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It's probably been asked a dozen times but is c.s.goto worth reading?

if we ignore the back-flipping terminators and other such rewritings of officail fluff. (This isn't a thread about why he's uliked)

As a stand-alone fiction writer is he any good?

Nom

I kind of enjoyed the omnibus, even though it clashed with SO MUCH official stuff.

But then, I love to read, and consider anything better than Twilight to be enjoyable reading, so YMMV. "Better than Twilight" isn't exactly high praise.

No. His stand-alone fiction isn't even worth mentioning.

I'd honestly say if you want to read 'stand-alone fiction', you're better off just reading fanfiction with all its typos and glorious context errors.

I've yet to find somewhere to buy Eldar Prophecy, but it's probably the best one to read out of his works. Stick beats Falcon.

Kanluwen wrote:No. His stand-alone fiction isn't even worth mentioning.

I'd honestly say if you want to read 'stand-alone fiction', you're better off just reading fanfiction with all its typos and glorious context errors.

100% with Kan on this one. Even if you find his books to be "so bad it's good", I wouldn't want to stretch that joke out to 300 pages.

As a writer, he isn't bad.

Unfortunantly he isn't worth for content, which makes him a bad writer.


He definitly aced his English classes, unfortunantly he failed reading comprehension and analysis.

If he were to come up with his own fictional world, he'd probably do really well.

His sin is trying to make 40k his own. You just can't do that.

n0t_u wrote:I've yet to find somewhere to buy Eldar Prophecy, but it's probably the best one to read out of his works. Stick beats Falcon.

It's good, but dear lord was it hard to follow for me initially, I didn't even realize what all was going on until I re-read the book about 3 times so I could get all of the characters down in my mind.

I read the Blood Ravens Omnibus as my first 40k Omnibus. It was right when I was getting into it, so some of the fluff errors weren't so obvious to me except for the whole Rhino becoming a Razorback all the time. Anyways the book was ok. Its probably the worst 40k Omnibus I've read, but there is worse out there. I'm sure of it.

Red Comet wrote:I read the Blood Ravens Omnibus as my first 40k Omnibus. It was right when I was getting into it, so some of the fluff errors weren't so obvious to me except for the whole Rhino becoming a Razorback all the time. Anyways the book was ok. Its probably the worst 40k Omnibus I've read, but there is worse out there. I'm sure of it.

The only books on par are the Soul Drikers books, with honorable mention going to the Grey Knights and Blood Angels omnibuses.

The only thing I've read by Goto is The Trial of the Mantis Warriors, a short story from the Legends of the Space Marines collection. Personally, I really enjoyed it. I can't speak to some of the other stuff the man has done, but if I were you I would pick up a few of the short story anthologies with his work in them, and then decide from there if you think his writing is something worth reading more of.

Brother SRM wrote:

Red Comet wrote:I read the Blood Ravens Omnibus as my first 40k Omnibus. It was right when I was getting into it, so some of the fluff errors weren't so obvious to me except for the whole Rhino becoming a Razorback all the time. Anyways the book was ok. Its probably the worst 40k Omnibus I've read, but there is worse out there. I'm sure of it.

The only books on par are the Soul Drikers books, with honorable mention going to the Grey Knights and Blood Angels omnibuses.

I'm actually reading the Blood Angels omnibus at the moment, and its no where near as bad as the Blood Ravens Omnibus. The first book in the BR Omnibus is awful. Its barely readable and feels like a video game translation. The plot from the game carried over poorly and his descriptions are meh overall. Blood Angels Omnibus at least keeps my attention.

I love bad video game adaptations. I remember reading "The Flood" which was the Halo novelization. It had two side stories that were pretty meaningless and poorly executed, and the parts with Master Chief were basically one step off from being "And then Master Chief pulled the right trigger twice, then pressed X to reload."

Brother SRM wrote:I love bad video game adaptations. I remember reading "The Flood" which was the Halo novelization. It had two side stories that were pretty meaningless and poorly executed, and the parts with Master Chief were basically one step off from being "And then Master Chief pulled the right trigger twice, then pressed X to reload."

Fable Novelization:

The Hero held down X, releasing a mighty flourish. Unfortunately, at that moment RRoD strikes, and he freezes whilst caving in the head of some unfortunate hollow men.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I do like my Xbox, but unfortunately, my previous got RRoD 3 times before I replaced it.

I find his writing abysmal even for 40k fiction. No character development, repetitive limited style with no clue about the 40k setting. And perverse things happen to every second Eldar and woman/girl in his books stories. One female farseer who enters already injured, is maimed, tortured and mutilated over 180 pages until she is finally allowed to die. One famous child farseer character invented by Abnett is molested by a fat drooling Slaanesh worshipping farseer. Yep, that bad. Oh, and in another novel Harlequins always end in "a pile of mulitated bodies" after a few seconds of fight. If you like Eldar, just stay away from him and grab Gav Thorpe novels instead.

Brother SRM wrote:I love bad video game adaptations. I remember reading "The Flood" which was the Halo novelization. It had two side stories that were pretty meaningless and poorly executed, and the parts with Master Chief were basically one step off from being "And then Master Chief pulled the right trigger twice, then pressed X to reload."

I remember this book. It's so bad that I've re read all the other Halo novels at least once except that book. Its just outright awful. I think the only interesting thing was seeing how Jenkins was still semi conscious while he was a flood. Other than that it was pointless.

Red Comet wrote:

Brother SRM wrote:I love bad video game adaptations. I remember reading "The Flood" which was the Halo novelization. It had two side stories that were pretty meaningless and poorly executed, and the parts with Master Chief were basically one step off from being "And then Master Chief pulled the right trigger twice, then pressed X to reload."

I remember this book. It's so bad that I've re read all the other Halo novels at least once except that book. Its just outright awful. I think the only interesting thing was seeing how Jenkins was still semi conscious while he was a flood. Other than that it was pointless.

Agreed. I don't tend to buy a lot of video game novels because of the uneven quality, and The Flood is one of the main reasons for this. I only bought it because, on a whim, I'd read the Fall of Reach which surprised me with how good it was. The Flood though was just a piece of crap, there's literally a scene where they describe Master Chief fighting successive waves of Flood that ramp in difficulty after he wipes out the previous wave (like the video game! Shocker!). Even worse though was Splinter Cell: Operation Barracuda which was more like Die Hard 4 than Splinter Cell, it completely ruined the tone of that series (Checkmate was much better but Operation Barracuda was so bad that I haven't even delved back into that series' novels).

Anyway... uh, I guess the point of all that is that novels tied into a franchise have very uneven quality, and the Black Library is no exception.

Hey Greatsword, where did you get those 8 bit GIFs in your sig? They look pretty sweet.

Andilus Greatsword wrote:
Anyway... uh, I guess the point of all that is that novels tied into a franchise have very uneven quality, and the Black Library is no exception.

I will say BL is better on the whole than most licensed fiction I've read, but you're dead on the money.

Brother SRM wrote:

Andilus Greatsword wrote:
Anyway... uh, I guess the point of all that is that novels tied into a franchise have very uneven quality, and the Black Library is no exception.

I will say BL is better on the whole than most licensed fiction I've read, but you're dead on the money.

Yeah, I agree on that front. I've read only a few BL books thus far (Prospero Burns, A Thousand Sons and a short story collection... I don't remember what it was called) and they've ranged from mediocre-but-entertaining to very good.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Hey Greatsword, where did you get those 8 bit GIFs in your sig? They look pretty sweet.

http://www.rengels.de/warhammer/designer/index.html

They only have a few customizable icons sadly. I had to Google to find the Tyranid Warrior, the Tyranids icon maker on that site doesn't work. They do look very sharp though, thank you!

Dervos wrote:

n0t_u wrote:I've yet to find somewhere to buy Eldar Prophecy, but it's probably the best one to read out of his works. Stick beats Falcon.

It's good, but dear lord was it hard to follow for me initially, I didn't even realize what all was going on until I re-read the book about 3 times so I could get all of the characters down in my mind.

Good? Are you sure? I found it pretty bad tbh. I mean,

If you like Eldar (like me) I warn you, DO NOT READ his books, I mean, a fat child molesting farseer just

Andilus Greatsword wrote:

Brother SRM wrote:

Andilus Greatsword wrote:
Anyway... uh, I guess the point of all that is that novels tied into a franchise have very uneven quality, and the Black Library is no exception.

I will say BL is better on the whole than most licensed fiction I've read, but you're dead on the money.

Yeah, I agree on that front. I've read only a few BL books thus far (Prospero Burns, A Thousand Sons and a short story collection... I don't remember what it was called) and they've ranged from mediocre-but-entertaining to very good.

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Hey Greatsword, where did you get those 8 bit GIFs in your sig? They look pretty sweet.

http://www.rengels.de/warhammer/designer/index.html

They only have a few customizable icons sadly. I had to Google to find the Tyranid Warrior, the Tyranids icon maker on that site doesn't work. They do look very sharp though, thank you!

How do you place them in the sig? I can't seem to find the option for that.

I saved/uploaded the pics to Photobucket and then used IMG tags to put them in.

Andilus Greatsword wrote:I saved/uploaded the pics to Photobucket and then used IMG tags to put them in.

Photobucket is awful and those pictures will be broken links because more than 10 people saw them soon. Use imgur.