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I just read Dead Men Walking, and I liked it, but...I was supposed to be rooting for the Necrons, right? The author seemed to veer between portraying the Death Korps as horrible people and praising their virtues in an unconvincing way. It was the same way with the main character-the author seemed to want to portray him as a pretty worthless person in his former life, but a god damned hero once he joined the Guard. The last chapter especially, about him being a hero and marching to (almost certainly) his pointless death for all his friends, seemed too positive. Either the author is deliberately being more nuanced than I give him credit for, or else writing bolter-porn has seriously screwed up his values...anybody know which?
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Feb 9, 2014 15:18
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I was reading the Sword of Justice/Vengeance books, and they were really cool, seeing hosed-up chaosy creatures and stuff, but one thing bothered me about Nefarettacan'tspellit. Is Slannesh the only Chaos God that women ever fall to? In almost every novel with a female chaos character, it's Slannesh. Sexy ladies who do a lot of drugs and torture people. The only exception I can think of offhand is the female IG who turns to Khorne in Storm of Iron. I know, I know, sexism in spacemans is not surprising, but the more I thought about it the dumber it seemed.
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Mar 10, 2014 06:20
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I reread the Night Lords trilogy this weekend, and it continued to be awesome. I really don't like that ending scene, though-the obvious implication is that the Flayer caught Septimus and Octavia and took the babby and made it a Space Marine. Which is fine, and could be a cool story, but it seems cheap to have the trilogy end with them escaping, and then have them (most likely) brutally murdered offscreen. Did ADB ever revisit that?
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Jun 30, 2015 18:24
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I really liked Master of Mankind, and I think that people who said the Emperor seemed really aloof might have been taking the characters' perspective too seriously. We mostly see him through the eyes of Arkhan and the one Custodes guy, neither of whom has much regard for Space Marines and their concept of the Emperor as their father. So, to Land, Big E is a cold transhuman guy, and to the Custodes he's a prophet/hero, and to the Marines he's a loving or stern father, and none of them (or us) has any better idea of his actual state of mind. Just spitballing, and maybe there's a chapter I misremembered where it's said more objectively.
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Feb 7, 2017 07:04
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Xae posted:The interesting parts are how his story echo's Malekith's backstory. Which is why the rumors for a while were that Malus would replace Malekith. Wasn't Malekith retconned into a good guy by the End Times? The evil scheming mages rigged the fire so it would burn him or something because he was too noble and handsome and whatever. (It was pretty dumb)
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Nov 7, 2017 07:37
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Zudgemud posted:He was retconned into the true rightful ruler, that he was burned is explained by him being more whimpy than his dad and not enduring the scorching flames for those extra seconds needed to get magically healed & anointed. This is the reasonable part, what is dumb is that the millennias of psychopathy, sadism, mass torture, brutal slavery and war of extermination, is wholly glossed over and ignored by the bulk of the players/factions. Eh, I think that's worse, I'd rather have characters with the defining trait "hubris" than "wussing out"
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Nov 8, 2017 01:40
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Trast posted:Malcador as someone who helped focus or mold the Emperor is an interesting idea. I've seen in the lore and snippets people have posted that where the Emperor was detached from basic humanity that Malcador had a much firmer grasp on things. A case of someone with great vision guiding someone with great ability. And then in WH40k fashion hubris bringing it all down on their heads. I've been banging this drum for a while, but most of the characters that the Emperor talks about being detached to are also detached (the Custodes, techpriests, and so forth)...when he talks to humans/space marines he seems much more human. How he really feels is still pretty much a mystery.
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Dec 21, 2017 06:35
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Guy Goodbody posted:People talk about Animorphs being grimdark, but loving Shade's Children was a successful YA novel. Warhammer is gonna be fine. This was banned by a school near me! Possibly because of the explicit sex scene and the girl cutting her wrists to get the tracking bug out. I was NOT expecting that from Garth Nix after reading the Seventh Tower series.
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May 24, 2018 09:14
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Yeah they really should have banned that a little harder, or made it more widely known after the heresy started that this was written by a crazy traitor who deserted the emperor anyways.
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May 1, 2019 18:39
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It’s good that GW has retconned Abbadon away from being one gigantic failure after another, but I think they may have gone slightly too far the other way (in the modern era, not HH or the ADB series.) Now all 13 Black Crusades were a carefully orchestrated plan that has taken 10,000 years to pull off. Couldn’t like...some of them have been successful while others were failures, either due to Abbadon’s mistakes, Imperial strategy, or just weight of numbers/material? I know GW is not great at the middle ground but it would be so much better here.
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Jun 9, 2019 21:22
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There must be money in there somewhere because Macharius complains about the war profiteers and grifters causing him supply problems and then conspiring against him when he tries to cut them out of the supply chain.
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Jul 30, 2019 15:41
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Inspector_666 posted:Robute in the Forges Of Mars trilogy is a pretty fun Rogue Trader even if he's kind of idealized. Although even in that way it's an interesting look at how much of a black sheep you can be when you're from Ultramar. Only recorded attempt to gently caress a tech-priest(ess)! Just relentlessly horny.
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Mar 12, 2020 01:22
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^burtle posted:Thanks for the recs, scooped up Fang and World Bearers. I think you could read Betrayer standalone, since it's the first (I think) book about the World Eaters. Only things from the other HH books you need to know would be: Lorgar was the first one to really get into Chaos, before it was cool, and he, Erebrus (his second in command) and Kor Pharon (His religious space daddy) have been the ones slowly leading the other legions towards the Warp. Argel Tal is a Word Bearer who was possessed by a demon, and he leads a bunch of other marines in the same boat, the Gal Vorbak. He is mostly a chill bro though. Lorgar hates the Ultramarines because they were mean to him and blew up one of his planets on the Emperor's orders, so now he and Angron are loving up Ultramar. Also, Ultramar is currently cut off by warp storms and is forming a mini-empire in case everyone else dies before they can get out. Really, any backstory you missed would be in the book First Heretic, which is an A+ book anyways, but you should be fine with Betrayer on its own if that's what you want.
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Mar 30, 2020 01:15
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1/3 of the way through Saturnine, some stray thoughts: I'm really over most of the Lectio Divinitas stuff. It would be more interesting after the Heresy as its own book, and frankly, it's kind of depressing to see the characters embrace the thing that's ultimately going to lead to all the grimdark. The "Space Marines are actually secretly horrible if you think about it" motifs, I'm extremely into. One of the characters expounding on that theme, I believe, comes out of a four page short story that like ten people read, so it might be confusing. Do they assume people read the anthologies? (Should I assume people read the anthologies? I almost always skip them) The Silent Sisters are just such a waste of a cool idea. Them not talking just makes them less interesting. It's a memorable setting detail but really gets in the way of their characters. They use battle-sign! They Sign during Battle! It's like talking but less cool to read about! Also, a lot of them use two handed weapons so I'm not sure how that works in actual combat. (Also, are the SoS augmented? It seems like they shouldn't be able to fight non-demonic space marines any more than any other trained human can) Abbadon just despising Chaos and the Warp is really great. Maybe, in combination with point 1, this sounds like atheist  but like...he sees everyone around him turning into weird monster people or being in unendurable pain from chaos diseases or slowly losing their minds, it's totally reasonable that someone would say "hey wait a minute I thought this was about winning a civil war against the people we hate, NOT ushering in a horrifying dark age full of demons.This may be the only recorded case of Dorn having a sense of humor. Further details as events warrant.
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Apr 1, 2020 09:14
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Is he alive in regular 40k? I know KP and Typhon, who are similarly awful, are still around.
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Apr 3, 2020 16:50
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Marin Karin posted:It will never stop being funny to me that the Emperor was like "yeah we'll turn your lovely old dad into a post-human warmachine" for Lorgar, but couldn't be assed to spend 2 minutes killing Angron's slave masters. Angron is as justified as he is unstable. It’s bizarre-there have been two books and two novellas about Angron, all of which were quite good, as well as a scene in Master of Mankind in which the Emperor is literally talking to someone about his plans for Angron, and there’s never been an explanation. I wonder if they’re saving it for something?
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Apr 3, 2020 22:36
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Fallen Hamprince posted:Re: the beginning of Valdor The issue with this is that the Horus Heresy series (and a lot of sci-fi in general, to be fair) tends to lean very heavily on expressions and other things that the viewer is aware of, so reasoning like this, which works in-universe, falls apart out of universe.
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Apr 26, 2020 22:42
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The dumbest names are Angron, who is angry, and Perturbaro, who is perturbed.
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May 12, 2020 20:11
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Demiurge4 posted:Lol gently caress Erebus and every story that he's in. Yes. Additionally gently caress every word bearer that isn’t Angel Tal.
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May 26, 2020 23:15
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I kinda liked parts of it...the parts about early imperial government, anyways. But there was a lot of superweapon bullshit on the part of the orks. Gravity weapon! Attack moon! SEVERAL attack moons! That teleport!
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May 28, 2020 03:48
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Just finished Bloodlines and are we to assume that the main character is in a genestealer cult? He’s in a group that worships a weird snake aspect of the emperor and he has a scar across his chest that he doesn’t remember getting. There’s exactly one mention of genestealers in the book. If that’s the case, his daughter would have hidden mutations of some kind, right?
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Aug 11, 2020 07:02
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Kevin DuBrow posted:I can't believe that Corvus Corax's last recorded words are "Never more". I think technically his last words, that we know about, are in that short story where he becomes a Vengance shadow demon and fucks up lorgar. But yeah, it’s pretty stupid
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Aug 12, 2020 09:52
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Miguel Prado posted:What short story is this? And I would love for Corax to come back all warped up but loyal and Guilliman trying to make it work It’s called Shadows of the Past, in the Sons of the emperor anthology.
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Aug 13, 2020 10:23
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I was rereading the Angron origin book and there was a unit called the Unbroken, because they’d never broken in combat. But like..,that’s every space marine, right? Is there an instance of a space marine unit running away in the fluff?
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Sep 8, 2020 19:29
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victrix posted:Thanks, this'll keep me for a busy Also heavily recommend Peter Fehrvari’s work-Fire Caste, Cult of the Spiral Dawn, and Requiem Infernal. All very spooky, deeply psychological mindfucks. I read Fire Caste, got halfway through, went HOLY poo poo and started over with a different understanding, then proceeded to track down all three of his books and a bunch of short stories. As far as I’m concerned he’s top tier.
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Sep 10, 2020 19:53
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bagrada posted:His warham books are under Brian Craig. I've managed to not read anything by him over the years, anything in particular I should look for? Pawns of Chaos is loving awesome. It's about a world that's been cut off from the Imperium, but the settlers still have much better technology, even in isolation, than the natives of the planet, so they have to summon demons. It's very half fantasy-half 40k. Also features a shaman whose mutations include a spiked dick.
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Sep 22, 2020 03:30
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So excited to be reading about guys in power armor battling weird poo poo ON EARTH as opposed to guys in power armor battling weird poo poo on...I don’t know Armageddon or something.
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Nov 26, 2020 05:32
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So I was rereading Slaves to Darkness, and the prologue introduces a chronological error-Horus hears Loken telling the story of the 63-19 Compliance the night before he becomes Warmaster, but that didn't happen until after he was Warmaster according to the first book. This is not going to bother me at all because I'm very cool and normal. I'm more and more convinced that the series should have started at or after Ulannor, though. That's when Horus' ego, sense of abandonment from the Emperor, and distance from his fellow Primarchs really begin to grow. On a side note, does anyone have a good podcast or youtube series that goes through and reviews the heresy or 40k generally book by book? The ones I've found aren't that familiar with the lore, which is kind of fun but doesn't lead to deep analysis.
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Jan 16, 2021 23:44
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So, someone on B&C posted the Dramatis Personae for Mortis, and uh...nobody from the Legio Mortis appears to be on it. Having no idea whatsoever about the plot, this does not give me much hope that it advances the story.
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Jan 24, 2021 20:26
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NikkolasKing posted:I think it was Flight of Eisenstein where Garro was nearly killed by Dorn that made me wonder how many Space Marines is a Primarch worth. I think the Primarchs are such a big ol ball of chaos energy and destiny and fate that they can literally be only killed by each other, or the Emperor, unless they WANT to die (like Cruze.) Lorgar and Angron get lava cannoned and stepped on by a Titan, Guilliman spends hours in the void without a suit, and Dorn tells Sindrmann that he could jump off the top of the palace and it wouldn’t kill him, only one of his brothers could. It’s fine as myth, but breaks down pretty hard when you think about it. ***Edit: this doesn’t mean I don’t want to see Valdor gently caress up any or all of the traitor Primarchs.
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Feb 3, 2021 14:37
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Nuclear War posted:So Dorn is alive I don’t expect anyone to confirm that he’s dead, in any case. And if you don’t have the rest of the body, I won’t believe it.
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Feb 3, 2021 14:51
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I bought Deacon of Wounds, the new horror joint by David Annandale. I was excited for this because I loved House of Night and Chain, but this one was a marked step down. It was extremely predictable-the premise is “a priest tries to comfort the people during a terrible drought.” And the priest does exactly everything you would think he does. Overall, I have not liked the warhammer horror line, with a couple of exceptions.
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Feb 8, 2021 23:30
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Owlkill posted:Ah thats a shame, I'd quite enjoyed Annandale's stuff in the two horror anthologies I've read. The Colonel’s Monograph has some good moments, and so does the Oubliette even if the premise is a bit ridiculous. Castle of Blood does a good job with the “trapped in a building with a killer” trope. I guess I’ve just found that the best horror is in regular 40k fiction and was disappointed that WHH isn’t that turned up to 11. A lot of Peter Fehervari’s work, parts of the First Heretic and the Night Lords trilogy, even bits of the Priests of Mars series. I haven’t read the short story anthologies, maybe I’ll check those out next.
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Feb 9, 2021 12:15
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Gate of Bones was not as good as the first book IMO. All the characters except two or three felt very underdeveloped, and RG got almost no screen time. Literally, whatever he’s doing is probably the most interesting thing going on at any given time. I liked the guard commander though. There’s also a point where someone says “there’s thousands of chaos cultists and all we have is hundreds of Mordians, thirty or forty sisters of battle, fifteen space marines, and a couple of Custodians in this fortified position”...,this should not have been a harrowing situation, that’s all I’m saying.
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Feb 11, 2021 18:47
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“A Shell hit the building facade, bringing down a rush of dust that choked them. Through it, all Dvorgin could see were the bright flashes of weapon shots sparkling all over the front of the cathedrum, and the front ranks of the ragged horde advancing upon them. His own command included a few hundred Mordians, a few dozen Sisters of Battle and Lucerne’s surviving Space Marines. It would not be enough. The traitors numbered in the thousands. On the other side were civilians clutching lengths of pipe and street signs, or clubs of stone and wood. Only a few had guns. There were catacomb dwellers and artisans, priests, adepts, menials and lordlings, men and women both. The traitor planetary regiments they had fought these last months had lost all discipline, and were freely intermingled with the whole.” Then they start with VOLLEY FIRE. Lasguns have an automatic mode! Just loving unload on them!
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Feb 11, 2021 20:39
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notaspy posted:As I've said I've not read any of the HH books so everything I know is put together piecemeal from the internet. I don’t think so. Someone makes the point that Sanguinius is so afraid that he’s corrupted because of his wings, that he’s twice as loyal as everyone else.
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Feb 17, 2021 01:08
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Skarsnik posted:I'm fully expecting those two to be the ones that lower the shields on the vengeful spirit At this rate the control room on the vengeful spirit is going to be extremely crowded.
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Feb 17, 2021 13:52
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Angry Lobster posted:- Leman Russ: the Great Wolf by Chris Wright. This one is a retelling of the old story about the origins of the feud between the Space Wolves and the Dark Angels, just more fleshed out. It's competently written and has some interesting tibdits, especially because it's the first time I've read Russ himself talk about his memories and thoughts about the moment when he arrived at Terra immediately after the defeat of Horus. It has some really good fighting scenes as well. It's just good, Wright as usual. Man I hate the loving space wolves but this book was great and the ending was extremely 
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Feb 19, 2021 16:36
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In fairness to ADB he apparently had a severe mental crisis culminating in a suicide attempt in summer 2019, that will kinda slow down your writing for a while. (This was posted on his public Twitter, I don’t know him or anything)
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Feb 25, 2021 13:38
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I enjoyed both Penitent and Pariah, but I think the ‘limiter cuff’ is a dumb device. It turns being a blank from this kind of gothic soul horror curse thing into a useful superpower
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Feb 28, 2021 14:03
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