The Horus Heresy - A Retrospective?

[LJF]

Instead of feeling sad and nostalgic I am glad it is finally over instead. What a mess. Early on the series had its high points ngl but after Unremembered Empire (the last HH novel I remember fondly apart from the ending of course) it went seriously downhill as the next books became more and more bloated, pointless and pretentious and if the Scouring series will be a thing my concern is they will just continue this trend.

 

As a fan I was interested in the Great Crusade and Unification Wars being their own separate settings and book series but after HH I have to be careful what I wish for.

[Nagashsnee]

On 2/10/2024 at 8:40 AM, Moonreaper666 said:

49k Frateris Militia and 7 Knights

 

 

Why those specific numbers? Are they random or is there some esoteric significance? 

[DukeLeto69]

2 hours ago, Nagashsnee said:

 

Why those specific numbers? Are they random or is there some esoteric significance? 

7 x 7000? 

[TheArtilleryman]

3 hours ago, Nagashsnee said:

 

Why those specific numbers? Are they random or is there some esoteric significance? 

Nurgle always deals in multiples of 7 :)

[Karhedron]

5 hours ago, Nagashsnee said:

Why those specific numbers? Are they random or is there some esoteric significance? 

 

Moonreaper has his own very specific headcanon. No greater significance as far as I am aware.

[Roomsky]

[DarkChaplain]

At least he didn't PM you a supposed callout about a fanfic Typhus vs the Khan scenario.

Edited February 12 by DarkChaplain

[Lord_Caerolion]

6 hours ago, DarkChaplain said:

At least he didn't PM you a supposed callout about a fanfic Typhus vs the Khan scenario.

Aww, I almost feel left out. Almost. 
 

To continue the others though, it seems to be a combination of Nurgles sacred number with his usual “Chaos must kill twelve-trillion people each book” since his posts indicate he values books based on arbitrary kill counts. He’s not happy unless his Named-Chaos-Character-of-the-Month is wiping out entire armies singlehandedly. 

[Bobss]

Just a few things here. I'm not going to heavily edit this so that it reads like running your hand across velvet, I'm just going to burp some stuff out. There are people on this forum who're better writers than I, or who possess a greater perspective than I do, or who, quite simply, care more about this series than I do. But I want to write something

 

So having started this series in late-2009, I've certainly not been here since the beginning, but I do believe I've experienced the main phases of this journey. Honestly, looking back and having lived through them I would split it up into three major phases, 2006-2024(?). The first phase, which I feel started with Horus Rising and ended anywhere between Know No Fear and Fear To Tread, was, as Roomsky says, a time of unparalleled energy. This isn't to say it was a 'golden age' of the HH/40k/BL, and it isn't to diminish those who joined the series after, but it was what it was. There was a real enthusiasm across the collective fandom in regards to Who would write What. This was before the Age of Darkness period, and was when the team were pushing through major, pre-established events which had existed in the 40k background material for decades. While I appreciate the BL team never felt any direct pressure to do this from their employers (at least to my knowledge), there was a sort of unspoken consensus among fans that the Collected Visions book served as The major template, and that any deviations were, 99% of the time, understandable and acceptable improvements. Some of the hallmarks of this era were a single release format, a relatively simple release schedule of 2-3 entries a year, and due to the lack of limited edition/'early access' content, the Entire community could go to their local GW or bookstore or order off Amazon the Lasted Book. I joined this series when Fallen Angels released, and even though that is a mediocre book, every 40k forum was full of discussion and debate and enthusiasm. A book like Fallen Angels made more of a splash than most Siege of Terra entries. Mental. You then had A Thousand Sons, at the turn of 2009/2010, and it knocked people's socks off. I even remember, as a teenager in 2010, planning out my 'ideal Siege of Terra trilogy', inspired by the Burning of Prospero duology. I wanted McNeill(PBUH) to write the opening salvos on the Imperial Palace, then I wanted ADB to write the chaotic combat pushing through the Palace, with Sanguinius making his stand at the end, and then I wanted Abnett to pen the finale on board the Vengeful Spirit. This was 2010: Perpetuals weren't really a thing. Grammaticus was a fun spy from some previous human era. tl;dr I can't stress enough how much richer the online HH community was when the books dropped at roughly the same time. No fancy edition. No hardback. No giant paperback. No Reddit spoiler breakdowns. Just fans and their paperbacks

 

So the next era basically makes up the Twentytens decade. This is the Age of Darkness leading up to the Siege. In some ways this contained both the best and the worst of the series. It was when the series reached its peak popularity (and, perhaps, quality?) but it was also the time when a lot of the bad habits began to form. Creatively speaking, the time between the Dropsite Massacre and the Siege was relatively thin, with a few pointers here and there. The BL stable decided to fill this in... with mixed results. For every Betrayer there was an Angel Exterminatus. For every White Scars revamp there was a Salamanders demolition job. For every Webway War there was an Imperium Secundus. During this period I think there was the biggest buzz in the fandom (though maybe not the same, innocent energy as the previous decade), with lots of public-facing events. I never went to any of these, but I know people who did, and they enjoyed them. This was before the weird in-house reshuffle GW did with BL (which perhaps they have done, again, recently???). There was a ton of material released outside of the main novels. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it had a few negative effects imo, such as splintering the readership and making books like McNeill's Vengeful Spirit or Abnett's Unremembered Empire difficult to read without having absorbed all the various shorts, e-shorts, audios etc. beforehand. I've often called this period of time Anthologies Without End, but the problem wasn't actually the anthologies, it was the lack of substantial books around the Pharos point. As I said, I didn't mind this phase of the HH, but I don't think it can be argued against that this was the high tide mark of not only the series, but perhaps BL altogether

 

This was also the time in which the Forge World supplements were released, deepening background and perhaps trying to course-correct it towards a more Badab War-like state of existence. A lot of people praise the Black Books over the BL stuff, and I'm going to be candid here: it's began Alan Bligh was a creative master of the same caliber as Rick Priestley and co. The vast majority of the BL team, no names, are simply not up to that level. I really enjoyed being a fan during this decade, but as bit of an iconoclast myself, I could see the dark clouds. I know many people on this forum disagree, but I didn't like Laurie Goulding's comments towards fans. I thought they were arrogant and rude and not remotely the sort of thing you would see the genuine, bedrock minds who started or improved 40k. The giant paperbacks are hot trash that should never have been greenlit. I think this period is best summed up as the Marvelisation of the HH. I have no interest in Marvel. I have more interest in someone 3D printing a simple board game based on Terminator 2 or the Thirty Years War or something than Marvel. Was this the Consume Product, era? I honestly don't know

 

Lastly, there is the final phase, dominated by scalpers and Reddit breakdown threads. You begin to see a withdrawal of authors from the community and a significant increase in negativity towards each release here. More words are typed on forums about scalpers snagging special editions than about said books' actual content. Very few people are enthused about whatever happens, and discussion turns into comparing levels of 'meh'. Rampant fragmentation of release formats/dates, increasing amounts of contradictory lore and the insertion of completely left-field stuff, and a Dan Abnett capstone trilogy that was more interested in inventing and resolving its own story vs. dealing with any of the dominoes knocked down since 2006 render this as 'lol whatever' territory. I have very little interest in the Horus Heresy or 40k now, but as someone who reads a ton of history, archaeology, anthropology etc. (why yes, I am a mature student, how can you tell?) I sometimes get bored reading about Caesar's Gallic Wars and instead want to read about Fulgrim or legions of men clad in power armour wielding plasma guns. But, no, I can't have that, because if I want legions of men clad in power armour wielding plasma guns, I have to have Perpetuals, cringeworthy dialogue between superhumans, a bewilderingly irrelevant number of POVs, extremely inconsistent writing quality and background material bewilderingly fragmented across hundreds of books, e-shorts and audios

 

My final comment on Black Library's Horus Heresy is thus:

I am more interested in the Unification Wars than I am the Horus Heresy, because it hasn't been written about

[Valkyrion]

With the benefit of hindsight, I'd have had a 10 book series focusing on Horus Rising up to the end of the Isstvan campaign, with a novel each showing how each other Legion arrives at Isstvan and what happens to them. 

Following that, a 10 book series of novels detailing the major engagements along the way - Prospero, Thramas, Signus etc and focus primarily on the rest of the legions that hadn't had much screen time so far (e.g, the book about Thramas would be told from the Dark Angels POV more than the Night Lords)

Then finally a 10 book series for the end, with books from the POV of Custodians, Malcador, the Emperor, the Daemon or Corrupted primarchs, Chaos Horus etc

That's 30 novels, which is a hell of a series of books to put on your shelf - who in their right mind thought to double it and add 10?!

 

 

[lansalt]

7 hours ago, Bobss said:

A lot of people praise the Black Books over the BL stuff, and I'm going to be candid here: it's began Alan Bligh was a creative master of the same caliber as Rick Priestley and co. The vast majority of the BL team, no names, are simply not up to that level.

The early Black Books were co-written by John French (both rules and lore). It's weird that everybody forgets about him when his influence is IMO very obvious compared to the FW Badab duology.

In fact, a few of his books, like Tallarn and the Solar War, read pretty much like novelizations of FW campaigns.

Edited February 13 by lansalt

[Scribe]

4 minutes ago, lansalt said:

The early Black Books were co-written by John French (both rules and lore). It's weird that everybody forgets about him when his influence is IMO very obvious compared to the FW Badab duology.

 

Yeah, but Bligh sure seemed to have the secret sauce, there was quite a derailment with his passing.

[lansalt]

18 minutes ago, Scribe said:

Yeah, but Bligh sure seemed to have the secret sauce, there was quite a derailment with his passing.

Sure, Bligh was clearly in charge and the driving force behind all it, but I'd argue that there was already a change of style after the 3 Isstvan books, when John French no longer was directly involved.

[Marshal Rohr]

All of the Black Books were pretty good compared to their companion novels from BL. The ones that people tend to like the least (Malevolence) were trying hard to clean up weird stuff from BL novels that came first. The Black Books people like the most were entirely divorced from BL (Conquest, Retribution)

[lansalt]

26 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

All of the Black Books were pretty good compared to their companion novels from BL. The ones that people tend to like the least (Malevolence) were trying hard to clean up weird stuff from BL novels that came first

I'd say that it only applies to the 3 Isstvan books, which neatly retold the messy events and timeline from Horus Rising to The Crimson Fist.
The others are more like companion pieces to the BL novels but focusing more in background events and characters (Tempest, Inferno), and sometimes to the point of directly contradicting what happened (Malevolence, Crusade) to insert FW characters and units even if they don't make sense (like Custodes in Signus Prime) and creating a mess of otherwise pretty linear and clear events in the novels.
And they keep doing it, by the way. As much as I like Ashurhaddon from The Siege of Cthonia, his background doesn't make sense at all with Ekkadon and Iacton Qruze existing previously and he never been mentioned before despite his importance.

[Marshal Rohr]

“He was never mentioned before”

 

Yes, that is what happens when new characters are developed. The FW characters are what the BL characters should’ve been. Also Ekkadon was dead by SoC. 

[lansalt]

The problem from a continuity perspective is that Ashurhaddon is not just another captain, or even a previously unmentioned specialist of the 1st company like Argonis was. He's supposed to be "The First Reaver" and that simply doesn't fit the LW/SoH narrative in the novels. And he's not the only example. The FW books may not have the petulant characters or obvious nonsense that many people dislike in BL stories, but examined closely they also have messy continuity issues and low key soap opera drama (like the end of Siege of Cthonia). I love it anyway, but let's be fair.
 

53 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

The FW characters are what the BL characters should’ve been.

You mean like Fafnir Rann or Endryd Haar? Come on.

Edited February 13 by lansalt

[Marshal Rohr]

Did you particularly enjoy Rann’s ever changing characterization? Much like Sigismund he changes so much from Novel to Novel he might as well be a brand new character. 

[Scribe]

7 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Did you particularly enjoy Rann’s ever changing characterization? Much like Sigismund he changes so much from Novel to Novel he might as well be a brand new character. 

 

I have only liked 2 Sigismunds, and it sure wasn't the ones painting him as one of the faithful.

 

Probably second only to the hatchet job done on Valdor.

[SkimaskMohawk]

French did the definitive take on the fists characters. Though that doesn't help the debate on whether BL or FW had the better lore.

 

I think it's fair to say that both bl and fw have some very good stories, and both have some pretty bad ones. New characters showing up in high positions of renown late in the timeline is weird, so is hugely contradictory statements of events. 

 

People didn't like the ferrus primarch book undermining the exemplary battle, and people didn't like malevolence undermining scars. Same thing

[Marshal Rohr]

Yeah, it’s SO weird that military organizations have so many high ranking people. That’s why Napoleon famously had only one Marshal. 

[SkimaskMohawk]

40 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Yeah, it’s SO weird that military organizations have so many high ranking people. That’s why Napoleon famously had only one Marshal. 

 

What a deliberately disingenuous take.

 

No, it's not weird that military organizations have high ranking people. They can have a ton, obviously.

 

What is weird is to have high ranking people materialize without context. No one complained about baraxa or the rest of the replacement soh captains appearing because they were nobodies that only got promotions because the entire upper echelon got wiped off in saturnine. But Ashuraddon? Was around and a company captain throughout the Luna Wolf days and created the Reaver attack squads, which earned him the title of the First Reaver? The guy who has a cult of personality around staying true to the OG Legion and cthonic traditions, the whole thing abaddon is obsessed with? He literally appears out of nowhere in the same style as a fan fiction self-insert, and for some reason, survives to not ever be talked about by future traitor/chaos space marines. 

 

It's like if you were colouring by numbers but your favorite colour wasn't part of it, so you just decided to colour over some other finished areas to include it anyways. 

 

[Marshal Rohr]

Or are expanding on the characters of the Sons of Horus beyond the extremely small number of BL characters and trying to illustrate these were huge legions with personalities. Extremely disingenuous is complaining about world building that makes things bigger.  Complaining BL characters doing their own things with their own concerns without mentioning some other commander in an organization with over a hundred thousand members is like complaining the Punisher doesn’t look into the camera and say “I am not a role model for cops”. Find a real problem to care about. 

Edited February 14 by Marshal Rohr

[MegaVolt87]

It to me seems like some authors didn't respect the groundwork another author did, prioritizing their "creativity" over a coherent continuity that makes sense. Especially in the already mentioned characterizations of named personalities. 

[Marshal Rohr]

18 minutes ago, MegaVolt87 said:

It to me seems like some authors didn't respect the groundwork another author did, prioritizing their "creativity" over a coherent continuity that makes sense. Especially in the already mentioned characterizations of named personalities. 

It’s sad and doesn’t make sense but if you read the series by author instead of order (read ADBs first to last books in a row) then switch to another author, it flows much better. I did a reread from First Heretic and only read ADB books and stories and it felt much tighter than reading them in order even though there’s huge gaps in the timeline