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So wait.

You expect him to just throw out carefully fleshed out characters because "battles are meaningless if only faceless extras will die"?

The whole reasoning behind Ibram Gaunt is that he doesn't like the Ghosts being wasted. He does everything he can to make it so even the faceless extras' deaths have some meaning.

Your proposal is like having James T. Kirk wearing a redshirt.

How many secondary and tertiary characters are there now? How many troopers and aides and commissars and assistant commissars?

When I read his books I know that 5 scary Chaos Marines or a greater daemon pose no threat at all because there's 300 pages left. Everyone (barring the extras) will be fine. Nothing to worry about until the last 50 pages. In the last 50 pages a kid with a laspistol can kill them.

And that hurts the book. If the radio guy (Bonin, can't even remember his name) or pyromaniac flamer guy actually died on page 53 then I'd be more worried the next time Gaunt runs into 100 howling warriors.

Except we rarely see "5 scary Chaos Marines" or greater daemons. Abnett has said he didn't like having unreasonably rare enemies becoming commonplace in his novels. It's why he wrote in the Sons of Sek and the Blood Pact. And the few times we HAVE seen those ridiculously rare and extreme enemies facing Gaunt and the Ghosts...it was a fight to bring them down.

Are you really going to sit there and say that Uexell and his damned Astartes in "Traitor General" were easily taken down? Or that there was some real issue with how Mkoll and Ezrah killed a Blood Pact Gaur in "Only In Death"?

Yes. Caffran's death was a tad ridiculous. But that was the POINT. Caffran died trying to save a child, because(crazily enough) Caffran was the kind of person who'd have tried to save a child. Bragg's death was another hard one, as was Corbec's. But the characters that die towards the "last 50 pages" as you put it--almost always die to a situation where their guard is down.
Bragg? Ambushed by Cuu in a ridiculous opportunistic murder.
Corbec? Shot by Cuu while the Ghosts are escorting Sabbatine back from her victory speech.
Caffran? Killed trying to move a child out of the crossfire between Sons of Sek hiding out among refugees and the Ghosts securing a town.

But yeah. Hey, let's always kill off characters early in the book. Then we can have Abnett start writing in the sob stories of all the Ghosts mourning their fallen comrade for the rest of the book.

Kanluwen wrote:Except we rarely see "5 scary Chaos Marines" or greater daemons. Abnett has said he didn't like having unreasonably rare enemies becoming commonplace in his novels. It's why he wrote in the Sons of Sek and the Blood Pact. And the few times we HAVE seen those ridiculously rare and extreme enemies facing Gaunt and the Ghosts...it was a fight to bring them down.

Are you really going to sit there and say that Uexell and his damned Astartes in "Traitor General" were easily taken down? Or that there was some real issue with how Mkoll and Ezrah killed a Blood Pact Gaur in "Only In Death"?

That's exactly what I was thinking of, that and the Wire Wolves in Traitor General. We're told, ad nausium how deadly these foes are and they kill extras just fine but the named characters get miraculous break after miraculous break.

One of the things I love about Abnett is he is able and willing to create new characters so frankly at this point I feel Larks (or any other second tier character) can be spared and someone new brought in.

but we can agree to disagree. For me this problem is the difference between a 4 star and 5 star rating.

We're told how deadly those foes are to the Gereon Resistance that were using PDF level equipment...

But yeah. Agree to disagree

Wouldn't it be weird if Abnett saw this thread. Or even weirder if he was already on it under an alias!

Any one of us could be Dan Abnett!

I wouldn't doubt he reads forums. He's always chatting on his facebook/livejournal, and even replies to Twitter updates pertaining to him.

When Corbec died... *sniff*

I'm about 2/3 the way through Titanicus. Normally a book has 100 pages to grab my attention. It starts out slow with introducing ALOT of characters for a 40k book (not having the Dramatic Personae list hurts too). The titan battles are pretty decent so far but you really don't understand the chaos side of it since he doesn't talk once about them aside from being the Archenemy whatever that growls it's name. Most of the fights telegraph who is going to win in advance based on the point of view of the fight.

Loved the Titan graphic novels. This one, not so much.

Cuu was my favourite character and abnett snuffed him. Ive never read a book that was perfect. Someone like Peter Hamilton is good but often irritates me with his continuous jumping around to different characters.

And compared to his peers Abnett makes them look like children who write in crayon. 'Cept for Watson.

Im serious too. Cuu was awesome.

12thRonin wrote:...Most of the fights telegraph who is going to win in advance based on the point of view of the fight...

Not always. I could mention one battle in particular.

The biggest thing that annoyed me about Titanicus was the huge fluctuation in the amount of damage that Void Shields could absorb. In one scene it only takes two shots to kill the shields but in another the titans blast away at each other for several minutes before they fail.

The Imperial shields always seemed to withstand damage better. I guess some of that can be explained by Chaos not taking care of their equipment but it still bothered me.

Cuu was a sick bastard in a love/hate kinda way...

Cuu was better in Honor Guard, where he was crazy and nasty, but kinda cool. And then he started killing people... He was much better as a baddy then a goody, though.

cuu should of been kept in longer,

i agree with kid i dnt have to worry until the end, the main characters are a tad superhuman/lucky

this would be the main thing i would dislike DA for, he set up the GGs novels on the pretense that 'anyone could die' (bragg-OMG! hes dead! -he was lame) but this turned out to be a lie as a metal flower can save me from a bolt shell

the books should have more deaths from things like, roadside bombs, unseen snipers, shrapnel,barbed wire, infection etc
but not used in a odd rare way which makes everyone think WTF!?

in the same line of thought if a greater daemon/big scary thing appears there should be ALOT of dead ghosts
5 marines!?!

i hated that the wire wolves were put down so easy

in the last book they should all die in an orbital bombardment.

MOMUS wrote: (bragg-OMG! hes dead! -he was lame)

What? Now that IS heresy.

Besides that, so what if the main charactors are super-human? They are the main charactors, after all. Sure, it's not realistic, but what book is? If all the charactors died off by sniper and infection and so forth there wouldn't be a story within 2 books!

the only time bragg was mentioned was when he did something stupid or said 'i try again'
then he got a little bit more air time, which signaled that he was going to die.
also holding a H.weapon, NO.

what book is realistic...i can think of several thousand.
realism is (to a degree) what makes the GG books (and others) interesting and involving

maybe you would prefer a book with more multilasers...

Kanluwen wrote:So wait.

You expect him to just throw out carefully fleshed out characters because "battles are meaningless if only faceless extras will die"?

The whole reasoning behind Ibram Gaunt is that he doesn't like the Ghosts being wasted. He does everything he can to make it so even the faceless extras' deaths have some meaning.

Your proposal is like having James T. Kirk wearing a redshirt.

Watch some of Yoshiyuki "Kill 'em All" Tomino's early work. Zeta Gundam, Ideon, Char's Counterattack, V Gundam, all have very frequent deaths of major characters. Hell, even the main characters aren't safe, and they're regarded as legendary way over in the land of the rising sun.

I've yet to read a BL novel that I didn't thoroughly enjoy; I think that when you put a large number of people all of whom have read the same novel in one conversation, all of their tiny objections combine and people retrospectively level a lot of criticism they would have been happy with on their own.

MOMUS wrote:the only time bragg was mentioned was when he did something stupid or said 'i try again'
then he got a little bit more air time, which signaled that he was going to die.
also holding a H.weapon, NO.

what book is realistic...i can think of several thousand.
realism is (to a degree) what makes the GG books (and others) interesting and involving

maybe you would prefer a book with more multilasers...

So your only beef with Bragg is that he was kinda slow and held a heavy weapon? Those seem like pretty minor complaints. Does that really make him a terrible charactor?

Can you name a few of the more realistic books please?

he was a poor mans OX lol

no, he was just a bad stereotype.
he didnt add anything (apart from with his death ironically), i just had to listen to him drudge 'i try again'

i would like to mention i really like DAs work not just for BL, i find his 'behind the scenes look' at chaos very fresh.

sorry i was making fun the way you seemed to imply that NO books are realistic, that was silly. bad me.

seriously try C.S Goto

OK, so that clears that up. C. S. Goto, here I come.

Fafnir wrote:V Gundam

Now, I'm a Gundam fan, but I haven't kept up since G Gundam. V Gundam made me think of a V (for Vendetta) mask over Death Scythe Custom's faceplate. It was hilarious.

On a related note, I've not read an Abnett book I haven't liked. Granted, I haven't read a C.S. Goto book I haven't liked either, but I've only read Eldar Prophecy from him.

Hrm,
Kid_kyoto, it's true he doesn't kill off main characters, but part of that I believe is the metaplot, regarding the saint etc. Obviously, if the series is meant to be just about Guard having a gakky time, then so be it - try reading 15 hours by someoneorother, they do that plenty in there.
From the first GG novel, there was an element of destiny, and together with the whole 'not corrupted' plotline, it's all tied in with the Saint. So it's a series about some destined heroes, not just grunts.
And he is IMO the only BL author truly worth his salt. Ian Watson has been retconned out of existence, sadly, and McNeil is a reasonable second, but BL is about 40K fiction - fun cheesy 40k action, when it comes down to it - and nobody does action like Abnett.
I read BL books for fun, I'm not expecting anything mind-blowing, but I'm usually pleasantly surprised, and Abnett does a cracking job of putting a spin on things. Horus Rising had the best Astartes interpretation I've seen yet published by BL.

At the same time though, your Deus Ex Machina analysis does ring true. Can you cite any examples of how you'd do it better?

Grotzooka wrote:OK, so that clears that up. C. S. Goto, here I come.

ARE you SURE?

Brother SRM wrote:I really enjoy his work, but it's kind of bothersome when your favorite character dies on the last page of a book because he just walked into a bamboo hut where a cunning trap was laid for him by a child who, before now, was not mentioned in the book.

At least Guardsman Hawke doesn't die in Storm of Iron. He was the Jason Statham of the Imperial Guard.

Yeah, but I think he would have eventually met a sticky end.



Storm of Iron wasn't exactly a "feel-good" kind of book. Haha.

Though it was a great read.

Dan Abnett is actually my favorite BL author, I think. On the odd chance that they do read these forums I will refrain from lacing into any of my less favored writers.

Abnett is probably the best of the bunch, but that's not saying much. I've found the black library books to be fine for some mindless reading, but if you want sweeping stories and gripping plots, look elsewhere.

Although if you want to send Tau fans into apoplexy, bring up the crap fest that was Graham McNeill's Courage and Honor.

Generally, I basically worship Abnett. But, it pisses me off extremely how he always finishes a book by murdering your favourite character. R.I.P. Godwyn Fischig

Only read the Eisenhorn trilogy and the Horus heresy stuff by Abnett.

In the Horus Heresy stuff, I think he's limited by the metaplot as to who can die and how, so that restricts things somewhat.

I enjoyed the heck out of Eisenhorn, but KK's objection that the characters seem functionally immortal (at lest until book 3 or the last 20 pages of the others) is a valid one. However the threats do feel like threats.

It's a bit like 24, you know nothing will kill Jack, but the dangers he put in are still tense...

Was some what angry with Titanicus, because the story arc that gave the book it's name could have been taken completely out of the book and lost very little. Also i was mad when Eisenhorn book 2 and 3 were the same book, just 'the names and faces have been changed to protect the innocent'.