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I just read Descent of Angels....

My, what a bad, bad book.

Don't get me wrong. Michael Scanlon looks like he could possible write well. The problem (and it isn't just his book) that their appears to have been no editting process whatsoever. Perhaps GW uses that old 'I know a bloke who writes and he's quite cheap' method of Book Publishing.

Putting on my Creative Writing Tutor hat on (oh yesh, I am not just (even) a pretty face): here are some of the things that should have been sorted on, say, a second draft.

Pacing: Let's leave the offworld action to the last 20 pages of the book.

Showing not telling: True, the book would have been 1000 pages long, but stop telling us that people 'could tell' that he was courageous, etc and bloody well show us the proof.

Characterization: Admittedly not set amongst the pampered 9 years old the modern world, but at least give some sort of child like quality to the stars of the book. I did a double take when first told the main characters age and then I thought, is this like planet years and one of their years is like three of ours? But no, readers, these are 9 years that talk like 30 year olds.

Tell us only the once, we have memories: There is no need to remind us, in often the exact same words, of the Lion's heroic aura every time he comes into the bloody room.

Lion El'jonson: He may have been lumbered with this, but it lost me almost then. Lionel Jonson. Lionel is not the name of heroes. No matter how cunningly hidden.

Ok. Rant over. There could be more, but I feel my ulcer playing up.

Amen Brick wrote:
Characterization: Admittedly not set amongst the pampered 9 years old the modern world, but at least give some sort of child like quality to the stars of the book. I did a double take when first told the main characters age and then I thought, is this like planet years and one of their years is like three of ours? But no, readers, these are 9 years that talk like 30 year olds.

Tell us only the once, we have memories: There is no need to remind us, in often the exact same words, of the Lion's heroic aura every time he comes into the bloody room.

Lion El'jonson: He may have been lumbered with this, but it lost me almost then. Lionel Jonson. Lionel is not the name of heroes. No matter how cunningly hidden.

Totally agreed. I got tired of reading the same stuff over and over. It was like the author was trying to shove it down my throat that the blah blah blah mist creatures blah crusade against them blah. I got it the first time man. Most readers aren't overwhelmingly daft.

Amen Brick wrote:Lion El'jonson: He may have been lumbered with this, but it lost me almost then. Lionel Jonson. Lionel is not the name of heroes. No matter how cunningly hidden.

It worked for the guy from Brain Dead. Well, he's kind of a hero I guess.

I am about half way through this one and even I have to admit it is hard to keep reading (which is so far the only BL book I have encountered that has done this, and i have read lots).

I am happy to hear that I was not the only one who said "ok, this has to be nine in their planet years and an adult in our years!" But nope, the kids were actually 9!

It does not seem like a bad book imo, but it is a huge change of pace from the rest of the HH. I am hoping to find the motivation to finish it but threads like this are not helping

Amen Brick wrote:Lion El'jonson: He may have been lumbered with this, but it lost me almost then. Lionel Jonson. Lionel is not the name of heroes. No matter how cunningly hidden.

That part wasn't his fault. Lion El'Jonson has been the Dark Angels Primarch for as long as the Marine Chapters have had Primarchs.

It's a play on the name of the poet Lionel Johnson, who wrote a poem called 'Dark Angel'... I thoroughly recommend never reading it.

I sort of knew that, but i was on a roll...

Wait until you read Battle for the Abyss. They must have done a 'find and replace' of ratlings for ralings or it's was a word I have never seen before. I didn't like that book, and only finished it so I could finish it.

I actually enjoyed Descent of Angels. Alot of people hate it. Maybe I am a glutton for punishment? I think I just liked the setting.

Don't ever read a book by C.S. Goto. Ever. Descent of the Angels will seem like a masterpiece by comparison.

Pulp genre novels contain bad writing? News at 11:00.

ShumaGorath wrote:Don't ever read a book by C.S. Goto. Ever. Descent of the Angels will seem like a masterpiece by comparison.

Too late! My reading age actually got younger afterward.

It will help to read amazon book reviews before buying 40k novels. Some are quite good, I just finished False Gods by Graham Mc'Niel and loved it. But there are some pretty horrendous ones too.

Monkeys are smelly and fling poo everywhere. Rabbits are cute and taste good. They're also buff with nunchucks and never forget a slight:




But to the topic-I think they use Vogons. Only a Vogon would approve some of their word combos. I write like a mule though so can't complain much.

Abyss was worse than Angels, in my opinion. I can forgive poor writing, but Abyss was full of breaches in the continuity. I mean, the Ultramarines were attending chapel and talking about faith in the Emperor during the height of secular enlightenment before the Imperial cult was founded.

When I read the first Horus Heresy book I was completely blown away. It actually made me want to collect space marines. In the same way First and Only made me want to collect Guard and Lost and the Damned.
Everything since has been horrible. Do they not make the others read the books that have gone before?
The Ciaphas Cane novels are far more entertaining, and they're pretty bad themselves in places.

I was more annoyed at the main heroes "special powers"

OooOOoooO,

Yeah. Facinating. Can the book actually go somewhere now?

If it were monkeys, then eventually they'd crank out shakespeare - so it's probably around day 3 (out of a million years) they get to do Black Library.

I try not to read BL books anymore. One too many CS Goto books spoiled the majority for me. I'd rather take a cheesegrater to my unseen parts than read another of his books.

Dark Disciple could have used an editor, be it monkey or rabbit or some other form of vertebrate life. Perfectly good sequel, devastated by the same people that invented the English language.

AMen Brick I'm sure you are happy that there is to be a sequel the Descent of Angels DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND! (or so said BL in thier announcement)

At least they are getting a different writer for it.

Its a shame the last few HH books have sucked so much.
Mechanicum is sitting on my desk awaiting reading over Christmas when the relatives are here, so hope its an improvement (legion was good though).

Oddly, it seems written as if a sequel was required/expected. I mean, otherwise the hero and his friends set up of close friends who are obviously going to fall out at some time in the future was a waste of time. It was not subtly foreshadowed.

I was under the impression the HH books where a continuing series leading up to the Big Imperium Bang, not a lot of unconnected books set at the time. I'll be a bit more careful and pick only those novels which involve the main strand of history in future.

It's just so unlike GW to milk something of every last penny. Frankly, I'm shocked.

First I have to admit that I'm a Dark Angels fan, so Descent of Angels was always going to be a good book for me.

However, I readily admit that it is the worst book in the HH series. I think it would have sat just fine as a stand-alone novel for people like me who like the chapter.

The rest are ace imho. And Gonads, I don't think you'll be disappointed with Mechanicum, except that it could easily have been twice as long just cos it's so cool!!!

sourclams wrote:Abyss was worse than Angels, in my opinion. I can forgive poor writing, but Abyss was full of breaches in the continuity. I mean, the Ultramarines were attending chapel and talking about faith in the Emperor during the height of secular enlightenment before the Imperial cult was founded.

This bothered me quite a bit as well. Abyss felt like it was set in the modern 41st millenium, not the 31st.

I liked the Descent of Angels somewhat, and feel that it gets a bad rap from others. It's far from a book I'd recommend to someone who's never read a 40K book, but we get a nice look at pre-Emperor Caliban.

However, the pacing of the book is terrible. The last third of the book should not be about the actual Dark Angels. Also, there is far too much of it that feels like it should be a WHFB book, with the questing and the swords and the snicker snack that eventually came around the corner.

I would like to see more fluff on either pre-primarch legions (Dusk Raiders, others) or pre-Emperor primarch planets.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:AMen Brick I'm sure you are happy that there is to be a sequel the Descent of Angels DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND! (or so said BL in thier announcement)

At least they are getting a different writer for it.

Its a shame the last few HH books have sucked so much.
Mechanicum is sitting on my desk awaiting reading over Christmas when the relatives are here, so hope its an improvement (legion was good though).

Mechanicum is good, it's got some good background stuff to it. I hope it's not classed as a spoiler, but just in case:

Simply put, the reason Battle for the Abyss sucked was because Ben Counter wrote it. In another thread, somebody's comment was along the lines of, 'I don't know why they ever gave him a crayon and let him write Black Library books', to which I can only agree wholeheartedly.

Seriously, he's responsible for the Soul Drinkers drivel, as well as any number of "SPASE MARINS! HURR!" books.

Considering Mitchell Scanlon, the author for Descent of Angels, well, it looks like he's a n00b, so cut him some slack. Let him do another book or two, and then decide if he's a travesty.

I will agree, though, that the editing for Abyss was abhorrent. Of course, I think this may be because editors didn't actually want to read Counter's work 'cause it's so bad....

As usual, its GW stumbling along without a plan.

What they should have done is taken a leaf (or four) out of the J. Michael Staczynski book of 'How to do stuff'. When he wrote Babylon 5, the whole story arc was planned in advance. That meant that any time someone else wrote an episode, they couldn't get too far off the reservation.

The HH series should have been planned in meticulous detail from the start. Each book should have been given a section of the story to deal with, clearly marked as 'start here, finish there, go through A, B and C on the way'.
The controlling editor should have commissioned treatments from his authors and then picked the best one before assigning that author to write that particular book.

Yes, the writing would have been variable in quality (the BL stable of authors is not exactly full of thoroughbreds) but at least the story arc would have kept on track, all 18 legions would have had good 'screen time' and we would be sitting here going me that was good