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berzerkmonkey posted:Wait - you ranked Helsreach third? Maybe it is because you're new and didn't realize how awesome that book really was... I got the "best of, vol. 1" omnibus since I had a coupon, thinking that the sheer size of it meant that something worthwhile was inside. I was wrong. Therefore I would advise against even bothering with H&B in general.
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Oct 5, 2012 21:47
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Lord of the Night, you mean? Yea probably, let me edit that.
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Oct 6, 2012 05:20
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Half way through Pariah and I am finding it enjoyably creepy, although entirely unlike what I was expecting. Also... attack of the killer dolls 
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Oct 6, 2012 07:23
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Col.Schultz posted:Half way through Pariah and I am finding it enjoyably creepy, although entirely unlike what I was expecting. Finished it a few minutes ago. Entertaining as hell, but drat Dan Abnett.
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Oct 6, 2012 07:44
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Galkaflower posted:Finished it a few minutes ago. Just finished myself. Not the book or the ending I was expecting, although I enjoyed it the whole way through. If anything, the most unusual thing was that I didn't find it particularly '40K'... it read like Predido Street Station with Las weapons and astartes . A few nice references to his Heresy books in there as well. If we are getting loyalist Alpha Legionaries and pre-great crusade Cogniate, is it too much to ask for Gramaticus to make a cameo too? The the Soviet space ship toy was a nice touch too.
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Oct 6, 2012 10:23
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oops wrong thread
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Oct 6, 2012 18:11
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Col.Schultz posted:Just finished myself. Not the book or the ending I was expecting, although I enjoyed it the whole way through. Well, with Eisenhorn's proclivities, we don't know if it's a loyalist Alpha Legionnaire. I agree on the rocket. It is a good change from the usual 40K feel. Well recommended.
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Oct 7, 2012 08:16
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Just got through Pariah. I think this word sums up my feelings by the end: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK For once his ending was all that rushed and I loved how it ended with the same line the prologue of Eisenhorn ended. Can't wait for Penitient. For anyone on the fence, the book starts of real slow but the by the second part it really picks and just becomes amazing. Dodoman fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Oct 8, 2012 |
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Oct 8, 2012 22:14
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Dodoman posted:Just got through Pariah. I think this word sums up my feelings by the end: I just finished it as well and I'm already jonesing for the next one really bad. The beginning is slow, but a good, deliberate slow that really makes you ask all these questions. The second half of the book is all about blowing your mind over and over and over until you're a quivering wreck.
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Oct 8, 2012 23:24
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Man I should really finish off Ravenor soon. I loved Eisenhorn, but Ravenor has been somewhat of a slog.
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Oct 9, 2012 00:10
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I felt the same, and it doesn't really pay off imo. From what I remember, the bit where they are underwater with the portal was the highlight for me. Is Pariah out yet  ? I can't find it anywhere online as an ebook. I'm in the Netherlands if that makes any difference.
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Oct 9, 2012 10:19
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Samopsa posted:I felt the same, and it doesn't really pay off imo. From what I remember, the bit where they are underwater with the portal was the highlight for me. https://www.blacklibrary.com ?
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Oct 9, 2012 12:14
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Ok, I finished Lord of the Night last week, and started Soul Hunter yesterday. But this has been bugging me ever since I first read the words The Exalted. Is this supposed to be Krieg Acerbus?
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Oct 9, 2012 13:04
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Lead Psychiatry posted:Ok, I finished Lord of the Night last week, and started Soul Hunter yesterday. But this has been bugging me ever since I first read the words The Exalted. Is this supposed to be Krieg Acerbus? Nope. The Exalted is a possessed sergeant named Vandred (not a spoiler).
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Oct 9, 2012 13:52
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Oh, ok. I know ADB didn't do Lord of the Night. But wasn't sure if that was going to be the tie-in with Night Lords series other than the name.
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Oct 9, 2012 14:33
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Other titles: I think you have hit Dan Abnett bang on, and it would be hard to disagree, he is the best and the most consistent writer in BL. I save particular vitriol for Graham McNeill. 'Storm of Iron' did my head in. Thinking back on it, I had three main issues: 1. It felt like McNeil had studied Napoleonic-era fortresses at community college and was going to tell you every little thing about it. Pages of the book were dedicated to the state of the fortifications, and how they get ground down in the assault. It felt to me like I was reading a textbook at times, it was that detailed. 2. The book starts killing people early on (page 9) and the death toll is constant until 5 pages from the end. This book embodies the 'There Is Only War' to its binding. And after a while, you get a bit sick of it. 3. Characterisation. The good guys are not fleshed out very well, probably for the best given the level of casualties. But still, a story should develop some characters. And rightly or wrongly (rightly!) we usually root for the good guys. On the 'good points' side, it was interesting to get some insight into the "lives" of Chaos Space Marines. We even get an idea on how they replenish their numbers.
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Oct 9, 2012 15:01
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Pariah was going to be a trilogy right?
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Oct 9, 2012 17:52
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ptolpa posted:I think you have hit Dan Abnett bang on, and it would be hard to disagree, he is the best and the most consistent writer in BL. You're fricking insane. That was one of the best 40k books! Maybe it's just because it was the first one I read. I remember being in awe of how the bad guys with daemons were allowed to win. It blew my mind, after I had gotten disgusted with Forgotten Reams, and how everyone always breaks down, cries, and then launches into a multi-page exposition any time something violent happened. As for the detail, I really enjoyed it. He's talking about Iron Warriors, the expert siege-breakers. Hardly seemed out of place. Also, did you really just complain that a 40k book killed people throughout? 
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Oct 9, 2012 18:02
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Guys, please tell me that Legion of the Damned gets better... I'm two chapters in and it is soooo boring and the Excoriators (and their serfs) read like annoying, angsty teens.
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Oct 9, 2012 18:54
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Mikojan posted:Pariah was going to be a trilogy right? Yep, it's the first book in the Bequin trilogy.
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Oct 9, 2012 18:57
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Infected Mushroom posted:Yep, it's the first book in the Bequin trilogy. But don't except book 2 for maybe three or four years. He's doing more Gaunt, more Heresy, maybe others before then.
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Oct 9, 2012 19:38
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berzerkmonkey posted:Guys, please tell me that Legion of the Damned gets better... I'm two chapters in and it is soooo boring and the Excoriators (and their serfs) read like annoying, angsty teens. It gets better.
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Oct 9, 2012 19:52
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berzerkmonkey posted:Guys, please tell me that Legion of the Damned gets better... I'm two chapters in and it is soooo boring and the Excoriators (and their serfs) read like annoying, angsty teens. It takes a while to get going (like 4 or 5 chapters in), but then the going gets good.
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Oct 9, 2012 20:39
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Path of the Renegade (Dark Eldar book) is really good. It's good to have Andy Chambers contributing to 40k again.
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Oct 9, 2012 21:12
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So, regarding Pariah, I really have to read the book again from the perspective that Eisenhorn is really behind it all from the beginning. It seems like there's no way Ravenor isn't dead-on with this one, considering all the talk about good demons vs bad demons and staticky coughs. Good book. Looking forward to the next one, for sure.
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Oct 9, 2012 23:59
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Lore question: Is Malcharion of the Night Lords in a standard dreadnought shell (as we usually see in 40k), or is he in a Contemptor pattern shell?
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Oct 10, 2012 05:30
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Pyrolocutus posted:Lore question: Is Malcharion of the Night Lords in a standard dreadnought shell (as we usually see in 40k), or is he in a Contemptor pattern shell? Not sure if it's ever mentioned, weren't all Dreadnoughts Contemptor pattern pre-heresy? On the other hand he got put in it after the Heresy so who knows really.
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Oct 10, 2012 08:01
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It seemed to me like, before they apparently retconned them all into Helbrutes with the latest codex*, the standard boxy loyalist-dreadnought-with-spikes was the default configuration for a Chaos dread. At least, that's what the preponderance of GW and FW models suggested to me. So either the traitor legions already had a bunch of non-Contemptors at the end of the Heresy (therefore implying that those existed), or a lot of Loyalist chassis have been scavenged over the years for them to plug their sarcophagi into. *and, hell, even the Helbrute looks like it grew out of a regular-pattern dreadnought rather than a Contemptor.
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Oct 10, 2012 10:48
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Shroud posted:Also, did you really just complain that a 40k book killed people throughout? This is a very fair comment (it made me laugh). It is true that one should not read a W40K novel and not expect, at some point, a big & bloody battle, several even. And Storm of Iron doesn't disappoint on this front. For me, it became tough going where platoon after platoon of Imperial Guard was ground into a grisly paste of blood and bone. After a while, it just got too much. Now that it comes back to me, I also thought the McNeil was inconsistent when it came to its treatment of (vanilla) Space Marines. Throughout the novel they are referred to in hushed tones, mentioned as demi-gods, which is true to canon. But their introduction, in the middle of a pitched battle sees them unceremoniously blasted away - the first two that air-drop in are immediately boltered into pieces.. I thought that could have been done a lot better. But yeah - don't read W40K and not expect a body count. But Abnett does it better...
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Oct 10, 2012 16:28
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Halfway through Prince of Crows in Shadows of Treachery. It's great. ADB 
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Oct 11, 2012 20:16
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I have a bit of a question for those of you who are a bit more experienced with this literature and the whole "40k Universe" than I am, and apologize in advance if this has been discussed before. (A short perusal of this thread did not get me any results, but they might be there and I didn't spend enough time) After having read the Gaunt's Ghost series, Ravenor, and Eisenhorn, along with the Ciaphas Cain series (and the Wiki), I can't figure out the purpose behind all the worship the Adeptus Mechanicus guys do. My understanding that they believe that the Emperor is part robot now and is their robot God and that he watches over the "spirits" in all engines and machinery. Does this mean that they don't really know how to fix anything or build new stuff unless they are some really important guy on Mars and just leave it up to the Emperor/the C'tan thing that the wiki says might be sleeping on Mars or whatever? More often than not it seems like they don't really know what they're doing and just kind of assume that their cog-Emperor thing will sort it out if they just pray a lot over the engine. Or is this just the authors trying to show that the perception of the main characters of the story have very little understanding of the "techno-sorcery" that is going on when the tech-priests et al actually fix things?
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Oct 15, 2012 15:34
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It's ritual replacing understanding. They know how to make things work, but not why what they are doing makes things work. Innovation requires understanding and is therefore... unpopular.
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Oct 15, 2012 15:44
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So Pariah is more or less set after the Eisenhorn and Ravenor series' and is more or less a sequel to them? If it is I need some of that, those are still the best BL books in my opinion.
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Oct 15, 2012 15:53
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buyers remorse posted:I have a bit of a question for those of you who are a bit more experienced with this literature and the whole "40k Universe" than I am, and apologize in advance if this has been discussed before. (A short perusal of this thread did not get me any results, but they might be there and I didn't spend enough time) The Mechanicum believed in the Omnissiah, or Machine-God, long before the Emperor came to Mars. Recent developments (the book Mechanicum) have revealed that this idea may have come from a C'tan that the Emperor buried on Mars long before the Great Crusade, which has been psychically influencing the martians and accelerating their technological development. When the Emperor arrived and demonstrated complete psychic mastery over machines ("Machine, Heal Thyself), the Cult of Mars determined that the Emperor was an incarnation of the Omnissiah. Internally, there is some disagreement as to whether the Emperor is, in fact, the Omnissiah, though by M41 that is considered heresy. Even non-Mechanicus people can have an understanding of mechanics and engineering. People understand how engines work, how guns work, etc. on a practical level, though they also believe that machines have a "machine-spirit" that must be appeased to ensure their proper function. So, maintenance and repair is a combination of religious and practical application -- to fix something, you say the relevant prayers, apply the sacred unguents, and then you troubleshoot and repair the drat thing. The procedure to un-jam a rifle may be called the "Rites of Unjamming" but it's not like an Imperial Guardsman would think it's magic. When it comes to the most advanced technology of the Imperium, however -- teleporters, terminator armor, the targeting systems of a Land Raider, other technology so complex that its programming subroutines combine to form a pseudo-conscious "machine spirit" -- you can be assured that all but the highest-ranked Adepts would not understand the technical reason behind the rites of repair and maintenance that they perform to keep said technology operational. There is also a belief that circa-20k human technology is "perfect", which is why the discovery of a fully-functional Standard Template Construct machine is the holy grail for the Mechanicum. Therefore, the innovation of non-STC technology or the appropriation of xenotech is considered an unfortunate necessity at best, and tech-heresy at worst. Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 15:54
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Emnity posted:So Pariah is more or less set after the Eisenhorn and Ravenor series' and is more or less a sequel to them? If it is I need some of that, those are still the best BL books in my opinion. It is. Pariah is basically a setup/introduction for a series of ravenor/eisenhorn novels.
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Oct 15, 2012 16:22
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Another fun aspect is the view that all artificial intelligence is heretical due to the wars of the Iron Men. (Basically robots. Typical SciFi self aware robots.) But, the Admech continues to use some sort of base AI that they call the Machine Spirit. This is a mix between superstition and actual application. They believe that all machines have one of these spirits, from the lowliest rifle or cogitator engine, up to the massive Armageddon Titan. Of course, only certain machines seem to have one of these spirits, and thus the machine spirit is also seen as a sort of scape goat. If your rifle jams, it isn't normal mechanical failure, you did something to piss off the machine spirit of the rifle. Some infantry actually recite a litany of reloading every time they switch clips, praying to their rifle's spirit that it uses the clip efficiency and without fail. The machine spirit does seem to be an AI system though, which is most easily seen in the Titans. It is constantly stated that the Machine Spirit of a titan is that of a feral predator, and that the mind-linked Princep is always in a battle of control over the titan's Spirit. Eventually the Princep does go insane and the Titan can take over until the new Princep is installed. In this regard, the mindlinked human crew is the failsafe for the AI or something like that. As for technological advancement, it is viewed with heavy suspicion. The highest point of human advancement is referred to as the "Dark Age of Technology." They believe that it was responsible for the Age of Strife, and that all newly discovered technology needs to be heavily researched and prayed over before it can be implemented. Any new technological advancement without an STC is viewed as heretical, and most modification is only performed as a necessity. (Replacing a burned out Destroyer gun with a Demolisher cannon is a good example.) There are a few exemptions though. Space Marine chapters have made modifications to STC designs, such as the BA's improved engines, the Templar's Crusader, and the Dark Angel Land Raider Ares, but they tend to be outside most standard Imperial regulations. A non Astartes example though is the Death Korps of Krieg Ragnarok. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/File:Ragnarok.gif#.UHwqJsVfQrU This is not really a tech advancement, but a Leman Russ alternative used by Krieg forces during their civil war. That being said, it is not made my any Admech Forgeworlds as far as I know, and probably not endorsed by the Admech.
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Oct 15, 2012 16:23
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Thank you, Mechafunkzilla and jadebullet for the excellent explanations. It makes everything fit together much more comfortably in my mind. As much as 40k stuff can fit, that is.
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Oct 15, 2012 17:14
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I can't remember which book it's from, but there's a great part describing one of the rituals of the mechanicus. Essentially there's a lot of mumbojumbo about administering to the machine spirit, with oils applied and lots of chanting by supplicants with incense being waved around, and it all concludes with the Magos hitting the machine with a large hammer.
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Oct 15, 2012 17:47
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Helsreach is a great book for people who want to learn more about technology in the Imperium. There's a significant side-plot from the perspective of a tech-marine doing very complicated tech-marine stuff. You might also like it if the sentence "the sawn-off shotgun of nova cannon technology" intrigues you.
Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Oct 15, 2012 |
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Oct 15, 2012 17:57
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Just finished the battle of the fang. I thought it was a pretty good book. Only thing that left me wondering at the end of it was... The amount of Punishment Magnus takes. I know he is Primarch and unequaled in all the galaxy outside of his peers, but god drat he took enough of a beating to cripple a Titan. Cut and stabbed up by Raging wolves in terminator armor, beaten and hosed up by Bjorn who proceeds to plasma cannon him across the Fang into a thunderhawk, detonates the fuel cell and keeps hammering him until there is not even skin left on Magnus. Then they throw him off the fang he faceplants down a cliff and then is fighting the great wolf taking even more damage to his now exposed warp form. For the love of the Emporer what does it take to bring him down? Do they need to fire Pariahs with melta charges strapped over 90% of their body at him at this point?
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Oct 16, 2012 00:14
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