2024 - BL highs and lows, best book/story of the year

[LemartestheLost]

1 hour ago, DukeLeto69 said:

Not seen anyone say they don’t want to read new authors, but the point is they are new and mostly an unknown quantity. The reason I listed pretty much the same books you just lampooned is because A) I DO want to read them and B) I already know they will be quality based on track records. But I am totally all ears for new author recommendations

 

People like what people like! I'm not lampooning those books really, or anybody in this forum excited for those novels, I want to read them just as much as anybody else, it's just that there ARE many readers that write off anything that ISN'T Abnett, Wraight, or ADB. At one-point Abnett, ADB, Wraight, and McNeill all had unproven track records and had to make a name for themselves.

 

 Not saying that the younger generation of authors don't have to put in the work to get that credit either, but it seems that many of the "Old Guard" are stuck reminiscing about ye olden days (which were ******* awesome), when there are new folks writing their legacies in 40k history that deserve a trilogy of their own, but are overlooked because they weren't there when Horus Rising was written, etc. GW and BL are in a VERY different place now than they were then, to be fair. I guess that I just find the journey and growth from unknown author to established contributor to the setting with a subsect fandom very entertaining to watch.

[wecanhaveallthree]

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The Sapphire King

 

Forget it, Roomsky. Nobody even knows what we're talking about any more. Just... just let it go. I can't... I can't bear to see us... this way... 

 

Guymer will write a hundred Red Angels before he gives us any more Chadan Stronos (I'm okay with that, I loved Red Angel). 

[darkhorse0607]

I am interested to see what the "new" generation of authors put out next year. Or how many of them are consistent and continue to write for BL.

 

And I hope BL let them swing for the fences

 

Rath is now getting to be a bigger (or more well known) name because he took a swing on Infinite and the Divine. That book, by all accounts of what BL seemingly like to do, shouldn't exist, especially given what happened to Reynolds and the cuts to the third Bile book. But they let him go for it and it paid off

 

I know Brooks is divisive, but Alpharius is one of my top 40k books period. That was also a pretty big swing for a relatively new BL author, and now they have another solid author to lean on (again, depending on where you fall on his stuff) who is giving the Xenos folks some needed coverage

 

Kloster seems capable given Lazerus, as does Fischer and Hayward from their showings this year

 

I just hope in the coming year that those who do stick around get to chase their passion project and BL let's them go for it

[grailkeeper]

Forgot I read thr Exorcistd novel. Says it all really.

[skylerboodie]

10 hours ago, Roomsky said:

 

I would actually like Abomination and The Sapphire King to come out before anything else. 

 

What is Abomination a follow-up to please?

[Nagashsnee]

Like others TEATD kinda broke me, it was the crescendo of my HH disappointment that those 3 volumes kinda personified ( following 2 fantastic siege books). I went from picking up random 40k books so long as they sound vaguely interesting to not reading much 40k at all. 

 

Best books of the year for me was Genefather for 40k, nothing groundbreaking but a fun read. However i did go back to the William King run of Gotrek and Felix and let me tell you re reading them was a BLAST. The perfect mix of grounded and fantasy, with each book following the same vague outline and themes ( it did the Ciaphais Cain 'if only i knew' stick before it was cool ) but also each genuinely introducing new characters, settings and themes.  And much like i will do with the Horus Heresy in the future  i simply stopped at giant slayer as it is the final book and no one ever wrote anything about the pair ever again ( triply so if anyone says anything

Spoiler

about Felix marrying a clearly traumatized girl who idolizes him and who HE MET AS A YOUNG CHILD HE RESCUED OVER 20 YEARS AGO JUST TO ABADDON HER FOR HIS, EX BL WHYYYYYYYYY  ).  

 

This lead me to re reading the Ragnar books by the same author and i don't know if it just nostalgia by i really enjoyed them too.  I might to a write up in the necromancy thread. 

I would pay REAL good money to find out how Dawn of Fire was planned out, and how they managed to drop the ball so very very far so badly. 

Edited December 11 by Nagashsnee

[System Sound]

7 hours ago, skylerboodie said:

 

What is Abomination a follow-up to please?

John French's inquisition trilogy, Horusian Wars

[Roomsky]

7 hours ago, skylerboodie said:

 

What is Abomination a follow-up to please?

 

It would be the last entry of the Horusian Wars. As a forever John French fan, I am annoyed it still hasn't come out and they sent him back to the Ahriman mines instead (much as I still enjoy that series.) I remain hopeful though, between Helwinter Gate eventually dropping and BL bothering to release an anthology of French's Horusian Wars shorts.

 

-

If Genefather counts for this year, I guess I'll put it as my runner-up. It was good fun, though I think the audiobook narration did a lot of the heavy lifting for me personally.

[DukeLeto69]

16 hours ago, LemartestheLost said:

 

People like what people like! I'm not lampooning those books really, or anybody in this forum excited for those novels, I want to read them just as much as anybody else, it's just that there ARE many readers that write off anything that ISN'T Abnett, Wraight, or ADB. At one-point Abnett, ADB, Wraight, and McNeill all had unproven track records and had to make a name for themselves.

 

 Not saying that the younger generation of authors don't have to put in the work to get that credit either, but it seems that many of the "Old Guard" are stuck reminiscing about ye olden days (which were ******* awesome), when there are new folks writing their legacies in 40k history that deserve a trilogy of their own, but are overlooked because they weren't there when Horus Rising was written, etc. GW and BL are in a VERY different place now than they were then, to be fair. I guess that I just find the journey and growth from unknown author to established contributor to the setting with a subsect fandom very entertaining to watch.

And that is actually one of the main reasons I come here… to read people’s author/book recommendations.

 

A perfect example is Peter Fehervari. I totally skipped Firecaste because I thought it was a Tau book and I don’t tend to enjoy or bother with Xenos as protagonist books, just not my thing. So Firecaste was dismissed out of hand (talk about a book so badly mismarketed by BL).

 

Then on the old Bolthole website (where many of us used to be before here) I think it was @DarkChaplain who said to go try Firecaste. I managed to ebay a copy and…new favourite author!!!!!

[wecanhaveallthree]

I'm glad to see a lot of love for Genefather. The seemingly inevitable (knock on wood) third book Necron time-heist sounds like an absolutely rollicking good time. 

 

But I think - aside from just being very informative about Cawl and the Mechanicus - Genefather is just such a good 'cameo book'. Now, it probably works so well because Bile and Cawl aren't known for being particularly militant so nobody is expecting them to really bash into each other with a contrived reason why nobody takes any real damage, but Bile just makes such a good showing. He's got all his Themes, he's a clever lad, he muscles up to Cawl both physically and mentally (and the two clashing exclusively through schemes and their 'creations' is delicious) and does absolutely no jobbing. He 'wins', but in a way that the reader comes out with a greater appreciation for the 'loser'. It's pretty ballsy to have the guy on the cover lose, too, but 'he is my son' is worth all the lost gene-seed in the setting, I think. We won't see Chaos Primaris for yonks, but character development is here and now, baby!

 

Genefather just felt good to read. I like to smile rather than scowl manfully when perusing my grimdark on occasion. 

 

 

[1ncarnadine]

Put me down as another reader burnt out by TEatD III. It took me most of the year to get through it, and ended up walling me off from reading other works. I picked it up and then would just quit on it for weeks at a time, and at one point over a month. I think I was actually burnt out by Volume II, because III actually felt pretty good? I have plenty of criticisms, but it handled Horus vs the Emperor really well.

 

Other than that, I've read Lord of Excess, and I'm currently about 2/3rds of the way through Eidolon. So I guess my book of the year is Lord of Excess for now, due to having no real competition. I won't count TEatD III. It's 1/3rd of a larger novel, or so they said.

[Krelious]

On 12/9/2024 at 8:54 PM, Scribe said:

 

We joke, but the way this all went down and the state of non Wraight/ADB 40K?

 

I'm completely turned off of Black Library. 

Thats generally my opinion as well but I'd at that Guy Haley is sometimes very good. I was really dissapointed at Jude Reid's Morvenn Vahl novel being hot garbage. 

 

Another thing that bothers me is that there are novels I would like to read (im not into audiobooks or pdfs) but the issue is they sell out or are out of print and people are literally charging a 5-7x mark up price on the base retail which just seems insane. I think the whole market for 40k novels makes me feel bad and theres always the FOMO debate going on in my head if I want to buy something now not knowing if its worth the purchase or not. 

 

I dont think ive gotten through many 2024 novels or just arent interested in taking the risk but none of them really stand out. End and the Death vol 3 on its own is kinda okay but theres the issue of the other two volumes, the whole scalping issue, and generally the whole feeling behind it really soured me. 

 

I'd also say that thematically on a meta level I'm not enjoying the Warhammer 40k novelization as much as I had in the past and I think its because of a kind of self aware corporate formula culture that has infected the setting which is why we got the whole Female Custodes crap shoveled at us, I still love the setting its just it feels to me like its slowly decaying and just not as good as it was when people were taking risks and just writing what they wanted. I dont think we are ever going to see quality and feeling like the first 5 HH novels ever again. 

Edited Monday at 05:46 PM by Krelious
pirates and ninjas.

[wecanhaveallthree]

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I still love the setting its just it feels to me like its slowly decaying and just not as good as it was when people were taking risks and just writing what they wanted. I dont think we are ever going to see quality and feeling like the first 5 HH novels ever again. 

 

For me, the start of 8th Edition was the recent high water mark. We had all kinds of weird again. The order came down on high that Space Marines could die in stories, and boy, how they died! We got to hang out on Terra. We got to hang out with the PRIMARCH REBORN. It felt like anything could happen and, possibly, would. There was a general sense of energy and interest in the stories that were coming out. Then we had the Indomitus retcon and things went all corpo.

 

Absolute no shade to the current stable of new authors doing their thing, but it feels very deliberate that what we're getting is a lot of paint-by-numbers safe stories that don't rock any particular boats or shoot any particular shots. I've banged about on this subject before that there hasn't been a genuinely bad BL product in some time, but with that polish comes a lack of risk-taking. Maybe it's because Thorpe's Ynnari got :cuss:canned, I dunno, but there just aren't 'risky' stories any more. It's all kiddy pool stuff. Yes, Fehervari is doing his wacky best, but aside from him, who's providing the weird, the strange, the far-out? I prefer it when we get the occasional unreadable dreck if we're also getting, say, a Fulgrim.

 

Perhaps it's telling that McNeill, now free from Riot jail, has nothing in the pipe. If there's a 'wacky and wonderful' author who swings for the fences every time (and does strike out on occasion), it's McNeill, but if he hasn't been pipped - especially after providing such great flavour for the Siege - I really do have to agree that the 'feel' isn't there right now.

 

Take Genefather for example, a book I've always been critical of...

Edited Tuesday at 04:23 AM by wecanhaveallthree

[Roomsky]

12 hours ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

 

Things n` Stuff.

 

Hmm.

 

Hmmmmmmm.

 

On one hand, 8th ed. does appear to be the herald of new horizons within Black Library. We're (still) in a golden age of xenos books, we got Warhammer Crime (for a while,) and there was some out-there stuff even on the astartes front like Ashes of Prospero. On the other hand, I do believe this era was much-maligned for the blatant primaris shilling throughout, and there are very few quality books involving the Indomitus era that I think actually needed to be set during that period. The fan favourite Devastation of Baal? The Vaults of Terra? Warhammer Crime? Said xenos books? Denny Flowers' sterling works? Fehervari stuff? 8th edition fluff is basically just handwaved-in on all of these except Vaults, and even then the core elements of that series could easily have happened without the rift opening - the throne failing idea's been around for a while.

 

What did we need the new edition for? Dark Imperium? It sucked. Angron? Daemon primarchs were already allowed to be active. Dawn of Fire? Everyone else seems to think it sucks. Watchers of the Throne? Fair point, though I'd argue book 1 didn't really benefit from the sudden fall of Cadia partway through, only it's sequel is a true "8th ed is cool actually" novel. Spear of the Emperor? Alright, there's another great 8th ed. Work. Hill's Minka Lesk is another 8th-ed.-and-beyond highlight, in fairness.

 

I don't personally think this comparatively dryer year is an indicator of much beyond supply chain issues and the company being Heresy-brained with the finale. We know several exciting projects are stuck in a backed-up release pipeline for reasons unknown (I know you've written stuff, McNeill. Where is it, BL? Where's the McNeill, Lebowski?)

[SkimaskMohawk]

On 12/11/2024 at 6:03 AM, Nagashsnee said:

However i did go back to the William King run of Gotrek and Felix and let me tell you re reading them was a BLAST. The perfect mix of grounded and fantasy, with each book following the same vague outline and themes ( it did the Ciaphais Cain 'if only i knew' stick before it was cool ) but also each genuinely introducing new characters, settings and themes.  And much like i will do with the Horus Heresy in the future  i simply stopped at giant slayer as it is the final book and no one ever wrote anything about the pair ever again ( triply so if anyone says anything

 

I literally did the same thing. Those novels rock something special and have a type of tone that got lost in more modern BL novels. 

 

Frankly embarrassing to try and compare "classics" like hours rising to these.

 

Edit:  just saw this 

 

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 I dont think we are ever going to see quality and feeling like the first 5 HH novels ever again. 

 

 

The quality of these books were actually very low. What they did was provide the feeling of discovering a past that was framed as mythical, and a lot of people conflated that rare feeling with the actual quality.

Edited Tuesday at 08:17 PM by SkimaskMohawk

[wecanhaveallthree]

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 Spear of the Emperor? Alright, there's another great 8th ed. 

 

Probably the number one offender of 'could have been set anywhere, anytime'. But then again, my lack of appreciation for ADB's interminable slave/master slash fics is a failing I recognise and will be sure to correct.

[Roomsky]

3 hours ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

 

Probably the number one offender of 'could have been set anywhere, anytime'. But then again, my lack of appreciation for ADB's interminable slave/master slash fics is a failing I recognize and will be sure to correct.

 

I ain't entertaining y'all and your "ADB keeps writing the same book / waifu fic" memes. I banish thee to the outer darkness.

 

I personally found the isolation from the bulk of the Imperium (and the accompanying pettiness of the Inquisition sending assassins through the Rift to kill one loyal dude,) the discussion about the legitimacy of Guilliman, taking the shine off the process of even creating primaris, and the Rift's role in creating the antagonists fairly central to the book's uniquely post-Rift identity, but I suppose like The Hollow Mountain, it could have been re-jigged into a pre-rift story with a few rewrites here and there.

 

Though that rather undermines the importance of 8th ed. further, I think.

Edited Wednesday at 01:16 AM by Roomsky

[darkhorse0607]

7 hours ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

The quality of these books were actually very low. What they did was provide the feeling of discovering a past that was framed as mythical, and a lot of people conflated that rare feeling with the actual quality.

 

I also think that it was the fact that you largely (barring Fulgrim/the latter 2/3 of Flight) followed the same characters through the arc. We don't typically get to see that from BL for 40k specifically, yes you have a trilogy here or there (at least now, we could have more if BL would ever finish them), but not really in the same scope

 

I'm in the camp that doesn't really think Horus Rising is that great, but it was good enough that if you said "well there's two more books where you get to see what happens to these characters, and then some others for books 4 and 5 that connect" then I'd probably sign up again, because it was good enough to see where it goes. Combine that with the other stuff and it stuck, especially given things like the SM battle series, where arcs were mostly one and done, even if you wanted more from a character

 

4 hours ago, Roomsky said:

Could have been re-jigged into a pre-rift story with a few rewrites here and

 

Just replace the word Rift with warp storm (any old one) and that does the majority of the rewriting for you. We already see ships lost, it wouldn't be un-40k to have a system cutoff for a while

 

I do think it's telling that we are seeing less and less focus on the word "primaris" going forwards though. It was something I noticed with Lazarus, and again with Broken Crusade is that the major emphasis that a lot of the 8th ed novels placed on Primaris and their specific primarisisms (Dark Imperium is a perfect example), is slowly disappearing. It might get mentioned here or there but not nearly as much as it used to