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Just finished Path of the Renegade. It has some interesting concepts and fleshes out everyone's favorite porny space elves a bit more, but the main plot itself is a bit lacking. It also has a very weak conclusion> the books doesn't end as much as it...stops. The Night Lords books by Aaron-Dembski are a ton of fun, though. He perfectly balances rooting for the underdog, highlighting the utterly borked nature of the universe, cheering for the anti-heroes...and then blanching at the things they do all the same. The conclusion in Void Stalker is immensely satisfying. It's a pity that GW itself doesn't draw more on the fluff from BL into their gaming work.
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Nov 5, 2012 21:57
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Demiurge4 posted:No according to the Chaos gods, it was all part of the plan to enable him to ascend to godhood. See the False Gods book. I felt that was a very clever twist as well, a decent take on the whole "bring about the prophecy you fear" theme otherwise known as the Anakin-Padmé Gambit.  It also implies that the utterly borked but still IoM-dominated state of the 40K universe was their end goal all along, though that's probably reading way too much into it.
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Nov 10, 2012 23:58
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Fuzzy Pipe Wrench posted:Unless he totally knew he could never succeed because chaos=entropy and figured that 10K+ years of endless GRIMDARK and DECAY is the best humanity could hope for. I remember one book (but forgot exactly which one) that sort of states that basically the Emperor was being a harsh dick early on to build a lasting foundation from which to oversee humanity as it crossed an evolutionary treshold and became more warp-resistant, at which point things would gradually improve. But yes, inconsistency across authors is annoying as hell.
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Nov 12, 2012 03:42
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Drythe posted:Just finished Blood Reaver and it further reinforced my belief that ADB is the best author Black Library has. I enjoyed Soul Hunter more however because it just seemed to feel more epic and The part where Talos tells off Abaddon is one of my favorite scenes. You may be surprised by how that develops in Void Stalker. Blood Reaver is an immensely fun book, and the whole part with the jacking a ship from the Red Corsairs was golden. I wasn't aware of a Kharn book by the same author. That sounds really interesting, especially since I use him a lot on Tabletop. Soon he'll get to chop loyalist Land Raiders apart in a more fleshed-out, context-rich manner!
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Nov 30, 2012 03:52
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Just got started on Betrayer. So far, so awesome. Trust ADB to give depth to mosnters and make them entertaining, tragic and freaking _epic_. Very nice to see Lorgar as more of a badass and gleeful architect of the whole catastrophe instead of a weepy spurned zealot.
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Dec 20, 2012 23:19
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Fried Chicken posted:Finished Betrayer. Holy cow is that good. Angron went from being "angry man who is son ANGRY" to a tragic and in some lights heroic figure, hated and abused by everyone. Very much this. I particularly liked his retort to Russ after he gets the whole "You're a loose cannon and I want your badge" spiel. Not what I expected at all but makes a ton of sense. Angron's statement that he only agreed to fight for the Emperor _because_ he is a damaged butcher, and that should he not have a murder engine hooked to his grey matter the moral thing to do would be to put a blade through the Emperor's skull in their very first meeting adds a lot of depth to his character, not to mention highlighting the whole 'grimdark Spartacus' aspect of the primarch.
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Dec 24, 2012 16:20
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Kegslayer posted:
While Lorgar has been acquiring more shades of Magnificent Bastard (if we're going all TV tropes here), I don't quite see it in the latest books. Especially in Betrayer, he goes to rather extreme risks to help out Angron, when Magnus and even Horus are pretty much coughing into their hands and saying it's not worth the effort. Teleporting into cursed earth, taking two plasma blastguns to the face like he's Sasha Grey (and a vulcan megabolter to the chest, but who's counting), wandering about Ultramar with a minimum fleet while the Ultramarines are roaring for his blood, and leaving himself vulnerable in the middle of a pitched battle to ensure Angron's ascension are not really the deeds of someone out to ditch his kin to get ahead. Though you -could- argue that we was doing it to test if it was even possible for a mortal to ascend into Daemon Princedom.
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Feb 20, 2013 23:07
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Kegslayer posted:I loved the Night Lords but I think the story of that particular warband is finished. I'm sure we'll see cameos and short stories but I can't really imagine another book down the line. Same here. Black Legion is also the one with the most potential for epic evil shenanigans. Talos and his pals were space beggars trying to punch above their weight (with some degree of success!). The Black Legion is a vast war machine with a tragic past, a reformation of sorts, a charismatic ambitious leader and the whole galaxy as an enemy. Are the Word Bearers books any good, by the way? I'm a bit more interested in that legion after reading Lorgar and Argel Tal in Betrayer.
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Mar 6, 2013 16:52
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Mowglis Haircut posted:So I've just finished Betrayer, it's great, naturally, but I noticed that the last few Heresy books have all involved Erebus showing up, doing his moustache twirling thing, before someone gets sick of his poo poo and kicks his rear end. True, but remember that the big plan keeps moving even so. Erebus likely gets such treatment because there is no solid plan yet to give him a good plot of his own, but he's still too big a fgure in the Heresy to leave aside. It would be great if he and his legion got a decent ongoing story in the post-Heresy, something along the lines of what is being planned for the Black Legion. Hell, just him and Kor Phaeron trying to out-plot each other trhough the millenia would be a good enough hook.
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Mar 15, 2013 18:18
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Trast posted:The inquisitor books like Eisenhorn and the Gaunt's Ghosts books have some wild stuff but I'm repeatedly amazed at the things space marines get into in WH40k like brain eating and the like. That is an aspect of Space Marines that authors should focus on more, actually; how divorced they usually are from baseline humanity. The net effect of a towering guy with aggressive tendencies amped up to 11 but held back most of the time by psych-conditioning, who can live to be 400, has 19 additional organs stuffed inside him, no interest in sex or romantic affection with any gender, eidetic memory and the ability to gather data from eating someone's flesh should be more than "He's just a sci-fi soldier everyman able to kick 200% more rear end".
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Mar 22, 2013 20:11
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Elrond Hubbard posted:What are the audiobooks like? Is it just someone reading the story normally, or are there like a ton of sound effects and weird voices for all the characters? It depends. The short stories usually have a ton of sound effects. The Butcher's Nails is really bad in that regard, especially with the space-combat parts. It has so much sci-fi pew-pew and whooshing it's almost like a 1950s B-movie. On the other hand, the Betrayer audiobook has none of that junk and is really good, especially since it has a single narrator who still nails very unique tones and styles for all the characters. His impressions of Lorgar, Lotara and Horus are all great, and the voices of the Mechanicus guys make me smile in the good way.
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May 3, 2013 15:44
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VanSandman posted:But I honestly couldn't tell you what motivates some of the loyalist ones, although the Lion being autistic as hell when it comes to anything outside of battle is amusing and appropriate. Lorgar has a great bit in Betrayer as he explains to others why Sanguinius would never turn traitor. The book itself is an interesting study on how some Primarchs fell thanks to their virtues, and others remained loyal not due to their strengths but because of their weaknesses.
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May 7, 2013 15:52
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Schneider Heim posted:Finished Path of the Incubus. Worse than its predecessor. I don't recommend the Dark Eldar series, it has some good ideas (showing how the fractured Eldar race needs each other regardless of whether they're Commorite, Craftworld, or Exodite), but the prose is mediocre. I'm sorry to hear that. Dark Eldar could be fodder for so much disturbing fun sci-fi, but are criminally under-used. Path of the Renegade was lame and pointless, and I was hoping Incubus would do a better job, as they are a better observer/outsider to the society, what with having some honor and being focused on kicking rear end.
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May 9, 2013 16:45
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mllaneza posted:Let's not forget that in a very real way, the Astartes are all grandchildren of the Emperor. There's plenty of spots in canon where Inquisitors or other zealots are uncomfortable with how they regard the Emperor. There are also plenty of incidents where the Astartes properly venerate the God Emperor. 40K is a big tent, there's at least one of everything in there. I bet Lorgar still gets a laugh at seeing how his earlier faith took root so well that even the Empire's top defenders have been swept in. Back to books, I've been giving the Word Bearers series a try and it's...not very good. It has a few starts here and there but never really engages. I guess the Night Lords series and Betrayer spoiled me for how writing about traitors should be done.
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Jun 19, 2013 14:01
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SquadronROE posted:Well, I'm out of Black Library books now. I've read most of the Horus Heresy stuff that isn't really, really crappy, I've read Gaunt's Ghosts twice. I've read Eisenhorn's series, Ravenor's series, and Pariah. I've read The Emperor's Gift twice. Read through the Cain series, and everything Abnett wrote except for Space Marine and some of the stuff published in 2001. Read Since we're suggesting ADB's stuff, try out Betrayer. It's really good and gives a very intense image of the early heresy on all levels: the Primarchs choosing sides, the mortal elite crew dealing with the fact that they are in rebellion (Ship captains and Titan crews), Dreadnoughts waking up and discovering that their legion is at war with the Imperium they spent decades building, and how much one can sacrifice for their ideals (or spite) without going against everything they value. I wish this book had a follow-up, because the characters are very good. Lotara is just brilliant, and both Kargos Bloodspitter and Vel-Kheredar are surprisingly funny in the ways 40k allows. It has also left some loose ends that need tying. Cyrene's fate is left a mystery, which is odd since she was such a huge presence in the mind of one of the main characters. Sadly not developed enough, too: it would be interesting to see how someone so sensible and seemingly well-intentioned could preach the faith she did.
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Jun 22, 2013 15:09
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Slipping a bit into BL audiobooks: If you were curious about Chosen of Khorne...it's not good. It's a return to the school of annoying background sound effects, the voices of all the World Eaters sound alike except for Kharn, and his inner-voice sounds ridiculous. Half of it is empty descriptions of hack-and-slash that border on teenage fanfiction (I kept expecting the phrase "hyper-realistic blood" to pop up at some point). Plot-wise, it's even worse. While the good BL books make you see beyond the obvious theme of their subject or add to it in a creative, interesting manner, Chosen of Khorne goes full-retard and just lays on the cliches. Khorne Berserkers really are dumb troglodytes who will leap into a precipice if you tell them there's a fight at the bottom. Tens of thousands of chaos marines just butcher themselves in a single day rather than go on a crusade because one of them says "Why wait? Let's start chopping now!". I could see the 'twist' coming right from the start but kept hoping it wouldn't be quite that dumb...no luck. The betrayer betrays everyone and no one survives except a very boring, flat Kharn. It'd be bad enough if orks were written this way, but World Eaters? It adds nothing to the lore and the voice acting is not enough to give it flair. Skip this one unless you are really hurting for more chaos stuff.
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Aug 28, 2013 01:53
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White Wolf advanced its plot, but it fell into quite a few ditches in doing so. I remember the Black Hand supplement that basically turned the whole setting on its ear (Vampires with time-traveling powers, one of their Disciplines being an alien disease they were trying to contain, etc), and then there was the whole Chaos Factor thing that was set to kickstart the End times for all factions but mostly added to the mess (to be expected when you have a werewold/mage/ghoul/hedge wizard/thaumaturgist as the main antagonist). On the other hand, the steady escalation of the story was a good thing, and done right more often then not (it's just that the bungled ones were BIG). I wonder how one could do the same in a wargame setting: you can't have Abaddon overrun or blow up Cadia because it would mess with their IG model line and make IG players mad. Can't have Tyranids eat a big SM chapter for the same reason. Orks will rampage across secondary worlds and crump random chapters but never, say, crush the Farsight enclave.
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Aug 29, 2013 04:15
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Are the Word Bearer Heresy books any good? A friend of mine has a 'First Heretic' copy I can borrow, but after reading that the Word Bearer Dark Apostle/Disciple/Creed trilogy is awful so I'm a bit wary.
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Sep 10, 2013 17:45
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Keep in mind that the Warp was somewhat restive in the 30th millennium after the peak that was the birth of Slaanesh, which likely meant less daemonic incursions. That said, both the Eldar and the Interex were really keen on fighting chaos, and several planets had cults and religions that were at least mildly chaos-tainted. The emperor probably thought that seizing the moment to claim the galaxy and shut out all chaotic influence for long enough to either starve the gods or wait until humanity developed some warp resistance was the best course of action. Why he felt he had to exclude his sons from that project is something some poor BL writer will have to sweat to justify at some point.
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Sep 12, 2013 03:55
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Just finished the First Heretic, which is a very good book. Having read Betrayer before it, it's a bit of a shock to see just how much Lorgar changes, and why. Still curious about what it was that caused the first rift between Argel Tal and Erebus, though. It wasn't clarified in the story.
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Sep 17, 2013 20:32
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Nephilm posted:The cause is that Erebus is manipulative perineum who corrupted Lorgar and led the legion to a path of damnation. The thing is, I'm starting to respect Erebus. Hell, he had to work with an uncertain Primarch and a failed Legion to jump-start the heresy, which is no small feat. As for leading the way into damnation, it can be argued that he paved the way to enlightenment instead, as they -did- find the suppressed primordial truth and even people who despised the First Chaplain, like Argel Tal, accepted that it was true. I really wish he was more active in the present 40k universe. He does seem like a much more dangerous and realistic Imperium-ending super-villain than Abaddon.
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Sep 17, 2013 21:00
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DirtyRobot posted:Do we know what Erebus' motivations are? Or is he moustache twirling just cuz? He does seem to me both immensely power-thirsty and very much untrusting the the intelligence of everyone else when it comes to doing the right thing, the Primarchs particularly. Chaos gives him the power to punch far above his weight in the galaxy and play the others for suckers, so he is pretty much justified in thinking the Four are the greatest thing since storm shields. "It was good to serve. It was even better to serve well."
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Sep 18, 2013 01:54
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Demiurge4 posted:On the other hand Lorgar vastly surpasses Erebus in very short order since his nature allows him much greater mastery of the powers being offered. I mean Lorgar orchestrated events that would have led to a warp storm consuming all 100 worlds of Ultramar, that ain't no small feat. This. After Calth Lorgar is amazingly quick to step out of the shadow of his adoptiove father and advisor and develops into a force of his own. I especially like how ABD sort of retcons the dumbness that was Battle for the Abyss with a snarky paragraph from the primarch. Also, he seems to be the the one primarch other than Magnus who manifests real psyker powers, though he's of course hugely outmatched by his big brother in that regard. Are there any other primarchs who show actual sixth sense powers in the rest of the books? (Other than Curze's premonition, that is)
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Sep 18, 2013 19:01
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I'm halfway through 'Fulgrim' and so far I don't really like it. No characters have any real traits other than "this guy will probably go evil, this other one won't". And if you did a word count on the word "perfection", I think the results may break five digits. It's an obvious, joyless slog. I'm not expecting amazing subtlety in my future space knight fiction, but it doesn't hurt to elevate the subject a bit. ADB managed to make Angron tragic and somewhat noble and a pack of remorseless genocidal psychos relatable. Sandy Mitchell brought some levity into the grimdarkness for contrast. Fulgrim has a depth that an ant could cross without getting its knees wet.
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Oct 3, 2013 22:55
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What books deal with the whole Cabal shebang? I've only seen them appear tangentially in Betrayer when one of them tries to recruit Cyrene . Also, finally getting started on the Ravenor books.
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Oct 12, 2013 00:31
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UberJumper posted:Nope, they still used the warp. The "warp drive", caused mankind to start spreading out rapidly. Most sources say it was the opposite; that the Warp was a giant hell of a boiling storm before Slaanesh came into being, with the rising depravity and psychic footprint of the Eldar, and that all that energy was consumed into the birth of the new god, making the Warp a lot calmer. So unless we are talking way, way before the birth of Slaanesh, it doesn't hold. And around those times, wouldn't the eldar be the dominant force in the galaxy? 
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Oct 15, 2013 01:43
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Depending on the writer, the Word Bearers are also decently unified, ruled by a council of Dark Apostles and dedicated to the Long War. The World eaters are a bit like orks in power armor, in the fluff. They'll merrily bash each other and anyone close until something knocks them all together. And then you get things like the Dominion of Fire, when Angron and 50 thousand berserkers reaved whole sectors clean of life until being stopped by the Grey Knights at Armageddon.
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Oct 15, 2013 14:12
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Blacktoll posted:I'm not sure if this even has any merit but I was under the impression that Chaos really lacks for an armada. While the ships they have are pound for pound better, there aren't many. Fleet and troop numbers are a bit iffy in 40K fluff. Other than the one thousand space marine chapters, numbers tend to be either vague or intensely huge ("A billion Imperial Guard regiments!). Chaos and all the other factions are as large and well armed as they need to be to be a threat that can be deadly not not instantly overwhelming, meaning it can be defeated at grievous cost, grimdark-style. Logically, though, the Black Legion and many other chaos factions could have large fleets and good gear. There are thousands of systems in the Eye and the Maelstrom to supply resources, and the Dark Mechanicum is the one that is actually free to innovate and improve stuff (even if they mostly bother with making Daemon engines, it seems). Abaddon had the unthinkably huge Planet Killer made. Hopefully the new ABD series about a Black Legion bigshot will offer some info about how the present Long war deals with manpower and material.
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Oct 15, 2013 17:11
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Blacktoll posted:
It's just the setting going back to its Dune roots. It is the Fremen way. The water belongs to the Tribe!
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Oct 23, 2013 16:20
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Mazed posted:
I have to agree. The material is quite decent, but the voices are mostly off. Lorgar sounds like a Decepticon, Kharn is Ivan Drago with a slightly expanded vocabulary, and I can see why they didn't try to do Argel Tal's doubled voice in the Betrayer audiobook after the small bit here. The pew-pew zoot-zoot sound effects during the space battles were the worst thing, though. I think they were made using those keychain thingies with space/laser sounds we had in the 80s.
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Oct 31, 2013 12:39
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Anonymous Zebra posted:Erebus is interesting because he's made several off-hand comments that seem to indicate that he hates the concept of Primarchs and wants humanity to reach it's true potential in communion with the Warp Gods. Like, I think he honestly believes that ALL the Primarchs are getting in the way of humanity reaching what he believes to be it's true potential, and that maybe part of his plan in the Heresy is to have them all kill each other/the Emperor. Someone else has pointed out here that the equerries/advisers of the more flawed/extreme primarchs (Lorgar, Kurze, Angron, Magnus) sort of had to have a take-charge attitude to compensate for their sire's erratic nature. It makes sense that many of them would sigh in relief at anything that helped them even the field a bit and let them work their plans directly. As for Erebus, I actually really like him, when he's kept subtle. I literally smacked my gob in Betrayer when I realized that he reformulated his entire plan to test/manipulate Arget Tal in a single moment, based on one -word- that Raum lets slip ("Deceiver"), switching which ploy is the offer and which one is the test. That said, seeing an unleashed Kharn with nothing to lose mulching him was ridiculously cathartic. Would that they'd let him do the same to Uriel Ventris, or the entire cast of the Salamanders series.
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Oct 31, 2013 15:55
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Khizan posted:World Eaters versus Orks. That sounds so fun I wonder why it hasn't been done yet. It would be even more interesting if it was made from the Orks' point of view. "Boss! Deez' here chaos boyz are choppier den we thought! Wat do we do?" "Get stuck in 'arder, you git! Show them Gork is killier den any blood god!"
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Oct 31, 2013 20:44
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Given the fluff, I'd say the ranking of one-on-one primarch dueling beatdowns is Angron>Horus>Sanguinius>Russ>Lion. Angron would likely die five minutes after beating up the Angel or even Horus, but while the others are all ridiculously powerful warriors, they are also something else: generals, artists, statesmen, scholar. Not Angron. He is purely a kicker of rear end with no distractions. I like how Lorgar puts it to Horus. "There are only two among us who would stand in defiance of the Angel’s wrath, Horus. Only two who would see him slain, once he fights with nothing left to lose. You are one. Angron is the other." As for the daemon primarchs, they are away due to plot necessity. The plot is no longer about them, just like the loyal primarchs also found one excuse or another to exit stage left. in Storm of Iron, one ascending traitor says that the call of the Warp is almost irresistible once you pass a certain stage, and that compared to it the material realm is usually a fleeting interest. It's as good a reason as any. Some of them may be able/willing to focus onto the materium when they feel like it (to be banished by imperial heroes), and I guess most would want to be there on Terra if a Black Crusade ever made it that far. I like to think Lorgar is just happily sailing the metaphysics of the Warp and thinking he won. His father is a wreck, his Imperium is almost the exact opposite of the godless enlighted realm he envisioned, and Chaos will likely engulf it sooner or later no matter how many Crusades are defeated. The fact that he was the architect of the main dogma of the Ecclesiarchy must gall and amuse him in equal measure.
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Nov 1, 2013 18:14
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Nephilm posted:Lorgar wanted a monster to fight against Sanguinius. Not quite. They already had that. Odd as it is, Lorgar actually feels kinship and cares for most of his brothers, Angron included. He even tells off Horus for suggesting the same idea. He is easily the most human of the primarchs from what has been published so far (mostly due to his insecurities and his need to be recognized, but also because he never wanted to be just a general or a conqueror). Even a year into the Heresy, he still feels somewhat bad for Ferrus Manus, Vulkan's fate, and for not being able to explain to Guilliman that he was justified in his rebellion.
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Nov 9, 2013 01:02
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Cream_Filling posted:Or he's just lying to himself. Basically the Humbert Humbert effect, since he's the protagonist of the book. Spoiler tags because this goes into the meat of a book. That's filling in a lot of blanks in a single direction. Lorgar sacrifices his flagship, endangers his sons and endures great personal horror twice on his mission to save Angron. A bit far to go for mere manipulation in order to have a rival for Sanguinius. In addittion, the book's omniscient narrator mentions more than once that Lorgar wears his emotions on his sleeve. If he is engaging in self-deception, it is so deep that it's pretty much drowned in his entire ideology, particularly since he's working to bring Angron into a fate close to that of his favored sons (the Gal Vorbak) and that he himself aspires to. Angron's reaction upon his ascension indicates that he doesn't much mind, as he tears through the forces assaulting Lorgar, and even before that he had agreed to let Lorgar save his life. It's entirely likely that lorgar sees it all as (forcefully) inviting his brother into a brotherhood that they will all share eventually. As for the Betrayal of the title, it's a purposefully multi-layered affair. It's the whole Shadow Crusade and the larger backdrop of the heresy. It's Argel Tal betraying his principles and better sense to bring Cyrene back. It's Erebus subverting his father's vision behind the scenes. It's Delvarus forsaking his oath to chase easy adrenaline. The whole legion shamefully delivering their librarium into slaughter when the opportunity presents itself. Angron's unwilling abduction. Calth and Gulliman's peaceful empire shattered by his brothers. Even the Emperor concealing Angron's degeneration and possible death from others. It's one of 40k's tragic, delicious little ironies that the character that is the most devoted and true in his dealings pays such a terrible final price for his loyalty, to the point that he calls in despair for the demon in his soul once it's gone.
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Nov 9, 2013 17:31
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Cream_Filling posted:Every action Lorgar takes is pretty selfish, honestly. He's always asking others to make sacrifices, but never really makes any himself - possession being an example. He freely admits this to Magnus, saying that he has been a coward at times and should have ventured into the Eye first. As for making no sacrifices and -always- being selfish? No. Simply not the case. He faces Corax on the killing fields despite having it in good authority that it will cost his life, to save his sons. He is mortified at Fulgrim's fate despite not really being fond of his brother, and risks throwing a spanner into the rebellion to put things right. He lands alone on Armatura to dig Angron out and takes two plasma blastgun shots to the dome rather than fleeing, and even when his brother is holding the Titan up he stays to lend a telekinetic push before being told to scram. In Nuceria, he loses his flagship, engages Guilliman and then a whole librarium plus a pissed-off Contemptor, ad loses his favorite son. When prompted, he again openly says that Daemon-flavor Angron is still in pain. The whole Sanguinius thing makes no sense in light of how he doesn't give two craps about the Signus Prime gambit. He openly states that no matter what, the Angel will be at eternity's Gate, and only brings Angron as a factor once Horus accuses him of divination. Which he could easily have backed up and said "Yeah, don't sweat Signus Prime, we have Angron! I've seen it all!" if he wanted, rather than again pissing off Horus by pointing out that he is being hollowed out by his ambition and should be a cooler big bro. He of course has a weasely little poo poo side, which only makes sense for someone who had such colossal self-worth issues and is at first trying to convince himself at least as much as he is trying to sway others. But a huge number of his points stand on their own merits: the Emperor's lies about the Warp and the entities there, the bizarrely harsh rebuke on Monarchia, and so on.
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Nov 9, 2013 20:29
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Cream_Filling posted:He fights sometimes, but then again he's a demi-god created to fight, so this isn't exactly massive. Especially considering that it's left ambiguous whether he's protecting Angron because he's a necessary part of his strategy or else out of personal concern - a distinction which becomes more settled once we realize the horrible fate he's arranged for Angron despite knowing him perhaps the best out of all his brothers.... What would count as a sacrifice, then? This discussion is splitting way too many hairs. If personal danger and mortal injury, loss of troops and material, potentially disrupting the Heresy he worked so hard to set up, risking humiliation and the death of close people all don't count, what does? Lorgar could have not lifted one finger and Angron would still be there at the battle for Terra. Nothing indicates the Nails are killing him -that- fast. In addition, he is not aware that Angron is up for ascension until the final duel in Nuceria when the warp aligns. It's just as likely that Lorgar truly wanted to save him and assure his immortality (and it doesn't go against the omniscient narrative), if only to convince himself that his cause was righteous. You can argue that becoming a daemon prince is a terrible fate, but it's quite clear that the primarch doesn't see it that way. The Emperor lied by omission at the very least, choosing not to warn his children of the real dangers of warp corruption. He could very easily have taken Lorgar and Magnus aside, shared the truth with them and entrusted them with safeguarding mankind's spiritual safety from such forces, in knowledge rather than ignorance. Of course, then we wouldn't have the setting, so some thick-headedness all-around is warranted. The degree to which the big E chastised the Word Bearers is also not clear. Unless it included calling Lorgar for a stern face-to-face talk that went entirely unheeded, though, the rebuke was idiotic and self-defeating. "Don't worship me as a god, I'm just the Omnissiah! And by the way, KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!" It's my main problem with the ADB heresy books, in fact; someone as supernaturally smart as the Emperor likely would know better. quote:Lorgar also doesn't care about the Signus Prime deal not because he's seen the future, but because he's convinced Sanguinius will never turn traitor (and is strong enough to survive it) - this isn't divination, but the fact that he personally knows him and that's his judgment on the situation. Oh, definitely. The point is that Horus thought Lorgar wanted to save Angron because he'd seen something in a vision, and and Lorgar could easily just have lied and said that yes, he had, so they could skip the whole Signus Prime gambit and focus their efforts elsewhere instead of going "I'm trying to save my brother because he's my bro, and you should feel the same way." As an aside, Lorgar's little speech to Erebus about why Sanguinius could never be turned is one of the most interesting bits about the Blood Angels I've read. It really makes me wish the legion/chapter was in better authorial hands. Leaving the whole heresy deal aside, what hopefully-decent books are nearing release that we know of?
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Nov 10, 2013 05:44
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Mr Teatime posted:A small nitpick about that which was somewhat interesting. Those weren't craft world eldar. Those were dark eldar, it was an archon and his incubi they faced down at the end. This. I was listening to the audiobook while working out and when both primarchs get to the bridge of the Eldar ship and see chains and corpses and spikes and hooks everywhere, making it clear to the listener that it's a DE vessel, one of them quips "This almost looks like Curze's bedroom" and I started laughing my rear end of by myself and convincing people around me that my mother spent the whole pregnancy attending tequila drinking contests while she was carrying me.
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Nov 11, 2013 02:11
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Kharn_The_Betrayer posted:I tough angel exterminatus was kind of bad over all. Its something to do with Mcneill and the emperor's children. The way he writes them just seem obnoxious to me especially Fulgrim. Though those little glimpses into the 1st minutes of life of Manus, Perturabo, and Fulgrim were kind of interesting. I just got started on that one and it does feel that way. I have to say that I liked Fulgrim's entrance with the hideous carnival of frenzied, altered people; it felt like a Hyeronimus Bosch scene. But Perturabo is very one-note so far and the story's flow is...odd. I could just be that after reading enough of the HH books, you realize that the stakes are actually quite low; we all know who lives and who dies, who loses and who wins. When authors try to artificially inflate it with doomsday cenarios (Will they obtain the McGuffin that erases whole sectors?) instead of strong characterization all around (Does Lotara survive the final battle? Does Variel hunt after Talos' slaves? Does Alizabeth Bequin recover?), the whole thing wears thin fast.
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Nov 23, 2013 16:20
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UberJumper posted:Fulgrim is a pretty good book, and does a good job describing a legions descent into chaos. Age of Darkness has a few good short stories, it isn't downright terrible like The Primarchs. Plus, if you make a drinking game out of taking a sip every time the word 'perfect' appears, you can get into the plot as a victim of excess unto death!
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Nov 24, 2013 05:53
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