbers. Only the Emperor's Children (and presumably the World Eaters) had really started to come apart in the older tellings by this point, whereas here they may as well be orks for how easily the loyalists seem to outdo them pound for pound.

 

I think we still achieve the atmosphere of desperation, of the loyalist's darkest hour, and of mankind's possible ending. It just gets undercut at most every turn so the defenders can look cool. Perhaps this wasn't the time for such things.

 

As a proper miniseries

Ha! No.

 

Let's take the 54 books of lead-up out of the equation for a second, so things like Keeler reverting to an earlier version of her character aren't a huge deal.

 

Well, the Solar War only works as sinew between said series and the main Siege content, so it's a terrible introductory novel. Lost and the Damned reads like a proper first entry, but establishes 0 new threads that will be important to the finale beyond Horus' dementia. Ditto book 3 and Grammaticus, which is like 1 paragraph. Saturnine is the first book that has any real pretention of proper set-up, reintroducing much of the human cast that'll feature by the end, including Fo. Mortis brings in Ollanius and co. and has some Fo content. Warhawk pays lipservice to Ollanius and co and the Fo content (by returning Fo to where he was in Saturnine.) Echoes does literally nothing. Then we get the finale in TEATD, which does this:

• Introduces and does away with the Dark King
• Has Sanguinius fight at his peak, making his gut wound pointless
• Spends time on characters from other books, like Rann, Amit, and Zephon, who already had a conclusion to their arcs.
• Introduces the space-time breakdown
• Introduces several brand-new characters like Agathe to observe said breakdown
• Features 99% of Horus' pagetime
• Does all the Valdor related set-up for Pandaemonium
• Has Dorn wander around a desert for 3 books
• Explains Ollanius' significance to the Emperor again, in full, despite its coverage in Mortis
• Makes Samus an important element despite its strong send-off in Solar War
• Provides no meaningful follow-up to: Katsuhiro, Ashul, the baby Shiban found, the tank crew in Warhawk, or any of Zenobi's surviving comrades (I know they probably all died but I'm making a point.) One wonders, then, why they occupied so many pages in prior novels.

Also, and this can fits into every category, how many bloody chapters did we spend on Fo just for his weapon to not get used, and then have him get skewered by Amon? When I say I like a Shaggy Dog story, I mean I like a deliberate anticlimax after a lengthy narrative. I don't mean I like a nothing ending to an overlong narrative where nothing happens.

 

TEATD may be a miniseries, but the Siege of Terra certainly isn't. It has no cohesion and no momentum. It is structural madness for no gain, and ends up becoming far less than the sum of its parts because of it. It has no consistent threads that run from beginning to end that weren't already present from the 54 books preceding it.

 

It's a mess, and nothing more.

 

…

 

 

Anyway, 6/10, I thought it was pretty enjoyable.

[Moonreaper666]

Garro Knight of Grey is crap. It should have been Typhus vs Garro, a company of White Scars, a few dozen Loyalist Blackshields, Imperial Fists Librarians, 49k Frateris Militia and 7 Knights

 

Ends with Garro getting boosted by the Emperor so he can wound Typhus before he is killed. Keeler escapes thanks to their sacrifices

 

Typhus being wounded is why he doesn't get personally involved in combat during Warhawl, Echoes, Vol 1, Vol 2 and most of Vol 3!