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Soul Drinkers is the one with spider space marines, right? I chucked it like 1/4 through. It was so bad.
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Jan 5, 2024 15:59
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Calax posted:Which gave us this gem This is why I got into 40k in 5th Ed. with Blood Angels. Deepstriking a Land Raider with Flamstorm Cannons into your opponent's backfield objective holders was 
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Jan 5, 2024 16:27
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Calax posted:Also the rules were a lot looser. It's the only reason I mentioned Coulter's works. It can be jarring to go back 20 years ( yeah. i have been going through cadian blood inbetween other books and its not bad at all but its very clearly earlyish 40k when not everything was fully set up yet. mostly feels like a generic scifi military book though. Philthy posted:Soul Drinkers is the one with spider space marines, right? I chucked it like 1/4 through. It was so bad. why is soul drinkers bad? i never read it.
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Jan 5, 2024 16:29
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) and read what was put out. Now they have a lot tighter editorial control to ensure that the books are at least following their own rules (The old Grey Knights books featured the main character working close with local authorities for example... in a time where even knowing about the knights would technically lead to the person being killed). Those early works are what defined what we know now as the World of 40k.
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Dapper_Swindler posted:Why is soul drinkers bad? i never read it. The Chapter Master growing giant spider legs and some characters thinking it is a good thing/blessing from the God-Emperor is certainly a bit hard to accept. Especially given that there were plenty of canon characters who had an issue with Sanguinius being a mutant, despite being both a Primarch and literal Angel, rather than a friggin Spider Daemon of Lolth!
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Jan 5, 2024 16:34
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Improbable Lobster posted:I wish Ferrus had a novel or two beforehand for to help characterize him a little more Sometimes in my wildest, fevered opium dreams, I glimpse a world where GW set the first of the Heresy novels mid-Great Crusade instead of the very end. That way we could get to know Ferrus better, you could give Abaddon a whole arc, theres just so much that could have been done better, in hindsight. As is we're just kind of dumped into the middle of the beginning of, uh, the end and told 'heres a bunch of characters who just arrived from doing decades of insanely cool poo poo, just off screen. Anyway how bout those Luna wolves, eh?' God can you imagine. It's so beautiful in my head. We could get to see the imperium at its best and most hopeful. How much more impactful would the eventual fall have been with that kind of proper buildup before it? I guess we'll never know now what could have been, without powerful narcotics 
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Jan 5, 2024 16:40
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Happens when what was supposed a quick, what, five novel series turns into a bloated monster most of which is really bad
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Jan 5, 2024 16:41
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Biplane posted:Sometimes in my wildest, fevered opium dreams, I glimpse a world where GW set the first of the Heresy novels mid-Great Crusade instead of the very end. That way we could get to know Ferrus better, you could give Abaddon a whole arc, theres just so much that could have been done better, in hindsight. As is we're just kind of dumped into the middle of the beginning of, uh, the end and told 'heres a bunch of characters who just arrived from doing decades of insanely cool poo poo, just off screen. Anyway how bout those Luna wolves, eh?' to be fair. i like what they did with abbadon. abbadon is the last sane dude who believed in daddy horus and supported him when he went traitor because he genuinly believed in horus bullshit. by terra he is misrable because sure they are about to win but everyone around him is a bug gently caress nutjob covered in the skins of babies or some religious nut praying to super satan and all of them are just charging into the guns, the brotherhood and higher ideals are long loving gone and now its just nuts
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Jan 5, 2024 16:50
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Dapper_Swindler posted:to be fair. i like what they did with abbadon. abbadon is the last sane dude who believed in daddy horus and supported him when he went traitor because he genuinly believed in horus bullshit. by terra he is misrable because sure they are about to win but everyone around him is a bug gently caress nutjob covered in the skins of babies or some religious nut praying to super satan and all of them are just charging into the guns, the brotherhood and higher ideals are long loving gone and now its just nuts Abbadon's arc is extremely good, and probably the best narrative portion of the Siege of Terra books. The scene in TEAtD2 where he and his boys just end up on the Vengeful Spirit, in theoretically different transports than they started in, after not even being able to take off in the first place, and his response is just "yep, that happened, who fuckin' knows anymore, let's roll because our crazy dad needs us" is great. Dude is so beyond "over this poo poo", but has decided that his loyalty to dad means more to him than anything else is kind of touching.
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Jan 5, 2024 17:09
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DaysBefore posted:Happens when what was supposed a quick, what, five novel series turns into a bloated monster most of which is really bad But enough about Dawn of Fire. 
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Jan 5, 2024 17:13
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Broken Record Talk posted:Abbadon's arc is extremely good, and probably the best narrative portion of the Siege of Terra books. The scene in TEAtD2 where he and his boys just end up on the Vengeful Spirit, in theoretically different transports than they started in, after not even being able to take off in the first place, and his response is just "yep, that happened, who fuckin' knows anymore, let's roll because our crazy dad needs us" is great. Dude is so beyond "over this poo poo", but has decided that his loyalty to dad means more to him than anything else is kind of touching. yeah. and now he is grand war master trying to circumvet the chaos gods who opperate on patronism and also narrative structure, abby cant get anywhere UNLESS he follows the grand narrative, so now he is trying to go meta with it.
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Jan 5, 2024 17:13
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Broken Record Talk posted:Dude is so beyond "over this poo poo", but has decided that his loyalty to dad means more to him than anything else is kind of touching. "Control, not Controlled"
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Jan 5, 2024 17:14
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All the Soul Drinkers/Ben Counter chat's giving me flashbacks to when I was 13-ish and unfussy and tearing my way through the Soul Drinkers and first Ultramarines omnibuses, and having a blast. Halcyon times, which maybe don't need to be tarnished by re-reading. Decent first intro to the setting, once you're of an age to appreciate the ultraviolence and not mind McNeill letting his inner Cenobite out to play come Dead Sky, Black Sun. I give the Soul Drinkers series partial credit for not shying away from depicting the absolute hellscape that is the Imperium (here's a long-standing space station built to accommodate the Imperial slave trade, here's competing institutions and greed forcing loyal elements into rebellion, here's the cack-handed attempts to put down a sector-wide zombie apocalypse) which the Ultramarines series didn't dwell on as much. There wasn't much of a protagonist gloss sloshed over the Imperium in them, which other Black Library stuff's sometimes struggled with. And never mind the actual protagonist mutating into a drider.
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Jan 5, 2024 21:04
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Dapper_Swindler posted:to be fair. i like what they did with abbadon. abbadon is the last sane dude who believed in daddy horus and supported him when he went traitor because he genuinly believed in horus bullshit. by terra he is misrable because sure they are about to win but everyone around him is a bug gently caress nutjob covered in the skins of babies or some religious nut praying to super satan and all of them are just charging into the guns, the brotherhood and higher ideals are long loving gone and now its just nuts Abbadon eventually became pretty cool but he spends most of the HH books as a mostly personality free heavy for Horus. I'm eager for Black Legion part 3.
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Jan 5, 2024 22:02
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Cranachan posted:All the Soul Drinkers/Ben Counter chat's giving me flashbacks to when I was 13-ish and unfussy and tearing my way through the Soul Drinkers and first Ultramarines omnibuses, and having a blast. Halcyon times, which maybe don't need to be tarnished by re-reading. Decent first intro to the setting, once you're of an age to appreciate the ultraviolence and not mind McNeill letting his inner Cenobite out to play come Dead Sky, Black Sun. i mean the ultramarines had the Daemonculaba so it evens out in stupid poo poo. I think writing edgy for horror is hard because if you go too hard to fast and dont have the right tone or believability, your hosed. idk. weird uber hosed up poo poo doesnt scare me or make me interested unless done right. i think the best written stuff in 40k keeps the best stuff vague or more about how decayed everything is. like how horus rebellion could have been a genuinly noble if brutal and underhanded at the start, but lol now everyones a capering monsters and only a couple of them are even aware of their strings. Improbable Lobster posted:Abbadon eventually became pretty cool but he spends most of the HH books as a mostly personality free heavy for Horus. I'm eager for Black Legion part 3. thats why i like him. he takes his own destiny and will do so by most means neccery as long as he doesnt have strings.
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Jan 5, 2024 22:05
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I really need to read Dead Sky Black Sun again.
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Jan 5, 2024 22:18
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Abbadon has some great moments in Saturninequote:This moment was his life in its purest form. His life distilled. He fought Katechon, and Imperial Fists, and Blackshields, and Cataphractii Terminators, and Tactical Space Marines, for no other principle than to find out who was best. There were no sides. No good or bad. No rebel cause or loyalist alliance. No Warmaster. No Emperor. No point to anything outside the broken, blood-smeared walls of the killing chamber. quote:Abaddon’s mouth stirred again.
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Jan 5, 2024 22:26
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Yeah, his chapters in Saturnine were some of the best moments of a book filled with great scenes. His final duel, right before the “send me back” was incredible.
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Jan 5, 2024 22:40
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Ok, which one of you is writing Warhammer 40k fanfiction again?
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Jan 5, 2024 23:10
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I gotta read Warriors of Ultramar again just because I like the idea of comparing it to the 15+ year memory I have of reading it for the first time.
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Jan 5, 2024 23:25
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Broken Record Talk posted:Yeah, his chapters in Saturnine were some of the best moments of a book filled with great scenes. His final duel, right before the “send me back” was incredible. I feel like that should have been the end of his arc. He even thinks “Horus was a fool” during that fight. He’d reached the mindset from Black Legion - let him spend the rest of the Siege healing from being 95% killed. I would have preferred he not show up after that.
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Jan 5, 2024 23:25
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I could see him getting "Horus was weak" from reaching the throne room at the climax of the duel between Big E and Horus.
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Jan 6, 2024 00:05
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Broken Record Talk posted:The Chapter Master growing giant spider legs and some characters thinking it is a good thing/blessing from the God-Emperor is certainly a bit hard to accept. Especially given that there were plenty of canon characters who had an issue with Sanguinius being a mutant, despite being both a Primarch and literal Angel, rather than a friggin Spider Daemon of Lolth! Spoilers for like a 15 year old book. Him being a mutant literally starts a chapter civil war, a bunch of key figures in the chapter are either implied or out right stated to have been part of a Tzeentch plot to corrupt the chapter, and if not outright stated its heavily implied there is mind fuckery going on about it because Sarpedon has a "Wait Holy poo poo" moment where the veil is pulled off and he realizes how hosed everything is. They aren't amazing books but like thats incredibly on brand for Tzeentch Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Jan 6, 2024 |
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Jan 6, 2024 00:13
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Broken Record Talk posted:Abbadon's arc is extremely good, and probably the best narrative portion of the Siege of Terra books. The scene in TEAtD2 where he and his boys just end up on the Vengeful Spirit, in theoretically different transports than they started in, after not even being able to take off in the first place, and his response is just "yep, that happened, who fuckin' knows anymore, let's roll because our crazy dad needs us" is great. Dude is so beyond "over this poo poo", but has decided that his loyalty to dad means more to him than anything else is kind of touching. I wonder if he'll come to see just how little (if indeed anything) of Horus is actually left, and that more than the death is what breaks him. Horus dying presumably helps to push Terra back into realspace again, and I can't wait to see Abnett take a crack at how batshit insane that is going to be.
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Jan 6, 2024 00:43
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Telsa Cola posted:Spoilers for like a 15 year old book. I'd have to go look at it again, but literally Ben's idea for the entire series was that "Well, what if they were good guys, but they weren't Imperium?" and he worked backwards from there. This sort of stuff only jumps out now because they have a much tighter amount of control over how things have to interact. If you tried writing the Soul Drinkers no, they'd probably have a few mutations that meant a single inquisitor outlawed them, but 99% of the Marines were un-mutated. Because if they were all mutated like the Soul Drinkers were, the current tight reign on 40k means they'd cull themselves. In the same way that in the first Ventriss novel, a marine misses a shot and is told by Ulriel "After this spend 30 days praying on the catchisms of accuracy" or something similar. Pushing way more towards the "Monastic holy warriors" rather than the more utilitarian world we have now. The books are perfectly serviceable. It's just that they're dated in how they portray the world around them. Honestly, it's kinda the same with going back and reading old Ghosts or Cain novels. With Straight Silver having it's conflict being centered around in a WW1 style trenchline against an enemy unit, and the Blood Pact being terrifying because they're organized and fight like Imperial Guard. Now, you don't have that sort of tech discrepancy, and guard/PDF regiments go traitor with enough regularity that it's not unusual to fight a Chaos Guard regiment.
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Jan 6, 2024 04:27
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The Soul Drinkers books are really poorly written. I would put them on the same level as the awful CS Goto warhammer novels. There's do much better poo poo that they are not worth reading
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Jan 6, 2024 05:27
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Ben Counter has done some pretty decent short stories though. Definitely remember reading a couple of his in some anthologies and liking those, even if the names escape me right now and I'd have to look up the book reviews I did last year for specifics.
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Jan 6, 2024 16:09
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He's not all bad. My review of Battle for the Abyss was basically "really fun space submarine action for the first third and then the worst poo poo ever" or something. I think maybe he writes himself into badness in longform.
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Jan 6, 2024 16:21
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Cooked Auto posted:Ben Counter has done some pretty decent short stories though. Definitely remember reading a couple of his in some anthologies and liking those, even if the names escape me right now and I'd have to look up the book reviews I did last year for specifics. He also wrote the Mechanicus video game which has excellent characters and dialogue.
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Jan 6, 2024 19:16
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His short stories are significantly better than his longer works
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Jan 6, 2024 19:29
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Angry Lobster posted:I really need to read Dead Sky Black Sun again. Is it readable without having read the earlier parts of the Ultramarines trilogy? The synopsis sounds kinda fun with Iron Warriors sieging each other, and I did read the first Honsou book.
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Jan 6, 2024 21:39
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Syncopated posted:Is it readable without having read the earlier parts of the Ultramarines trilogy? The synopsis sounds kinda fun with Iron Warriors sieging each other, and I did read the first Honsou book. You absolutely can go blind just by reading the plot summary of the previous book in a wiki (which will be thin as gently caress, they were standard bolter porn), also the author does a small summary in-character of the previous book's plot in the first chapter, so go ahead.
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Jan 6, 2024 22:18
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Black Griffon posted:I gotta read Warriors of Ultramar again just because I like the idea of comparing it to the 15+ year memory I have of reading it for the first time. My favorite Tyranid book. Out of the Omnibus, that one was the one I enjoyed the most by a wide margin. Reading about a world slowly being infiltrated by 'nids and then going full blown invasion was great. Of course that was like so long ago, and the only other book I can compare it to with 'nids is Devastation of Baal, which wasn't all that great save for the ending scene. My second favorite was the one where the Necron Nightbringer is accidentally released into the wild. Philthy fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Jan 7, 2024 |
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Jan 7, 2024 09:15
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I can't hate McNeill too much, because he did write a short story about Snowdog that is a semi-sequel to Warriors of Ultramar that is an absolute riot to read because it's hilariously over the top from start to finish.
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Jan 7, 2024 15:28
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McNeill also wrote a superb short story in the latest Sabbat anthology. Really there's a whole bunch of good stories in that anthology, definitely worth getting. He's a bad author, but even a bad author can turn out a good story here and there. Edit: The anthology is Sabbat War. Not to be confused with Sabbat Crusade or Sabbat Worlds. Kylaer fucked around with this message at 15:48 on Jan 7, 2024 |
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Jan 7, 2024 15:45
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I can't hate McNeill too much because I love McNeill
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Jan 7, 2024 15:50
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Black Griffon posted:I can't hate McNeill too much because I love McNeill Now this right here is a bad take, because McNeill is a literal Magnus simp, who writes in the afterword of his Siege Magnus novella about how much he loves Magnus, and everyone knows Magnus is the worst primarch 
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Jan 7, 2024 15:53
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Kylaer posted:Now this right here is a bad take, because McNeill is a literal Magnus simp, who writes in the afterword of his Siege Magnus novella about how much he loves Magnus, and everyone knows Magnus is the worst primarch Magnus is the worst primarch except for all the other ones
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Jan 7, 2024 15:59
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Kylaer posted:Now this right here is a bad take, because McNeill is a literal Magnus simp, who writes in the afterword of his Siege Magnus novella about how much he loves Magnus, and everyone knows Magnus is the worst primarch Absurd. Magnus innocent.
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Jan 7, 2024 16:26
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Not only does Graham McNeill post in this thread, he's got two accounts 
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Jan 7, 2024 16:35
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Magnus is a sympathetic serial gently caress-up.
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