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Got it today. Read it. It was ok, below average for the Horus Heresy series. Not as bad as descent of angels but still not very good. Reminded me of Execution Hour, only better.

Well, first of all thanks for not spoiling anything.
Second ... I have it sittin at my place but I gotta finish the darn Blood Raven omnibus first *sigh*

This is somehow kinda what i expected to hear though. I hope theyll be able to turn around and bring the quality back to a higher standard. the first few books really were amazing.... descent of angels...well, we all know how that went.

hopefully ill be able to actually comment on the content within a week or so.

Yeah, I agree - REALLY bad, especially for the Horus Heresy series.

I actually quite liked Descent of Angels - one of the reasons the Horus Heresy series is so good is that it gives you insight into what the Imperium used to be like - the values and thoughts of the newly founded Space Marines, and the humans that they live around. Descent does this really well, and plants all the right seeds for the current Dark Angels fluff, although I DID think that it would work better as the first part of a two-book story. It ends quite abruptly.

However, Battle for the Abyss is truly awful. It gives you absolutely no insight into the pre-horus imperium, in fact if you swapped the World Eaters characters out for some Flesh Tearers or something, it could easily be a 41st millenium story. It's just a quite badly-written emotionless Heroic Space Marine Adventure, with hardly any relevance to the rest of the universe, or the established Heresy timeline.

I was quite impressed by Ben Counter's last Heresy contribution, but Battle for the Abyss is much more like his two-dimentional, Space Marine oriented other work...

ian

Lets face it, the first three were good, Legion was awesome. The rest...not so much.

Shame really.

btw, have you heard the rumour going round that they're going to write about 30 of the bloody things??

30? I'd originally heard 12, but judging from what's been covered in the recents ones that's gotta be out. The first three seemed to have pace and fit into a larger story, the more recent ones have been much more stand alone. Someone needs to put them back on track. Still reading Abyss. It's good so far but i ditto the comment it's just a space marine story with a few of them being bad. Nothing really matching up to the real heresy going on. These guys just seem to be playing at the moment.

Maybe they are emotionless boring characters because they are Ultramarines.

I have always hated the type of plot that was used in Battle for the Abyss. Bad guys have superweapon and are out to destroy the world, good guys desperately try to stop the bad guys at all costs. Due to bad guys incompetance good guy catch a break and save the day.

Plotlines like that have no place in the HH series. The fact that the badguys won the early and middle rounds of the HH should be VERY clear. Battle for the Abyss made me feel like I was reading Star Wars episode 4.

Unfortunately I agree.....point to those who don't want the plot being ruined....this is a discussion thread about the book, if you don't want a spoiler don't read the thread...nuff said.

Back on point. I actually enjoyed certain aspects of the book, but on the whole it was a bit basic. I hated the way the Word Bearers were slaughtered everytime they came head to head with the "good" guys. WHy do they do this? The Word Bearers were just as battle hardened as any other Legion, so how come a handful of loyal Marines can hand them their arseses with no problem?!?!

In my mind a handful of Marines going up against a zealous Legion like the Wordbearers should have been shown the back door in the first few pages....

The comodey of a defence the WB lay down in the space port is a joke, and what happens on board their ship is just an insult.

It was almost as it the loyal Marines were veterans going up against scouts....that would have made some sense.

I think if the series carries on like this I shall end up just avoiding them.

Booo!
I'm very disappointed. Horus Rising is the only fluff I've ever read that made me want to play marines. The rest just don't do it for me.

@Delephont, I think you forget one of the central tenets of chaos in 40K. If you get corrupted you become dumb. In 4th ed SM's had a strategy rating of 3 and Chaos space marines had a strategy rating of 2. Even though many CSM's were veterans of 10000 years of warfare they somehow were worse strategists.

Well, they had less strategic resources to work with, because they have no established infastructure

Yeah that must have been it. Not SM love, just no established infrastrucure. What was I thinking?

hey guys, ive been hearing everyones replies on the books so far, and am a few pages into legion, and the great feedback on it is making me want to read it every second i get!!
I will obviously keep reading the series, but due to being bought one of the books by a mate, i read false gods first, but never read horus rising!! is it worth me going back and buying and reading it even though i will know what happens for the rest of the series relating to that storyline??

Hell yes, Horus Rising is well worth your time and money. Trust me on this.

Darrian13 wrote:Hell yes, Horus Rising is well worth your time and money. Trust me on this.

Truthfully, most things that Dan Abnett seems to write seem to be well worth the money.

The first three books and Legion are top notch; Fulgrim was a pleasant read; Descent had its moments and I was disappointed in Eisenstein.

I'm halfway through and it is a real struggle not to just stop and put the thing up on Ebay. The Ultramarine aharacters are completely one dimensional and quite frankly interchangable, the space wolves/world eater/thousand son interaction is the only thing that has stopped me giving up all together, though the fact that ultramarines keep beating up space wolves is getting old.

The word bearers are if anything worse than the ultramarines, I assume the main guy is meant to be paranoid with his obsessing over other's ambitions, but it ends up like one of the villains Adam West as Batman spent his time KAPOW!!ing

The Word Bearer: "Get Batman and use words hee hee... my PEN shall kill you... You've come to the end of the PAGE Batman, erm Ultramarine" etc...

Most of the black library stuff is pulpy trite, the rest is just .

this falls into the second catagory

True, the Space Wolf/ World Eater/1000 Son interaction was the best part of the book. I was really hoping at some point the 1000 Son would pull out his magic wand and change the Space Wolf into a poodle.

I agree with the general view. Battle for the Abyss was a tolerable action story, but not good as a Horus Heresy piece.

Things I liked:

The chapter from the Admech viewpoint about the destruction of Thoth. The callousness and coldness of the Admech are always awesome. I love that it has to look up in its memory banks to figure out what it is feeling upon witnessing the Furious Abyss's liftoff. Also. the hints that the Admech who serve the Fabricator general have programming/instincts that push them towards union with their "slumbering God". Dragon much anyone?

The fact that when the Word Bearers are like "Dude, World Eaters are on our team now, your primarch says so" he's too angry to care. That talking stuff doesn't cut ice with World Eaters. Angron knew that at Istvaan when he threw down on his renegades.

The fact that the Word Bearers symbol is the book with a flame leaping forth...and the ship's superweapon is a plasma lance which emerges from their big book symbol. Fanboy as all get out, but that's just cool.

These shouldn't be construed as approval of the book though, I'm very disappointed in the overall story. In particular, can we stop redefining who knew what about the Warp pre-heresy? There's like 4 versions in the HH alone!

I just bought this book. I got 60 pages into it and put it down. I'm probably never going to finish it. It's some of the blandest, most uninspired writing I've ever seen. It feels like it was written in a rush with no passion whatsoever. I think this might be the first 40k novel I won't finish, which is saying something given that I've read around 30 of them.

I got to page 60 and put the book down, read all of PlanetKill (wow, freaky ass stuff in there), made some eggrolls, played a couple of games on Vassal with Space Wolves and IG, and now I'm trying to force myself through this book again because I managed all of Descent of Angels and figure this can't be any worse.

Good to know guys, thanks.

I was a big fan of the trilogy that opened it, and Legion rocked my socks off. Descent of Angels? *SPOILER* The part where the Emperor lands JUST as El'Jonson is giving his "Well, we won - what now?" speech? Seriously, what crappy writing!! UGH! Made me lose interest entirely.

Ultramarines are rather boring HOO-AH space hulks, but that's what I find appealing about them. They're interchangeable fascists masquerading as immortal gods.

The money shot of Descent of Angles should have been te Emperor meeting Lion. The fact that they did not go into ANY real detail made me want to burn the book. What a blown opportunity to make a very memorable scene. I finished the book because my need to finish things outweighed my disgust.

Battle for the Abyss reads exactly like all of Ben Counter's books, basically dreadful. For me one of the worst part about his writing is it appears he is in love with his computer's thesaurus. He seems to just replace any words he possibly can with bigger words for no apparent reason.

Ironically enough the one word he repeatedly overuses is "ubiquitous". As a 40K fan I keep hoping this series will turn out a decent book but with few exceptions it has not happened.

Having now finished BftA, I wonder if a lot of it wasn't down to expectation on my part.

I was expecting nothing less than a full blown account of the war at Calth. I wanted an opening sequence of the Word Bearer fleet blowing the crap out of the unsuspecting Ultramarines, followed by awesome rearguard heroics.
I wanted to really feel the full majesty of the Ultramarines finest hour as Guilliman fought his way out of Lorgar's trap, kicked the Word Bearers ass and then despaired as he realised he'd never get to Earth in time.

In short, I wanted a book that would make me a smurf convert.



What I got was a piss-poor, badly written piece of tripe with no believable characters (at least, not Astartes ones) that did NOTHING to further the story of the Heresy.
Even the extra characters did nothing.
Thousand Sons are loyal but also secretly practicsing psykers? WE KNOW
World Eaters are psychos but basically good guys when Angron's not there? WE KNOW
Space Wolves are Vikings? hmm, let me think. WE KNOW!!!!!!!



Sorry for the rant but that book is easily the worst I have ever paid money for.

If you're reading this, Ben Counter - shame on you...

If the book was as you had expected, I would also have become an Ultramarine convert and I hate Ultramarines. That would have been great. Too bad i read Ben Counters version instead.

Chimera_Calvin wrote:Having now finished BftA, I wonder if a lot of it wasn't down to expectation on my part.

I was expecting nothing less than a full blown account of the war at Calth. I wanted an opening sequence of the Word Bearer fleet blowing the crap out of the unsuspecting Ultramarines, followed by awesome rearguard heroics.

Fleet? You mean their ONE SHIP? I'm only on page 160 now because I keep tasting throw-up when I turn every page but so far the Word Bearers' massed offensive is ONE SHIP with a "Chapter" (yes, Counter uses the word "chapter" to refer to a pre-Codex detachment of non-codex-that-doesn't-exist-yet Marines) of fanatics on it.... what the hell are the rest of the Word Bearers doing? Something more important? The fiefdom of Ultramar is an entire system, isn't it? It'd take one ship and a thousand marines years to put down the entire territory assuming they won every battle.

The problem is that this reads like a Dungeons and Dragons adventure, much like the whole Uriel/Pasanius saga. It's not glorious fleets and armies smashing each other to ruin as heresy-era conflict should be, it's a party of heroes and their attached NPCs infiltrating dungeons and fighting Big Bad Evil Guys.

Flachzange wrote:Well, first of all thanks for not spoiling anything.
Second ... I have it sittin at my place but I gotta finish the darn Blood Raven omnibus first *sigh*

The BLOOD ANGELS books?

Holy crap those things are BAD. Talk about the writer (and the editor, and hell, even GW itself!) not paying attention to their own background, and then 'allowing' a story to be written that is so out of character and yet so significant that if it ever really did 'happen', that would be it for the BA's...

Anyway, if people are saying that BATTLE FOR THE ABYSS is 'on par' with the BLOOD ANGELS books, ugh.

Not good.

I was going to buy it anyway, you know, 'need' the whole HH series thing, but this is still depressing.

Delephont wrote:Back on point. I actually enjoyed certain aspects of the book, but on the whole it was a bit basic. I hated the way the Word Bearers were slaughtered everytime they came head to head with the "good" guys. WHy do they do this? The Word Bearers were just as battle hardened as any other Legion, so how come a handful of loyal Marines can hand them their arseses with no problem?!?!

I had the same sort of issue with Galaxy in Flames (also by Ben Counter). The virus bombing of Isstvan III is supposed to be the brilliant surprise attack that kicks off the Heresy - basically the 40K equivalent of Pearl Harbor. So what happens in the book?

Isstvan III - a world which will live in infamy. It is here that, with a single command, Horus plunges the entire galaxy into a confict the likes of which has never been seen, a war that will bring the Imperium of Man to its knees and condemn the human race to an eternity of darkness. Embarking on a path from which there can be no return, Horus orders the deployment of the Life Eater - a planet-killing weapon with the power to scour a world of all life. In a dreadful act of betrayal Horus' fleet initiates a full bombardment of Isstvan III with these most deadly of weapons - an attack so unthinkable, so unprecedented, so devious, so devastating, that... it basically does nothing because the good guys were hiding in the basement or something.

WTF??? So the Horus' war to end all wars starts off with a massive surprise attack that fails completely. Oh noes! Here comes scary Horus with his virus bombs! Oops. Three cheers for duck and cover! Better luck next time chap. Let the galaxy burn indeed.

@Alpharius, I think the Blood Ravens are not the same as the Blood Angels. The Blood Ravens are the chapter shown in Dawn of War. The Blood Angels are crazy vampires.

Oops!

My Bad!

The Blood Angel stories were so bad, that their sheer awfulness clouded my vision...

Apologies all around!

No worries.