|
Oh yeah the first twice dead king is a fantastic book and I'd rank it over Infinite and Divine but just on my personal tastes. They are both fantastic. I like how human the necron are in both books while still being incredibly alien, but in ways that seem more natural that is the nightmare of the imperium. I do like how twice dead posits the necrons are reascendent but only as a destructive force, they're still doomed by entropy and wasteful interconflict to fall as everybody else is, and it's interesting to see a flawed character struggle without the power of reality at their fingertips like trazyn and orikan have. It does have the classic ending I've come to expect from black library though where it ends without a period of falling action to set up the future, but I can just jump right into the sequel now at least. Sharkopath fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Nov 30, 2023 |
#
?
Nov 30, 2023 15:46
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 10:42 |
|
|
I will laugh so hard if Abnett somehow ends up doing his traditional ultra-abbreviated ending to The End And The Death despite sprawling it out across three hefty volumes.
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2023 15:51
|
|
|
Kylaer posted:I will laugh so hard if Abnett somehow ends up doing his traditional ultra-abbreviated ending to The End And The Death despite sprawling it out across three hefty volumes. He managed to do it with TEATD2! And then Sanguinius got owned. Gg no re
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2023 15:55
|
|
|
Kylaer posted:I will laugh so hard if Abnett somehow ends up doing his traditional ultra-abbreviated ending to The End And The Death despite sprawling it out across three hefty volumes. I hope the first half is the Emperor vs Horus and the 2nd half is the mad scramble as everyone realizes they lost.
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2023 15:56
|
|
|
Sharkopath posted:Oh yeah the first twice dead king is a fantastic book and I'd rank it over Infinite and Divine but just on my personal tastes. Crowley's also a goon. He doesn't post much, but dropped into the thread a few hundred pages back.
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2023 16:07
|
|
|
Kylaer posted:I swear Guy Haley writes most of his good scenes as if they're meant for the big screen. The crescendo tank fight in Baneblade, the undersea walk in Titandeath...and the weird slapstick comedy opening scene in The Great Work that doesn't fit the rest of the book at all, but it would translate perfectly to a show or movie, two bumbling tech adepts doing everything short of accidentally sticking their This is true for vast swaths fiction of publishing these days. Authors don’t make use of the traits of the novel as a medium, you can tell that they were writing it as a TV show/movie in their heads. No art or investment to the prosecraft, only sensory descriptions are visual and sound, character reactions written like stage directions, no work with various perspectives or structure that the medium affords, all exposition is dialogue etc etc etc. Some are more obvious about it than others (Haley in Avenging Son was so bad about this) but it is so common that at this point I regard writers who write books as books rather than books as movies as a rare treat when I find them. It is somewhat to be expected, you tell stories in the format you study and these days most stories people are exposed to are tv and movies. But I still find it annoying and appreciate the writers who study genres and mediums to take advantage of them
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2023 16:40
|
|
s in electrical sockets as they try not to get shot down by their own allies.
|
Sharkopath posted:Oh yeah the first twice dead king is a fantastic book and I'd rank it over Infinite and Divine but just on my personal tastes. They are both fantastic. I like how human the necron are in both books while still being incredibly alien, but in ways that seem more natural that is the nightmare of the imperium. One of my favorite aspects of the new necrons is their relationship to time now that they're functionally immortal. Trazyn spends like 7 years just pondering poo poo while standing around the planning table with his majordomo (Sannet?) before anyone says anything. And in twice dead when oltyx meets up with his brother and they just sorta stand there in silence for hours. I think its neat 
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2023 17:06
|
|
|
Are there any good books or worthile collections that revolve around rogue traders?
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2023 21:43
|
|
|
It's weird reading the criticism of the Grey Knight books in this thread. I just reread the omnibus last month and I loved the ending and wanted to know more about the future of the main character but nothing has been written since then which sucks. Taking down an entire planet devoted to the blood god was pretty cool.
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2023 21:52
|
|
|
Hamelekim posted:It's weird reading the criticism of the Grey Knight books in this thread. I just reread the omnibus last month and I loved the ending and wanted to know more about the future of the main character but nothing has been written since then which sucks. Taking down an entire planet devoted to the blood god was pretty cool. They all thought they had some kind of stable world devoted to Chaos. The whole time the gods were just waiting for it all to go to havoc and poo poo and laugh about it. lmao
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2023 23:16
|
|
|
How many back books would I need to read if I wanted to join the TEATD bandwagon? I've read the first three Horus Heresy novels and a assortment of other 40K novels. I know who the primarchs are and how the heresy plays out. Do I need to start with Siege of Terra or go back to book 4?
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2023 23:42
|
|
|
Mappo posted:How many back books would I need to read if I wanted to join the TEATD bandwagon? You can mostly piece it together, you'll be missing out on some stuff/characters but the only essential back story is that Terra is hosed right now. And I'd imagine people here would be happy to answer questions like "who is this Sigismund guy"
|
|
#
?
Nov 30, 2023 23:55
|
|
|
Mappo posted:How many back books would I need to read if I wanted to join the TEATD bandwagon? Really the only thing you'd probably be baffled by is who John Grammaticus, Oll Persson and company are. And honestly their plotline is the worst and least interesting aspect of TEATD, and of the Siege in general (except for the servitor beating the poo poo out of Erebus with a box). In terms of the rest of the Siege, The First Wall and Mortis are low spots, The Solar War and The Lost And The Damned are decent, and Saturnine, Warhawk, and Echoes of Eternity are all absolutely worth reading, completely aside from being "necessary" for TEATD.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 00:02
|
|
|
I am listening to teatd without having read any hh story apart from master of mankind and I am doing fine.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 00:09
|
|
|
Kylaer posted:Really the only thing you'd probably be baffled by is who John Grammaticus, Oll Persson and company are. And honestly their plotline is the worst and least interesting aspect of TEATD, and of the Siege in general (except for the servitor beating the poo poo out of Erebus with a box). In a series that's dominated by epically ridiculous heroes, those characters all stand out for having such extreme Marty Sue energy.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 00:11
|
|
|
Kylaer posted:Really the only thing you'd probably be baffled by is who John Grammaticus, Oll Persson and company are. And honestly their plotline is the worst and least interesting aspect of TEATD, I thought book 2 was unnecessarily padded with returning to half a dozen interchangeable space marines fighting meaningless battles.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 00:12
|
|
|
Bohemian Nights posted:Are there any good books or worthile collections that revolve around rogue traders? I’m about halfway through the Blackstone Fortress omnibus and enjoying it, the two novels focus on a rogue trader at least.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 00:18
|
|
|
Gravitas Shortfall posted:I thought book 2 was unnecessarily padded with returning to half a dozen interchangeable space marines fighting meaningless battles. I halfway agree but those gave us the line "He does know that the final hours of Terra's fall are not a teaching moment" which is beautiful. Also I may be an outlier but one of my pet peeves is Enuncia. I do not like it as a plot element, I don't think it fits the setting and I have disliked it in every circumstance it's made an appearance, so the fact that it's spilled over into the Siege annoys me.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 00:20
|
|
|
I've read so much trash in my life that most of that doesn't phase me, but I really don't understand the whole perpetual storyline. The Emperor is perfectly capable of being a one off and doing epic history things without needing Odysseus following him around. The again this is the publisher that decided the astartes are named after Dr. Astarte and not simply a nod to a war goddess.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 00:53
|
|
|
I like the perpetuals. I enjoy having something that just feels like a completely different thing, because it makes the universe feel bigger. Sometimes, the scope of the setting can feel stymied by a sense that there's a finite amount of something; there's these gods, these great civilizations, this kind of magic and so on. Both the perpetuals and stuff like enuncia foster a feeling that there is still an unexplored vastness out there, and I enjoy the universe so much more when I'm not reminded that it's a boardgame.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 01:00
|
|
|
Enucia is also I think a joke about the characters saying the words of the book Maybe not idk
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 01:02
|
|
|
Am I misremembering or have they explicitly acknowledged that the perpetuals are archetypes in a novel?
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 01:33
|
|
|
moths posted:Am I misremembering or have they explicitly acknowledged that the perpetuals are archetypes in a novel? No they have. Can't recall exactly which one, but it's Mortis, Warhawk or Echoes of Eternity.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 01:44
|
|
|
Probably should read saturnine before teandthed
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 01:45
|
|
|
Kylaer posted:I halfway agree but those gave us the line "He does know that the final hours of Terra's fall are not a teaching moment" which is beautiful. I agree, I am mostly not an Abnett Guy (I like some of his stuff but not as much as most people here do), so I hate when Abnett Stuff appears in the wider universe. I'm rereading Prospero Burns and I groaned when Enuncia and the Cognitae (sp?) show up, I had forgotten it was there. The only good scene with it (I assume?) is in Betrayer when Angron says that sorcery is bullshit and Lorgar speaks a word of what I thought was a secret demon language and blasts him across the room. If it turns out it's Enuncia and not a secret demon language that is so horrible reality rebels against it, that is way less cool. 40k already HAS a secret order behind the cosmos that shapes everything and will give you knowledge and power but at a terrible price, it doesn't need ANOTHER one.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 02:55
|
|
|
von Metternich posted:The only good scene with it (I assume?) is in Betrayer when Angron says that sorcery is bullshit and Lorgar speaks a word of what I thought was a secret demon language and blasts him across the room. If it turns out it's Enuncia and not a secret demon language that is so horrible reality rebels against it, that is way less cool. I'm confused by this paragraph, "secret demon language this is so horrible reality rebels against it" is literally what Enuncia is right?
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 03:05
|
|
|
Enuncia is not chaos or warp no Iirc Edit Is warp but not chaos ?
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 03:10
|
|
|
Abnett is a top tier writer but some of his lore additions are weird and bad. Enuncia is lame but the magic bracelets that turn pariahs off are way worse. Did he introduce perpetuals and Grammaticus? The siege of Terra books are noticeably worse for their inclusion imo.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 03:15
|
|
|
He did. He did.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 03:16
|
|
|
I think every collective series writer has a natural desire to carve out a space for themselves within the larger body of work, but often it just gets weird.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 03:24
|
|
|
euphronius posted:Enuncia is not chaos or warp no Enuncia is explicitly not Warp power from everything I can recall reading. It's an entirely different all-powerful mystical underpinning of the universe, one that the Necrons and the Eldar never managed to discover but some absolute nobodies at the Tower of Babel did, before getting pwned by the Emperor, in the Bronze Age. IIRC perpetuals are a thing from the flavor text in the really old rulebooks, but Abnett was the one who brought them back into the modern era of fiction. And Grammaticus is entirely his.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 03:25
|
|
|
Hamelekim posted:It's weird reading the criticism of the Grey Knight books in this thread. I just reread the omnibus last month and I loved the ending and wanted to know more about the future of the main character but nothing has been written since then which sucks. Taking down an entire planet devoted to the blood god was pretty cool. I tried re-reading it earlier this year and it's hard to explain, but you can tell that it was written early in the Black Library and the rules were less stringent about how things should be portrayed. Finished the second Crimson Fists book (Legacy of Dorn). The author of that was VERY good at remembering to keep Marines as a leap beyond humanity. Which is good, but he also seems to have the opinion that Marines would also forget that baseline humans need to sleep and eat more than Marines to survive. To the point there's an argument between a ranking human and a Marine about the Guard needing to rest to be at 100% and the marine shrugging it off with "My men don't need to, so you won't either" and walking off.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 03:37
|
|
|
Calax posted:Finished the second Crimson Fists book (Legacy of Dorn). The author of that was VERY good at remembering to keep Marines as a leap beyond humanity. Which is good, but he also seems to have the opinion that Marines would also forget that baseline humans need to sleep and eat more than Marines to survive. To the point there's an argument between a ranking human and a Marine about the Guard needing to rest to be at 100% and the marine shrugging it off with "My men don't need to, so you won't either" and walking off. Now I feel for the Crimson Fists chapter serfs.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 03:44
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 03:57
|
|
|
I think Enuncia and the perpetuals are cool. Makes me think of the bit in Seed Of Destruction when Rasputin "says" the glyph that Prince used as his name and Hellboy describes it as being hit by a submarine.
Inspector_666 fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Dec 1, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 04:07
|
|
|
I feel like Abnett's subplot with the perpetuals has always gotten a lot of hate. I personally like it, I always thought of it as neat bit of adventure story to break up all the pew-pew with 'roided-up super soldiers. Was it Legion where he first introduced that plotline?
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 04:08
|
|
|
habeasdorkus posted:Now I feel for the Crimson Fists chapter serfs. The big point about Pedro Kantor was that he cared for the serfs. There's a few other marines but 2/3rds of the other marine viewpoint characters were basically "Who cares about humans, we need to kill the enemy!" Also preservation because the writer wiped out most of the chapter in one blow early in Rynn's World.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 04:15
|
|
|
Eunicia is like the least offensive thing about the perpetuals.Black Griffon posted:No they have. Can't recall exactly which one, but it's Mortis, Warhawk or Echoes of Eternity. Ok thanks. I thought so! It just feels very fourth-wall, and not in a fun way. They exist just to do something, and fate ensures that they'll be there when the plot demands it. It's like when a novel references Hero with a Thousand Faces and it's like... Ugh here we go. Grammaticus just reads like an American Doctor Who inspired original character do not steal. And his presence is just unearned here. This whole setting tells a story about the Emperor's hubris and its consequences. How sins reflect and are revisited in unforseen ways on their creator. Oly fits into that seamlessly (for spoiler reasons,) but Grammaticus does not and subtracts from Oly's story.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 04:23
|
|
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 04:23
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 10, 2024 10:42 |
|
|
Enuncia works for me as a concept because 40k absolutely is a grab bag full of weirdness. Oli also works for me, given his history with big E, whereas I'm entirely lukewarm on John Grammaticus.
|
|
#
?
Dec 1, 2023 05:04
|
|