Gav Thorpe's Dark Angels

[Roomsky]

With The Scouring starting and written coverage of the Destruction of Caliban now inevitable, let's chat about Thorpe's Dark Angels. Do you love them? Do you hate them? How do you rate them? Do you want Thorpe to cover this most significant moment in their fluff, and if so, what do you want to see him bring to the table? 

Thorpe's Dark Angels Novels and Novellas:

• The Lion
• Angels of Caliban
• Luther: First of the Fallen
• Angels of Darkness
• The Purging of Kadillus
• Ravenwing
• Master of Sanctity
• The Unforgiven
• Azrael

Personally, I'm not hot on his Dark Angels work. I really like the ambition he shows with his ideas, but like the Star Wars prequels, the execution is extremely messy. The quality also varies WILDLY, to the point where I'm surprised Ravenwing and Angels of Darkness were written by the same guy. (I do like Angels of Darkness and Master of Sanctity though, he hit the sweet spot for entertainment in both of those, IMO.)

I actually don't mind the childish, psychopathic zeal to pursue the Fallen he injects into the 40k chapter - it's very in keeping with the madness of the Imperium, and the dramatic irony of the chapter (I just wish they didn't read like crap.) His characterization of the Lion as constantly throwing tantrums, and the allegedly best-of-his-generation Luther being fairly inept as a diplomat, make me wary of him covering Caliban's destruction, however. If he does cover that event, I'm hoping he can balance continuity nods with making it a piece that stands somewhat on its own. I feel like it's totally possible to tie all his Dark Angels work together without making it an impenetrable conga line of references to his other works.

This thread is inspired by an attempt to read Azrael, which I abandoned almost immediately for skipping characterization in favor of fight scenes.

[Karhedron]

I find Gav Thorpe a bit hit and miss in general. His Ravenguard stuff in HH was pretty good but I didn't enjoy the DA stuff. I really like Space Wolves but I haven't been able to finish Wolftime. 

[Lathe Biosas]

His writing style has changed over the years and while he has had some great ideas and amazing opening Chapters, his execution in the final Chapters are not always the best. 

 

I still love his Last Chancers novels, though.

[Chaplain Lucifer]

I wish someone else would write DA. Gav just can't.

[darkhorse0607]

I was kind of on the fence about Thorpes Dark Angels (mostly on the negative side to be honest)

 

And then I read Lazarus, and that pushed me all the way over  to the "Let someone else do the Dark Angels" side.

 

Its not a 10/10 book by any means, but it was good enough, and it actually had potential

 

#letthembemorethanchasingthefallen

[Roomsky]

I'll also throw in my thoughts on the other Dark Angels authors:

• ADB and Wraight - Love `em, but not a fair comparison as their works are very short / don't have the Dark Angels as the main focus. I think they do perfect "Dark Angels as supporting cast." Annandale is less good but is in a similar position, based on Ruinstorm.
• Kloster - Probably the most solid? He wrote the much-desired Dark Angels novel that wasn't about The Fallen, but still kept a strong chapter identity. The existence of The Fallen haunts them, even when their mission doesn't directly involve them. 
• Brooks - His Lion is pretty lame, but I like his Dark Angels. Generally they're intelligent but damaged. I wish he'd been able to write the Lion as mentally tied into knots as he should be.
• Guymer - If this were just based on Dreadwing, I'd call him the best Dark Angels author, both for the Legion and the Lion. But I really dislike Lord of the First, so he's only at about 50/50, quality wise.

All of the above I'd prefer to write about Caliban exploding (leaving it there as that discussion belongs in The Scouring thread.)

• Scanlon - Fine, I guess? My issues with Descent are more due to how it was written, rather than the legion itself.
• Lee - I enjoyed everything related to politicking, and found the way he writes action scenes a total bore. Thorpe level, I'd say.

Again, to give Thorpe his flowers, I love how the legion is addicted to tying itself into knots over The Fallen. I kind of just wish that was all his books were? Instead of protracted fight scenes or character shilling. I think his strengths as an author clash with what is expected from a 40k book.

[phandaal]

Looking at my copy of Knights of Caliban on the shelf, I can see the places where I dog-eared a page and put it down for who knows how long because Gav's writing is such a slog. Only the fact that I have been a Dark Angels fan since the day I saw a demo of Space Hulk at the local PC store kept me going through his stories.

 

Honestly, I think Gav has a lot of unearned respect because he copied homework from William King and Dan Parkinson to make his dwarf novels. He is better when he is being unoriginal, or when he is constrained to writing short blurbs for rulebooks.

 

The only current Black Library author I would rate lower for the Dark Angels is Phil Kelly, and that is just because Phil is a Tau fanboy and GW should really know better than to let him write for any other faction. Having Azrael send the Tau to attack another Unforgiven chapter is so dumb that I can just kind of pretend it didn't happen.

 

Gav has a knack for ideas that sound kind of cool if you don't think about them, but the problem is no one ever checks to see if those ideas are good or not. Case in point - having Azrael cause the destruction of Caliban by accidentally sending a warp storm back in time. Such a neat little bow, it might as well have come from a children's Saturday morning cartoon. (Side note - his Votann are not any better.)

 

So yeah, not a fan. GW has other authors who have proven they can write better Dark Angels stories.

 

Edited 21 hours ago by phandaal

[darkhorse0607]

17 minutes ago, Roomsky said:

Brooks - His Lion is pretty lame, but I like his Dark Angels. Generally they're intelligent but damaged. I wish he'd been able to write the Lion as mentally tied into knots as he should be.

 

 

Yeah, this is a good shout. I know people have problems with that book anyway (myself included, although the afterwords kind of makes up for it), and I don't love the huggy version of the Lion you get with it. With that, I'd take huggy/Guilliman-lite Lion over Thorpes "this chaplain questioned me so I will punch his head off" Lion.

 

That being said, one reason I re-read that book as often as I do, is because I really enjoy the Risen. So if Brooks ends up writing another Lion novel, or does a Dark Angels novel in general I wouldn't be mad about it. I'd also take another Dark Angels novel from Kloster, although I enjoy how he writes Marines in general so the bar isn't high for me to be on board 

[Lathe Biosas]

No one's mentioned it (as it's more of a novella), but I really enjoyed John French's Cypher, Lord of the Fallen.

 

I like having a super unreliable narrator, and it really works for this story. It’s the only Dark Angels story where I can truly say, "I wish it was longer."

[1ncarnadine]

I enjoyed Cypher, but it does trend towards being so mysterious and unreliable that at times it doesn't really say anything.

 

I'm just not that excited for Gav's Dark Angels. I haven't read all of his works on them because I just haven't been interested from what I have read of his Dark Angels. But I did get through his Heresy Dark Angels, and I remember reading Angels of Darkness ~20 years ago and feeling marginal about it even then, before I could read as critically. I liked most of Luther, I guess, but nothing else impressed me. It's poisoned the well for me in some ways, because I also haven't read Brooks's Son of the Forest, Guymer's DA works, or Kloster's Lazarus. I probably should at some point, because I have most of those in various formats.

 

I do really like the Dark Angels that Wraight and ADB depict, but as Roomsky noted, it's still just the Dark Angels as side characters in other stories. I think Annandale did alright, too.

 

The whole concept of the Lion having a noble exterior that contrasts with a savage core borne from his time in the dark depths of Caliban, and that that nature contrasts Russ's, is actually great. It just doesn't always meet an execution that sells me on it.

[Scribe]

I thought Luther was decent?

[SvenIronhand]

Gav himself has acknowledged that his stories cover the Hunt for the Fallen a bit too much, and that 90 percent of the time, the DA are doing normal SM things. I think Purging of Kallidus was at least partially an attempt to right this perceived wrong.

[Gillyfish]

Angels of Darkness was clever in that you got the perspective of the Fallen and it caused doubts in the minds of the Dark Angel's Chaplain on Piscina. That rug pull was pretty well-executed to the extent that a lot of readers assumed that the words of the Fallen must be true, not realising that characters can lie or have their own perspectives. 

 

At the time of release it did rather split people as a lot of readers weren't quite sure how to take it. Of the books of his I have read, it's probably the best executed (I have not read all of the above). Some of his later books do feel a bit rushed in places which I suspect may be due to impending deadlines.

 

The first part of Scanlon's Descent of Angels was great. I really enjoyed reading about Caliban, but everything felt incredibly rushed once the Imperium arrived. It felt like there were chapters edited out to make it fit to a publishable size and that would have been a shame as what was being created could have been a lot better.

 

I have really enjoyed ADB's description of the Dark Angels from the perspective of the other Legions. It's a nice take and they feel more rounded, somehow. 

 

I think part of the difficulty of writing these characters, particularly primarchs, is that they are so different to us and supposed to be so intelligent that it is actually quite difficult for an author to convincingly portray that sense of them being several steps ahead of everyone else, even the other Astartes.

 

One author mentioned in passing but not for his Dark Angel work is William King; he wrote the original Deathwing short story in the boxed supplement of the same name and, for a long time, that was a really defining piece of fiction. I remember devouring it as a teen. It is a portrayal of a very different chapter, of course.

[Felix Antipodes]

Thorpe, across all his writing, has been so hit or miss that it is almost maddening.  Good ideas are often badly executed.  Yet I still pick up anything he puts out because his ideas and plots are often solid and he occasionally gets it right.  Plus, it would seem incredibly churlish to not give him a chance to do what is the pivotal moment in the DA story.  

On the other hand, I’ve said several times that I would like to see newer talent get their chance to play with these toys.  Kloster would be a good choice going by his previous work, but for someone left field I wouldn’t mind seeing Rob Young getting a shot.  Whoever gets the nod, I hope we get the DA Chapter and not the meme.

[Fedor]

Angels of Darkness was an early BL classic that sparked decades of debate in the online community (for good and bad). Not anything special prose-wise, but it's a great 40k ideas book that really stoked the imagination around the heresy era in a similar way as something like Lord of the Night.

 

I don't particularly care for the later 40k Dark Angels stuff he did, when it started to get into big convoluted plots, bolter porn, and time-travel :cuss:e.

 

His 30k Dark Angels work was mostly fine. However, I don't think he ever truly seemed to be fully in the creative driving seat there We had the early books from Scanlon/Lee then Thorpe comes in and tries to clunkily subvert the whole Nemiel/Zahariel thing and gets the Tuchulcha going (which tied in with his 40k stuff), but after that....ADB upends the Lion's characterisation in Savage Weapons ( a story I don't think has aged well) and a lot of the subsequent non-Caliban DA plotline seemed to be more collective Heresy team committee and Forgeworld driven. The execution of it was mostly solid.

 

Personally, I think the often egregiously overstuffed Forgeworld background for the 30k Dark Angels didn't do much to help the authors write a coherent primarch/legion

Edited 4 hours ago by Fedor