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Jerkface posted:Does anyone know why Matthew Farrer hasn't written anything more? He did the Enforcer books about Shira Calpurnia and I really like them a lot. He reminds me of a warhammer 40k george rr martin, not in creepyness but in the ability to craft an elaborate world that seems to work. I really like the setting with very real rivalries between police, church, nobles, and navy. I'm only on the second now but the whole rogue trader succession thing is great. Only other thing I know he wrote was some stuff for one of the Dark Heresy supplements. Incidentally about the Arbites. But yeah I wish he was writing something more as I really liked the Calpurnia trilogy. Even if the second book was a bit on the weaker side.
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# ? Jun 2, 2013 13:40 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 15:08 |
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Does anyone know when the unremembered empire is due out? I don't see it on the bl site, and there is no entry for it on lexicanum. It has to be soon, the anthology after it comes out in a month
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# ? Jun 2, 2013 17:25 |
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hopterque posted:That's basically the core theme of 40k, as someone posted above.
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# ? Jun 2, 2013 20:58 |
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Baron Bifford posted:Wow. I'd love to read a book on this. Can you recommend a novel or two where this phenomenon is well explained? I don't really know of any book, but there's a great short thing someone wrote up. quote:The Mechanicus does NOT have the technology. They haven't been living on some fancy paradise planet since pre-Fall. Mars is an anarchic nightmare shithole the moment you leave the safe zones into the kilometres of labyrinthine corridors beneath it full of rogue machinery, self-aware and malevolent AI from before the Fall, and the daemon programs of the Heresy. EVERYTHING in the databases is hosed. The databases are fragmented over the entire surface to the extent that it would be impossible to see one tenth of the total files in the ludicrously extended life of a Magos even assuming that they are completely safe to visit. And they are not. Got it from http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Adeptus_Mechanicus
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# ? Jun 2, 2013 21:07 |
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Baron Bifford posted:Wow. I'd love to read a book on this. Can you recommend a novel or two where this phenomenon is well explained? I don't know how else to explain this but it is literally the core theme of every 40K story. Someone with good intentions found something he shouldn't have and chaos shows up and cackles maniacally and suddenly you get the horus heresy. It's not explained explicitly anywhere that I can think of because it's what the entire setting is based on, knowledge being so incredibly dangerous that what is known is closely guarded and what isn't known is not worth risking. The Horus Heresy happens because the Emperor has secrets so dangerous that he can't even tell the Primarchs about it, the fall of Mars happens because the Mechanicum (at Horus' bidding) decides to poke around with some of the emperor's other buried secrets, and it goes on and on and on. So basically just start reading some 40k books!
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# ? Jun 2, 2013 21:21 |
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Also the whole thing is built on a bunch of hyperactive nerds and goths putting together an 'awesome' picture of a heavy metal future. The story isn't supposed to be a deep introspective into the nature of humanity and knowledge. It's supposed to sell overpriced little plastic figurines. It does what it does, and over the years people have added flesh here and there until a unique and compelling setting has formed which is nevertheless broad enough for anything to be possible. But 40k is not deep. To write the words 'well explained phenomena' in relation to Warhammer you basically have to have completely misunderstood absolutely everything. Alchenar fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Jun 3, 2013 |
# ? Jun 3, 2013 00:12 |
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Yeah...the cool part of 40k to me has always been the stories that take place within this batshit crazy world that has been cobbled together from three decades of shameless riffing on established sci-fi properties. Not, like, figuring out what the "truth" is about the various elements of the setting. Generally speaking, that stuff is all mutable depending on the narrative needs of a given story.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 14:46 |
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I love this summary except for the last bit. The Imperium does all this sacrifice and brutality because it is often the best thing they can think of. The 41st Millenium is a dark age, a time of great unenlightment. The rulers are corrupt, callous, and stupid. Contrast human strategies with the Eldar and the Tau, who are far more creative.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 15:08 |
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Baron Bifford posted:I love this summary except for the last bit. The Imperium does all this sacrifice and brutality because it is often the best thing they can think of. The 41st Millenium is a dark age, a time of great unenlightment. The rulers are corrupt, callous, and stupid. Contrast human strategies with the Eldar and the Tau, who are far more creative. This is why 40k is good, because you are both right.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 16:51 |
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Mechafunkzilla posted:Yeah...the cool part of 40k to me has always been the stories that take place within this batshit crazy world that has been cobbled together from three decades of shameless riffing on established sci-fi properties. Not, like, figuring out what the "truth" is about the various elements of the setting. Generally speaking, that stuff is all mutable depending on the narrative needs of a given story. 40k really is an example of game settings done right. There's room for a huge diversity of stories and settings but there's also strong core themes to give structure to the whole enterprise. Tonally, you're free to do anything from out-and-out comedy to to lovecraftian horror story to fairly serious military sci-fi before in the next book looping back to ridiculous deadpan gothic dystopian satire without missing a beat. There's multiple strong in-game mechanisms for explaining away game changes and inconsistencies that actively support the core themes - e.g., time-shifting in the warp, massively fragmented record keeping and history, active rewriting of history by repressive governments, tzeenchian superconspiracy, etc., so nobody's overtly bound or weighted down by what's come before when necessary. Every faction gets to claim that they're the ultimate badasses and has a potential win button, none of them are the "good guys," and each one has enough internal ocnflict and uncertainty that you can dream up a scenario where any one group is fighting with another. The now widely copied/mocked grimdark aspects are fun because they're a welcome send-up and antidote to the often relentlessly optimistic or credulously militaristic tone of most sci-fi settings or game settings in general. It's too silly to be taken seriously or be actually unpleasant, but it serves to leaven the power-fantasy and militaristic aspects of the setting by injecting a little more complexity. And, despite all the layers of lore that have accreted over the years, there's usually been only limited indulgence of the nerd fanboy desire for complete certainty and definite explanation and resolutions for every stupid little thing. Like, yeah, you're supposed to feel the frisson of uncertainty and ambiguity as you read - that's how fiction works. You bait the reader along with the promise of resolution and give them a little something at the end to resolve the narrative. But getting perfect, infallible answers for every little thing isn't storytelling, it's pornography. What's left unsaid for the reader to imagine on their own is almost always superior, it's better to want than to have, etc. 40k is a wide, well-appointed and curated playground for storytelling, both for the house authors and for the players and fans themselves. It's a legit good line of commercial art that has crossover appeal for children and adults. OXBALLS DOT COM fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Jun 3, 2013 |
# ? Jun 3, 2013 17:01 |
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The Space Marine creation process seems contradictory. The fluff says that the neophyte needs to be an adolescent or the gene-seed implants will probably malfunction, but the Space Marine ostensibly only recruit from the most fearsome warriors in the galaxy. The most fearsome and accomplished warriors are usually adults. There are not many 12-year-old Conans out there.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 17:26 |
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There are plenty of them on death worlds, and in turn, plenty of death worlds. Plus, not all marines are culled from the same stock. The Ultramarines and Space Wolves have very different standards, I'd wager.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 17:32 |
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Baron Bifford posted:The Space Marine creation process seems contradictory. The fluff says that the neophyte needs to be an adolescent or the gene-seed implants will probably malfunction, but the Space Marine ostensibly only recruit from the most fearsome warriors in the galaxy. The most fearsome and accomplished warriors are usually adults. There are not many 12-year-old Conans out there. In the real world the onset of puberty has fluctuated throughout history from between age 12 and 18 due to standard of living, nutrition and stuff. So at least the age part can be 'explained' away.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 17:34 |
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Fellblade posted:In the real world the onset of puberty has fluctuated throughout history from between age 12 and 18 due to standard of living, nutrition and stuff. So at least the age part can be 'explained' away. Also, the archetypical non-adult player is usually about that age and has no trouble imagining themselves as a potential 12-year-old Conan, so they're encouraged to imagine that they, too, would be chosen as future space marines. Before they start caring about girls and start realizing the downsides to eternity as a sexless super-soldier whose idea of fun is carving skulls onto bigger skulls.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 17:54 |
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Baron Bifford posted:The Space Marine creation process seems contradictory. The fluff says that the neophyte needs to be an adolescent or the gene-seed implants will probably malfunction, but the Space Marine ostensibly only recruit from the most fearsome warriors in the galaxy. The most fearsome and accomplished warriors are usually adults. There are not many 12-year-old Conans out there. I always figured they recruited children from warrior races or generally resilient lines people. Or very young crminals and hive gangers, conditioned for survival at very early ages.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 17:56 |
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Mikojan posted:I always figured they recruited children from warrior races or generally resilient lines people. Or very young crminals and hive gangers, conditioned for survival at very early ages. Ultramarines fluff sometimes mentions formalized battle academies, which would mean they basically recruit from the grim darkness of English boarding school mixed with Ender's Game.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 17:59 |
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Kegslayer posted:I like Abnett and while his prose is great, I find he has difficulty ending a story. Impaired Casing posted:I don't really know of any book, but there's a great short thing someone wrote up. The main thing to remember about the Adeptus Mechanicus is that it's the reductio ad absurdum result of union-busting. That's why there's so much talk of 14 hour work days six days a week and people being literally made into the machines they operate. It's all about Maggie.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 18:42 |
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I don't think it's the endings of Abnett's stories people complain about, at least from a plot standpoint. It's not like he betrays the themes of the narrative with how his plots wrap up, or anything like that. It's the pacing as he approaches said endings that can feel rushed. Sometimes it works and is effective in making the climax feel frenzied and intense, but I understand the complaints of abruptness.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 19:04 |
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I understand it, I just don't think it's necessarily fair. To use the most recent example, Salvation's Reach ends BAM right after the action. There's no resolution of losing Dorden or anyone else and no examination at all of if the big scheme actually worked at all. Because that's for the NEXT book to examine.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 19:47 |
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Arquinsiel posted:I keep seeing people say that and I used to agree until I read Embedded. He's not ending stories badly, he's just leaving the consequences of the story to another book. Sometimes that book doesn't ever get written. We're used to getting epilogue chapters and "where are they now" Animal House endings these days, but that's not the only way to do things. That bit was actually ripped from forums favorite TheCosmicMuffet, I believe. The other major obvious influence on the Ad Mech is medieval era artisan's guilds, since 40k first started out as knights in space. But yes, I think 40k has extra relevance to Americans now because it originally emerged in the context of 80s Britons dealing with the collapse of their own empire, and also because the social issues from the 80s never really went away. You could go one further and talk about how the whole "warrior races" bs for space marines recruitment is meant, consciously or unconsciously, to evoke actual talk of "warrior races" that played a part in British imperial rhetoric. Arquinsiel posted:I understand it, I just don't think it's necessarily fair. To use the most recent example, Salvation's Reach ends BAM right after the action. There's no resolution of losing Dorden or anyone else and no examination at all of if the big scheme actually worked at all. In part, it's an artifact of his books, and 40k books in general, being so heavily serialized. The worst offender for this is still Graham McNeill - his new series starting with Mechanicus was just terrible and basically had no ending of any kind.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 20:13 |
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He did the same in Embedded, because the result of the huge revelation and how society at large deals with it wasn't the story, the story was about how hard it is becoming to keep information secret in today's world of twitter and wikileaks. The results of that may inspire another book, but the story wouldn't even need to name any of the same characters, it could be an entirely different cast or timeframe.
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# ? Jun 3, 2013 20:27 |
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Just started on the Gaunt's Ghost series for the first, finished till Sabbat Martyr. I love it, though I am curious: The Saint seems much more humble and... benevolent than I expected? As an example, after taking out the Baneblade, she asks them to call her by name, talk about how Corbec has achieved more valiant deeds than her, asks if she is rambling. Not to mention her general demeanor throughout the book after she showed up. Do any other saints show up in other books?
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# ? Jun 4, 2013 01:54 |
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Weissritter posted:Just started on the Gaunt's Ghost series for the first, finished till Sabbat Martyr. I love it, though I am curious: No other saint really gets mentioned, but her retinue do get named and at least one of them turned up earlier than that, kind of.
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# ? Jun 4, 2013 02:11 |
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Arquinsiel posted:Look at it this way: she KNOWS that if she dies she goes to the Emperor's side. She is 100% sure there is life after death. She is also waving around a sword that cuts through siege tanks while wearing power armour that makes the average marine look like he's wearing a bodge job. Corbec is out there fighting the same fight, but without any of that stuff. Thus his faith is stronger than hers and he is more blessed in the Emperor's sight blah blah etc. Also it makes people feel good when she says that stuff. Yeah, I had just expected her to be more.. zealous? More pompous, perhaps? Not to take time to speak to the rank-and-file on a first name/nickname basis. She just seems to be as close to a paladin-archetype you can get in a setting like WH40K. I do like the little touches like how everyone who saw her at the parade thought she was looking at each of them directly.
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# ? Jun 4, 2013 02:56 |
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Weissritter posted:Yeah, I had just expected her to be more.. zealous? More pompous, perhaps? Not to take time to speak to the rank-and-file on a first name/nickname basis. She just seems to be as close to a paladin-archetype you can get in a setting like WH40K. I do like the little touches like how everyone who saw her at the parade thought she was looking at each of them directly. Dunno, I think she cleaves a lot closer to the saint archetype. A paladin is supposed to be a holy warrior - a fusion of the earthy, proud soldier with the higher ideals and devotion of the clergy. By comparison, a saint is, well, a saint - an unearthly exemplar, touched by the divine, often portrayed as strangely blissful, selfless, and/or otherwise unconcerned or disconnected from material attachments and normal, human concerns. The fact that she's a war saint is probably because it's 40k, and for many incarnations of the Imperial church every war is a holy war and battle is basically a sacrament.
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# ? Jun 4, 2013 03:22 |
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Arquinsiel posted:I understand it, I just don't think it's necessarily fair. To use the most recent example, Salvation's Reach ends BAM right after the action. There's no resolution of losing Dorden or anyone else and no examination at all of if the big scheme actually worked at all. See for me, I think that's just bad writing and I'm not sure whether to attribute it to Abnett or whether it's his editor considering how many books he churns out in a year. By all means, leave plot hook for another story to resolve but you should get a sense of completion when you finish reading a story, not feel like you need to read another book to finish the story in the first book. For me, Abnett's problem is that he takes his books to a great climax and then it just fizzles out at the end. Even on this forum, we don't see much story discussion for Abnett's books because there is nothing to discuss. After say an ADB book, we can sit around and talk pages and pages about the characters, themes, setting and the conclusion but with Abnett it's like yup, the prose is great, the characters are believable and that big bad thing happens but that's it.
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# ? Jun 4, 2013 03:51 |
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Cream_Filling posted:Dunno, I think she cleaves a lot closer to the saint archetype. A paladin is supposed to be a holy warrior - a fusion of the earthy, proud soldier with the higher ideals and devotion of the clergy. By comparison, a saint is, well, a saint - an unearthly exemplar, touched by the divine, often portrayed as strangely blissful, selfless, and/or otherwise unconcerned or disconnected from material attachments and normal, human concerns. The fact that she's a war saint is probably because it's 40k, and for many incarnations of the Imperial church every war is a holy war and battle is basically a sacrament. Fair enough. My initial thought was paladin due to her being a warrior, and her pretty obviously supernatural abilities. But she does not quite seem unearthly in her normal conversation though (I find it funny that they had to reassure her that she is not rambling).
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# ? Jun 4, 2013 04:00 |
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Cream_Filling posted:Dunno, I think she cleaves a lot closer to the saint archetype. A paladin is supposed to be a holy warrior - a fusion of the earthy, proud soldier with the higher ideals and devotion of the clergy. By comparison, a saint is, well, a saint - an unearthly exemplar, touched by the divine, often portrayed as strangely blissful, selfless, and/or otherwise unconcerned or disconnected from material attachments and normal, human concerns. The fact that she's a war saint is probably because it's 40k, and for many incarnations of the Imperial church every war is a holy war and battle is basically a sacrament.
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# ? Jun 4, 2013 13:20 |
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Kurzon posted:Are we using the Dungeons and Dragons definition of paladin or the historical definition (Charlemagne's senior knights)? Dunno, both. Either way, the whole chivalrous knight thing was an attempt to try and add higher social ideals and values to the standard figure of a brave soldier, as well as the whole "defender of the faith" thing fighting Saracens.
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# ? Jun 4, 2013 14:29 |
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Just finished The Sigilite, pretty cool I thought. Mallcador is one of the most interesting personas in the whole universe I think. interesting to see how the sigilite order has been around since, presumably the emperor. Since the emperor has been all the great dictators in history, a mortal sigilite has always been his right hand man. Also interesting to see how the Emperor really does want the best for humanity while malcador's views on how leadership works eventually gets twisted into the GRIMDARKNESS of the bureaucracy of the post-heresy imperium Also, if you have not read The Last Church in Tales From the Heresy, you are missing out on one of the best stories in the 40k universe. It isn’t even that long and it is just insanely good the whole thing can be read on 1d4chan, just search for it
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# ? Jun 4, 2013 16:17 |
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Urg The Sigilite sounds great, but it's a loving audiobook.
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# ? Jun 4, 2013 16:20 |
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ed balls balls man posted:Urg The Sigilite sounds great, but it's a loving audiobook. It sure does sound great though! I'm terrible at this someone probate me please
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# ? Jun 4, 2013 16:53 |
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ed balls balls man posted:Urg The Sigilite sounds great, but it's a loving audiobook. They have started releasing the Audio drama's in book anthology form. Like a collection of short stories, they already did one collection. Urg, the first of the Sigilite's. The Emperors autistic cousin
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# ? Jun 4, 2013 17:08 |
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AcidRonin posted:They have started releasing the Audio drama's in book anthology form. Like a collection of short stories, they already did one collection. I wonder if they'll release
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# ? Jun 4, 2013 17:39 |
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bunnyofdoom posted:I wonder if they'll release Tell me more of this Aporkalypse Now, please.
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# ? Jun 5, 2013 03:18 |
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VanSandman posted:Tell me more of this Aporkalypse Now, please. http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Dead_in_the_Water_(Audio_Book)#.Ua6wRECsjPo
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# ? Jun 5, 2013 04:29 |
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I've got pretty much all the books including the Hero of the Imperium anthology and I wouldn't say no to a collection of all the Caiphas Cain short stories to be honest. Which of course will never happen since they'd just bake them in the next anthology meaning I'd have to rebuy all of the books pretty much. Oh and it seems like they're finally making a move to adding their stuff to Android and Kindle. http://www.blacklibrary.com/digital-editions-preview.html Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 15:24 on Jun 5, 2013 |
# ? Jun 5, 2013 15:20 |
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Cooked Auto posted:Oh and it seems like they're finally making a move to adding their stuff to Android and Kindle.
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# ? Jun 5, 2013 19:33 |
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I finished Eisenhorn, and it was good but i didn't find it that amazing overall. My biggest problem was Abnett introducing way too many characters and under developing the vast majority of them or doing nothing with them. However Tobias Maxilla was awesome and his death was Going to start reading Ravenor. UberJumper fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Jun 6, 2013 |
# ? Jun 6, 2013 03:39 |
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# ? May 9, 2024 15:08 |
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UberJumper posted:I finished Eisenhorn, and it was good but i didn't find it that amazing overall. My biggest problem was Abnett introducing way too many characters and under developing the vast majority of them or doing nothing with them. However Tobias Maxiwell was awesome and his death was Who?
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# ? Jun 6, 2013 03:41 |