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2012/02/03 14:15:46
Subject: Deliverance Lost - second worst HH novel.
I'm ranking this just above Battle for the Abyss and just below EVERYTHING ELSE. Silly, teenage action with a complete lack of believable characters, and a rubbish storyline. Reading this was a chore almost from the start. Most annoying 'revalations' listed below... :/
Spoiler:
1. The entire code for creating the Primarchs fits on a single little wafer? And you just select the 'primarch skills' you want? Hmm.... :(
a. The Emperor knew about Alpharius/Omegon and set their 'primarch code' to 'extra small'. Well done, Gav. A potentially interesting msytery blown out of the water as a footnote.
b. The Emperor put 'Canine DNA' in Leman Russ. But I thought it had already been established that the Canis Helix was something present in the bloodline of Fenris, from the first colonists. The combination of the Canis Helix and the Gene Seed is what makes Space Wolves so much more dangerous than normal marines.
2. Legion fantastically portrays the Alpha Legionnaires as clinical, professional, comradely special-ops soldiers. But in this, the Alpha Legion are all emotionally unhinged 'Evil Marines'.
3. His given name is Corvus and 'Corax' just happens to mean Lord? Really? And by complete coincidence, his Legion were called the Raven Guard BEFORE they were reunited with him?
4. The Raven Guard have apparently no 'personality traits' or culture other than Extremely Laid Back. They act throughout like a bunch of teenagers.
5. NOBODY KNEW OR DETECTED AN IMPERATOR TITAN ON KIAVHRHRHRH? Seriously? They didn't notice?
6. Vincenze Sixx? Motley Crue in Space!!!
7. Agapito's misleading storyline is really badly pulled off. We're slowly led to believe he was an infiltrator, and then it turns out he was just following Solaro, a character who isn't at all present in the rest of the novel. And he never told Branne because....um...?
8. The techmaine guy spends lots of time making 'new armour' which then turns out to be SLIGHTLY better shoulder pads that are never mentioned again in the novel. Meanwhile, new armour turns up from Terra.
What's annoying is that, crazy as the plot is, it's the terrible characters and writing that make it bad. I'm sure that with a bit of restraint, Abnett or McNeill (or even ADB) could have made this a really interesting novel. But this just reads like bad fan fiction.
Oh well. At least it isn't Battle for the Abyss.
:/
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/02/03 14:17:35
1) Alpha Legion was behind everything. WTF sort of derp idea is that? It removes the original tragedy from the Corax character. They could have had a great story about how the primarch comes home and in his grief, attempts to rebuild his legion using wacky gene tech. Then you go with either him ignoring the warning signs, or making a deal with the devil in order to make things work, upon which time you get say 10,000 new Raven Guard who are slightly off. Throw them into battle, have things go horribly terribly wrong (like Knights of Blood wrong) and then watch as Corax has to clean up the mess, thus breaking his spirit.
Instead, they throw hints of Corax being obsessed, but in reality he always backs away from that edge, and the actual corruption of the new guard is caused by a warp virus implanted by the Alpha guys. Zero arc on the primarch. And, as a bonus, the corruption caused by the warp virus is basically all cosmetic. The mutated guys get armor and end up fighting against Team Horus at the end of the book. It's about as close to 'And they lived happily ever after.' as I've seen in a non-Cain 40k book.
2) The Emperor has two main devices protecting the data and material from the Primarch Project. One is a giant mechanical maze that shifts and moves and has guns in it. The other is a freaking nuke that will go off if someone tries to open the vault without using some super awesome psyker lock thing. One of them makes for a great bit of story, the other actually gets the job done.
The funny bit:
Spoiler:
Both Corax and Dorn think Russ is an idiot.
2012/02/03 14:39:57
Subject: Re:Deliverance Lost - second worst HH novel.
ArbitorIan wrote:I'm ranking this just above Battle for the Abyss and just below EVERYTHING ELSE. Silly, teenage action with a complete lack of believable characters, and a rubbish storyline. Reading this was a chore almost from the start. Most annoying 'revalations' listed below... :/
This is definitely in the same category as BftA and is one of the more action orientated books that you can read without it getting to complicated. It possibly would have been handled better by another author as the story itself should be more complicated. When I learned that the Alpha Legion were involved I was a bit disappointed as they seem to have had dealings in a fair bit, and nothing seems to happen by misfortune now.
The book itself I did enjoy, it was nice that they still had the Guild Masters mentioned in the old Raven Guard fluff and carried through.
Gav's writing is to me, much like Nick Kymes and Mr Counters Grey Knights offerings. Quite flat and action based. I enjoyed his fluff in the Codex for Chaos, as it was written factually and like you would expect on a tome. But for a Heresy novel, not so much.
Now on to your comments, some of them at least.
ArbitorIan wrote:
Spoiler:
a. The Emperor knew about Alpharius/Omegon and set their 'primarch code' to 'extra small'. Well done, Gav. A potentially interesting msytery blown out of the water as a footnote.
Kinda corny I know, but I'm glad that I can finally go neer to the doubters This is also confirmed by ADB in Aurelian.
ArbitorIan wrote:
Spoiler:
2. Legion fantastically portrays the Alpha Legionnaires as clinical, professional, comradely special-ops soldiers. But in this, the Alpha Legion are all emotionally unhinged 'Evil Marines'.
I thought he did this rather well, the circumstances were very different to them after all and I didn't find them over evil, just doing what was necessary.
ArbitorIan wrote:
Spoiler:
7. Agapito's misleading storyline is really badly pulled off. We're slowly led to believe he was an infiltrator, and then it turns out he was just following Solaro, a character who isn't at all present in the rest of the novel. And he never told Branne because....um...?
I got a bit confused with this but reading it over a few times and it did seem to make sense to me.
daveNYC wrote:
Spoiler:
Instead, they throw hints of Corax being obsessed, but in reality he always backs away from that edge, and the actual corruption of the new guard is caused by a warp virus implanted by the Alpha guys. Zero arc on the primarch. And, as a bonus, the corruption caused by the warp virus is basically all cosmetic. The mutated guys get armor and end up fighting against Team Horus at the end of the book.
Now on this you'll have to refresh my memory as it's been a while.
Spoiler:
Does Corax find out about the Alpha Legion infiltration or does he put the cause of corruption down to process itself?
Giving them armour does happen and is mentioned in the Saga of the Weregeld.
Spoiler:
not all the Raptors were fortunate enough to hold it together either if I recall.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2012/02/03 15:08:01
No pity, no remorse, no shoes
2012/02/03 15:03:04
Subject: Deliverance Lost - second worst HH novel.
It was #7 that ruined the novel for me, since Thorpe violated all of the rules of good fiction writing by failing entirely to create any kind of suspense, which robbed the twist of any impact. The rest are indeed a mix of pointless fan-service and (even more) pointless continuity rewriting, but they would have been forgiveable in a better story.
I'd go so far as to venture that Deliverance Lost actually replaces Battle for the Abyss - which might have been half-decent had the pacing not been so terrible - in the Heresy series' bottom place.
Red Hunters: 2000 points Grey Knights: 2000 points Black Legion: 600 points and counting
2012/02/03 15:12:51
Subject: Re:Deliverance Lost - second worst HH novel.
Instead, they throw hints of Corax being obsessed, but in reality he always backs away from that edge, and the actual corruption of the new guard is caused by a warp virus implanted by the Alpha guys. Zero arc on the primarch. And, as a bonus, the corruption caused by the warp virus is basically all cosmetic. The mutated guys get armor and end up fighting against Team Horus at the end of the book.
Now on this you'll have to refreshm my memory as it's been a while.
Spoiler:
Does Corax find out about the Alpha Legion infiltration or does he put the cause of corruption down to process itself?
Giving them armour does happen and is mentioned in the Saga of the Weregeld.
Yes to both questions actually.
Spoiler:
The Alpha guys get actviated steal the data and material, then trash the lab (or the data, at least). Then they all get shot while trying to escape. Corax then puts gene screening in place to catch any further infiltrators, and by the end of the novel they're totally clear that they knew that the Alpha Legion was skulking around the place for the entire storyline. Strangely enough though, Corax doesn't think (or at least doesn't mention it) that Alpha Legion was the cause of the project's failure. There's some handwavium about how the genesamples might have become slightly corrupted each time they took it out of stasis, which is why the first batch of recruits were fine, but the later ones got all twisty. The decision to stop the project was based on their worry about not being able to keep the data and material secure, in case someone tried to steal it again (because for some reason, they're able to kill all the Alpha Legion guys, but not check to see if they had stolen anything, or even search the area to see if they had stashed anything in a locker or something). Huge freaking plot hole right there too.
2012/02/03 15:21:29
Subject: Deliverance Lost - second worst HH novel.
As regards point 1, OP, the size of computers is meant to half, or the power to double every ten years. So by the 31st millennium a tiny chip could conceivably hold every single scrap of data in the world right now.
What bugs me most about Deliverance is
Spoiler:
Corax was a tragic figure who was consumed by his desire for vengeance against Chaos, and realised what he did too late. Now he's just a guy who got a perfect solution from the Emperor and messed it up. Maybe it's just me, but I preferred the original version.
Arguing with some people is like playing chess with a pigeon. You can play the best chess in the world, but at the end of the day the pigeon will still knock all the pieces off the board and then gak all over it.
2012/02/03 15:21:43
Subject: Deliverance Lost - second worst HH novel.
So Corax, not knowing that the Alpha Legion interfered with the project, blames himself for the way his Raptors turned out et voila
Flimsy and by no way means any where near as good as what was implied in the original articles but it will have to do.
Durza wrote:but I preferred the original version.
To me there's the BL version and the studio version, in most cases I prefer the original version like yourself, but I do enjoy reading, in most cases (not you Fulgrim ) the full bodied version.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2012/02/03 15:24:46
No pity, no remorse, no shoes
2012/02/03 15:41:08
Subject: Deliverance Lost - second worst HH novel.
So Corax, not knowing that the Alpha Legion interfered with the project, blames himself for the way his Raptors turned out et voila
Flimsy and by no way means any where near as good as what was implied in the original articles but it will have to do.
I'm not sure it will have to do. I might just throw this book down the memory hole, same as I did with the timeline issues in The Outcast Dead. (OT: I'm almost done with the book, is it wrong that in pretty much every HH book, I'm finding the marines from the traitor legions (regardless of whether the specific marine is a traitor or not) much more interesting than the loyalists?)
Spoiler:
Thing is, he doesn't even really blame it on himself either, it's more of a 'good try, we had some success, but then stuff happens'. It's actually a pretty huge plot hole. Corax knows that Alpha Legion was there, and he knows that they were there since Istvaan V. He even knows the assumed identies of the Alpha guys, so he knows what level of access they had, and with transportation logs, he'd know if they'd gone anywhere interesting. Yet somehow he doesn't even consider the fact that they might have worked some evil mojo on the Raptor project? That one guy was involved with the project from the get go, he was in the maze when they retreived the material and data. Heck, they killed the Apothecary on the way into the lab. To not consider that just maybe the project might have been sabotaged is a Wookee on Endor moment.
There's also the problem of numbers. Post-Istvaan, the Guard had something like 3,000 marines left (might be a bit fuzzy on that), the Raptor project could do 250 recruits at a time. One batch went fine, so that's 250 'good' marines. Then the next batch was poisoned, so that's 250 mutant marines. Maybe they did an addional batch of marines before the mutations manifested, so say 500 mutants, 250 norms, and 3,000 regular old marines. Those numbers aren't large enough (IMO) to lead to the sort of tragedy that supposedly leads to Corax going all Poe and hopping a shuttle to nowhere. I'm not buying that he'd be able to shrug off the loss of however many tens of thousands of Raven Guard died at the dropsite, yet somehow 500 (or even 750) quasi-mutants going loco is going to break his spirit? I'm not saying they can't salvage something out of it, but right now, the story is in a bad place, if you want to milk some good grimdark drama and character development out of it.
2012/02/05 02:22:53
Subject: Deliverance Lost - second worst HH novel.
So glad I found these posts. In the process of building a Raven Guard army, liking the fluff and was going to buy Deliverance Lost but I'm going to forgo that pleasure now and spend the eight quid where it might help, like on a Space Marine biker or put it towrds an Assault Squad!! Cheers lads
This is also confirmed by ADB in Aurelian.
Red Hunters: 2000 points 
Grey Knights: 2000 points 
Black Legion: 600 points and counting 
) the full bodied version.
