Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I've been enjoying the siege so far, I had a thread reviewing them but it's probably buried deep now so I won't necro it.

End and the Death part 1 I felt was...okay. A bit messy in places and I felt it could have been a bit snappier, but I was overall okay with it. I'm going to discuss it's sequal in general below, you might consider some of what I'll say spoilers so if that matters to you feel free to skip my post.

Part 2 leaves me much more conflicted. Not least because I didn't realise there would be a part 3 until I got to the end of the book, and I was a bit put out by that!

But moreso because of issues with the book.

It's clear Abnett is going for a very particular feel with the book, and on one hand, I think he executes on this quite well. He wants to evoke the complete collapse of reality and causality, really give us some Realm of Chaos nonsense with time and space, and that point is hammered home many times in the book. It's a tricky thing to pull off, and though I think he leans a bit too much on certain imagined landscapes in doing it, I think he mostly manages what he wants - a sense of disjunction, of the breakdown of reason and the futility of logic or conventional warfare against the Warp. This fits with the way the Heresy has been written and the feel he's going for of the end of the material universe. It also ties into allowing the weird reality hopping team of misfits he's obviously enamoured of to play their part.

But my problem is that to me, the Siege in my imagination was a conventional war with some supernatural aspects. The control of vital points and the actual war fighting aspect of it. Not that it's realistic - of course! A medieval style siege in the far future is silly. But I wanted to see it made to work well enough to keep me hooked. And the earlier books broadly manage this, which is why I've been happy with them, despite being much more critical of the Heresy series. The entire series has been all about war, and the people who are fighting this war. Now at the end, they are all rendered irrelevant due to reality breaking down, and it becomes something more like a mythic clash between gods. It's just not the interpretation I find compelling, and I wish we had the more grounded version with some supernatural elements adding spice and surprise. As is, it feels like there aren't really any stakes and there's nothing much that non-supernatural characters can do. All the sense of place and geography built up over the series is literally obliterated.

It's a choice and I think a valid one, but ultimately one that I don't enjoy, despite finding the writing overall fairly good and thinking that Abnett mostly landed what he was aiming for.

Yeah.

The spectacle of the Realm of Chaos entering the material realm around Terra was beaten to death way before we got to this point.

Padding, so much padding. Minor characters get confused and walk in circles...again..I thought I was over there...again...open fire...ooops....wait for me to die daemon...

We get it. just tell the story.

As a small aside the only real viewpoint I have been interested in is Abaddons. His distaste at the changes in his legion, father, warfare and current allies all the while with burning hatred for the loyalists. Traitor points of view for the warp manifest on Terra would make the constant beating over the head more bearable.

I have to say my review would be very similar.

i feel that we have had too much padding in Volumes I and II which feels like they decided they would rather sell 3 books rather than 1 outstanding book. in the first book, it too far to long to get to the Vengeful spirit. In the second, we spend far too much time dealing with how the warp has resulted in the rules of reality breaking down.

In addition, the perpetuals journey dragged on a bit too long and could have had a few bits excised to make it more punchy and clear.

Finally, two spoiler discussions:




My highlights of the siege are still Saturine, Warhawk and Echos of Eternity. Neither of these two books has quite hit the same mark as those. That said, it was always going to be a challenge to satisfy everyone in these novels. I look foward to seeing the conclusion next year.

I

 Sureshot05 wrote:
I have to say my review would be very similar.

i feel that we have had too much padding in Volumes I and II which feels like they decided they would rather sell 3 books rather than 1 outstanding book. in the first book, it too far to long to get to the Vengeful spirit. In the second, we spend far too much time dealing with how the warp has resulted in the rules of reality breaking down.

In addition, the perpetuals journey dragged on a bit too long and could have had a few bits excised to make it more punchy and clear.

Finally, two spoiler discussions:

Spoiler:

The biggest change that I was disappointed by was the image of fighting on the bridge in view of the burning terra has suffered immensely here. i may have to reread the description again, but this was not the imagery that was conjured and it lost a significant impact for me. Also, Sanguinus didn't speak with Horus much and this was a real sadness. The duel should have had more dialogue and shown the two brothers connection more. Maybe this is to reflect how little of Horus is left, but the battle felt short as a result. That said, Sanguinus final death was horrible and perfectly fitting with how it should be (compared to a more majestic version).

Spoiler:

So the Emperor discards a shard of himself (like magnus) into the warp. It is even noted how over time emotion and power will attach to it. Could this be what powers the divine side of the Emperor in 40k, whereas what lies in the throne is separate and distinct. Look forward to seeing more.

My highlights of the siege are still Saturine, Warhawk and Echos of Eternity. Neither of these two books has quite hit the same mark as those. That said, it was always going to be a challenge to satisfy everyone in these novels. I look foward to seeing the conclusion next year.

I

It's probably an allusion to the Star Child. The Star Child thread has been teased in some of the post Great Rift Dawn of Fire novels.

Is the Siege of Terra series worth reading if most of my enjoyment from the HH books was just seeing the legions fleshed out? I sort of figured I'd end up reading them eventually, but it seems like they probably aren't introducing much new lore in those books, I already know the major beats of how things shake out, and I'm not sure there are any plotlines from HH that I care about and expect to see resolved in SoT.

Am I wrong?

Trying to look at it from the POV you've described, it's a bit hard to say. There are Legion development bits, I'd say, Especially in Warhawk (death guard) and Echoes of Eternity (world eaters and blood angels)? There's some conclusions for characters, I'd say most of the characters get at least a beat or two?

But generally it's just the battles fought for the siege itself. I've enjoyed the books so far, even the ones from authors I don't normally like much, but the last book has gone into territory I don't really enjoy and the second last had some significant weaknesses from my POV despite being well written in most respects.

I've seen that most fans don't like the Solar War, but I really did, and I think Saturnine and Warhawk are really good. I also thought Mortis and Echoes were good. Lost and the Damned and First Wall were better than I expected and I enjoyed them. I'm actually pickier about the HH series books, generally only like books by ADB, Abnett, Wraight or French.

I enjoyed the book, but felt it could've been more concise. We didn't need a plethora of examples about how the warp is changing Terra. There were some cool parts, but it got repetitive and confusing. It made what should've been a more intimate, close quarters last stand less significant when the enemy can just end up behind the defenders randomly and time/space mean nothing.

Some parts where the Lion, Russ and Roboute start to break into the solar system and start attacking the traitor fleet would've been a welcome break from all of the tedious warp shenanigans.

Also :

Yeah, Perpetuals are my absolute least favourite part of the entire Horus Heresy series, which considering how much I dislike the giant sized primarchs, is quite an achievement!

(I headcanon all primarchs to be roughly space marine sized and nobody can stop me)

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, Perpetuals are my absolute least favourite part of the entire Horus Heresy series, which considering how much I dislike the giant sized primarchs, is quite an achievement!

(I headcanon all primarchs to be roughly space marine sized and nobody can stop me)

The Perpetuals are an attempt to rationalise Malcadors existence. (I think)

If Big E has a similar bro friend then there must be some others around. Who would the Emperor consider peers? etc.

An interesting idea morphing into ridiculousness.

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, Perpetuals are my absolute least favourite part of the entire Horus Heresy series, which considering how much I dislike the giant sized primarchs, is quite an achievement!

(I headcanon all primarchs to be roughly space marine sized and nobody can stop me)

Exalted!

I firstly need to read the siege of terra books, however I am close to the end of the heresy novels now, and I have a few questions from the heresy series in regards to the revelations in book II.

Namely:

Da Boss wrote:

I've seen that most fans don't like the Solar War,

I am one of those who liked it. It, together with the Saturnine, are my two favourites from the Siege so far.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:I firstly need to read the siege of terra books, however I am close to the end of the heresy novels now, and I have a few questions from the heresy series in regards to the revelations in book II.

Namely:

Spoiler:

If the big E is the dark king, or intended to be the dark king... What was Erebus and Lorgars over-arching plan. Was it for the genesis of the 5th chaos god, did they only perceive Horus (or in the case of Lorgar, himself) being that dark king? If not, why was there a plot to kill the Emperor with Spear etc which is the first conflict in the prior books I am thinking of, yet I am sure there are more. I'd like these loose ends explained personally - alternatively, if I need to read the books as they are, tell me

I think the fact they are milking the last book by splitting it into 3 volumes is hilarious when the vast majority of the first two have been padding that could have been completely removed with little, or no, effect on the narrative.

All of the chapters labelled "Fragments" can safely be skipped, especially after you've read a couple. The other problem is there seems to be a need to finish the storylines of every surviving character, so we end up having chapters devoted to Loken, or Zephon, or half a dozen other characters that ultimately don't matter and should have already had their endings written (or just been ignored in the face of the galaxy-changing events happening above them). What's worse, is many of these characters have had their development done across literally dozens of different books throughout the series, and if you haven't read them all, their significance is lessened even further, to the point of irrelevance. The constant jumping between all these various groups and characters is also annoying. The chapters are very short and these constant snapshots just don't help with pushing the narrative forward. They annoy me, more than they provide any narrative momentum, which is what I think they were supposed to do.

There's some good ideas in the second book, mainly to do with the encroachment of the Warp into the material realm and how that interacts with the mortals still fighting. Horus seems to be written pretty well so far, but there's another volume to go before we can say for sure.

Having not read either volume yet, it sounds a lot like the finale of the series is pulling notes from the finale of Evangelion, skewing into metaphysical introspection as reality breaks down around the characters and any concept of time or space is being lost.

Slipspace wrote:
I think the fact they are milking the last book by splitting it into 3 volumes is hilarious when the vast majority of the first two have been padding that could have been completely removed with little, or no, effect on the narrative.

All of the chapters labelled "Fragments" can safely be skipped, especially after you've read a couple.

Abnett was clearly being paid by the word, lol.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Having not read either volume yet, it sounds a lot like the finale of the series is pulling notes from the finale of Evangelion, skewing into metaphysical introspection as reality breaks down around the characters and any concept of time or space is being lost.

I don't quite understand. Can you please expound on this for - I dont know - 10,000 words? Please repeatedly use the same metaphor and analogies i.e clocks stopping. Being in the wrong location etc.


Yours
The Black Library Editorial Team.

It's interesting to see that one of Malcadors speeches pertaining to the end of the dark king is almost directly lifted from Rick Priestly's original work on the nature of the warp from before the lost and the damned and the realm of chaos.

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, Perpetuals are my absolute least favourite part of the entire Horus Heresy series, which considering how much I dislike the giant sized primarchs, is quite an achievement!

(I headcanon all primarchs to be roughly space marine sized and nobody can stop me)

I never minded the perpetuals - the idea is hardly unique to warhammer after all, if we jump across to DC, we can see characters like Vandal Savage and Ras Al'Ghul. It gives us central characters that aren't all Space Marines - but who have a reason for surviving in a galaxy riven by war - not to mention helping to fill in some of the underlying history of the Emperor.

I hate enuncia as a concept far more.

Being unique to the setting or not really has no bearing on whether its a good idea or not.

The concept was added by abnett and it just takes a lot of the underlying oppressiveness away when you have super immortals that grow back from ashes. It's one thing to never get old or sick but still be Killable, to literally being indestructible.


Enuncia sucks massively as well, it's like an authorial insert but instead of a Mary Sue character its Mary Sue metaphysics that comes in and craps all over existing metaphysics, making warp power look like a joke and undermining central concepts in the setting.

 Hellebore wrote:
Being unique to the setting or not really has no bearing on whether its a good idea or not.

The concept was added by abnett and it just takes a lot of the underlying oppressiveness away when you have super immortals that grow back from ashes. It's one thing to never get old or sick but still be Killable, to literally being indestructible.


Enuncia sucks massively as well, it's like an authorial insert but instead of a Mary Sue character its Mary Sue metaphysics that comes in and craps all over existing metaphysics, making warp power look like a joke and undermining central concepts in the setting.

That's actually why I don't like Abnett: this tendency to not stick within the established background but introducing something that completely upends the paradigm, seemingly for the sake of being different.

My view is that when working with an established IP, respect the existing work by sticking within the lines. Sure, maybe embellish or introduce new limited stuff that is limited in power or scope, and in that way add to the overall body of work in a gradual fashion.

I don't mind Enuncia in the original books - creepy lost space magic stuff is part of 40K and I think it's fine to add stuff to do a story like his Inquisition series. It's just some weirdness off in a corner, and after all the galaxy is a big place.

I dislike it being inserted into the Heresy along with the immortal secret agent John Grammaticus. I also dislike the reliance on immortal super heroes as "main characters" of the setting who really know what's going on and so on. Blech. Having human characters in 40K who were around during 30K is lame imo, because it strips away the mystery from the setting.

In Abnett's own chunk of the setting, he can mess around and invent stuff all he likes. Samus was cool in the first Gaunt's Ghosts book as a little weird chaos thing that happens. Samus getting a ridiculous extended monologue along with someone reading that monologue in the Emperor's super secret library in an ancient book is self indulgent as feth. I think the Daniverse stuff should have been left out of the Heresy. When he engages with the Heresy era properly he writes some really great stuff, I still think Horus Rising is a proper banger and I didn't mind the Samus easter egg there, because I thought that would be the end of it - a nod to people who had read his earlier stuff. But then Samus is like a daemon of the Dark King which is this huge important thing...nah. I know Dan started in comics and I really like a lot of his comics, but I don't want that style of comic book writing in my Warhammer books.

That said, the whole setting has been comic-bookified in the last ten years or so so I'd better get used to it.

I don't have an issue with the idea of perpetuals, they've been part of the lore of warhammer since before 2nd edition. I think some of the narrative convulutions that they have gone through have been a little painful, but it has been nearly twenty years since this series started, with loads of separate authors, so it's inevitable there are some stark issues when looking at every thing in the round.

 Plant wrote:
I don't have an issue with the idea of perpetuals, they've been part of the lore of warhammer since before 2nd edition. I think some of the narrative convulutions that they have gone through have been a little painful, but it has been nearly twenty years since this series started, with loads of separate authors, so it's inevitable there are some stark issues when looking at every thing in the round.

The only thing close to a perpetual from that era are the sensei, but they are children of the Emperor and crucially they could be killed, they just didn't age or get sick.

Having literally indestructible regrow from ashes perpetuals is about as juvenile a concept of one-upmanship as you can get and utterly undermines the setting in a fundamental way.

Worth mentioning that if you haven't already, then you ought to read the Bequin trilogy as it seems to have some connections to some of the storylines in SoT.

Dan Abnett is a bit like Dave Filoni - his OCs are always the most super important special flowers who are pivotal to the setting and the stories of existing characters in it.

To be fair to Dave Filoni, that is kinda how Force stuff works.

Dan Abnett needed to be told "No" with this book.
Half of it was meaningless or could have been a bloody novella.
Everything with the stupid "Super Primarch Killer 9000" sucked and none of it served any purpose.
The "twist" wasn't a shock at all, everyone and their mums dogs uncles knew who the Dark King was going to be.
If I read Astartesian used anywhere else by any other author again I may go mad.
Siege started strong and kept going. Then this awful ending trilogy has happened and ruined it.

 Gert wrote:
Dan Abnett needed to be told "No" with this book.

If I was the editor I'd have just taken the manuscript and quietly removed every single chapter named "fragments", then done a search for Zephon, Rann, Amit, and the half-dozen other ancillary characters and done the same there.

 Gert wrote:

Siege started strong and kept going. Then this awful ending trilogy has happened and ruined it.

It feels like a meta commentary on the HH series itself. That started out strong, had a lot of promise, then meandered for a decade before deciding to try to resolve anything. I think the Siege series could probably have done with having one less book leading up to the finale and then having the finale be just one book, albeit likely a little longer than standard.

Honestly, the whole HH and Siege of Terra series could have been done in half as many books and been better off for it.

Slipspace wrote:
If I was the editor I'd have just taken the manuscript and quietly removed every single chapter named "fragments", then done a search for Zephon, Rann, Amit, and the half-dozen other ancillary characters and done the same there.

I wouldn't be so specific. For example, Rann and Zephon are pretty central characters for the Siege series to represent the middle level Astartes POV compared to say Sigismund, Raldaron or Archamus who see things from the upper command echelons. But did every single tiny chapter need to be in that book? Did we constantly need to see Malcador's POV? Probably not but clearing things out should have been a broad sweep of the novel rather than picking specific characters or side plots.

It feels like a meta commentary on the HH series itself. That started out strong, had a lot of promise, then meandered for a decade before deciding to try to resolve anything. I think the Siege series could probably have done with having one less book leading up to the finale and then having the finale be just one book, albeit likely a little longer than standard.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Honestly, the whole HH and Siege of Terra series could have been done in half as many books and been better off for it.

I really disagree with this sentiment. I didn't like this book and I didn't like some Heresy novels but I don't think the number of Heresy or Siege books is the issue. But if the novel series wasn't as successful as it was, then there would be no HH game. All those lovely plastic Spartans and Deimos vehicles would never have come out and the hundreds of fanmade rulesets would never have pushed it into the mainstream popularity and success we see now.
Were some books a bit naff? Sure, but most weren't and the setting is better off with the HH novels than without them. The galaxy is still there, you can still have Your Dudes play out Their Story in the Heresy because even with certain events being expanded upon, there is still massive amounts of space to do Your Story.

Slipspace wrote:

 Gert wrote:
Dan Abnett needed to be told "No" with this book.

If I was the editor I'd have just taken the manuscript and quietly removed every single chapter named "fragments", then done a search for Zephon, Rann, Amit, and the half-dozen other ancillary characters and done the same there.

 Gert wrote:

Siege started strong and kept going. Then this awful ending trilogy has happened and ruined it.

It feels like a meta commentary on the HH series itself. That started out strong, had a lot of promise, then meandered for a decade before deciding to try to resolve anything. I think the Siege series could probably have done with having one less book leading up to the finale and then having the finale be just one book, albeit likely a little longer than standard.

At least Amit and to a lesser extent Zephaniah and Rann are established characters that had an ongoing story (and Amit becomes first chapter master for a major chapter).

It’s the seemingly half a dozen new characters that never appeared before with pretty samey meandering plots that’s the wors issue. Got completely lost in the middle of the book with the string of chapters about IF low level captain #4 and his stereotypical equivalent from whatever other chapter having some completely interchangeable sub plot about teleporting somewhere random.