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 January 12 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 January 13 by Fedor

[Roomsky]

Well, I'm glad it's not just a parade of Thorpe bashing in here.

 

But to those who believe he should get to write about the Destruction of Caliban, I'm curious why you think he should have it, beyond 'earning' it with his previous work on the faction. What is he bringing to the table other authors can't - be it narratively or character-wise?

 

In my opinion he's not a good action writer, his Lion isn't my favourite, his Luther is mid (in fairness, so is everyone else's,) and he's one of 3 authors with a full-length Heresy Dark Angels novel. Legacy of Caliban is a closed loop.

 

The only part I see Thorpe as really owning is Astelan, being that the character is almost entirely his own and, for better or worse, he makes the guy entertaining. But does Thorpe's Astelan need a whole novel here? I'd be happy enough with a short or novella to describe his view of the whole event.

 

Sell it to me, @DarkChaplain

[phandaal]

1 hour ago, Roomsky said:

Well, I'm glad it's not just a parade of Thorpe bashing in here.

 

If it ever feels this way, it is because Gav earned that reaction himself. Nobody (I assume) ever went into their first, second, or even third Gav Thorpe novel planning to hate it. Those of us who have come to dislike his work over the years have come to that conclusion by reading what he wrote.

 

Gav is actually one of those authors where I have never felt like I was bandwagoning my dislike for him. Just about everyone thinks CS Goto's books are best used for kindling, but there are plenty of people who are more than happy with Gav's books. I disagree with those opinions, but it does make me feel like I am not just busting out a pitchfork when the word "tuchulcha" makes me cringe a little in secondhand embarrassment.

[wecanhaveallthree]

Quote

Sell it to me, @DarkChaplain

 

Hello, it's me, DarkChaplain. 'I know all about mass market paperbacks! Where is the Black Library Weekender YOU COWARDS! Give me the crying emoji or give me death!'

 

Hem hem. Now. Credentials established:

 

First of the Fallen. No notes.

 

Thorpe should write Caliban's destruction because he understands Caliban. Not an idealised version of it, but the true Caliban, the one neck-deep in darkness, the world of ruthless knights and secretive Orders. First of the Fallen recalls King Arthur's realm, all the mystery and danger and doom of it. Thorpe's Luther is a man agonisingly caught between love for his home and love for his brother(s), whose desire to be the hero he was always meant to be damns the Angels for ten thousand years. Luther is a hero in the wrong story, just as Caliban is a fantastical character in the wrong setting. Nobody hits those off notes like Thorpe. Nobody manages to show you the best and the worst of them. Nobody else could do Luther's pathetic failure and realisation better than Thorpe could. Nobody is better placed to twist the knife.

 

Quote

um but i don't care about luther

 

RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE

[1ncarnadine]

Far from a parade of bashing Gav, I think it's mostly his Dark Angels (and his Corax/Raven Guard) work that I'm not thrilled with. I think he wrote great Codex material, his Primarchs entries are excellent, Honour to the Dead is an awesome audio, he's produced some banger Heresy shorts, and my dad loved the Last Chancers so much that we had a long-running ritual of watching The Dirty Dozen every year. He's written a lot of cool things.

But yeah, as phandaal said, he's also written some cringe. Some cringey cringe-cringe whyyy cringe.

 

This is possibly off-topic, but seeing the summary of major Dark Angels works got me thinking... Why the heck aren't there more stories about their Successor Chapters? I would think the Angels of Absolution would be worth a story from their perspective, and a lot of the newer successors that have been added since the Great Rift have some mighty neat prompts. I get that the Unforgiven operate to some extent as a Legion, but that should justify more stories from non-Dark Angels perspectives if anything. The Dark Angels can't be everywhere themselves.

Maybe it's just something that hasn't caught on yet. But with all the secretive orders that used to exist in the Heresy, some of those have to have been passed on to the Chapters and influenced their cultures, not to mention where they tend to operate (such as the Knights of Abhorrence in the Ghoul Stars), their home world influences, etc. We have so many stories about Blood Angels successors, in comparison.

[Valkia the Bloody]

Well, "Angels of Darkness" had a deep impact on me, back when it came out.

It was one of the first 40k books I read and one of the books that brought me over from Fantasy to 40k.

Maybe it is my nostalgia eyes, but I think it was a great book (I even re-read it a few years ago). 

It is full of mystery, intrigue, shows the hypocritical nature of not only the Dark Angels, but Imperial institutions on a whole. I liked the characters. 

Funny thing is, I did read the book BEFORE I knew a lot about the Dark Angels at all. This is where I learned about how half of the Legion turned traitor. I thought this was fascinating.

I actually believed what Astelan was telling, just because it made for the better story. 

I did read Purging of Kadillus, expecting more along the lines of Angels of Darkness, but was a bit disappointed. It was a good Space Marine book, but lacked in the intrigue and mystery department.

I admit that I have so far avoided the Heresy Dark Angels books- back when they came out, they had disappointing reviews, I was a student and this saved me money (I got all of the other early Heresy books, yes, even Abyss....). However, I have the "Angels of Caliban" on my "to listen to soon" audiobook list- mainly, because it features my favorites (the Night Lords). 

I read some of Thorpe's other work, but I was not sold on the first Raven Guard HH novel and subsequently did not get the sequels. 

I liked the Malekith Fantasy novel (back then, I had a Dark Elves army....). 

 

EDIT- I just remember I did read the 40k Dark Angels Omnibus. I had the book in my hands when I was back home for Christmas. I do NOT remember a single thing about the book, I just remember I read it on the train when I traveled between home and university when I was studying. Since I cannot remember anything, it must have been pretty forgettable. 

Edited January 14 by Valkia the Bloody

[Roomsky]

1 hour ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

 

Hello, it's me, DarkChaplain.

 

Well, "I don't care about Luther" isn't quite accurate. My issue is that Luther, like the primarchs, is constantly hyped up as the pinnacle of his kind, a master not just strategically but also politically. The guy who would cover The Lion's diplomatic shortcomings. Unlike the primarchs, he doesn't have enough off-page awesome to make that even mildly believable.

 

I think, purely based on his actions, he's a compelling character. If Luther were, say, your average knight who just so happened to stumble upon a feral primarch and managed to befriend him, he'd be great! Luther is constantly in over his head and I root for him to find clever ways out of it. If he was an average Calibanite constantly struggling to live up to his unexpected new position, he'd be one of my favourite Heresy characters. Who doesn't love an underdog?

 

Unfortunately, he was not your average knight, he was the greatest of his generation. Allegedly. Without the coming of the Lion, the name Luther would have gone down in legend. For what, exactly? His experiences pre-ascension seem like fairly standard feats of Order members, and he fails to win over the Knights of Lupus, the Saroshii, and his own people (several times for that one, in fact.) It doesn’t matter that most of those were narratively inevitable failures, we don't ever have a good idea of what his successes look like. Nothing so minor has ever annoyed me more in a Black Library book than:

"It was then that my confidence became overconfidence, for my mouth ran away from my brain a little.

 

‘I would be happy to send you our scan records of their fleet – they were in quite some poor repair, Sar Corswain,’ I offered enthusiastically, cursing myself even as the last syllables left my lips."

 

Are you serious? Corswain just got there. But Luthor is so in awe of his own cleverness that he immediately almost gives the game away. This is the master of diplomacy that covered The Lion's weaknesses? This guy would lose to an online Debate Bro.

 

And Luthor's alleged magnificence is integral to his character. It's why he almost let The Lion get nuked. It's why he still commands the respect of the initiates who have long-since ascended to places he could not follow. Luther's story is predicated on informed attributes he rarely, if ever, displays.

 

First of the Fallen, as noted above, did not change that for me. It's uninspired action/adventure scenes spliced between, admittedly compelling, scenes of a remarkably average man trying not to get murdered in the company of space marines. I would like Caliban's Doom to be more than an accountant who got kicked upstairs having a sword fight with a guy in need of industrial-strength antipsychotics.

[Fedor]

I think there was definitely bandwagoning in the Thorpe dislike, but more so around the weirdo elements of the online Aeldari community developing a belief that Thorpe was responsible for GW never giving them wins, and hated the faction simply for writing a downer trilogy with a few dodgy "power levels" action scenes, or the longstanding memes about everything DA being the fallen, with that somehow also being his fault. On places like Reddit you would see folk bandwagoning onto that sort of thing in a blatantly obvious manner.

 

 

Edited January 14 by Fedor

[DarkChaplain]

2 hours ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

 

Hello, it's me, DarkChaplain. 'I know all about mass market paperbacks! Where is the Black Library Weekender YOU COWARDS! Give me the crying emoji or give me death!'

 

Hem hem. Now. Credentials established:

 

First of the Fallen. No notes.

 

Thorpe should write Caliban's destruction because he understands Caliban. Not an idealised version of it, but the true Caliban, the one neck-deep in darkness, the world of ruthless knights and secretive Orders. First of the Fallen recalls King Arthur's realm, all the mystery and danger and doom of it. Thorpe's Luther is a man agonisingly caught between love for his home and love for his brother(s), whose desire to be the hero he was always meant to be damns the Angels for ten thousand years. Luther is a hero in the wrong story, just as Caliban is a fantastical character in the wrong setting. Nobody hits those off notes like Thorpe. Nobody manages to show you the best and the worst of them. Nobody else could do Luther's pathetic failure and realisation better than Thorpe could. Nobody is better placed to twist the knife.

 

 

RESPECTFULLY DISAGREE

 

 

 

 

In all seriousness, though, I've been staying out of this one deliberately, because on one hand I expected things to devolve into a lot of Thorpe bashing (as is tradition) and because I had enough other things going on this week to want to add arguing extensively about the matter on top of it :') I almost went in to push back about The Wolftime, though.

 

That being said, I'm not sure how I'd fairly divorce Thorpe "earning" the book through his work history from all the elements and themes that'll inevitably have to be handled in the Destruction of Caliban book which either originated or were transported and developed by Thorpe over the years.

 

 

Still, without getting into things too deeply, since it was brought up as kinda meh here already, Purging of Kadillus is a weird book. It's more loosely connected to Angels of Darkness and the Legacy of Caliban trilogy, but primarily, it was a Space Marine Battles novel. Those put action first, with few exceptions - even ADB's Helsreach is a massive lineup of spectacle moments and setpieces, which is carried hugely by the first-person Grimaldus PoV. If it wasn't for the introspection, it'd be all-out action for long stretches, and it still benefits from only really showing a limited, rather isolated view of Armageddon 3rd, with other stories and novels dealing with things elsewhere (look up how many shorts and novellas even under the SMB banner actually deal with Armageddon, and there's other stuff, too).

Kadillus could never live up to Angels of Darkness by design, because it's scope and purpose are vastly different. It's light on introspection whereas AoD is basically all about that.

 

Additionally, The Purging of Kadillus was based on existing fluff, going back to the Storm of Vengeance 2nd edition supplement from 1997, which Gav co-authored back in the day, alongside Jervis Johnson and Andy Chambers. It's crazy old stuff that is clearly from a different, simpler time. Funnily enough, the same thing also got adapted into a god-awful lane defense mobile game cash grab (that was also on Steam), basically a reskin of the developer's other, more successful game. I believe it released back in 2014, or at least I last played it that summer according to my Steam library. It's been delisted like many other games from that period, due to GW being real geniuses and renting out the 40k license only for a limited timeframe and making it prohibitively expensive to extend, which saw multiple games shut down around the same time, including the turn-based Space Hulk adaptations.

 

So the battle for Piscina IV was already mostly set in stone, and it wasn't exactly the most complex thing, just busy. The book only barely mentions Astelan by name once, in the single Boreas chapter it had, and wasn't really concerned with propelling the "meta plot" forward. Piscina IV plays a role again in Ravenwing, but all things considered, Purging of Kadillus is more of a commissioned battle novel with nods to what came before and would follow later than anything else. It's the odd one out.

 

Everything else, though, has been consistently working towards this confluence at Caliban, though. That plot Merir Astelan and even Typhus wove, that Cypher may or may not be involved in, depending on who he actually is at this point and whether or not GW will ever allow it to be what it ought to be (I still would not be surprised if we got something akin to Moriana-Kat's situation happening with Zahariel al Zurias and Holguin; Holguin should be the current keeper of the Lionsword as per Angels of Caliban, unless I forgot something, and Zahariel is the Cypher on Caliban, although John French muddied the waters with Grey Angel where he was clearly involved and helping the Knights Errant to escape from Luther, implying Loken knew the bloke, while also never revealing the identity before Samus happened in TEATD), runs through both Heresy and almost-contemporary 40k. I may not be happy with the Lion just up and punching Nemiel's head off, but Gav clearly took the reins and put down the blocks.

 

The problems for me arose with Forgeworld, which rejigged the Legion in big ways - and even retconned Luther and co's exile to Caliban to no longer happen immediately, something that had to be accounted for in other books again, including Luther: First of the Fallen, and the way Dan Abnett just completely ditched the Lion's anger at Guilliman, set up in the novella set just before he gets to Macragge, and made him act like a fool in The Unremembered Empire.

 

My big question at this point, though, is how much of Gav's planning over the past 15 years is still going to be viable now that GW has brought Caliban back via Vashtorr and the Lion woke up. Maybe this whole M42 plot development is currently on hold in part because of the Scouring and this book being not too far off, and needing to be done first. Or GW started meddling and threw things out of whack. We'll have to see one way or another.

 

Also, for long years have I been one of the seemingly few proponents of the original Descent of Angels novel by Mitchell Scanlon. I loved pre-Imperium Caliban and the way it set up the disillusionment with the new regime as Caliban gets deforested in favor of cancerous industry at the cost of the Calibanite people. But damn did people hate that book because... it didn't have enough to do with the Horus Heresy, being the first book that didn't directly tie into the fall of Horus or Isstvan or the likes. It was a setup novel to a Legion, something we'd get plenty more of, but as book #6, it got hammered quite a lot within the community. But it did so much to set up the Dark Angels as what they would later become, the Lion's need for more, the feeling of him being a caged beast on his own world, the way Luther's resentment grows, particularly after seeing what happened to Caliban and so forth. It made Caliban a homeworld that I could visualize pretty clearly even in those early Heresy days, being the first book to actually do so. And through that it drove home the loss of it and what "joining the Imperium" actually means even when you're on the winning side, not the side bringing "compliance" to a random backwater world.

 

But that ain't a Thorpe novel. Thorpe did, however, build on it over the years, and looking at Luther and Angels of Caliban, as well as some of the short stories, I feel he's done so well.

 

Would I have liked to see more Prime-Luther doing knightly things? Yes, definitely. But I doubt there'd have been room for it anywhere with BL/GW, unless as a sideshow to current events, and Luther: First of the Fallen with its various vignettes, whether truthful or not, kinda stepped on those toes by now. And damn am I glad that book exists...

[Roomsky]

Most excellent

 

That does make things clearer to me, without just glazing the guy, thank you.

 

I am honest in wanting to discuss Thorpe's virtues as well as his shortcomings (even if the thread's creation was influenced by my sheer irritation at Azrael.) Here's some more!

Angels of Caliban is probably my favourite Horus Heresy Dark Angels book, even if I could take or leave the half following The Lion. This is Luther at his most believable, and the tangle of plots and conflicting motivations makes it a joy to experience most of the way through. The Imperium Secundus plot outdid Lee's Lion plot in Fallen Angels as well, if for no other reason than the glimpses of the broken promise of Imperium Secundus shining through here and there.

 

Angels of Darkness is a classic; straight up, no caveats. It's interesting, it's well-told, and it set up years of discussion and debate mercifully unrelated to power scaling. It’s also, arguably, the template for the best 40k-era astartes fiction ever since, creating the ever lauded “perhaps my space dad is not who I thought he was” genre.

 

Master of Sanctity is just... bonkers. Asmodai is delightfully insane! A terminator falls through the stairs and can’t get up! It moves fast as hell and sort of feels like Angels of Darkness 2, regarding the subject matter and how it handles it. Gods, I wish all his Dark Angels fiction had this energy.

 

So, uh, yeah. Man is fully capable of writing a good book. I loved Rogal Dorn, and that was quite recent. But much like MCNEIIIILLLLL... I’m wary. I’d rather a lock of an author. An all-star to complete the lay-up. I like the Dark Angels premise, but reading their books, I don’t know if even their best ones (excluding, perhaps, Angels of Darkness) would have won over someone who wasn’t already invested in the chapter. But hey, that one sort-of exception is Thorpe. Maybe he’ll do it again?
 

[Nagashsnee]

Whoever wrote the 'Lion punches his own chaplains head clear off because he CORRECTLY pointed out a stone cold fact' should write all dark angel books for ever.

 

I still bring it up to irk my local dark angel players.