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I really want to pay 35+ dollars so I can listen to someone read a space pulp book to me.
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Feb 10, 2013 22:37
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Their narrator is dreadful as well, that doesn't help.
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Feb 10, 2013 22:44
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Is it the same Scottish guy who narrated Salvation's Reach? Because I associate every other character in Gaunt's Ghosts with him now...  ROOOOOHN
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Feb 10, 2013 22:49
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They should just get the narrator from Dawn of War: Dark Crusade to do them all.
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Feb 10, 2013 22:58
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I can't seem to force myself to read any more of Fear to Tread, so sod that and onto Path of the Incubus and Berserker.
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Feb 11, 2013 00:45
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Rapey Joe Stalin posted:I can't seem to force myself to read any more of Fear to Tread, so sod that and onto Path of the Incubus and Berserker. Why are you buying James Swallow books to begin with? Also if Path of the Incubus is anywhere near as dull as Path of the Renegade you should probably skip it.
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Feb 11, 2013 15:51
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A friend told me to. And I really liked Path of the Renegade. 
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Feb 11, 2013 16:00
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Scoobi posted:I really want to pay 35+ dollars so I can listen to someone read a space pulp book to me. B-B-But the dramatic music! The crackling boom of bolter fire! The Professional Black Library Voice Actingtm! It's like you're actually there fighting for the emperor. And furthermore, i am an ultramarine in real life
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Feb 11, 2013 19:08
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So, I just burned "The Traitor General" up real quick, having finished "Sabbat Martyr" the day before. The ending of of the latter was a real good match of happy and sad, and while I don't want to list which characters I will be missing, and which ones I'm glad bit the dust, it was all such a shock, especially one particular officer who I was real sad to see go. And then I started "Traitor General" and just could not put it down. I can't even name a particular reason why, it was just enjoyable, even if it was a limited cast of characters.orphean posted:B-B-But the dramatic music! The crackling boom of bolter fire! The Professional Black Library Voice Actingtm! It's like you're actually there fighting for the emperor. And furthermore, Hey, if they had the guy who voiced GABRIEL ANGELOS of the BLOOD RAVENS CHAPTER narrate, while doing the random inflection on random words, I'd say thirty five dollars would be paying too little.
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Feb 11, 2013 22:15
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I think I need to lay off the bolter porn for a long while. I'm in Vegas and I was using the column of light from Luxor to orient myself and kept calling it the astronomicon...
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Feb 12, 2013 09:14
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Finished the Ravenor omnibus last weekend. I really liked it, it was tighter than Eisenhorn and I cared for a whole lot of the characters more, but I have some concerns: 1. If Molotch was such a super-genius, then how did Patience Kys sneak into his cadre without him ever suspecting? He got characterized mostly in the third book, and he really stole the show whenever he appeared, so I wonder if Abnett didn't intend him to be THAT smart at the start of the first book's prologue. 2. No one suspected Thonius? Really? How could he have gotten away with the flect thing, even? 3. Blanks can be cured? 4. They kept Bequin floating around, what. Really liked Patience, especially because of her story. I hope she appears in Pariah... Now onto Necropolis. Depending on how blown away I am by the end, I'll pick the next Gaunt omnibus.
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Feb 12, 2013 14:59
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Schneider Heim posted:Finished the Ravenor omnibus last weekend. I really liked it, it was tighter than Eisenhorn and I cared for a whole lot of the characters more, but I have some concerns: The answers to all your questions are "because otherwise there wouldn't have been a story". If you can't suspend your disbelief enough to accept that a super-trained Inquisitorial agent could infiltrate a cult then maybe you should just stick to non-fiction. Mechafunkzilla fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Feb 12, 2013 |
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Feb 12, 2013 15:21
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Impaired Casing posted:The ending of of the latter was a real good match of happy and sad, and while I don't want to list which characters I will be missing, and which ones I'm glad bit the dust, it was all such a shock, especially one particular officer who I was real sad to see go. And then I started "Traitor General" and just could not put it down. I can't even name a particular reason why, it was just enjoyable, even if it was a limited cast of characters. I put the book down for a while after Sabbat Martyr. Traitor General is amazing and a bit of a welcome change of pace after the all out war of the other books. Really grand novel and the end of it sets up some amazing stuff. Great to see certain characters becoming a bit more humanized and the characters that you pick up are great. But God, that Carpenter stuff.
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Feb 12, 2013 15:25
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I finally got around to finishing Salvation's Reach. Really great work from Abnett in my opinion, and I can't actually complain about the cliffhanger -- in a lot of ways it's preferable to the way he often rushes to wrap things up in the last few pages. It's also cool to see the Ghosts doing something that has the potential to affect the war effort as a whole. The series has some nice momentum as it moves towards its likely conclusion in the next few books, or so I assume. Angel Exterminatus is up next. I'd rather be reading Betrayer but I'm going to wait until the paperback release in April.
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Feb 12, 2013 15:31
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Mechafunkzilla posted:The answers to all your questions are "because otherwise there wouldn't have been a story". If you can't suspend your disbelief enough to accept that a super-trained Inquisitorial agent could infiltrate a cult then maybe you should just stick to non-fiction. Dunno, the characterization of Molotch did annoy me because "magical supra-genius" is tough to really relate to or work into the plot. I say magical because it's essentially plot magic, which while it isn't abused by Abnett, is somewhat tricky. I also think that the latter concerns are somewhat legitimate as well. In order to go for the hardboiled detective/techno thriller feel instead of the more standard action plus gothic space horror approach, Abnett in his inquisitor books has to bend some of the more horror influenced parts of the fluff, especially in his treatment of blanks and the warp. He does a decent job of it, but it does lead to some stuff that isn't quite as 40k. Same with Gaunt's Ghosts, where the needs of the genre mean that the fight against chaos is instead increasingly depicted as a clash of civilizations, with the adversaries in later books shown as basically an entire separate branch of human civilization (with vaguely Indian-sounding names) that has limited to no knowledge of the Imperium, instead of a creeping and pervasive force of malice and corruption that originates from the Imperium itself. The adversaries are deliberately depicted as strange and non-English others, even down to using alternative and somewhat incomprehensible terms for their military ranks and political titles. I know people have jokingly called it "Sharpe in space," but honestly that might be about a century off, as it feels a lot more like our quasi-celt Tanith, as a resentful part of the quasi-Anglo Imperium, fighting against Pashtuns and subcontinenters with their horrible bloodthirsty pagan gods. Instead of the grudge match between distant cousins that was the British and half of Europe versus the French and Napoleon's pan-european empire from Sharpe. Though this is really a criticism that only applies to the later novels in the series. Just to note, I like Abnett a lot, even going as far as to call him a good sci-fi author even outside of the kiddie pool that is the Black Library, and I don't really single him out for this since it's really just the pervasive influence of the imperialist themes found in the genre and most English pulp novels in general. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 16:48 on Feb 12, 2013 |
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Feb 12, 2013 16:40
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I've read Eisehorn and came back, as per thread title instructions. Tanks for recommending the series, it was really quite good. I hope Ravenor is equally interesting (though a more cerebral protagonist may be a bit beyond the author's ability), but whatever will I read when I'm done with that (probably 18th century navy novels, then whatever that Hortaio Hornblower in space series was called) Xander77 fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Feb 12, 2013 |
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Feb 12, 2013 17:42
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Cream_Filling posted:Dunno, the characterization of Molotch did annoy me because "magical supra-genius" is tough to really relate to or work into the plot. I say magical because it's essentially plot magic, which while it isn't abused by Abnett, is somewhat tricky. That's why it was jarring after we got more Molotch POVs. He was in an arguably worse position in his first encounter with Ravenor (alone and virtually unarmed), but he stood his own. But I have to say that my favorite parts were all him, especially the part where he single-handedly demolishes an inquisitorial cadre. The horror bits are extremely well-written, like the flect visions. And Slyte itself.
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Feb 12, 2013 17:49
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Xander77 posted:I've read Eisehorn and came back, as per thread title instructions. Ravenor is really only "more cerebral" in the sense that he uses his brain to hurl psychic fireballs at people.
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Feb 12, 2013 18:31
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Xander77 posted:I've read Eisehorn and came back, as per thread title instructions. If it's one thing the Black Library lineup is lacking in, it's definitely a Horatio Hornblower in space, 40k edition.
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Feb 12, 2013 19:18
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I too disliked the characterization of Molocht. I already threw my spiel in the previous topic I think, but suffice to say that I echo the sentiment that it feels like he wasn't actually intended to be a super genius villain until after the prologue was long past written, and that everything just falls flat when the story switches to his POV on the third. Genius villain is really hard to pull off; Abnett managed it on Eisenhorn by not showing the villains themselves but what they've been accomplishing, leaving the rest to the reader's imagination, and in a rare moment also pulled it off with that one flashback scene when they first met, but once he started giving the character slice of life moments it was... so jarring.
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Feb 12, 2013 20:03
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Cream_Filling posted:If it's one thing the Black Library lineup is lacking in, it's definitely a Horatio Hornblower in space, 40k edition. There was the old Battlefleet Gothic books from years ago but the prospect of seeing more of that is about as dead as the game in question. Speaking of the Imperial Navy I'm still waiting for the sequel to Double Eagle. Fat chance of ever seeing that though.
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Feb 12, 2013 20:14
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Cooked Auto posted:There was the old Battlefleet Gothic books from years ago but the prospect of seeing more of that is about as dead as the game in question. I read those books. They were alright, but not much like Horatio Hornblower. I did enjoy the character of the loutish thug who becomes some sort of NCO/below decks enforcer, though. Double Eagle was pretty fun, though the language gets a little repetitive at times.
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Feb 12, 2013 20:32
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bunnyofdoom posted:I think I need to lay off the bolter porn for a long while. I'm in Vegas and I was using the column of light from Luxor to orient myself and kept calling it the astronomicon... Schneider Heim posted:Now onto Necropolis. Depending on how blown away I am by the end, I'll pick the next Gaunt omnibus.  Cooked Auto posted:There was the old Battlefleet Gothic books from years ago but the prospect of seeing more of that is about as dead as the game in question.
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Feb 12, 2013 23:32
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Arquinsiel posted:Interceptor City is hopefully out this year according to the man himself. September-ish was the ballpark IIRC.  Awesome.
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Feb 13, 2013 00:29
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This is totally going to bite me in the rear end when he dies of meteorites and it never gets released or I totally misremember the date or something like that. I was pretty star-struck when talking to him to be honest.
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Feb 13, 2013 04:47
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Cream_Filling posted:Same with Gaunt's Ghosts, where the needs of the genre mean that the fight against chaos is instead increasingly depicted as a clash of civilizations, with the adversaries in later books shown as basically an entire separate branch of human civilization (with vaguely Indian-sounding names) that has limited to no knowledge of the Imperium, instead of a creeping and pervasive force of malice and corruption that originates from the Imperium itself. The adversaries are deliberately depicted as strange and non-English others, even down to using alternative and somewhat incomprehensible terms for their military ranks and political titles. I know people have jokingly called it "Sharpe in space," but honestly that might be about a century off, as it feels a lot more like our quasi-celt Tanith, as a resentful part of the quasi-Anglo Imperium, fighting against Pashtuns and subcontinenters with their horrible bloodthirsty pagan gods. Instead of the grudge match between distant cousins that was the British and half of Europe versus the French and Napoleon's pan-european empire from Sharpe. Though this is really a criticism that only applies to the later novels in the series. That works though, as the Crusade is starting to push the boundaries of the Sabbat Worlds. They're encountering worlds that may not have known the Emperor's Light since the Heresy. So the forces they've been fighting were those that had converted and been conquered at the beginning of m.41. The Blood Pact exists as the counterpoint to the Imperium, what mankind would be given millenia of loyalty to the Ruinous Powers. Everything before that was worlds that hadn't had time to codify their structure or worship.
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Feb 13, 2013 06:30
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50/50 really. The Blood Pact are largely built around cadres of ex-Guardsmen and organised along the IG's lines for the most part (see: [xpoiler]Mabbon Etogaur[/spoiler]). It's just that they happen to have all the other side's bells and whistles.
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Feb 13, 2013 21:39
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Speaking of, I was looking ahead in the Gaunt's Ghosts series, and see that "Blood Pact" and "Salvation's Reach" are two books in an arc all of their own called The Victory. Is it only those two books, or are there more waiting to be published? I'm on "Only In Death" right now, and can't decide if I want to read the next two, have it end on a cliff hanger, and wait it out, or just wait it out and not read them until the books are done. I only ask because looking at the publication dates, a couple years are between some of the releases, and that's a long time to wait.
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Feb 14, 2013 05:30
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SwankRabbiIgor posted:That works though, as the Crusade is starting to push the boundaries of the Sabbat Worlds. They're encountering worlds that may not have known the Emperor's Light since the Heresy. So the forces they've been fighting were those that had converted and been conquered at the beginning of m.41. The Blood Pact exists as the counterpoint to the Imperium, what mankind would be given millenia of loyalty to the Ruinous Powers. Everything before that was worlds that hadn't had time to codify their structure or worship. I get that, but his decision to make the setting this way is distinct from the standard fluff portrayal of Chaos, which is usually some mix of Heresy Marines, cultists/mutants, and imperial renegades (both guard/marines) - all individuals linked closely to the Imperium culturally (I left daemons off that list). They've been getting away from this a bit with the unique Chaos Dark Mechanicum units like the weird looking flyers and giant evil animal robots, but in general Chaos seems to be considered as a threat to the Imperium that originated from within the Imperium, even though this link might be millenia distant in the case of the original heresy marines. This is somewhat more in line with the Napoleonic parallel of a grudge-match between cultural cousins rendered all the more vicious by their past history than the clash of mutually unintelligible civilizations seen in the later Ghosts books.
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Feb 14, 2013 06:46
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Impaired Casing posted:Speaking of, I was looking ahead in the Gaunt's Ghosts series, and see that "Blood Pact" and "Salvation's Reach" are two books in an arc all of their own called The Victory. Is it only those two books, or are there more waiting to be published? I'm on "Only In Death" right now, and can't decide if I want to read the next two, have it end on a cliff hanger, and wait it out, or just wait it out and not read them until the books are done. I only ask because looking at the publication dates, a couple years are between some of the releases, and that's a long time to wait. It seems like there will be two more books in that series. However, those aren't the only books in the crusade really. There are a few spin offs. Like Titanicus, and Double Eagle, and the upcommign Interceptor City. Plus the Sabbat World Anthology.
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Feb 14, 2013 08:53
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Cream_Filling posted:I get that, but his decision to make the setting this way is distinct from the standard fluff portrayal of Chaos, which is usually some mix of Heresy Marines, cultists/mutants, and imperial renegades (both guard/marines) - all individuals linked closely to the Imperium culturally (I left daemons off that list). They've been getting away from this a bit with the unique Chaos Dark Mechanicum units like the weird looking flyers and giant evil animal robots, but in general Chaos seems to be considered as a threat to the Imperium that originated from within the Imperium, even though this link might be millenia distant in the case of the original heresy marines. Abnett shows that side of things in his Inquisitor books, so he's not going for an across the board shift in how chaos works as a threat. In the Sabbat Worlds Crusade "artbook" he talks about how taken by surprise the Crusade was by the Blood Pact and that it took years for the high command to actually believe that chaos forces were capable of something like that. And yes, the Blood Pact is composed of a decent amount of renegade Guard forces, but if your options after going renegade are go be a mob of cannon fodder or join up with something approaching an actual society, a decent number of units will probably take the society route. I don't see either take on chaos as superior to the other, but I do like that Abnett has shown a different side of chaos compared with most of the rest of Black Library. And the idea that chaos is more of a threat from within is still valid, the Blood Pact may be able to field a significant force, but in every straight up fight we've seen, the Pact looses. Things like a Chapter of marines suddenly getting murder crazy or a forge world rising up and now making Baneblades for chaos not only gives something to the enemy, it takes something from the Imperium.
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Feb 14, 2013 09:20
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Do the Iron Snakes show up in any of the Sabbat Worlds novels? I've only read the first Gaunt omnibus (more than halfway through Necropolis!) and Titanicus. It seems that they contributed to the Crusade according to one of the fluff books.
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Feb 14, 2013 10:16
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Cream_Filling posted:I get that, but his decision to make the setting this way is distinct from the standard fluff portrayal of Chaos, which is usually some mix of Heresy Marines, cultists/mutants, and imperial renegades (both guard/marines) - all individuals linked closely to the Imperium culturally (I left daemons off that list). They've been getting away from this a bit with the unique Chaos Dark Mechanicum units like the weird looking flyers and giant evil animal robots, but in general Chaos seems to be considered as a threat to the Imperium that originated from within the Imperium, even though this link might be millenia distant in the case of the original heresy marines. Whenever any of the good authors like Abnett and ADB are confronted with questions about how 'fluffy' a given choice is, they just say that it's a goddamn entire galaxy of things to play around in, there is no real standardised way of portraying something. Infinite variety in all its forms and all that. Basically, 'suck it spergs'.
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Feb 14, 2013 10:21
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To answer my own question, yeah the Iron Snakes showed up at the end of Necropolis. Great book, but In Remembrance sealed the deal. I'm getting the next omnibus. But before that, Mechanicum!
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Feb 14, 2013 13:46
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Schneider Heim posted:But before that, Mechanicum! Do yourself a favor and either skip it or stop reading somewhere around the middle.
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Feb 14, 2013 14:15
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Schneider Heim posted:Do the Iron Snakes show up in any of the Sabbat Worlds novels? I've only read the first Gaunt omnibus (more than halfway through Necropolis!) and Titanicus. It seems that they contributed to the Crusade according to one of the fluff books. There's an Iron Snake who figures prominently in Salvation's Reach.
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Feb 14, 2013 15:00
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Mechafunkzilla posted:There's an Iron Snake who figures prominently in Salvation's Reach.
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Feb 14, 2013 15:38
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I've never owned a mini or even contemplated playing the game (it's expensive and the stereotype that 40k is only played by neckbeards who don't know deodorant rings true here), so I just read about it, rules and strategy and watch a battle report or two. It's strange but it's a nice supplement to my BL.Mechafunkzilla posted:There's an Iron Snake who figures prominently in Salvation's Reach. Whelp, time to work my way through the entire series!
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Feb 14, 2013 15:51
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Mowglis Haircut posted:Whenever any of the good authors like Abnett and ADB are confronted with questions about how 'fluffy' a given choice is, they just say that it's a goddamn entire galaxy of things to play around in, there is no real standardised way of portraying something. Infinite variety in all its forms and all that. Basically, 'suck it spergs'. I don't think you get what I'm saying. I'm not complaining that it's not fluffy, I'm pointing out and analyzing the choices that the author made.
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Feb 14, 2013 16:10
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Saw this posted at Warseer (spoiled for official chronology of Primarch discovery) -quote:
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Feb 14, 2013 18:47
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