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Descent of Angels may not be that great of a book, but it was better than friggin' Fulgrim...

I actually really liked it.
What you've got to realise is it starts a new story arc, If you want to compare it full on to the likes of Fulgrim and the rest of that arc, then great, but you should really compare it to Horus Rising.
If it had of been released at the same time as Horus Rising- would it have recieved so much flak? I seriously doubt it

Yes its not the best- but it does a pretty good job of setting the scene for the DA going nuts, the reasons behind it in a very "human" way (even the parts about the leaders who were too old to become marines but still joined the legion- a subject that hadn't been touched on before)

And how else would you suggest to explore the foundations of the dark angels before they joined the imperium?

I'm pretty sure i've seen a 2nd DA book due out on the black library website.I reckon it was good to read a book that points towards the heresy but give the whole pre chapter/legion background some attention. Plus the emperor appearing was decent.
Having been away from 40k for a couple of years, coming back and finding all this background material played a big part in me playing again when there used to be sod all apart from short stories.

well i found the book a total disappointment fluff wise it was a good read but was NOT very contributing to the horus heresy yeah we know luther was jealous but damn do we need a 400+ pg book to know that ......... it should not have been published under the horus heresy maybe they should make a new line of books called legions origins then it would have been great but looking for the story of the army i have played for almost 8 yrs it was a disappointment.............................

Why all the hate on Fulgrim? I thought it was brilliant. The scene where everything goes apeshit and the Daemonettes fly out of nowhere and start tearing things apart is great, it reads like a riot of noise, color, and emotion, which fits in nicely with the Emperor's Children.

And I love how Horus chews out Fulgrim about dressing like a waif, and then you see how Fulgrim snaps out of it, and chooses a nihilistic escape, like a drug user. It's all quite interesting.

In my opinion Fulgrim was written with the literary maturity of a 4th grader. I was barely able to make it through the scene where the demonettes appear and sonic weapons are created because of how silly it was. I mean, the demonette's were described like they were being seen through the eyes of a 12 year old boy and even with the copious amount of suspensiion of disbelief it takes to enjoy a 40k novel, I was unable to believe that marines in an audience could jump up on stage, take broken instruments and turn them into Strength 4, AP 5, Heavy 3 Sonic Blasters.

Everything I've read that Grahm McNeil's written, Ultramarine Omnibus, Horus Heresy 2,5, and Storm of Iron, always conveys a decidely lower level of sophistication than the other 40k books I've read. Normally this lack of sophistication doesn't matter because the stories he's conveying are fun, airport reading adventures, but when writing about something as deep and important as the turn of Fulgrim to chaos, McNeil's style leave something lacking. I wanted the tale of Fulgrim to have deep, interesting characters that took part in well written, interconnecting sub-plots and stories. Instead, Fulgrim gave us cookie cutter transperencies of shallow characters with a bunch of sub-plots that had no bearing on the main story. The remembrancers in Fulgrim and the niche of the story they filled were IMHO a joke. The quiet misunderstood sculptor, the dominating, extroverted painter, the jealous and eccentric musician all combined for 100 pages of who cares. In fact, aside from summoning the demons with her magnus opus, I don't really think they were necessary to the story. McNeil all but supports this assessment with the way he dealt with the Sculptor at the end of the book, hurriedly, shortly, and blatantly covering all his basesly. Even the primarchs which in the other novels of the HH had been portrayed as interesting characters were bland and steriotypical. Ferrus Manus had two emotions, brute-brotherly love, brute-anger. I was really moved. In my opinion, Fulgrim didn't even hold a candle to Horus Rising, Galaxy in Flames, or Flight of the Eisenstein. It's in the same league as Descent of Angels though as far as reading 300 pages for nothing goes.

There's one thing that Grahm McNeil can do well in his writing and that describe battles. I've noticed this in all of his books that I've read and Fulgrim is no exception. I enjoyed the opening battle of the EC running around killing Xenos and I especially liked the fight with the Eldar, but unfortunately, McNeil tries to extend his writing beyond descriptions of battles and that's when everything goes to hell. As soon as McNeil started to take stabs at character and plot development Fulgrim went down the can. It's a shame too, because the Emperor's Children story was probably one of the most interesting accounts the Heresy Cannon had to offer.

The reason it's so easy for me to hate on Fulgrim is because I've read books in this same series that accomplished everything McNeil failed to. I'm going to take my bash one step further and say that I truly hope McNeil doesn't contribute one more novel to the Horus Heresy series. I would be content to have Abnett, Swallow, and Counter take turns tag teaming out the rest of the series.

I actually rather liked Descent of Angels. To be honest, it is probably the lowest quality book in the HH series, true, but it's not bad, in and of itself.

I went into this book knowing almost nothing about the Dark Angels save the basics (They 'Hunt the Fallen', have little jawa buddies, wear robes, like ornamental swords, and their Cavalry is called the Ravenwing. Oh and they're filthy heretical traitors that need death.) In retrospect... I didn't really learn a whole lot about them from this book. I took this book (as I take most books) as a stand-alone story, and in that regard it was fairly good. The ending was very rushed and half-assed, though.

(SPOILER: "Ok! The Greater Daemon is dead! You, you, and you! Get on the ship! Goodbye!" And for THAT matter, does anyone remember how much of a huge scandal and controversy the appearance of a Daemon caused in Horus Rising? Yet these guys just kinda treat it as business as usual. "Oh yeah, there are evil creatures inhabiting the warp that can do unnatural things and have cults worshiping them as gods. No biggie. Let's go kill 'em")

In regards to the Heresy, this book just didn't belong. I don't claim to be a scholar of the Horus Heresy, but as near as I can tell, this book had nothing to do with anything. Which I imagine is what most people don't like about it. If they had released any of the other HH novels after Horus Rising with a different title and cover, so they looked like a stand-alone book, anyone who read them would instantly recognize that the book belonged in the HH series, if for nothing more than minor character cross-overs (ignoring the huge, interwoven and dependent plot lines.). If DoA wasn't released with a HH cover... no one would have questioned it. Just another random Space Marine fluff book.

In that respect something went horribly wrong here. Either Black Library just wanted to move more units by slapping the Good-As-Gold "Horus Heresy" tag on an otherwise mediocre book that had no relation to the rest of the series, or Scanlon wanted to do something different and stand out from the rest of the crowd doing the series, instead of doing the typical "Here's how life in the Legion was, here is where it went wrong, here is how the Primarch helped it, this is why they deserve death". Unfortunately that mechanic works really well, so breaking away is not such a great idea.

Oh well, bring on Legion! One of the few books I've been really excited about in a long time. I think only Abnett could do the "Legion of Subterfuge and Political Intrigue" justice.

I wonder what it would take to get Frank Miller to write Night Haunter's book...