Hive - Dan Abnett

[Tolmeus]

Got my edition today. The slipcase / dust jacket was in good order, as well as the books themselves. 

 

Read the first chapter, so only got a taste by now but I like it. 

 

Even now one will notice the extensive use of new words and phrases by Abnett. It fits in it's function to create the atmosphere of a Hive with it's own many subcultures.

 

Look forward to reading more tomorrow and your opinions on both the novels.

[grailkeeper]

Very early into it.

 

It needs a thesaurus.

 

It's not full of samaragdine harpagons, but he's made up a lot of vocab. I suppose the slang localises it to a particular place. I don't mind it at all, but I can see it attracting comments.

[grailkeeper]

A small complaint about the kindle version.

 

The book uses many many different povs and switched between them frequently.

 

On the kindle sometimes there isn't a gap when a pov changes. This is usually when a page is turned. As a result you can think a character is doing something, but it's actually someone else. If they'd formatted it slightly better that problem wouldn't exist.

 

Otherwise enjoying this. Its pretty rich.

[darkhorse0607]

14 hours ago, grailkeeper said:

I don't mind it at all, but I can see it attracting comments.

 

Yeah, I will give you one 

 

Did he try to go for the record of new terms he put in here?

 

Started it last last night. Its ok so far, but my goodness he has created a lot of new names/phrases/etc. Agreed that its supposed to make it more feel more in world, but it's definitely an Abnett book

 

Nice to hear Toby Longworth again though, it's been a while since he's done a new narration 

[Fedor]

Big Daddy Dan still striding through 40k like a colossus. It's good to dig into something like this that isn't just soulless box-checking explicitly tied to tabletop characters/units/campaign releases.

[grailkeeper]

To be fair the vast majority of the new terms are obvious in context, and are mostly swearwords. 

 

Drokkin' love a good Sci-Fi swear word.

[darkhorse0607]

47 minutes ago, grailkeeper said:

To be fair the vast majority of the new terms are obvious in context, and are mostly swearwords. 

 

Drokkin' love a good Sci-Fi swear word.

Yeah, I agree, also to not to overstate it, I am only a few chapters in so I am not trying to pass judgement on the book as a whole

 

Maybe I just am meshing with Abnetts writing right now or something, maybe I am still mad about the End and the Death, I dunno 

 

I am fully on board with the premise, and I get most of it is just jargon/swear words and its not that big of a deal

[The Scorpion]

But then, is it good or nah?

[grailkeeper]

8 minutes ago, The Scorpion said:

But then, is it good or nah?

There's a lot going on and I dont understand most of it.

 

But then again I was the same with Dune.

 

Yeah, its good. 

[wecanhaveallthree]

Quote

The book uses many many different povs and switched between them frequently.

Quote

There's a lot going on and I dont understand most of it.

Quote

It needs a thesaurus.

 

...

 

Quote

Yeah, its good. 

 

HE CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS

[DarkChaplain]

There's actually a section in the Afterword about this, haha.

 

Quote

For those of you who like to know these things, here’s a quick glossary of the slang. I haven’t included all the (many) bits of local Hive terminology, such as ‘Without’, ‘Skirt’, ‘crumplegang’, ‘bond’, ‘vertic’, ‘zontal’, ‘Overmost’, or ‘lightwell’ and so on, or phrases like ‘plenty be’, because they are all pretty self-explanatory, or defined in context.

bolit – ‘nasty’, ‘unpleasant’.
burboe – ‘fancy’ or ‘fine’, as in posh, or well-to-do.
chofa – ‘stupid’, also ‘idiot’ or ‘fool’.
ecja – ‘filthy’, ‘dirty’, or simply ‘very’.
frhaka – expletive.
gruek – ‘thug’, ‘brute’.
jant – ‘claptrap’, ‘nonsense’, though stronger, like ‘bull:cuss:’.
jha – respectful honorific, both ‘sir’ and ‘madam’. Plural is jha therra.
jheek – ‘good’, ‘fine’, ‘all right’.
khefda – ‘fancy’, in the sense of fussy and showy-offy.
kherti – ‘trouble’, but literally ‘bloody’ or ‘violently messy’.
snart – a cocky, arrogant person. ‘Smart-ass’.
thuffy – ‘ostentatious’, in the sense of elaborate or excessive.
vulp – to steal, so also ‘thief’.

I’m sure I’ve missed some. I’m sure you’ll let me know. Anyway, it’s time to lock up. Hope you enjoyed your look backstage. Mind your head on the way out. Don’t worry, I’m a professional. I know my way around back here.

 

Makes me proper glad that he wasn't involved with Varangantua, to be honest. Though maybe if he had been, Crime might have survived a little longer, so that authors would at least hit their sequels...

[wecanhaveallthree]

+Fraters, I need a status update on your progress through this book.

 

My searches here and elsewhere reveal glowing praise for worldbuilding and slang and being set in a hive but I have, as yet, to see a single post about any characters or story. Is it actually a good book as opposed to a Dark Heresy sourcebook in disguise? 

[grailkeeper]

I'm about a quarter of the way in so far.

 

There are a lot of interweaving storylines. Here's a rough spoiler version for those asking

 

Spoiler

The planet is a hive world. There are two hives on the planet but the main one is about 10 times as big as the other and is far more important. The two hives were in a civil war in the last decade, with the main hive winning. The cost of this war saw the planetary governor being deposed by imperial authorities, because he missed tithes. The war was seen as a pointless expense. The imperials have imposed a new governor, although the person groomed for this position died unexpectedly, so the new governor is a last minute second choice replacement.

 

 

There are a lot of competing factions that want to overthrow the regime. These include a couple of different factions representing the oppressed lower classes, what is obviously a Slaaneshy cult although the name slaanesh is not used, factions loyal to the old deposed governor and  infiltrators from the other hive.

 

[Taliesin]

Any good Arbites scenes so far? Are there Inquisitors in it? That cult sounds interesting.

[The Scorpion]

Agree. I like that everyone has their motives, and it just so happens that someone's motives are just downright Heresy.

[grailkeeper]

8 hours ago, Taliesin said:

Any good Arbites scenes so far? Are there Inquisitors in it? That cult sounds interesting.

 

 

Spoiler

Arbites are in it. They're very powerful but so far haven't done much on camera. They were a large part in the replacement of thr old governor. I think they will do more as the booknprogresses. The locals don't know about Chaos, but they do.

 

No inquisitors.

 

 

 

[wecanhaveallthree]

Grail, you know I love ya, but I gotta say: your spoiler text actually has fewer specifics than the WarCom article (or the book blurb).

 

There was a big thread over on 40klore today where every post was either WOW THE WORLDBUILDING IS GREAT or DAMN ABNETT, WORLBUILDING AGAIN. Someone compared it to the golden era of 80's Tom Clancy (oh no!) and another to Dark Heresy (on one hand, awesome, everyone loves Dark Heresy, on the other hand, I literally accuse it of being a Dark Heresy sourcebook upthread here). 

 

In fifty-three posts, nobody mentioned a single character. Not one. Granted, some of those fifty-three posts were me ranting about Moby Dick, but that's kind of insane, no? I don't want to sound like an elitist jerk, but I generally anticipate a higher level and greater depth of discussion here than with the hoi polloi on Reddit. It's kind of funny to look at the two other recent book threads and then this one. Death Rider has praise for the Krieg and the Commissar character, Zardu Layak has a lot of discussion of Layak's character and (perhaps more importantly) that of the antagonists. But every discussion of Hive, here and elsewhere, is 'worldbuilding'.

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if I had to write a thesis, I'd title it something like The Deletion Of The Necromancy Thread And Its Consequences Have Been A Disaster For In-Depth Discussion On This Board. 

[Nagashsnee]

36 minutes ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

Grail, you know I love ya, but I gotta say: your spoiler text actually has fewer specifics than the WarCom article (or the book blurb).

 

There was a big thread over on 40klore today where every post was either WOW THE WORLDBUILDING IS GREAT or DAMN ABNETT, WORLBUILDING AGAIN. Someone compared it to the golden era of 80's Tom Clancy (oh no!) and another to Dark Heresy (on one hand, awesome, everyone loves Dark Heresy, on the other hand, I literally accuse it of being a Dark Heresy sourcebook upthread here). 

 

In fifty-three posts, nobody mentioned a single character. Not one. Granted, some of those fifty-three posts were me ranting about Moby Dick, but that's kind of insane, no? I don't want to sound like an elitist jerk, but I generally anticipate a higher level and greater depth of discussion here than with the hoi polloi on Reddit. It's kind of funny to look at the two other recent book threads and then this one. Death Rider has praise for the Krieg and the Commissar character, Zardu Layak has a lot of discussion of Layak's character and (perhaps more importantly) that of the antagonists. But every discussion of Hive, here and elsewhere, is 'worldbuilding'.

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if I had to write a thesis, I'd title it something like The Deletion Of The Necromancy Thread And Its Consequences Have Been A Disaster For In-Depth Discussion On This Board. 

 

Spoiler

Look it has characters, it has LOTS of characters. If your asking why none of them are being stood out,...its because non of them stand out. They are all fine, they all do what they need to do in the story they are not badly written. But neither do any of them GRIP you. 

 

This book (cause it is 1 book) is NOT about characters, its about THE HIVE. This is a story about a ant colony during a difficult time, there are many ants, some of them more important then others, there is even a queen ant. But THE HIVE is the star, THE HIVE  is why this was made, THE HIVE  is formed from the combination of all these individual characters. 

 

Not every book is a character study, this is a setting study. The worldbuilding IS THE MAIN CHARACTER. And thats all anyone is talking about.

 

 

Or thats how i see it anyhow.

[darkhorse0607]

Spoiler

Honestly @wecanhaveallthree I think the reason why you havent seen much is because its Fragements Hive Edition

 

Were there characters in Fragments? Sure. Could you describe one or two? Sure. Was it actually about the characters? Not really because it was about the Siege, the they were stories from the Siege like this is a story from the Hive. 

 

I think if you're ok with that, then the book is good, it has a lot of world building, etc, but if you wanted this to be a non-hive character story (like I did), where they go on a journey through the hive, rather than the hive having characters move through it, then it is probably not going to be for you.