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Just finished blood reaver by Aaron dembowski-bowden and it rocked! Just as good as soul hunter. Most black library nobles are poorly written with transparent plots and one dimensional characters but not these night lords books. The plot has unexpected twists, the characters arc, they have depth and the writting is very good.

I've never enjoyed rooting for the bad guys so much! Plus, you empathize with the night lords a bit, which is impressive considering they're a bunch of ruthless bastards.

Anyway, give these books a read if you like 40k fiction. They are very good.

Is someone a Night Lords fanboy?

I am I bought a copy of the Soul hunters book and I am almost finished.

whitedragon wrote:Is someone a Night Lords fanboy?

To his credit, the series is definitely well written.

whitedragon wrote:Is someone a Night Lords fanboy?

How can you NOT be after Soul Hunter, Blood Reaver, Throne of Lies, and "The Core"?

Lol, I was making a light hearted jab at Reecius since we played a Night Lords themed force at Adepticon this year.

Pft. Cursed inside jokes.

Haha, those books have made me a Fanboy as well, though I admit the pic of the Night Lord in the 4E book made me decide on CSM for my first army. I just don't like those silly winged helmets...

I haven't actually read any of this particular series, but I've always liked fiction involving the Night Lords (though I've only read maybe one novel and a couple short stories about them) since it seems quite a lot of them firmly believe that it was the Emperor who betrayed their Primarch and not the other way around. Some of them are even sympathetic characters to a degree. I'll have to check this out.

I highly suggest this series.

It's not so much of the "EMPEROR DUN BETRAYED US!", but more "Do you really think we were ever 'noble' protectors, Brother? Are you really so blinded by nostalgia?".

Do I need to read "Lord of the Night" first?

Soul Hunter is the first one in ADB's series, start there.

Yeah, I loved the Night Lord books, too.

Interestingly, he mentions Dakka Dakka in the closing thank-you message, so I'm assuming he's actually on the forums? *becomes giddy*

ADB? Yeah AFAIK he is on the forums...
Not sure if he still goes on so go figure...

He does, just not very often.

He probably won't be on too much right now since he just got married and things need to settle down a bit for him.

Think he pops up over at B&C quite a bit too.

I didn't really like Soul Hunter. I'll admit the writing style was good, but the plot wasn't particularly good and the character was a Mary Stu (if you don't know what one is, look it up). In addition he made the Chaos Gods, the Black Legion and Abaddon complete idiots and Talos an epic awesome Night Hunter dude who sees the future and tells off Chaos Gods and has a cool sword and is a great fighter and even Abaddon (whose a stupid chaos stupid pants) wants to recruit him but the Exalted (whose a stupid chaos mutant stupid pants) wants to recruit him too because hes just that good. Just my opinion of course.

If you're going to cite a term that literary critics use, while telling someone "if you don't know what one is, look it up"--it helps to use the correct term.

It's a Mary Sue.

And no, he really didn't make any of those things happen. The Night Lords get their asses thoroughly kicked by the Black Legion. Abaddon wanted Talos to use him, not because he "wants him for his great fighting skills".

LoneLictor wrote:In addition he made the Chaos Gods, the Black Legion and Abaddon complete idiots

Strangely enough, this is why I loved the book. Because basically Talos tells Abaddon what countless Dakka threads have already discussed:



I heard that ADB was a 40k fan before he was a 40k writer. I suppose that's why he does 'fanservice' such as these

Talos is only a Mary Sue in the sense that he's the most sympathetic psycho on a ship full of psychos. All ADB did was inject some realism into the usual Chaos Marine tropes. Someone has to be the glue that holds a warband or a squad together, or else how could they still exist as fighting units?

rabidaskal wrote:

LoneLictor wrote:In addition he made the Chaos Gods, the Black Legion and Abaddon complete idiots

Strangely enough, this is why I loved the book. Because basically Talos tells Abaddon what countless Dakka threads have already discussed:

Spoiler:

Why the hell should we follow you, you can't even lead 13 Failcrusades out of the EoT! (sic)

I heard that ADB was a 40k fan before he was a 40k writer. I suppose that's why he does 'fanservice' such as these

This is why I love the Night Lords!

Dembski-Bowden writes a good villainous novel. Unlike some folks who want to glorify the 'bad guy,' Bowden remembers one of the core rules of writing such a story (like Mark Millar and Richard Lee Byers) which is to make sure the audience understands that the protagonist is still a very bad person. Throughout the novels, you are made to empathize with the Night Lords, and towards the end of each of the novels there is an event which hits you like a hammer and makes you a little disgusted with yourself for supporting these sick bastards. While the Black Library books aren't bad, most of them are 'brain bubblegum,' (like most military fiction) with little literary content. Bowden brings a bit more depth to his work, and it shows.

Kanluwen wrote:

whitedragon wrote:Is someone a Night Lords fanboy?

How can you NOT be after Soul Hunter, Blood Reaver, Throne of Lies, and "The Core"?

The first two I am familiar with, but the second two..... are they audio books or new books coming out? Or are they out already?

The Core is a short story. Pretty sure it is from Fear the Alien.

Throne of Lies is an audiobook, The Core is a short story in Fear the Alien Both out already.

Edit: Ninja'd by 50%!

From the BL description of "Fear the Alien":

The Imperium of Man has many enemies among the stars, but none are reviled so much as the alien.

Not counting "Rebels" as a bigass enemy against the imperium (lets face it..they get stomped by SM and IG most of the time)..what else is there other than chaos? "Many enemies among the stars"..aren't those the aliens? xD

ADB is definitely becoming one of my favorite writers for the BL.

His writing has been consistent in style and quality and I don't think I have read a bad book or short story by him yet.

He's not so excitable as some of the other newer writers.

Still yet to pick up Blood Reaver, but I am reading the Heresy series again and will pick it up after I have finished.

They're damn good books and Aaron is a top chap. I met him recently and went for a beer ahead of a book signing. He also defaced some of my books.

Cadian Blood now sports the phrase "I so wrote this book. Did you? No. Aaron."

He's also drawn faces and other weird things inside my copies of Age of Darkness, Blood Reaver, Soul Reaver and The First Heretic.

Interesting news? He's rebooting the Grey Knights books after his next Heresy novel is finished...

Good. Hopefully he mixes the good parts of this edition and the previous Daemonhunters. I'm thinking, keeping the Dreadknight, whilst "retconnning" so to speak, the chapter size back to 3000.

Well put it this way, he's got similar opinions on BL and GW's writers as us, especially regarding books like Descent of Angels, for example. And C.S. Goto...

I have high hopes.