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For me, they never really told you a good reason Horus turned to chaos.

Really? What was that reason?

I'm still wondering how we got three books from the main perspective of a Grey Knight (Seriously, explain to me a possible character conflict for a Grey Knight using the codex fluff; their personalities are intentionally one-dimensional), yet we only have one from the Tau and a comic for the Orks.

^Well in their defense, The Emperor's Gift was very good....

 Harriticus wrote:
^Well in their defense, The Emperor's Gift was very good....

I actually forgot about The Emperor's Gift. I haven't read that one, but it's written by ADB, so maybe he can prove me wrong. I'll try it out.

I just felt that Ben Counter's Grey Knights books never felt like they were about Grey Knights, and not because he's a bad writer; their one-track minds (Kill daemons, destroy chaos, always do whatever is necessary) make them unable to have conflicts we can remotely relate with.

Well Emperor's Gift is basically the opposite of the GK Omnibus on every level.

 Harriticus wrote:
Well Emperor's Gift is basically the opposite of the GK Omnibus on every level.

Emperor's Gift totally changed my opinion on them - I' really liked how ADB put them down....

My main gripe (not really 40k, but still BL) the Gotrek and Felix series changing authors. I preferred William King especially for the amazing writings he created but then BAM Nathan Long and I just lose focus as it is inferior writing and the characters of Gotrek and Felix lose their personalities and basically become very 2D.
As for the 40k books, I haven't read the HH but the books I have (Malediction and Gaunts Ghosts) I have absolutely no complaints whatsoever

 Color Sgt. Kell wrote:
For me, they never really told you a good reason Horus turned to chaos.

He pricked his finger on an evil sword. That wasn't good enough?

 baxter123 wrote:
Gotrek and Felix lose their personalities and basically become very 2D.

They were already totally flat to begin with. Gotrek would grumble and run his thumb down the blade of his axe, then kill something. How Bill King ever managed to flesh that out into an entire novel, let alone a series of novels, is entirely mind boggling.

That most 40K stories are so set on "invasion X" or "defense of Y" that there comes a point where everything becomes diluted and you develop a major sense of deja vu.

The Fantasy books do better because, despite the constant warfare, the setting still allows for other stories. Malus Darkblade, or the Gotrek and Felix books are interesting because they do something different. Gotrek and Felix is pretty much a buddy cop series, the focus of which is killing big monsters.

While the combat is present, it isn't omnipresent, like it is in 40K.

 Kaldor wrote:

 baxter123 wrote:
Gotrek and Felix lose their personalities and basically become very 2D.

They were already totally flat to begin with. Gotrek would grumble and run his thumb down the blade of his axe, then kill something. How Bill King ever managed to flesh that out into an entire novel, let alone a series of novels, is entirely mind boggling.

I disagree. In the William King books, the whole concept was from one perspective, Felix's. You would see the entire story unfold from a poets pov, and we saw what Gotrek did and the building respect from mutual agreement. Nathan Long tried to bring Gotrek more into the series, and he failed. He tried to do it from the Dwarfs pov, and you would see is something not so unlike a Champion of Khorne.
William King recognised this and tried the angle of Felix and by describing the quirks of Gotrek and his unlikely friendships and experiences.

I would really, really like to see more xenos novels, but please don't set Gav Thorpe loose on'em. I had a hard time swallowing the Sundering Trilogy, and to know that he's starting to sink his teeth in the DA novels is just disheartening (Yes yes I know Angels of Darkness was acceptable). We need to see more Tau, Eldar, heck even Necrons now that they have personality - perhaps a book of Trazyn trolling through the Galaxy? Well one can dream...

Even inside the IoM, Sisters could do with some more love... hurr hurr.

Apart from that, I do believe they really need to step up a bit on the Astartes characters - most are flat, one or two dimensional. In their defense, however, it's hard to write a character that has a pleasing level of moral ambiguity when you're dealing with brainwashed, hate-indoctrinated zealots. The pre-established fluff limits things a bit, imo.

 Yojiro wrote:


Apart from that, I do believe they really need to step up a bit on the Astartes characters - most are flat, one or two dimensional. In their defense, however, it's hard to write a character that has a pleasing level of moral ambiguity when you're dealing with brainwashed, hate-indoctrinated zealots. The pre-established fluff limits things a bit, imo.

My problem with giving spacemarines personality ( and therefore almost all BL novels which have spacemarine protagonists ) is that their utter lack of humanity is a defining factor of their fluff.
Take that away and we have starcraft marines/ halo spartans / Nick Kyme's kindergarden marines. Having personality works for chaos marines, because they are no longer bound by their indoctrination,
but loyalist marines will, at least in my opinion, suffer if they are made too relatable.

 KingDeath wrote:

 Yojiro wrote:


Apart from that, I do believe they really need to step up a bit on the Astartes characters - most are flat, one or two dimensional. In their defense, however, it's hard to write a character that has a pleasing level of moral ambiguity when you're dealing with brainwashed, hate-indoctrinated zealots. The pre-established fluff limits things a bit, imo.

My problem with giving spacemarines personality ( and therefore almost all BL novels which have spacemarine protagonists ) is that their utter lack of humanity is a defining factor of their fluff.
Take that away and we have starcraft marines/ halo spartans / Nick Kyme's kindergarden marines. Having personality works for chaos marines, because they are no longer bound by their indoctrination,
but loyalist marines will, at least in my opinion, suffer if they are made too relatable.

I agree, and BL authors must carefully manage the balance between their indoctrination and making the marines compelling characters to read about... and most of them fail to do so.
It would, however, make it easier on them if we saw less SM-centric novels, and the offer widened a bit, which is one of the reasons why I defend more xenos/IG/Sisters/wtfever isn't a SM novels.
Who knows if an author who fails to capture our attention with a Marine novel doesn't nail it in the head with a Necron novel? Just no Multilasers, please.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Heck, if a western author were to try and write a convincing Japanese samurai, it would be extremely difficult, just because they don't inherently understand the values that shape that kind of person.

It's not that most Japanese know it either. The honorable warrior-poets lifted up as an ideal are the result of the Japanese government using samurai manuals from the 18th century as propaganda and indoctrination at the start of the 20th century. Those were just manuals - how the lords of a peaceful era thought they should behave. The warlords and samurai of the huge civil wars that saw Tokugawa become Shogun wouldn't have recognized most of that stuff, they knew you have to win first in order to tell everyone it was an honorable victory. Samurai switching sides when a warlord offered better pay was common, warlords switching sides if they were on the losing side not much less common.

As for the topic, I have to agree that there's too much boring Marines everywhere, and Imperium in general. A few good books about the xenos isn't too much to ask for, is it?

I need to ask, as I'm trying to flush out my own home-brewed characters more, What makes a space marine character interesting? you guys keep saying there are to many boring ones, but what about the exciting ones too? what drives them? what makes them a good character?

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
I need to ask, as I'm trying to flush out my own home-brewed characters more, What makes a space marine character interesting? you guys keep saying there are to many boring ones, but what about the exciting ones too? what drives them? what makes them a good character?

It's a really hard question to answer. A lot of really good, professional writers consistently get it wrong.

SPOILERS AHEAD!







The short version is we need to care about them. If I don't care what happens to the character, then nothing that they do will be interesting. They need to have believable crises of conscience. They need to have traits we can admire, and ones we can sneer at. The Emperor's Gift is a good example of a good SM character. The main protagonist is conflicted between his loyalty to his chapter and the Inquisition, and his loyalty to the Imperium at large. He hates the conflict with the Space Wolves, although he still considers them in the wrong, and contemplates assassination of the Lord Inquisitor responsible for the actions that provoked them.And while the Character himself goes toe-to-toe with both Logan Grimnar and Angron and lives to tell the tale, he is still over-confident in his capabilities and his squad suffers for it. It's interesting to read about.

ADB says he writes Space Marine characters as though they're autistic.

 Kaldor wrote:

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
I need to ask, as I'm trying to flush out my own home-brewed characters more, What makes a space marine character interesting? you guys keep saying there are to many boring ones, but what about the exciting ones too? what drives them? what makes them a good character?

It's a really hard question to answer. A lot of really good, professional writers consistently get it wrong.

SPOILERS AHEAD!







The short version is we need to care about them. If I don't care what happens to the character, then nothing that they do will be interesting. They need to have believable crises of conscience. They need to have traits we can admire, and ones we can sneer at. The Emperor's Gift is a good example of a good SM character. The main protagonist is conflicted between his loyalty to his chapter and the Inquisition, and his loyalty to the Imperium at large. He hates the conflict with the Space Wolves, although he still considers them in the wrong, and contemplates assassination of the Lord Inquisitor responsible for the actions that provoked them.And while the Character himself goes toe-to-toe with both Logan Grimnar and Angron and lives to tell the tale, he is still over-confident in his capabilities and his squad suffers for it. It's interesting to read about.

so there has to be conflict we can care about, like saveing a planet full of civilians or going after an enemy, right?

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
so there has to be conflict we can care about, like saveing a planet full of civilians or going after an enemy, right?

Something like it, yes.

And there has to be a real chance the character might not succeed - Superman is boring because he is super strong, invulnerable and incredibly smart to boot. Who cares how he solves it, we know he can just muscle through it all if he has to. And there were a whole lot of those Deus Ex Machina adventures too, except Superman was the god. Basically he'd look confused for most of the story, then at the end he's stop the villain and explain how he saw through it all at the start with his super intelligence and just played along. Yawn...

The last quarter of the majority of Black Library books... Particularly Dan Abnetts. Although Deliverance Lost in particular had that problem too.

There's always just this massive build up to epicness... Then it's about 5 pages long, then you're left going, 'oh was that it?'

I've enjoyed Dan Abnett's work the most, most likely because he also writes comics so his style is more to my liking.

My main gripe with 40k fiction (Codex books included) is probably that they don't stick to a set formula. They never sat down and said "This is a Space Marine, his qualities are.... He has weaknesses in.... This here is an Eldar Farseer, he is.... and has the abilities to.... This is a Grey Knight, he has qualities like a Space Marine but differs in..."

Its all just, "Hey I like this awesome idea, lets do this" but in the end you just read multiple books where a Space Marine can conquer the galaxy alone in one book, is a weakling in the next. Eldar are portrayed as being like the epitome of Psychic powers, but are then shown to be less powerful than a mutant on planet Gorblog who can fart bad juju that saves everyone.

Sometimes a book draws you in and you think its amazing, then other stories, you read something and stop and can't help but put the book down, stare at it and say "what garbage, this is utterly a crock of s***".
I like Ben Counter's version of the Grey Knights, its how I saw them, a group made for the purpose of fighting Daemons. I dislike the Codex version which makes them an utterly Anti Psyker army, who can do this amazing thing, this impossible thing, this thing which doesn't match with the description of the thing they are meant to be fighting, etc. Or hell, lets make it so they can die, but as they die blow up and kill things. Because yeah, that is just awesome.

I think if they sat down and then put down in concrete what things can do, how they work and how they react it would work better. Not saying that all Star Wars fiction is brilliant, but I like that they do sort of work from a set of concrete ideas, instead of allowing anyone to make up whatever they like to make up and releasing it.

Also the pacing is horrible in some books, its as if they are told before writing, make up a story, and after getting 300 pages in the BL bosses go, "Yep this is sweet, but you need to take and keep what you have written here, all these 300 pages... And then finish the book in 50-100 pages. Without changing these past 300."

In saying that I think keeping an idea running is also a problem. The Inquisition War, great start. Then its just WTF for the 2nd and 3rd books.

 Tiger9gamer wrote:
so there has to be conflict we can care about, like saveing a planet full of civilians or going after an enemy, right?

Yes and no.

Yes, you need conflict that we can care about, but no, saving a planet of civilians or going after an enemy are bad examples. 40K is a vast setting of constant conflict, and killing bad guys and protecting Imperial worlds are standard fare.

To make the character interesting, there has to be conflicts unique to him. Internal conflicts. The conflict covered by The Emperor's Gift isn't about the Grey Knights versus the Space Wolves. It's about the main character wanting to protect the Imperium as a whole, which means fighting the Wolves and killing civilians and loyal soldiers. He has to do things he doesn't want to do, to achieve the goal he wants. It's this internal conflict that makes the story interesting, reading about how he rationalises his actions and deals with that internal conflict.

Another example is the intense showdown between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi. Skywalker wants to defeat the Emperor and Vader, but refuses to use the dark side of the force to do it. Vader wants to do the Emperor's bidding and kill Skywalker, but at the end he realises he still values his soul and repents. These internal conflicts are what gives that scene it's tension, and what makes the characters interesting. It's why we care about what happens to them because we want to see how they resolve those conflicts. That scene could have taken place in an abandoned warehouse or an office complex and been just as tense. The incredible space battle happening outside was, essentially, just window dressing.

Having said that, the actual setting is still kinda important. But it should only ever serve as a mechanism to steer the characters. We only want to know what happens to the protagonists in the story. The type of character should determine the setting. For example, a story about a squad leader doesn't need a massive warzone to be part of. A small conflict will do just as well. Unless, of course, the scale of the conflict is somehow integral to the internal conflict the character is facing. To return to the Star Wars example, the massive space battle gave Luke motivation. He otherwise could have retreated from the confrontation and fought Vader and the Emperor on more favourable terms. To force the conflict, and force Luke to fight a more tense and uphill battle, the lives of his friends (and the Rebellion as a whole) were placed on the line.

So you can see, it's not as simple as just chasing down a bad guy or protecting a planet of civilians. The really interesting conflicts happen inside the characters.

 Kaldor wrote:


Another example is the intense showdown between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader at the end of Return of the Jedi. Skywalker wants to defeat the Emperor and Vader, but refuses to use the dark side of the force to do it. Vader wants to do the Emperor's bidding and kill Skywalker, but at the end he realises he still values his soul and repents. These internal conflicts are what gives that scene it's tension, and what makes the characters interesting. It's why we care about what happens to them because we want to see how they resolve those conflicts. That scene could have taken place in an abandoned warehouse or an office complex and been just as tense. The incredible space battle happening outside was, essentially, just window dressing.

This is the main character point of view in" Emperor's gift "...Nice analogy....

 kwah wrote:
i wish there where more tau and or xenos oriented books.

The problem with these kinds of books is the same problem you have writing Space Marines.

They usually end up being books about humans with pointy ears, or tusks, or blue skin, etc. As in, authors have a hard time writing from an alien perspective because, well, they're aliens. If you're an Eldar, a member of a dying race, and live more or less forever, your perspective about everything is going to be vastly different than a human whose lifespan is measured in decades, and are among countless bazillions.

Basically, if you've ever read any fantasy novels written from the perspective of an elf, you know how bad they are, lol. Or, maybe you don't know how bad they are, because, like the author, you've never contemplated how much differently that an alien with entirely different values and lifespan would actually think.

My biggest gripe with BL books? Nine times out ten, they can't write a logical conclusion to a novel to save their life. They either write themselves so deeply into crap that it takes a miracle to save the protagonists, or the plot is going on nicely, climaxes logically. And then in the space of two pages there's a sudden twist and it's all over, like the wirter just ran out of his page allowance and went "oh, I only have 5 pages left. Let's have *random event/superpower/character X* show up and end it all.

Horus' turning is an oft-mentioned prime example. I was equally disappointed with Alpharius/Omegon's betrayal. The worst one for me was the ending of Mechanicus.

My main complaint about GW lore is that there's almost nothing from a female perspective. Even when they are written, they're often nothing more than one-dimensional characters.

But aside from that, in general, I'd like to see them pay more attention to scale.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spetulhu wrote:
Superman is boring because he is super strong, invulnerable and incredibly smart to boot.

Actually, superman has had numerous interesting adventures despite, or even because, of his super powers. You can write from the perspective of a very powerful being. But you need a good conflict for them. The more powerful they are, the less likely the conflict will be physical, and the more likely it will be moral, emotional, mental, etc.

 Melissia wrote:
My main complaint about GW lore is that there's almost nothing from a female perspective. Even when they are written, they're often nothing more than one-dimensional characters.

But aside from that, in general, I'd like to see them pay more attention to scale.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Spetulhu wrote:
Superman is boring because he is super strong, invulnerable and incredibly smart to boot.

Actually, superman has had numerous interesting adventures despite, or even because, of his super powers. You can write from the perspective of a very powerful being. But you need a good conflict for them. The more powerful they are, the less likely the conflict will be physical, and the more likely it will be moral, emotional, mental, etc.

There will be "Howl of the Banshee", a new Eldar audio by Gav Thorpe...

I read The Emperor's Gift. Good stuff! The only problems are that it suffers from some pacing issues, and I don't think its ideas could really be continued in another book, but it does show me that it is possible to write an interesting Gray Knight novel.

The best part is that the protagonist is really kind of a dick, and the author knows it. Hyperion is probably the least likeable loyalist Space Marine perspective I've ever read, yet I can still sympathize with his conflicts.

 LoneLictor wrote:
ADB says he writes Space Marine characters as though they're autistic.

I wouldn't be surprised. Hyperion's inner monologue is very robotic and emotionless, even when he is outwardly volatile.