Looking Back on The Beast Arises

[Roomsky]

It's been almost 10 years since Black library's most infamous series concluded. Exceedingly popular at the time, it's since become extremely divisive, either an over-hated gem or a rightfully-hated mess. Let's celebrate its decade of existence by talking about it.

Have you read the series? What did you think? Have your opinions changed since it first released? Why is Drakan Vangorich your favourite character?

I myself am enjoying a re-read. Links to what I've reviewed so far:
Books 1 and 2
Books 3 and 4
Books 5 and 6
Books 7 and 8
Books 9 and 10

[Scribe]

23 minutes ago, Roomsky said:

Exceedingly popular at the time

 

Was it?!

[Roomsky]

12 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

Was it?!

Sales-wise, as far as I'm aware. I recall every discussion circle keeping up with the new releases, with lots of speculation about the next entries. It wasn't always positive buzz, but there was a lot of buzz.

[DukeLeto69]

Great concept (monthly serialised novels) but poorly executed (no surprise there).

 

They should have had the entire series written with enough time and editorial oversight to ensure no contradictions or repeated ideas. Instead I believe at most half had been written and the rest were chasing preset deadlines.

[Scribe]

6 minutes ago, Roomsky said:

Sales-wise, as far as I'm aware. I recall every discussion circle keeping up with the new releases, with lots of speculation about the next entries. It wasn't always positive buzz, but there was a lot of buzz.

 

Weird. It's one I completely skipped, just 0 interest.

[Rain]

Orks are just not nearly as compelling of an antagonist as Chaos/Traitor space marines. The drama of corruption, good intentions gone awry, and brothers becoming the most bitter of enemies has much more pathos and emotional resonance than "This cockney green guy is a lot bigger than most cockney green guys, and has a whole horde of green hooligans with him, so thousands of pages of bolter porn will be required to get rid of them." Orks are a comic relief faction, and despite this novel series apparent attempts at making them horrific, they are still too silly to be taken seriously in this kind of writing, as well as being too intrinsically alien in their comic mindlessness to empathize with in any way. 

 

They should have fleshed out the Age of Apostasy, or War of the False Primarch, or some other event that has the potential for more drama and intrigue on both sides of the conflict, as well as a more interesting antagonist.

[Roomsky]

Shadow of Ullanor - Rob Sanders

 

Last Son of Dorn ended with a major kick-in-the-nuts-style twist. How!? We asked, naively. How will Rob Sanders resolve all these conflicts satisfactorily in 200 pages?

 

He didn't, obviously.

 

It’s actually quite interesting going back to this after the Heresy's climax. This is, at least, half the length it should have been. TEatD was, at least, twice the length it should have been. Both, somehow, are reasonably enjoyable divorced from all the plotlines they failed to carry forward.

 

Taken on its own, the book is fine. It's written well enough, and is for my money actually a smoother read than Predator, Prey. It's a tight package, straightforward, with a good balance of action and intrigue. It ends the war in a somewhat believable way. In another, shorter, version of this series, this would've been a fine climax.

 

But for the series it's in, this book is a failure. It was hard to truly understand just how much they were flying by the seat of their pants until this dropped; everything before now was reasonably solid, passable as part of the plan. This reads like what it is - an author forced to end a conflict in 200 pages that no one before him knew what to do with.

 

Veritus, Wienand, Van Auken, Bohemond, and Laurentis get only a passing mention, if that. Krule, Lansung, and Kubik all get to participate in a brief plot point and then stop being mentioned. These are members of the series' main cast, and half of them aren't even here. Unless your name is Vangorich, Thane, or (confusingly) Zerberyn, you may as well not exist.

 

Vangorich is Vangorich, no complaints there. Sanders, despite being the author to introduce Thane, gives him no personality beyond "man of action." Zerberyn is a waste of pages because he's forced into a situation where he needs to kill loyalists, which we've seen multiple times already. Honestly, if something about Zerberyn and Kalkator's alliance is what made this third attack on Ullanor a success (being an ingredient the Imperium never would have counted on,) I'd forgive many of the book's sins. As it is, Zerberyn is an unforgivable waste of precious pages.

 

So, what is the secret ingredient that wins this third attempt to topple the Beast?

 

Realistically, it's Kubik's teleporter, because it means he can throw asteroids at Ullanor. This is given very little attention beyond serving as a vehicle to get Thane inside Gorkogrod (altogether comically underplaying the sheer destructive power of such a thing.) And I guess the arrival of the Phalanx, which has been absent from previous attempts for reasons that are not explained in this book (this isn't how you establish an intriguing mystery, BL. Stop doing like this.)

 

Allegedly, victory is because this time Thane got the whole Imperium to start cooperating. How, you may ask, after all the previous attempts? By making a nice speech and having Vangorich threaten Lansung and Verreult. How did a returned primarch fail to inspire such loyalty? How did Vangorich fail to do this sooner? How did the Imperium mobilize that much military power in short order without tripping over itself? you, It'll be explained in the next book, if you're lucky.

 

And then they use the Sister of Silence + Weirdboy strategy to explode The Beast's head, which creates a psychic shockwave that wins the war. Bit of an anticlimax, that. Adequately set up, I suppose, but if this was going to be the solution, I needed a better journey to get there. And why did we bother making 6 Beasts, if they were just going to die when their leader did? They didn't even do anything in the final battle!

 

In fairness to Sanders, I don't have a perfect picture of what happens behind the scenes. Having to write this is a raw deal whichever way you slice it, and the editors weren't exactly pulling their weight, based on some of the mild contradictions found within. But, unfortunately, he still wasn't the guy.

 

You know what this needed? Fragments. Hey put-put the gun down. Let me finish. This climax is apparently predicated on the Imperium coming together in a way it hasn't before. Demonstrate this with little snippets of every major character throughout the series performing a key role in this machine of murder. It would have been rushed, yes, but a series of fragments laying out the actions of Thane, Bohemond, Zerberyn, Laurentis, Kubik, Van Auken, Vangorich, Krule, Wienand, Veritus, and all the High Lords making the plan work would have at least made it feel like Thane didn't hijack the story so he could plot armour his way to victory. It wouldn't have been a great culmination, but it would have been a culmination.

 

Uhhhh 40/100, good try, but an F.

 

I lied in my previous review, I'm going to do an entirely separate post for the series' good and bad after I review The Beheading (or, The-Book-Where-Haley-Mostly-Cleans-Up-The-Mess.)

Edited 2 hours ago by Roomsky

[DukeLeto69]

1 hour ago, Scribe said:

 

Weird. It's one I completely skipped, just 0 interest.

So a sample of one! Why is it “weird” that people have different tastes to you?

Edited 2 hours ago by DukeLeto69