Horus Heresy, forgeworld book

Dan Abnett has a thing for endings - Legion is a rather average book, but enging makes it into a real epic story (not to mention made the Alphas one of the more "alive" Legions, stupidities like branding "secret" agents with highly visible hydra tatoos nothwithstanding).

Same goes for Prospero Burns, which is imo a terrible and dissapointing continuation to wonderfull Thousand Sons, yet is redeemed by the last 20 or so pages (it still means one has to endure the previous 420 though). Too bad Abnett forgot to read the Space Wolf cycle before writing this one, then he'd got hold of at least a little bit of the Space Wolf-atmosphere.

Descent of Angels would be a great read, if it was compressed into say 1/3 of the volume, rest being the actuall Heresy stuff - like it is it's just too long and unneeded introduction to a story everyone interested already knows and just needs few details to finish the pre-Imperial picture instead of a whole novel.

And tbh I didn't really liked the first books, there's just no "descent into Chaos" in them, it's more of "Horus is distressed-agents of Chaos use it to nudge him to that backwater moon which name I always forget - Horus gets stabbed - Horus is already turned. And everyone is an idiot all the time." 0-1 switch. Except for Fulgrim, that's the best painted portrayal of how a Legion falls so far - it even neatly fits characters into scenes from previous books.

@Makoto. I think you're right in many respects but given the standard of plot, character etc that you normally get in 40k fiction I think the various authors made a decent fist of the early books, f not in the detail then certainly in giving a feel for the Great Crusade.

I always find the testosteronic (if such a word exists:) ) approach most 40K fiction quite off puting and apart from the Eisenhorn Trilogy, the only other books I really enjoyed and didn't feel that they had been written for a teenage audience were Ian Watson's Inquisitor Wars books.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic, I reckon the HH models and books will be really interesting and attractive enough but won't drag me away from 40k. There's enough battles going on there to keep me occupied for the rest of the Dark Millenium

I think part of the problem is that it's very difficult to make space marines compelling characters. They're super-soldiers raised from childhood to fight and die. And at that, they live and die entirely within the confines of whatever life their chapter allows them to lead. These aren't guys that ever go traveling or have a career or have a romantic relationship. From age 8 to whatever century they finally croak, every hour of their life has been strictly regimented by the chapter. They live in a cult and there's nothing even slightly relatable about them.

Sure, they go to war, but these aren't war stories with any recognizable or compelling tropes because the space marines just aren't that put off by dying. In the end they squash so many bugs and bash so many heads and make precisely zero net gain in the long-term big picture of the Imperium's endless struggle.

The only (I hesitate to use the word good) enjoyable piece of space marine fiction I've read has been Storm of Iron. It pits the Iron Warriors against an Imperial Guard regiment and tells the story from both sides. Given the chaos marines as this horrifying and implacable foe, as well as the magnitude of what's at stake (serious long term galactic plot changer), it actually ends up being a fairly good read.

Yes, it is difficult - and yet we have Fulgrim, Thousand Sons, Deathwing and even those tidbits of fluff in the 2nd ed Codex:Space Wolves doing great job of showing there's far more to an Astarte than just bolter, chainsword and prayer.

Feel free to call me picky, but since it can be done, and was done quite well already, I compare books in the HH series to the best stuff there is, not the average.

[offtop]
Was the Storm of Iron the one where in the end that single guardsman Iron Warriors overlooked in first chapter did far more than an entire company of Imperial Fists, and where that chaos sergeant in TDA jumped all over a Warhound and died only because author remembered he wrote himself in to a position where plot demanded the bugger died despite being one of the better written characters? If yes, then that is a quite good book.
Plus that female guardswoman turned into a champion of Khorne looks promising - does she appear in further novels of the trilogy after what happened when she stormed the fortress wall?

@butchyboy73 - You can write a novel reeking of testosterone and adrenaline that'll still be a good read (HMS Ulysses and Guns of Navaronne spring to mind). It's just it's as difficult to do so as portray Astarte as more than a killing machine Also, do try to get hold of Commisar Cain series, imo those are among best parts of w40k writing.

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Yep, that's the one.


The lone guardsman is manning a listening post up in the mountains when it's attacked by the first infiltrators the Iron Warriors land. He's mistaken for a corpse and left for dead. He then spends the next weeks sending visual reports on the Iron Warriors siege works back to the Citadel via vox caster. The part you're thinking of is where he's sent to activate an anti-ship missile silo that wasn't fully destroyed by the IW orbital bombardment. He manages to successfully launch a torpedo which is used to destroy the bastion captured by the Iron Warriors in the first half of the book.

There's some small resolution to Hawke's character in one of the EoT-era White Dwarfs. In an article on the Jouran Dragoons it's mentioned that three entire regiments of the Dragoons have mysteriously disappeared due to a munitorium administrative error, though they were last known to be on extended garrisson duty on the mechanicus world of Hydra Cordatus. A lone guardsman claiming to be the sole survivor of the regiment has made testimony of conspiracy and an archenemy attack on the world. However the man has a record of drunkenness and disciplinary problems making his word ssupect.


The rest of them. Honsou, the possessed woman, and all the surviving guard characters make a return in Dead Sky, Black Sun which is a Uriel Ventris Ultramarines novel. It's not really as good, but it provides an interesting resolution to the stories.

Yes, it is difficult - and yet we have Fulgrim, Thousand Sons, Deathwing and even those tidbits of fluff in the 2nd ed Codex:Space Wolves doing great job of showing there's far more to an Astarte than just bolter, chainsword and prayer.

Feel free to call me picky, but since it can be done, and was done quite well already, I compare books in the HH series to the best stuff there is, not the average.

[offtop]
Was the Storm of Iron the one where in the end that single guardsman Iron Warriors overlooked in first chapter did far more than an entire company of Imperial Fists, and where that chaos sergeant in TDA jumped all over a Warhound and died only because author remembered he wrote himself in to a position where plot demanded the bugger died despite being one of the better written characters? If yes, then that is a quite good book.
Plus that female guardswoman turned into a champion of Khorne looks promising - does she appear in further novels of the trilogy after what happened when she stormed the fortress wall?

@butchyboy73 - You can write a novel reeking of testosterone and adrenaline that'll still be a good read (HMS Ulysses and Guns of Navaronne spring to mind). It's just it's as difficult to do so as portray Astarte as more than a killing machine Also, do try to get hold of Commisar Cain series, imo those are among best parts of w40k writing.

[/offtop]

good points made there and I'll keep them in mind when next I tackle a BL book. I suppose that The Illiad and the Odyssey are similar in that respect though maybe a tad wordier.
Ref the Commisar Cain books, my son recommended them to me too, saying they were really good so I'll make an effort to get hold of them.
Thanks for enlightening me (seriously)
Jim

Back to the HH book.

Models aside, anyone knows anything about the Isstvan III campaign rules that are supposed to be the "new and exciting stuff"?

Had opportunity to read this book today, and tbh am hugely disappointed.

I do understand this is mostly about astartes, but since the fluff plainly says there were millions of guardsmen (yes, it was “Imperial Army” back then) per every Astarte, I expected at least a mention of it. There’s not a bloody word, even though this would fit well into the whole picture. Or work perfectly well as auxiliary squads, even if just for the traitor lists as far as Isstvan III goes (Galaxy in flames mentions Army units among the traitors during the campaign). Instead we get a legion “ally chart” which ignores the Army completely.

But wait, there’s a “Mechanicum army list”! Although be warned it boils down to a single character, warhound and reaver titans, a fighter, land raider variant and a single type of jet infantry squad.

Also, primarchs seem to be a sort of carnifex equivalent. Except for Montarion, who seems to be given a sort of plot shield.

Lastly, campaign is very heavily based on what we had in the Badab war campaign. Zone Mortalis rules were downloadable from FW and I failed to notice significant differences.