The Horus Heresy novels, what do you think of them?

[gigastar]

I put the Horus Heresy series in the same bracket as the Star Wars Expended Universe... "series".

Both are basically lisenced fanfictions, and there may be good ones, but more often than not theyre mediocre. At best.

 

[Rob Robson]

I hate them, because these books and other books about hurpa durpa SPESS MUHREEENS means less books about actually interesting things from the Warhammer 40.000 franchise, like Tau or Eldar or the (short) life of a regular guardsman. Hell, I would KILL for a game/ book where a Dark Eldar raider is the main character, and the entire thing is about his sick and twisted personality and inner struggles.

But all we get is one-dimensional, self-righteous, low brow power armour porn for the 13-year olds and it pisses me right off.

 

[carpathic]

I love them honestly, I am on the 23rd book Angel Exterminatus and I enjoy the way they talk about the traits of each primarch. The traitor primarchs except for Magnus and Alpharius/Omegon are fucking crazy, egotistical assholes. Fulgrim wasn't too bad until he was infected with the daemon sword. Curze is a total whack job just like Lorgar, who is a weak willed scumball who can't live without something to worship. They haven't gotten to Mortarion yet so I can only go by the other fluff people have wrote, Angaron is the subject of the next book. While Perturabo seems like a fairly normal guy his inability to know his place in the Imperium is what pushes him over the edge. And of course Horus was brought down by his own hubris and the poison words of Erebus.

I think being that they are based on a war themed game they need to flesh out the battles and go into details of the high's and low's of history.

Totally agree with you _ I love the books. Though, there is a lot of debate as to whether Alpharius/Omegon are actually traitors, or if they are following a much deeper plot by the Emperor. I cannot remember the lore I read, but I do remember there being some very, very heavy hints that Alpharius/Omegon were following instructions with their "traitor legions" rather than just being traitorous.

 

[archvile93]

I love them honestly, I am on the 23rd book Angel Exterminatus and I enjoy the way they talk about the traits of each primarch. The traitor primarchs except for Magnus and Alpharius/Omegon are fucking crazy, egotistical assholes. Fulgrim wasn't too bad until he was infected with the daemon sword. Curze is a total whack job just like Lorgar, who is a weak willed scumball who can't live without something to worship. They haven't gotten to Mortarion yet so I can only go by the other fluff people have wrote, Angaron is the subject of the next book. While Perturabo seems like a fairly normal guy his inability to know his place in the Imperium is what pushes him over the edge. And of course Horus was brought down by his own hubris and the poison words of Erebus.

I think being that they are based on a war themed game they need to flesh out the battles and go into details of the high's and low's of history.

I think Lorgar is in many ways just the ironic end result of what happens inside a society where atheism and secularism are enforced with violence but the gods are in fact real and hungry for true believers.

Part of the Emperor's problem is that he tried to enforce ignorance in the guise of scientific enlightenment so that when the gods and daemons came aknocking even the Primarchs were completely defenseless against them because they had no idea of what was happening.

Even Horus might not have fallen if he had a better idea of how to deal with Chaos.

As far as Perturabo goes giving someone all the hardest, shittest jobs you have and then when they do an amazing job of it mocking them for the cost seems like a pretty good way to lose employee loyalty, as it were.

I think you'll like the next book, gulliman shows up for the climatic battle and the whole thing is a pretty entertaining mess.

Yeah this always seemed like a massive case of fridge logic to me. How exactly could a super genius like the Emperor be so so idiotic? How could he possibly believe that whole what you don't know can't hurt you shit? That was his whole flaw in his plan to deal with Chaos, well that and the fact that Chaos doens't benifit from direct worship but rather emotion of any kind. Most people don't know when a Vindicare has them sighted in, but that won't prevent your head from exploding when he pulls the trigger. Most humans don't even know Chaos exists, so they're completely unprepared to see through the lies and temptations when it inevitably shows up on their doorstep. Compare this to the Interex, who were well versed in the nature of Chaos and as a result were far less likely to succumb than the average Imperial moron. Combine this with the Emperor's horrible parenting skills (how could he not know how to do this properly, he 30000 years to learn it), and you have a recipe for disaster that any idiot could see coming from miles off, though inexplicably only the last Christian priest did.

 

[Seventh Actuality]

Space Marines are boring shit so I haven't read them, but I knew Aaron Dembski-Bowden over WoW a while ago and he's kind of a pompous wanker.

Thus ends my valuable input.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Nope, it's very much all a scheme by Erebus:

Spoiler: False Gods Spoilers

Horus gets seriuosly wounded by an athame (funky sword of super deadliness that Erebus stole form the interex at the nd of Horus Rising) while fighting a corrupted Imperial Govenor. He's on his death bed, and the Son's are mad with grief. Erebus convinces them to take Horus to a Davin seprent lodge, where they can heal him. Which they do, becuase they've just been offered hope for thier idol/father. At the lodge Horus had a psychic hallucination. In the dream he meets Erebus, who is impersonating Hastur Sejanus (one of Horus favourite captains, killed just before the start of Horus Rising). Erebus shows Horus a vision of the future, complete with a Imperial cathedral to the Emperor and the loyal Primarchs. This offends Horus, partly because he doesn't understand why he isn't being honoured alongside this brothers, and partly because this looks like the Emperor has betrayed him, spreading the secular imperial truth while planning to then establish hiself as a God. This also ties in with the feeling that the military and the Legions are being sidelined now the Great Crusade is almost done, with the Legions are unsurprisingly unhaooy about. Magnus joins the vision and tries to talk Horus down, but Horus eventually decides to go with Erebus's plan and lead a revolt to preempt the Emperor's betrayl he now thinks is coming. Erebus them convinces him that the powers of the warp (which the Primarchs are aware of, but don't understand their true nature) can hand him victory in his rebellion. So the Heresy is pretty much 100% the Word Bearers fault.

Excepting that Horus reveals that he'd seen through the scheme, and knew he was being lied to. Then went along with them anyway for no reason.

 

[ForumSafari]

I think it's been going on for far too long

Bingo.

I had great hopes for the series because initially the pacing was great even if the individual stories were variable. The problem is that after the dropsite massacre it just lost all momentum, there are still books being written about the aftermath of an event that begun in what, book four?

 

[Megalodon]

Nope, it's very much all a scheme by Erebus:

Spoiler: False Gods Spoilers

Horus gets seriuosly wounded by an athame (funky sword of super deadliness that Erebus stole form the interex at the nd of Horus Rising) while fighting a corrupted Imperial Govenor. He's on his death bed, and the Son's are mad with grief. Erebus convinces them to take Horus to a Davin seprent lodge, where they can heal him. Which they do, becuase they've just been offered hope for thier idol/father. At the lodge Horus had a psychic hallucination. In the dream he meets Erebus, who is impersonating Hastur Sejanus (one of Horus favourite captains, killed just before the start of Horus Rising). Erebus shows Horus a vision of the future, complete with a Imperial cathedral to the Emperor and the loyal Primarchs. This offends Horus, partly because he doesn't understand why he isn't being honoured alongside this brothers, and partly because this looks like the Emperor has betrayed him, spreading the secular imperial truth while planning to then establish hiself as a God. This also ties in with the feeling that the military and the Legions are being sidelined now the Great Crusade is almost done, with the Legions are unsurprisingly unhaooy about. Magnus joins the vision and tries to talk Horus down, but Horus eventually decides to go with Erebus's plan and lead a revolt to preempt the Emperor's betrayl he now thinks is coming. Erebus them convinces him that the powers of the warp (which the Primarchs are aware of, but don't understand their true nature) can hand him victory in his rebellion. So the Heresy is pretty much 100% the Word Bearers fault.

Excepting that Horus reveals that he'd seen through the scheme, and knew he was being lied to. Then went along with them anyway for no reason.

Hmm, I don't remember Horus realising he was being lied to, only that erebus wasn't Sejanus, the he gets annoyed at both Erebus and Magnus trying to influence him, then comes to his decision. But its been years since I read the book, so I may well be wrong.

 

[Tiger King]

I remember reading the first couple of novels and it's the first dan abnett book I had read and thought 'this is pretty good' (I think his gaunts ghosts novels are just band of brothers rip offs)
Sadly I got distracted and haven't been paying attention since, I checked on black library and it's 150 pounds for the whole series!!!!

Been reading the night lords novels over again, good stuff!

 

[Thaluikhain]

I remember reading the first couple of novels and it's the first dan abnett book I had read and thought 'this is pretty good' (I think his gaunts ghosts novels are just band of brothers rip offs)

The Gaunt's Ghosts books started a few years before Band of Brothers came of, though.

OTOH, yeah, the first book was quite decent, the later stuff not so much, and you can see where he's been ripping off other stuff over time.

 

[Tiger King]

I remember reading the first couple of novels and it's the first dan abnett book I had read and thought 'this is pretty good' (I think his gaunts ghosts novels are just band of brothers rip offs)

The Gaunt's Ghosts books started a few years before Band of Brothers came of, though.

OTOH, yeah, the first book was quite decent, the later stuff not so much, and you can see where he's been ripping off other stuff over time.

Thanks for pointing that out!
that's the problem I had with his gaunts ghosts, they are so ww2!
I read a novel of his called double eagle (I think) and it was a re-write of the battle of Britain pretty much.
dan seems like a nice guy n all but if I wanted to read history I would jump on wiki.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I put the Horus Heresy series in the same bracket as the Star Wars Expended Universe... "series".

Both are basically lisenced fanfictions, and there may be good ones, but more often than not theyre mediocre. At best.

I'd say it's more accurate to call them "adaptations of existing materials that eventually turned into licensed fanfiction."

Then again....Most things in Warhammer 40K apply (see Matt Ward and his Ultramarines fanwank)

 

[Thaluikhain]

Thanks for pointing that out!
that's the problem I had with his gaunts ghosts, they are so ww2!
I read a novel of his called double eagle (I think) and it was a re-write of the battle of Britain pretty much.
dan seems like a nice guy n all but if I wanted to read history I would jump on wiki.

Not true, they more often are WW1

What I find particularly annoying is that writing them as WW1 (or WW2) just does not work.

They travel in mighty spaceships, they can land troops and terrible fighting machines wherever they want, they can destroy entire cities from orbit, and they they fight in trenches for the hell of it.

At least in the first GG book he goes into a (little) bit of detail specifying why they had to do that.

It gets even worse in books where both sides are shipping people in from offworld, meaning they've both got spaceships in orbit...which never gets mentioned.

In Double Eagle, for example, those fighter planes are easily capable of flying to orbit and back. They could attack anywhere on the planet. If they wanted, they could fly right round the world and attack the enemy from behind.

(Also, a lot of his characters get very samey, and he uses the same endings fro almost all of his stuff. Either a random magic thing saves the heroes, or the enemy leader gets killed and the enemy give up, or both, every single time)

 

[gigastar]

I put the Horus Heresy series in the same bracket as the Star Wars Expended Universe... "series".

Both are basically lisenced fanfictions, and there may be good ones, but more often than not theyre mediocre. At best.

I'd say it's more accurate to call them "adaptations of existing materials that eventually turned into licensed fanfiction."

Then again....Most things in Warhammer 40K apply (see Matt Ward and his Ultramarines fanwank)

Despite the shit he got away with in the past, Ward has proven he can do something decent when he is assigned an editor.

And his shit still doesnt compare to what Goto gets away with.

 

[lordmardok]

I think it's been going on for far too long, and it's just devolved into more Bolter Porn. The first few books, especially Dan Abnett and Graham McNeil's contributions, were pretty good. But once they decided to drag out every single stupid battle, I lost interest. It will be 2020 before they get around to showing the Siege of Terra.

It's almost as if they were written for a merchandise-driven game were people are expected to by new crap anyway, no matter how poorly designed..

I do agree that there are a lot of them, but remember that there are eighteen legions total, each with their own unique cultures and stories to present to the audience, each legion has at least a dozen worthwhile characters to flesh out. That's not counting the Imperial Army, the Assassin Clades, the Administratum, etc... They need to have this many books because otherwise we'd end up not even knowing half of what's going on. There's so much lore to actually flesh out I think they're actually showing an admirable amount of restraint.

Yeah there are some books that weren't so great, Battle for the Abyss and Mechanicum being my least favorite thus far. But then there's the first three books about the Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus, Flight of the Eisenstein, Legion, First Heretic, and one of my personal favorites thus far, Betrayer. The Horus Heresy lasted a long time and spanned the length of the conquered galaxy. Simply put, I don't think you all appreciate on exactly what scale they're operating on here. Telling a story this massive is literally unprecedented. They've nearly exceeded the length of the Wheel of Time books and... frankly... are actually much better for those of you have read the WoT series which has a tendency to... ah, meander.

Anyways, this last bit is my personal opinion but I'm continually pleased by how long they're taking because it means I actually get a sense of everything that's happening up to the Siege of Terra. I don't want to be thrown into a huge, epic culmination like that without an appropriate sense of scale.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Despite the shit he got away with in the past, Ward has proven he can do something decent when he is assigned an editor.

And his shit still doesnt compare to what Goto gets away with.

Hey? Didn't they drop Goto a few years back?

Now, yeah, at the time Goto's stuff was unprecedentedly bad (got me kicked off the BL forum for saying so, though the mods then lied about it), but Ward still seems much worse. Goto didn't do much more than write dreadful LotR fanfic as 40k stories, he didn't do much to the continuity, IIRC.

 

[Tiger King]

Thanks for pointing that out!
that's the problem I had with his gaunts ghosts, they are so ww2!
I read a novel of his called double eagle (I think) and it was a re-write of the battle of Britain pretty much.
dan seems like a nice guy n all but if I wanted to read history I would jump on wiki.

Not true, they more often are WW1

What I find particularly annoying is that writing them as WW1 (or WW2) just does not work.

They travel in mighty spaceships, they can land troops and terrible fighting machines wherever they want, they can destroy entire cities from orbit, and they they fight in trenches for the hell of it.

At least in the first GG book he goes into a (little) bit of detail specifying why they had to do that.

It gets even worse in books where both sides are shipping people in from offworld, meaning they've both got spaceships in orbit...which never gets mentioned.

In Double Eagle, for example, those fighter planes are easily capable of flying to orbit and back. They could attack anywhere on the planet. If they wanted, they could fly right round the world and attack the enemy from behind.

(Also, a lot of his characters get very samey, and he uses the same endings fro almost all of his stuff. Either a random magic thing saves the heroes, or the enemy leader gets killed and the enemy give up, or both, every single time)

I'd say it's a blend myself of ww1 and ww2.
Regardless, it lacks imagination in my opinion, the Horus heresy books were the first of his where I saw how good he is.
He did a good job with the iron snakes novel too, especially since he admitted that space marines are 2d and hard to write.

(note: awesomeness! can't believe I'm having an ultra geeky chat about 40k with someone!)

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Most WH40k books I've attempted to read that aren't source material (and some that are) seem to be bloated beyond reason with crap I don't care about, much like the way I view the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series. Number of pages/words doesn't mean great writing... Some of those writers should really read War and Peace sometime to see how to properly write massive novels.

 

[dalek sec]

I love the books. Every single one. Of course there are ones stronger than others but overall I love them.

I don't even care if we don't get to siege of Terra for years, we all know what happens in the end but we know little of the run up to it.


[HEADING=1]FOR THE EMPEROR![/HEADING]

I'm pretty much in same boat as you are. I love it and I'm collecting the paper backs and the hardcovers (cause I'm such a fucking nerd) and I'll admit, some stories are better than others but so far I'm happy with the series overall. You got any favorite stories in the series so far TimeLord?

 

[Thaluikhain]

I'd say it's a blend myself of ww1 and ww2.

Well, like you say, Double Eagle was the battle of Britain. Straight Silver, OTOH, was very much WW1 trench warfare.

Regardless, it lacks imagination in my opinion, the Horus heresy books were the first of his where I saw how good he is.

Wasn't fussed with his Heresy stuff, TBH, but that might have been because he'd done so many similar BL books before.

Legion, for example, was a mix of ideas he'd done to death already.

I'll also say that, IMHO, BL in general had gone into a decline before the HH stuff got going. Back in the day, they generally had good solid authors, people who were known for other stuff before BL work.

Later on, there was a trend to get people who'd worked on the rulebooks. I don't think McNeill, Thorpe or Chambers, for example, would have been able to write BL stuff if they'd not worked for GW.

You also got people who'd done nothing before. For example, when Bill King (who was an established author before BL) stopped doing the popular Space Wolves books, they gave them to two authors who'd not done anything before, but were big fans. Gotrek and Felix was given to Nathan Long, a rather mediocre author...in fairness though, I got the impression he was trying with the G&F stuff, which I haven't with his previous BL stuff.

Also...when a franchise gets big enough, you can pump out any garbage and people will buy it, which I think was the root problem.