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Morkphoiz wrote:
Shadowsword by Guy Haley.

It's a book that tells you that baneblades and shadowswords are great. The Characters are boring, the Story is boring, the ending is boring. Nothing really happens throughout the book except that the main Character gets promoted from shooting up stuff in a baneblade to shooting bigger stuff up in a shadowsword. The Story is incredibly bland. Never before has a book felt so much like a model Advertisement like this one did.

I'd say all the short stories that are blatantly written to sell a new model are awful. I stumbled across the one for the tau riptide in an anthology a while back, and found it particularly bad. I think it was 'The Patient Hunter', by Joe Parrino.
It's only a few pages long, and is just about a bland riptide pilot musing obnoxiously to himself as he blows up around 60 leman russ tanks, followed by a baneblade (That's not an exaggeration. At one point it says 48 tanks were left, after a good number had already been destroyed).

Crackedgear wrote:
The “—— of Mars” series might be my least favorite. I’ve read other stuff by Graham McNeill that was good, this wasn’t it. The story wasn’t bad per se, but the whole thing felt really sloppy. Like it was describing one character talking about his shaved head, and then two sentences later it’s talking about his hair. Or the one black Templar who gets his hand cut off, but five pages later he’s got his hand again.

Plus as a really nerdy point: there was a scene where a bunch of characters are standing around basking in the “glittering nitrogen rain”. The boiling point of nitrogen is -320 degrees F.

Or 300 pages of "Then the Marines smashed the green glass robot, then the marines smashed the other green glass robot, then the green glass robots fused into another green glass robots and the marines smashed that..."

I REALLY wanted to like the Of Mars books. I really did...

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Crackedgear wrote:
The “—— of Mars” series might be my least favorite. I’ve read other stuff by Graham McNeill that was good, this wasn’t it. The story wasn’t bad per se, but the whole thing felt really sloppy. Like it was describing one character talking about his shaved head, and then two sentences later it’s talking about his hair. Or the one black Templar who gets his hand cut off, but five pages later he’s got his hand again.

Plus as a really nerdy point: there was a scene where a bunch of characters are standing around basking in the “glittering nitrogen rain”. The boiling point of nitrogen is -320 degrees F.

Or 300 pages of "Then the Marines smashed the green glass robot, then the marines smashed the other green glass robot, then the green glass robots fused into another green glass robots and the marines smashed that..."

I REALLY wanted to like the Of Mars books. I really did...

Thanks, I had forgotten about the stupid glass robot monsters.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Crackedgear wrote:
The “—— of Mars” series might be my least favorite. I’ve read other stuff by Graham McNeill that was good, this wasn’t it. The story wasn’t bad per se, but the whole thing felt really sloppy. Like it was describing one character talking about his shaved head, and then two sentences later it’s talking about his hair. Or the one black Templar who gets his hand cut off, but five pages later he’s got his hand again.

Plus as a really nerdy point: there was a scene where a bunch of characters are standing around basking in the “glittering nitrogen rain”. The boiling point of nitrogen is -320 degrees F.

Or 300 pages of "Then the Marines smashed the green glass robot, then the marines smashed the other green glass robot, then the green glass robots fused into another green glass robots and the marines smashed that..."

I REALLY wanted to like the Of Mars books. I really did...

Or how everybody in the third book is suddenly either related to a major character, or is connected to
Background events from other sources - the Cadian officer who is Creed's neice, the techpriest who studied under Corteswain, two characters talk about events on Caris Cephalon, the training deck city is a copy of Vogen, villain guy stole tech from Cthelmax, etc - do you get the reference?! The lore is so deep and connected!

And of course I can never forgive what McNeill did to the Cardinal Boras in book one...

So to summarize...

Our money and more importantly time are limited and should not be spent on crap

Any book made to sell an upcoming video game (Fire Warrior) or new model (Shadowsword, Skitarii) is probably going to be a quickie and poorly done.

The first wave of 40k books, (Ian Watson's Space Marine and Inquisition Wars, the Eye of Terror novel) are an acquired taste to say the least.

Follow authors, not factions or a series.

And even then, best to see reviews and make a decision based on them. Every author has an off-day.

The Eisenhorn books are the best damn 40k books and anything by Kim "Jack Yeovil" Newman is worth reading.

phillv85 wrote:

 RobS wrote:
I read Kharne: the Red Path by Chris Dows and hated it. Nonsensical, and very badly written.

Then I read Betrayer by ADB and loved it. So now I am uneasy about trying more Black Library...

I forgot about Red Path. Boy that was a bad book.

The only good thing about it is that it made me feel that I could write Black Library books.

By the way, I'm not Rob Sanders!

I'm just going to say it: the ending of Xenos is rubbish, and I don't like the Eisenhorn books.

'I called on the largest gathering of Deathwatch ever described to this point and we launched a planetary assault to destroy the knock-off pylon; but we're short on page count here so I won't give any detail about any of that. I had a duel with the baddie. The end'.

I hated Fist of the Imperium. The Space Marines were terrible at the one thing they should be good at... fighting. They made mistakes at every turn, could only win fights that took place "off screen", and still managed to accidentally win in the end. Barely. I mean, it has a Space marine chasing a cultist on a bike, and the Space Marine forgets his bike has guns on it.

I dislike Damacles for much the same reasons.

I generally really enjoyed the Eisenhorn books, but here are some things I didn't like:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
So to summarize...

Our money and more importantly time are limited and should not be spent on crap

Any book made to sell an upcoming video game (Fire Warrior) or new model (Shadowsword, Skitarii) is probably going to be a quickie and poorly done.

The first wave of 40k books, (Ian Watson's Space Marine and Inquisition Wars, the Eye of Terror novel) are an acquired taste to say the least.

Follow authors, not factions or a series.

And even then, best to see reviews and make a decision based on them. Every author has an off-day.

The Eisenhorn books are the best damn 40k books and anything by Kim "Jack Yeovil" Newman is worth reading.

When are those first 40k novels from?

^like early 1990s I believe. Id check mine but I'm away atm.

I think Inquisitor was either 89 or 90. It’s real early stuff.

I liked Firewarrior. You get to spend so much time meeting interesting, three-dimensional characters. And then Kais shoots their heads off.

I haven't read a lot of bad BL books. I even read the first book in C.S Goto's Dawn of War series when I was young and I thought it was a solid read then, not sure it would hold up to nostalgia now though. I have read books that are just disappointing though.

Fastest BL book I've ever put down is Angel Exterminatus, though partly because I was borrowing it. I'm sorry but if your book starts with something like 20 pages describing a character climbing a cliff, you're not taking the medium to a higher literary level, you're just being dull and pretentious.

Aaron Dembski Bowden has never let me down, but Dan Abnett's latest 2 offerings to finish off the Gaunts Ghosts series I just think are a bit limp and unsatisfying. The content just isn't that engaging, the set pieces feel regurgitated from earlier books but in a worse way. The character writing is still solid and its the only thing that kept me reading. Still better than Honour Guard. Only GG book I found painful to finish.

phillv85 wrote:
I think Inquisitor was either 89 or 90. It’s real early stuff.

Yeah that's about right, RT times to be sure with most BL books kicking off around late 90s /3rd edition.

Basically it's:
Deathwing (short stories)
Space Marine
Inquisition Wars (Inquisitor/Draco, Harlequin, Chaos Child)
Eye of Terror (actually BL but feels like RT era fiction)

And I'd add Jack Yeovil/Kim Newman's Dark Future books, they're not 40k but they are really post apoc sci fi and very funny. Every so often I see words he coined in them used for 40k like Recaf/coffee.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

I haven't read a lot of bad BL books. I even read the first book in C.S Goto's Dawn of War series when I was young and I thought it was a solid read then, not sure it would hold up to nostalgia now though. I have read books that are just disappointing though.

Fastest BL book I've ever put down is Angel Exterminatus, though partly because I was borrowing it. I'm sorry but if your book starts with something like 20 pages describing a character climbing a cliff, you're not taking the medium to a higher literary level, you're just being dull and pretentious.

Aaron Dembski Bowden has never let me down, but Dan Abnett's latest 2 offerings to finish off the Gaunts Ghosts series I just think are a bit limp and unsatisfying. The content just isn't that engaging, the set pieces feel regurgitated from earlier books but in a worse way. The character writing is still solid and its the only thing that kept me reading. Still better than Honour Guard. Only GG book I found painful to finish.

Agreed! i liked angel exterminatus, but I read it before i really knew the gist of the heresy, so I couldnt say if I'd like it as much now, but yeah..the cliff climbing scene was just unnecessary. I think I skipped it on a reread of it.

Graham McNeil really let me down with the Mechanicus series. I hate it because it's humans and Eldar teaming up to stop some ancient and unspeakable horror that you will not see on the tabletop. The plot with the Eldar is extremely contrived also.

Path of the Eldar by Gav Thorpe made me stopped giving a gak on the Eldar. The whole series is full of bad pacing and unlikable characters. And the Eldar culture is something I reject with a passion.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Literally anything by C.S. Goto.

Fat Eldar, SMs with Multilasers, Backflipping Terminators and children taking out Falcon Grav Tanks with sticks and stones to name but a few.

I second this.

Don't forget the Eldar preferring the Leman Russ over their grav tanks, Space Marine jump packs as anti-tank missiles, and Eldar snuff pr0n.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


Any book made to sell an upcoming video game (Fire Warrior) or new model (Shadowsword, Skitarii) is probably going to be a quickie and poorly done.

.

not gonna lie, Dark Imperium was a pleasent suprise to read because it's quality greatly exceeded my (admittingly low) expectations. perhaps Guy Haley is just better at writing Marines given his weakest books are all about the Guard?

BrianDavion wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


Any book made to sell an upcoming video game (Fire Warrior) or new model (Shadowsword, Skitarii) is probably going to be a quickie and poorly done.

.

not gonna lie, Dark Imperium was a pleasent suprise to read because it's quality greatly exceeded my (admittingly low) expectations. perhaps Guy Haley is just better at writing Marines given his weakest books are all about the Guard?

I like Baneblade. It was quite a cool read. But Shadow Sword is exceedingly dry and the ending is a repetition of Baneblade in which (SPOILER ALERT!) the Space Marines come to save the poor little defenseless Imperial Guards. Very disappointed with Shadowsword. Could not even finish after looking at the ending.

I find in general for writing for a shared universe, I find I respect those writers that can "color within the lines" so to speak, by not outright conflicting with or overwriting existing background, rather than those writers that run roughshod over existing background either because they didn't know the background (and didn't care to learn) and/or because they are trying to make their personal mark on the background. I think there is enough wiggle room, loose ends, and mysteries that a writer can still have room to do something creative without necessarily having to trample over existing stuff or introduce something that has setting breaking implications.

Iracundus wrote:
I find in general for writing for a shared universe, I find I respect those writers that can "color within the lines" so to speak, by not outright conflicting with or overwriting existing background, rather than those writers that run roughshod over existing background either because they didn't know the background (and didn't care to learn) and/or because they are trying to make their personal mark on the background. I think there is enough wiggle room, loose ends, and mysteries that a writer can still have room to do something creative without necessarily having to trample over existing stuff or introduce something that has setting breaking implications.

ADB is good for that, his novels have occasionally included referances to other 40k novels.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Literally anything by C.S. Goto.

Fat Eldar, SMs with Multilasers, Backflipping Terminators and children taking out Falcon Grav Tanks with sticks and stones to name but a few.

I second this.

Don't forget the Eldar preferring the Leman Russ over their grav tanks, Space Marine jump packs as anti-tank missiles, and Eldar snuff pr0n.

Why on earth would you prefer a leman russ...

I enjoyed the Path of the Eldar books myself.

BrianDavion wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:


Any book made to sell an upcoming video game (Fire Warrior) or new model (Shadowsword, Skitarii) is probably going to be a quickie and poorly done.

.

not gonna lie, Dark Imperium was a pleasent suprise to read because it's quality greatly exceeded my (admittingly low) expectations. perhaps Guy Haley is just better at writing Marines given his weakest books are all about the Guard?

Why did you spell "Night Lords" as "guard"?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BrianDavion wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
I find in general for writing for a shared universe, I find I respect those writers that can "color within the lines" so to speak, by not outright conflicting with or overwriting existing background, rather than those writers that run roughshod over existing background either because they didn't know the background (and didn't care to learn) and/or because they are trying to make their personal mark on the background. I think there is enough wiggle room, loose ends, and mysteries that a writer can still have room to do something creative without necessarily having to trample over existing stuff or introduce something that has setting breaking implications.

ADB is good for that, his novels have occasionally included referances to other 40k novels.

If only we could get Guy Haley to read ADB's books....

pm713 wrote:
I enjoyed the Path of the Eldar books myself.

Though I found the last one to be a little weak, I do think they were amongst the better book of BL. The Dark Eldar version is more disappointing despite a stronger first act.

epronovost wrote:

pm713 wrote:
I enjoyed the Path of the Eldar books myself.

Though I found the last one to be a little weak, I do think they were amongst the better book of BL. The Dark Eldar version is more disappointing despite a stronger first act.

The conclusion of Path of the Eldar is....strange. I think they got caught up in the idea of Eldar having strange methods to win and forgot to check for sense.

Path of the Dark Eldar is odd. I loved Path of the Incubus and parts of Path of the Archon with Motley but the overall story is...not as good. I wouldn't say bad though.

pm713 wrote:

epronovost wrote:

pm713 wrote:
I enjoyed the Path of the Eldar books myself.

Though I found the last one to be a little weak, I do think they were amongst the better book of BL. The Dark Eldar version is more disappointing despite a stronger first act.

The conclusion of Path of the Eldar is....strange. I think they got caught up in the idea of Eldar having strange methods to win and forgot to check for sense.

Path of the Dark Eldar is odd. I loved Path of the Incubus and parts of Path of the Archon with Motley but the overall story is...not as good. I wouldn't say bad though.

What I liked about Path of the Eldar was that it was a nice little incursion into Craftworld culture and the Path of the Eldar; how it mold their lives and change them; how it plays on their inner nature. I wanted something similar for Path the Dard Eldar and the similar titles made me believe it would be the case, but it turned out mostly into your fairly standard "battle novels".

Shadowsun: Last os Kirus Line
A story that ignores all established tau lore and is about if Shadowsun should have a baby.
IF SHADOWSUN SHOULD HAVE A BABY
and throughout all of it she is haunted by the ghost of her unborn son she might have.
Anyone else here is wrong.

For the first time in my black library history I’ve stopped a book partway through. That honour goes to Descent of Angels. After 6 of the most boring chapters I’ve ever been through I couldn’t take anymore, and I’ve been through some gak books in my time.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I liked Firewarrior. You get to spend so much time meeting interesting, three-dimensional characters. And then Kais shoots their heads off.

The funniest one was the Chaos Dreadnought, where we get to read a pages-long recount about his millenia-long life, starting with serving the Emperor in the Great Crusade, fighting in the Horus Heresy, participating in the Siege of Terra, descending further and further into Chaos damnation, getting entombed into a Cybot sargophagus, raging for eternal slaughter...

and then he accidently falls into a hole and dies.

At least, that's how I remember it.