Hulksmash wrote:There were some valid points once you got past the hypocrisy. And I can understand someone getting annoyed at the lamentation of the PB. People hyped it up and that rarely lives up to expectations (David Weber and Jim Butcher are exceptions to this rule )

MajorTom11 wrote:Tbd, you are ridiculous.

To say you personally like the book, then slam people who didn't like the book for 'personal expectations' and question their intelligence and reading skills is truly epic hypocrisy sir.

You should start your own forum where no one else can post and you tell us all what we think! That would be amazing!

TBD wrote:

It's funny, but what you did here is the exact same thing you accuse me of doing. The difference is that I (partially) explained why I think the statement(s) I responded to is absurd), and nowhere did my post say that different opinions are not allowed.

TBD wrote:
Prospero Burns is an extremely well written story, and to call it a stinker just because it didn't meet your personal specific expectations is nothing short of absurd.

TBD wrote:
So maybe you should take your own advice if you don't like to deal with different opinions on the internet? Either respond to me using arguments as to why you don't agree, like I did, or don't respond at all.

TBD wrote:
There happens to such a thing as someone reading a book and "not getting it". That person can then go ahead and state what a stinker it is, but if someone subsequently tells him he didn't get it, or not enough of it, then he will have to deal with that without transforming into Captain Butthurt all of a sudden.

I know this kid who once read the Bible, and after finishing it he said "what a stinker, there weren't enough elephants in it, and I expected more exploring of the psychological and philosophical differences between the Sumerians and the Ethiopians".

When someone told him to not be absurd and that he perhaps had wrong expectations about the book he responded by saying "but, but it's my opinion, and my opinion is holy because its mine and therefor it can never be wrong!".

I guess there are certain types who would actually agree with the kid, while others would say it's not the book but him being a fething idiot.

Call me an arsehole but I'll happily agree with the latter, and I don't give a rat's behind what anyone thinks about that

BrookM wrote:

Alpharius wrote:THIS IS ABNETT!

Meaning he can get away with a lot?

BrookM wrote:Answer: Yes, yes he can. Then again, this could be BL as a whole trying to break through into a different field. Maybe if the title and cover description text were different I'd get it, but as it stands right now, I came for the story of two loyalist legions fighting because they are forced to, not the back story of a human that takes up most of the book. Granted, Kaspar is an interesting character, why not do a whole novel about him instead? All his talk and flashing back to his days as conservator talking about Terra that was is far more interesting for some reason.

MajorTom11 wrote:

TBD wrote:
Prospero Burns is an extremely well written story, and to call it a stinker just because it didn't meet your personal specific expectations is nothing short of absurd.

You can try to be all oh you took me wrong, but there it is. You think the book is extremely well written, and anyone who disagrees is absurd.

Go through my posts, or ask anyone who has dealt with me on this board, the only time I get into arguments with people is when they start telling other people what they are and aren't allowed to like.

I didn't take issue with your opinion, it's content or your right to make a personal assessment for yourself. My comment was directed to you calling anyone who didn't like the book absurd.

This 40k novel was clearly beyond our intellectual scope.

The Wolves, like all aspects of 40K, have evolved over time, so the question of what counts as getting them 'right' isn't entirely straightforward. Consider how Graham McNeill portrayed them in A Thousand Sons, compared to how Bill King did in the four original Space Wolf novels. Superficially things are pretty similar, but in many ways they're very different characters. Every author, including the various writers of the Codexes, has their own angle on the SWs, and being faithful to that huge collection of material is a challenge.

So, in preparation for BotF, I thought a lot about the nature of the SWs and how to portray them. At the same time, I did a *lot* of reading. For starters, that meant the current Codex, plus extracts of the older ones sent to me by BL. I went back through the two Space Wolf omnibuses, as well as the relevant stories from the anthologies. There were bits and pieces from the Index Astartes that were useful, as well as chunks of the venerable Rogue Trader rulebook. And don't forget the Thousand Sons - I didn't want them to be mindless villains (the sorcerers, at least), and it was important to get them 'right' as well. So that meant reading extracts of the Chaos Space Marine Codex (both old and new), as well as the various snippets about them scattered across the GW canon. I also wanted to get a feel for how Space Marines were being written in contemporary BL books, so got stuck into books like Salamander and Soul Hunter for a flavour of how the universe was being rendered by current authors.

In the end, there were three sources that proved most helpful and influential. The first was Helsreach, which came out just as I was getting started. This was a great inspiration in many ways, but the story structure is also quite similar to the Fang's and I suspect the writing issues were pretty similar. The second was A Thousand Sons, which gave me heaps of ideas for portraying Magnus's sons. I had a long chat with Graham before starting out, as I wanted my Thousand Sons to feel the pain of Prospero in everything they did. For them, it's a matter of decades since the City of Light fell, and they're still coming to terms with it.

The third influence was, of course, the mighty Prospero Burns. I won't be giving any spoilers away if I say that this was one of the finest books I've ever read from BL, and it was a huge help in getting the Space Wolves clear in my head. By the time I got hold of an advance copy I was about a third of the way through Fang, so I had to do some rewrites to make sure everything matched up. In my opinion, Dan has written the definitive Space Wolf book in PB, and I've taken his account as the principal template for my own rendering of the warriors of Fenris.

All that being said, though, BotF is my book. There are ideas there that are totally my own, and I've not tried to copy anyone's style or mannerisms. It was an enormous privilege to portray Fenris in all its savage glory, and to try to tell an epic tale with the action and depth it deserves. I'll have to wait to see what the readers make of it, especially those who play SWs or TSs. Experience tells me that not everyone will agree with my take on the characters, setting and story, since everyone has a different angle on them. But I hope that others will, and that it'll stand up alongside the other Space Wolf stories and further enrich their fantastic background.


1) how long does Black Library usually give you to finish a book? did you choose this project or was it given to you?

Hi MaveriK, and thanks for the idea of doing this. BL books vary in how long they take to write. Some are written as quickly as three months, although there's usually been a few weeks of planning before that, and the proofing stage can also add to that. BotF took a lot longer, as it was Big and Difficult. I was asked to pitch for BotF by BL.



2) like Dan Abnett, he had certain props around him to help him write Prospero Burns, did you do anything similar?

Lots of artwork, and piles of codexes. But mostly the inspiration comes from the music I'm listening to as I type. God bless Spotify.



3) who is a your favorite Space Wolf character and why?

The Dreads. They're awesome. The way I see it, all Space Marines have an ambivalent relationship with being stuck in a giant metal coffin for all eternity. Sure, it's a huge honour and they can keep on fighting, but deep down they know they'll never race toward the enemy with a chainsword in their (real) hand ever again. They're pissed, they're confined, and that makes them utterly terrifying. Space Wolves even more so. Imagine being a Blood Claw - the most reckless and exuberant warrior in the galaxy. You spend your time hurling yourself into combat like the were-rabbit from Holy Grail. Then you're told you can only trundle into contact at two miles per hour and you have to get your mjod through a tube. That's some interesting psychology there.

And, of course, there's the grandaddy. Best Space Wolf character? Bjorn, by a distance.



4) what are your final thoughts on the Space Wolf chapter in comparison to the other chapters of the Imperium.

As I said in the previous post, I think Dan's take on them is the right one. They're savage, but not savages. They're brutal, but not brutes. They're obsessive in pursuit of their goals, and kill without remorse or hesitation. They're executioners, the guys you turn to when you need a job doing with the most extreme kind of prejudice. But they're also capable of extreme loyalty and devotion. They value the human spirit when it stands up and fights. They have no airs - what you see is what you get. They will laugh as they run into battle like a mortal would laugh when falling in love. They're superstitious and backward, but for all that wiser than many more advanced strands of the Imperium. They're extremely simple, and also extremely complicated.

In short, they're brilliant.



5) I would like to ask if the author will shine a light to the lethal native flora and fauna of Fenris aside from the obvious Wolves, like Psyfoxes and cave dragons....? Is the Fang described in lots of detail?

Hi Bulweih. As you'd expect, Fenris gets a lot of attention. I did try to flesh out the planet's unique landscape, and pay attention to the fact that everything on it is trying to kill you. All the time.

Don't expect much focus on the more exotic fauna, since most of the action takes place in the Fang, and this is about Space Marines fighting each other. But there are deep tunnels at the bottom of the fortress, and the story takes us a long way down...



6)I am wondering what authors inspiers him and he looks up to. :-)

I've been pretty vocal about the BL authors I admire, in this thread and elsewhere. As for non-BL writers, I have pretty broad tastes. SF-wise, I like Iain M. Banks, Ursula LeGuin, Christopher Priest, John Wyndham and Margaret Atwood. I also enjoy Robert Harris thrillers, journalism by Joseph Mitchell, and Calvin and Hobbes.

One author I hugely admire is J. K. Rowling. Not for the books (I haven't read any of them), but for her life-story. Anyone who can work that hard and go through so much rejection and maintain belief in her material is a hero. I'm glad she's made a success of herself - she deserves it.



7)Was the battle/war only at the fang or was it global?

Hi dragon950. Your questions touch on stuff that I'd rather leave to the book to tell, so don't assume from my brief responses that they're not good questions (they are).

The book concentrates on the Fang.



8)How many brothers were left to defend the fang? There should be one company left to defend, plus all the different priests, scouts, blood claws that haven't been put in a compnay yet, and dreadnoughts.

Yup, that's about right. More detail in the book.


9)Any ideas on how many thousand sons were attacking the planet. In the third ragnar book it made it seem like there was alot more of them than there were in the HH book.

I took the likely numbers from what's left at the end of A Thousand Sons, accounting for defections to Ahriman, etc., over a millennium. So we're talking hundreds of Rubric Marines rather than thousands. But that doesn't mean there can't be mortal troops as well, on both sides - the ranged forces are pretty big.


10)My thoughts: I know it's much more likely that whenever the Thousand Sons launch an assault on Fenris they would just head straight for the Fang (rather than get shot out of the sky by Fenris' Planetary Defense Guns) but if they were to consider sending forces off to go after the natives how would the SW counter this/ act on it and how would the skirmishes play out?

Hi Orphus. As with my previous post, not much I can say here that isn't answered in the book. The battle focusses on the Fang, just as the Sack of Prospero focussed on Tizca.


11)I've always wanted to know with all Black Library authors how much the stories main details are already decided ?

There's a lot of freedom there. BotF had a couple of restrictions which gave me a few headaches, mostly involving numbers and timing (like the siege lasting 40 days, etc.), but in terms of characters and the unfolding of the action, we get a fairly free hand.


12)I noticed areferance to greylock in the write up on the site, i am interested to see if this is the same greylock aka brother captain greylock from the wolftime campaign released back in the rt book of the astronomicon ?

Ah, no. There's been a slight typo on the BL site here - the character in the book is actually called Vaer Greyloc, and he's a Wolf Lord. He's got no relation to the Greylock you're referring to, who I think would have been fighting in the 40K 'present' (BotF is set in M32).


13)Did you do all your research via books, or who did you talk to for facts on the wolves? What places/groups/films/etc did you find yourself drawing on for their speech and behavior? How do you feel your works line up with William Kings descriptions of the Fang and Fenris?

Hi Grey Mage. I think the first (long!) post at the top of this series of answers mostly covers this question.

Just on Bill King's vision - I do think that my version of Fenris is a little different. That's not because I don't admire King's original (I do), but just because I think that the 40K universe has evolved since those books were written. I've not set out to contradict anything in the Space Wolf saga, but we do get to see a darker, grittier Fenris, which I think is in keeping with the tenor of current 40K writing. Also, remember that there are approximately 8,000 years between the action of BotF and the King Space Wolf books, so you'd expect some things to have changed.


14)Just how peeved are the Wolves that Fenris is being invaded? Does it bring on a righteous fury among the Wolves, making the assault on Prospero seem like puppies playing?

One of the aspects I wanted to play up was the difference between the TSs' defence of Prospero and the SWs' defence of Fenris. Remember that the Thousand Sons were hamstrung by confusion and contradictory impulses - in large part, because the wisest among them recognised that they were being punished for a terrible miscalculation, and that makes the conflict all the more tragic. The Space Wolves have no such uncertainty - they loathe the Traitor with a passion, and they're going to fight like daemons even when it looks like all is lost.

So there are key differences here, but there are also some surprising similarities. The Wolves and the Sons share millennia of mutual hatred and mistrust, and over the centuries they've become more alike than either would admit. The Thousand Sons are driven by a bitterness at their betrayal (as they see it) which makes them far more ruthless than they were in the days of the Crusade. The Wolves have also been badly hurt by the Heresy, and are mistrusted by the wider Imperium almost as much as Magnus once was. One of the great aspects of the Heresy story is the ambiguity between 'good' and 'bad' in the Galaxy - over time, as the Long War drags on, the various factions become more and more alike, and the only real victors are the ever-thirsting gods. In telling a story set in M32, I wanted to start hinting at how this process begins, and how the Galaxy of the young Imperium already exhibits the flaws that will see it degenerate so terribly by 40K.

reds8n wrote:Just for the record, so to speak : the artwork we're seeing on the next Nagash book isn't the finished item, it's really little more than a hurried off placeholder piece.

Jon Sullivan is the chap behind the cover art for the Space Marine Battles and the Time of Legends books. He’s a talented artist, a perfectionist and a little mad. Jon painted a great piece of art for the cover of Nagash Immortal. At least we thought so. Jon on the other hand felt that it wasn’t quite great enough, that a book featuring one of the most infamous characters from the Warhammer world needed something spectacular. So he painted another, from scratch (we love you Jon). And here it is: the new cover-art for Nagash Immortal.
If you can’t remember what the original version looked then be sure to check out the product page, before we update it with the new art tomorrow.

Alpharius wrote:I find it very hard to get into the 'bad guy' books, especially when they're so far along as to be really, really bad - irredeemably so.

"Evil" in the 40K and WFB world tends to be very black and white - and with Chaos being the main antagonist, well, there isn't much to recommend signing up for that side, in the end.

FOr example, I want to pick up "Wulfrik", but I am hesitant to do so, as I can only read about so many 'good people' getting beat down before it gets old.

Am I missing something?