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Dawgstar posted:Anybody have strong feelings one way or another on John French's stuff? Kinda on par with Guy Haley? New Dante book coming btw
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Nov 4, 2020 19:25
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Dawgstar posted:Anybody have strong feelings one way or another on John French's stuff? Yeah, I'm a fan. Maybe not as good as Wraight or Dembski-Bowden, but definitely up there.
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Nov 4, 2020 19:28
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French likes his puzzle plots. They're not bad but that is his flavor of 40k.
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Nov 5, 2020 02:00
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VanSandman posted:French likes his puzzle plots. They're not bad but that is his flavor of 40k. This is what makes his Horusian War series particularly good. Puzzle plots work great for inquisition stories, especially when they are about different factions of inquisitors fighting each other.
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Nov 5, 2020 04:00
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I'm about 60 pages into the new Luther book. So far so good. It seems to be Luther telling tales of old Caliban to a succession of Dark Angel chapter masters. Looks like there will be some interesting lore and the first person retelling conceit is well written so far. I didn't realize that the knights of Caliban had powered armour and bolts before the coming of the Imperium. Is that new or was it already known? It's inferior to Astartes equipment but still I always pictured them as only having swords and bows. There were also women knights which is cool and I don't remember hearing before. D-Pad fucked around with this message at 07:03 on Nov 5, 2020 |
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Nov 5, 2020 06:56
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D-Pad posted:I didn't realize that the knights of Caliban had powered armour and bolts before the coming of the Imperium. Is that new or was it already known? It's inferior to Astartes equipment but still I always pictured them as only having swords and bows. There were also women knights which is cool and I don't remember hearing before. I remember that sort of being the case in their first Horus Heresy book (the power armor for sure, I don't remember if they had bolters). I also strongly disliked that book.
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Nov 5, 2020 09:01
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D-Pad posted:I didn't realize that the knights of Caliban had powered armour and bolts before the coming of the Imperium. Is that new or was it already known? It's inferior to Astartes equipment but still I always pictured them as only having swords and bows. There were also women knights which is cool and I don't remember hearing before. In Titandeath they talk about how a feudal world had knights that they rigged up to run even though they only had steam tech, which I guess kind of "backs up" the idea of planets devolving but keeping tech that we generally associate with the Imperium. It's a cool idea.
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Nov 5, 2020 17:29
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When you look to history when skills/technology gets lost the last ones to go are the war related stuff. When Rome fell we may have forgotten how to do central heating but by god we kept how to make steel.
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Nov 5, 2020 18:16
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Foxtrot_13 posted:When you look to history when skills/technology gets lost the last ones to go are the war related stuff. Technologies get forgotten when they're no longer useful. On both Caliban and the knight world from Titandeath, weapons are necessary to protect settlements from hostile (and in Caliban's case chaos-tainted wildlife, so military technologies survive even through the total devastation of old knight. The fall of the Western Roman Empire and accompanying transition from a stratified, urbanized society under centralized government to a rural, overwhelmingly agrarian one with little central authority meant technologies like centralized heating and concrete were no longer anything more than curiosities so the knowledge and infrastructure needed to create them died away. In Caliban's case, using things like swords and bows might have something to do with simple, ancient weapons being relatively more effective against daemons and the like, as is noted in Know No Fear
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Nov 6, 2020 05:27
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Just finished the last book in the Eisenhorn trilogy and now I'm sad that it's over. I'm gonna miss that gruff old radical... But I just started the first ADB Night Lords audio book and I love the narrator's cheesy eastern european accent for the NL
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Nov 6, 2020 05:44
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D-Pad posted:
It would be neat if the big secret of the dark angels wasn’t that half of them fell to chaos, but that the half that did were all women.
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Nov 6, 2020 08:09
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Bucnasti posted:It would be neat if the big secret of the dark angels wasn’t that half of them fell to chaos, but that the half that didn't were all women.
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Nov 6, 2020 08:21
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NUMBER 1 FULCI FAN posted:Just finished the last book in the Eisenhorn trilogy and now I'm sad that it's over. I'm gonna miss that gruff old radical... Good news, Magos and Pariah exist, with two more books to come.
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Nov 6, 2020 09:11
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Fellblade posted:Good news, Magos and Pariah exist, with two more books to come. But also don't forget to read the Ravenor trilogy before those.
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Nov 6, 2020 13:23
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Finished reading The Great Work. I've read a few of Guy Haley's books now and I really dislike his version of the Imperium. Everything feels so sanitised and heroic and largely misses the point for me - it's like 40k via Marvel movies. I read Forges of Mars before and even though it was middling overall, I liked the way the Ark Mechanicus is this giant ancient thing that no-one understands and is run by the brutal subjugation of pressganged masses who no-one on the upper decks gives a poo poo about.
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Nov 6, 2020 13:36
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abrosheen posted:But also don't forget to read the Ravenor trilogy before those. Get Magos now, follow the reading order in it. That gets you the short stories too.
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Nov 6, 2020 15:37
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mllaneza posted:Get Magos now, follow the reading order in it. That gets you the short stories too. I already have the Ravenor trilogy, but I just ordered Magos. Thanks!
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Nov 6, 2020 16:04
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Nov 6, 2020 20:28
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I read through the Fehevari short story "Nightbleed" tonight, and it was really good and creepy, but... It didn't feel like 40k in any way. He himself suggests it as the first thing to read in his Dark Coil universe, do they get more Warhammy later on? I think The Reverie is listed as the next thing to read, but I have a few other things in the queue first. Back to a Night Lords!
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Nov 7, 2020 05:14
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Nightbleed was the first dark coil story that I'm considering showing to my non-warhammering significant other specially because it's the one that requires the least amount of 40k knowledge. I'm reading The Reverie right now and it's a lot more 40k, so to speak.
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Nov 7, 2020 13:44
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The Reverie is a trip so far. Loving it.
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Nov 7, 2020 15:57
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drat, space vampires, Abaddon, tons of gore, political intrigue, badass space battles... this Night Lords book is appealing to the dumb teenager in me that fell in love with 40k like 20 years ago
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Nov 7, 2020 21:22
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Space Vampires are also a thing by themselves. I think Pluto or one of the Sol planets kept getting hosed by them during the age of darkness.
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Nov 7, 2020 21:26
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The space vampires are the Blood Angels. The Night Lords are Murder Batman and his army of Jason Todds
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Nov 7, 2020 22:24
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Arcsquad12 posted:The space vampires are the Blood Angels. The Night Lords are Murder Batman and his army of Jason Todds This guy or girl fucks
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Nov 8, 2020 01:15
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I'm happy to report the new Luther book is great. It's better than most of Gav Thorpe's stuff and has some very interesting Dark Angel and pre-Imperium Caliban lore. I highly recommend it when the regular edition comes out. Third of the way into The Reverie and as usual Peter Fehervari has knocked it out of the park. The Angels Resplendent are an incredibly interesting chapter and so different from what we normally get. I love what he has done with them. Finally got a hold of one of these bad boys. One of the best looking LEs in my opinion:   
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Nov 8, 2020 03:39
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Goddamn that's pretty.
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Nov 8, 2020 04:27
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For the first time since I started reading this thread about eight years ago I am caught up. You mad bastards sure can post! I've read a crapload of 40k books thanks to you all, and I wound up having to maintain a spreadsheet to keep track of everything you recommend so I can read things in the proper order. I have almost 80 books on there! Thanks to the early Gaunt's Ghosts books 40k quickly became one of my favorite franchises and it's great that there are so many quality authors involved. EDIT: I see now that back in 2018 I skipped 3,000 posts to try to catch up! Dick Trauma fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Nov 8, 2020 |
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Nov 8, 2020 05:18
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D-Pad posted:I'm happy to report the new Luther book is great. It's better than most of Gav Thorpe's stuff and has some very interesting Dark Angel and pre-Imperium Caliban lore. I highly recommend it when the regular edition comes out. Really? Now that's surprising because Thorpe's books are usually not very good, will look it up in the future.
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Nov 8, 2020 09:10
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peanut- posted:Finished reading The Great Work. I've read a few of Guy Haley's books now and I really dislike his version of the Imperium. Everything feels so sanitised and heroic and largely misses the point for me - it's like 40k via Marvel movies. Did you read Baneblade and/or Shadowsword? I think they toe the line fairly well.
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Nov 8, 2020 15:22
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Been meaning to read Shadowsword since I've had it on my shelf for at least a year now. But I've been flipping through the Sabbat Crusades fluffbook and all of a sudden want to re-read Necropolis. And I still haven't even touched the Warmaster or gotten a copy of the Anarch yet.
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Nov 8, 2020 15:47
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Angry Lobster posted:Really? Now that's surprising because Thorpe's books are usually not very good, will look it up in the future. Yeah he isn't one of my favorites, but he uses a different writing style in this one and it reads way better than his typical stuff. Basically the setup/setting for the book is: (Not really spoilers really but I will spoiler it anyway) Luther is captured by the Dark Angels after the destruction of Caliban. He is kept prisoner until the present day in a stasis cell and is only brought out at random intervals by DA chapter masters to be interrogated. The chapter masters are the only ones who know of his existence. Each time he is questioned he tells a first person recounting of a story about pre-imperium and pre-Lion Caliban. It's this first person storytelling style that makes it work better than Thorpe's usual stuff. So we get a lot of cool old Caliban lore and we get to see a succession of DA chapter masters over 10k years and see how the chapter changed, especially in their obsession with the fallen
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Nov 8, 2020 16:44
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D-Pad posted:Yeah he isn't one of my favorites, but he uses a different writing style in this one and it reads way better than his typical stuff.  Azrael: Maybe I'm just here to punish myself. "Any new prophecies you'd like to share, Luther?" Luther: "I'm glad you asked, Azrael. This prophecy, like all prophecies now, felt very... real. Like reality. And reality now feels like a prophecy. Maybe it's all a prophecy. Maybe it's all real." Azrael: A prophecy where Luther endlessly tells me about his prophecies. Luther: "I was in a dark place, and there was a dark man there. His name was Mr. Door, and he told me that there are many worlds - side-by-side, on top of each other, some inside of others. In one world, there was a writer who wrote a story about a Space Marine. In our world, the Space Marine was real. Door said he himself was in all of them at the same time, endlessly shifting between them. I asked him how I could reach these worlds - I wanted to bring Chaos there. But he didn't want to help me. He didn't like the idea. What did he know?" Azrael: I'm not wild about the idea myself.
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Nov 8, 2020 17:28
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Cooked Auto posted:And I still haven't even touched the Warmaster or gotten a copy of the Anarch yet. Fix that right the gently caress now.
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Nov 8, 2020 19:45
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How are Guy Haley's Dante books?
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Nov 9, 2020 14:43
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Arcsquad12 posted:Fix that right the gently caress now. Duly noted. I'll toss Anarch on my christmas list. Might even have it there alongside the sequel to Watchers of the Throne.
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Nov 9, 2020 15:29
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Arbite posted:How are Guy Haley's Dante books? First loyalist space marine book I read was Devastation of Baal and I remember liking it a lot. There's some neat bits about the hive mind and a lictor. The fight for Baal feels suitably big and there's a good amount of action. Still need to read Dante. At the time I knew nothing about the Blood Angels (or space marines out side of the couple in Eisenhorn and the Night Lords) two of them eat a guy in like the second chapter "...wait what"
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Nov 9, 2020 15:51
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Obviously Guy Haley, Gav Thorpe and a slew of the others can now retire. ADB, Abnett, Wraight, Brooks and Fehervari will handle it from here. On a serious note, the Dante books are not bad. “Devastation” got a bit bolterporny for me in the end but with another book being released in December or so, why not dive in?
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Nov 9, 2020 17:51
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Not sure how I've missed the existence of this thread for years. Go me. I just finished Reverie and enjoyed it but after a promising horror'y start it changes gears into something more like a 'dark thriller' for lack of a better term. I know at the end of the day it's still a 40k book but I was hoping for more of a lingering sense of dread which - in my opinion - Requiem Infernal did better. Unrelated but Chris Wraight seriously is becoming one of my favorite Black Library authors. Dude is killing it with Watches/Vaults of Terra and that's without going to all his snot marine work with the death guard.
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Nov 9, 2020 19:00
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I actually got caught up in re-reading Lords of Silence after reading The Tainted Heart, even though I've got Reverie plus Flesh And Steel sitting on my desk. It's real good. Speaking of The Tainted Heart, it was a pretty mediocre book. There's some interesting descriptions but overall it's just a very straightforward quest and the end twist is telegraphed pretty heavily. Plus at some point the protagonist crosses over into "willingly stupid". I haven't read Plague Garden yet but I've heard decent things about it, so if you're looking for AOS Nurgle try that instead. Or track down Palace of the Plague Lord.
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Nov 9, 2020 19:48
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