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I've got a bit of a problem with Graham McNeill. Occasionally he'll produce something utterly fantastic like Dead Sky, Black Sun and Fulgrim.

Then he'll churn out utter drivel like Angel Exterminatus, which contains page after page of irrelevant characters, boring exposition and clumsy battle sequences; the last third of the book, set on the Eldar crone world, was just shash, it was like he'd given up. The entire Iron Hands plotline could have been cut out which would save about fifty pages. Nobody cares about some legendary captain who spends the entire story in a stasis pod. His characters speak some dodgy dialogue and they often seem a bit pathetic.

But then, for no reason at all, he writes really good characters with genuinely amusing dialogue. Certain paragraphs in even his worst novels come alive: some of the action sequences are fantastic and his imagination is unrivalled. He writes the books that actually get into a primarch's head (although the best example of this is still Deliverance Lost by Gav Thorpe, imo.)

I believe some of his books are being edited by another author due to the erratic difference in quality. Either that, or he is rushing some of his work and simply not bothering to edit it (this seems to be the case with Angel Exterminatus).

What do other people think? Does anyone else groan when they see the next Heresy novel was written by McNeill?

Not read that much of him as I avoid the HH series like a plague (they are a series that should have never been written IMO. Too much of the curtain has been pulled back and mythology surrounding it has been diluted).

But I digress. If you liked DSBS, then, why, oh why, have you not read novels that lead up to this crossover piece? The Uriel Ventris Ultramarines novels and more importantly (as it is a fantastic novel) Storm of Iron?

My main problem is that he can't keep a timeline straight.

That and two of his Ultramarine novels are a bit too mired in drawing paralels with recent events, where one could've been called "IRAQ WAR IN SPAAAAAACE" and the other "ABU GHRAIB IN SPAAAAAACE (with blue men instead of human prisoners being humiliated)"

i'm a fan of his novels, and of him as a person, and was happy to wake up to a friend request from him yesterday, funny enough...
he doesn't, however, reach the same level of enjoyment that an Abnett or ADB novel gives me...
he ranks third on my BL author favorite list, with Chris Wraight catching up fast, and William King in the mix there...
mostly because some of the things Graham chooses to write about, such as Ultramarines and Elves, are not as interesting to me as some of his other subjects...
i like his Ad-Mech and Iron Warriors, a lot...

i enjoyed Angel Exterminatus, actually, though i would say Fulgrim and Mechanicum were HH novels i enjoyed more...
the inclusion of Forrix, 10,000 years before Storm of Iron, was a fun touch...
Fulgrim is one of my favorites, with Storm of Iron being right up there, and A Thousand Sons was just awesome...
False Gods was good, and the Priests of Mars trilogy is interesting...
the Legend of Sigmar novels were great...
i enjoyed The Outcast Dead, even with the "timeline flub", as seeing a real Thunder Warrior in action was priceless...

funny you should use Gav Thorpe in your comparison, because i find his books to be more of a slog to get through than Graham's...
i still like Gav's books, but he definitely doesn't make my top 5, and may not even be in my top 10 BL authors...
he has written quite a few books, though, and contributed a great deal to the lore, so i give him props for that...

i know a lot of people REALLY hated Graham's take on the Ultras...
i enjoyed the books, but would rather read about the Wolves...
ironically, Abnett has made the Ultras much more interesting with Know No Fear, for me...

i think that writing so many books, it is hard for an author to be "on" 100% of the time...
i'm sure there are a few Abnett novels that fall flat for some people, too....
ADB seemed to be batting a 1000 right up until his Abaddon novel, which got very mixed reviews...
when these guys are on, it is inspiring genre fiction...
when they are off, at least it is interesting world building to me, if nothing else...

cheers
jah

The problem with McNeill's take on the Ultramarines is the way he spends an entire codex telling us how straight-laced they are, no deviations whatsoever, everyone looks up to them and wants to be them (even Imperial Fists and Flesh Tearers, apparently).

He then presents rules for Tyrannic War veterans who use non-standard equipment, tactics and formations.

He then writes a series of novels about an unconventional Ultramarine captain.

Guess he doesn't think Ultramarines are as awesome to write about as his Codex implies... :/

Yeah I read Storm of Iron and wasn't blown away to be honest, I'll give it another try.

I loved Deliverance Lost, to me it had absolutely everything that makes a Heresy novel special, I loved Corax and I certainly don't find the Raven Guard boring. Unfortunately I *do* find all the other loyal Legions and Primarchs boring. The evil ones have all the fun!

EDIT: Thorpe's Dark Angels novel was crap but I thought his Last Chancers books are probably the best non-Ian Watson 40k material. I don't buy 40K novels any more, they pale next to some of the Warhammer and Heresy offerings. 40K looks cartoony and inconsistent next to them.

Russ is my favorite primarch, by far...

i did actually enjoy Deliverance Lost the most out of Gav's novels...
that one was great...
i liked the Last Chancers novels quite a bit, too...

the Dark Angels ones were ok, but very slow going...
his Paths of the Eldar trilogy were the worst slog for me...

i like Gav's work, just not as much as Graham's...

cheers
jah

He is/was one of the two BL authors I kinda trust to deliver a decent read. But I went through the 'Mars' trilogy as it appeared and each book was harder to get through than the last. I still have to finish Gods of Mars - I set it aside, halfway through, and can't summon the energy or excitement to pick it up again. There's an honest-to-goodness Mary Sue in there (or so I see it) and an inability or unwillingness to explore an AdMech worldview, that borders on polemic in places. The noosphere was an interesting concept as an Iron-Man-style internal holographic imaging system, whoever came up with it first for AdMech stories; but by book three of this lot, it's all but degenerated into techmages throwing nigh-physical noughts and ones (or algorithms, or whatever) at eachother, as if they were fireballs or purple suns. And...



He's slipping, IMO. Getting a bit too high on New York Times acclaim?

that first time reading about the noosphere in Mechanicum was a magic moment, for me...
what a cool image it produced in my head, and made the Ad-Mech even more awesome than before...

thanks for that little reminder, Vermis...

cheers
jah

Rule 1 is important to this forum. Stay polite, motyak

Also, why must... every... sentence... end... like... that...?

Didn't the noosphere come from the Cain novels?

First time I saw it pop up was in Mechanicum, where it was invented by that one super-priest who ran Magma City.

Death or Glory: 2006, Mechanicum: 2008. Huh, Sandy Mitchell got there first I guess. Not that its an original concept of course.

Not my favorite.

Fulrim is my least favorite HH book.

The only book I ever read from black library and did not enjoy to any degree was 'Daemonworld' by Ben Counter, but then I never did pick up a CS Goto novel.

I've read a fair few of McNeill's books and enjoyed them all, but then I'm not looking for Le Carre or Kafka, just a good spacey medieval battleromp adventure.

A lot of Counter's stuff is either boring or a mess and Daemonworld, while an interesting premises, had a shoddy execution.

 Vermis wrote:
Did you have anything relevant to add or did you just want to indulge your usual hobby of passive-aggressive tit-for-tat point scoring over meaningless details?

Seriously Jah, if you had just said something like 'hmm, I still quite like the noosphere myself, for reasons', I could accept and respect that. But this is like 90% of your posts - always ready to to shove some thinly-veiled childish barb into the debate. And even that might be more palatable if you could put a bit of wit into it.
We get it, Graham MacNeill is your homeboy and GW can do no wrong. Might be nice if you could reason out why, to people who've been burned, without the usual bizarre display of lashing out with pulled punches.

what???
i was thanking you for reminding me what a great moment it was when the image of the noosphere was presented in all it's glory in Mechanicum...
it wasn't meant to be "passive-aggressive tit-for-tat point scoring"...
thanking you was not some "thinly-veiled childish barb", but a genuine thank you...
there was no "lashing out with pulled punches"...
i am honestly confused by how many people think i am being passive-aggressive, when i am simply expressing my love for this hobby...
i don't judge other's views, but i will share mine...

you pretty much hit the nail on the head, with the Iron Man reference, as to why the image of the nooshpere in action made me so happy in Mechanicum...
i was so stoked when i saw the HUD in his helmet in Iron Man...
it is an awesome thing to see visualized in the movies...

why i still like the idea of the noosphere is thanks to the very cool scrapcode attack in the opening of Abnett's Know No Fear...
reading along, as the Tech-Priest tried to fight off the code, and eventually became overwhelmed by it, was a cool scene...

if you think i feel that GW can do no wrong, you have missed where i have been very critical of Finecast,
(so disappointed in the quality from the first blister release, that i won't buy anything Finecast for my collection), and how i moved over to P3 paints as soon as they were introduced...
i also don't support BL's move to limited edition hardback novellas...

what is wrong with being excited about being a part of this industry, and getting to know some of the guys who have given me so much joy in the world of minis???
i wouldn't have mentioned it if it was not germane to the topic, and something cool that just happened on Thursday...
i am not trying to impress anyone, just sharing my joy...
i happen to not be a cynic, but still have a childlike wonder of the fantastical worlds created by GW, and their rivals, with the fiction, art, and minis...
if i say anything about how i feel very lucky to have been able to become friends with, and a colleague of, so many people in the industry, it is not about scoring points, but simply being stoked that my childhood dream came true...
i am just as happy to big up the competition who create settings that fire my imagination, and bring me joy...

as i have said before, i am not critical of fiction, art, or movies...
i either like it, or don't, but at the end of the day, i am totally stoked that people take the time to create something that wasn't there before...
if it strikes a cord with me, like a lot of Graham's fiction does, then so much the better...

i always thought forums where a place for people to get together and talk about the common ground that they enjoy...
yet, people try and disabuse me of that notion every day...
i still soldier on in my merry manner...

cheers
jah

Don't worry Jah, your post certainly did not come across badly. You actually made me feel what you felt and made me wish I wanted to deliberately read a non-HH McNeill book, but he is too hit and miss for me.

I still think someone was editing his work, particularly some of the battle scenes.

The less said about Ben Counter, the better. The first and third Grey Knights novels were pretty decent but his style is almost unbelievably amateurish and Galaxy in Flames was a disaster next to Horus Rising, False Gods and Flight of the Eisenstein.

Personally I find him overrated and a bit hit or miss. I think he does great character stuff for humans, but when applied to space marines it loses something for me. I guess me makes them seem much more, well, human. Dan Abnett makes them seem godly and very detached from humanity in general, and I very much prefer that.

I also have to comment about how much I was loving Angel Exterminatus with all the new, cool Iron Warrior characters and what I thought would be Lucious' first take-over-the-guy-who-kills-him. Then that didn't happen and instead the fight got broken up and I realized all the new characters I wanted to see developed were just going to die in his earlier Iron Warriors novel in the 41st millenium. That left a very bitter taste in my mouth.

I actually dislike the idea of the Noosphere for anything outside of the Horus Heresy.

The "current" mechanicum is made up primarily of unstable fanatics who fill the box of priest better than scientist. Only a small fraction of the Mechanicus priest hood actually knows how anything works and even they are pretty clueless.

The Noosphere frankly makes the Mechanicum TOO technologically advanced and I feel detracts from their great aura of mysticism and ritual.

 BrookM wrote:
Also, why must... every... sentence... end... like... that...?

To many times watching Captain Kirk?

Every novel should be a compelling masterwork where you just keep flipping one page after another until the wee hours of the morning... Yeah

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Every novel should be a compelling masterwork where you just keep flipping one page after another until the wee hours of the morning... Yeah

Ideally, yeah. I write as a hobby, and if I took it up as a profession, you're damned sure that would be the goal.

 Vermis wrote:
He is/was one of the two BL authors I kinda trust to deliver a decent read. But I went through the 'Mars' trilogy as it appeared and each book was harder to get through than the last. I still have to finish Gods of Mars - I set it aside, halfway through, and can't summon the energy or excitement to pick it up again. There's an honest-to-goodness Mary Sue in there (or so I see it) and an inability or unwillingness to explore an AdMech worldview, that borders on polemic in places. The noosphere was an interesting concept as an Iron-Man-style internal holographic imaging system, whoever came up with it first for AdMech stories; but by book three of this lot, it's all but degenerated into techmages throwing nigh-physical noughts and ones (or algorithms, or whatever) at eachother, as if they were fireballs or purple suns. And...

Spoiler:

... the magic, bloodthirsty, never-fail hounds set on our protagonists' heels in book three... I nearly fell into a coma.

He's slipping, IMO. Getting a bit too high on New York Times acclaim?

I was a bit disappointed with the tone the Techpriests often struck in the Mars trilogy as well, but that charge is somewhat mitigated by the story focusing on Explorators, who are generally considered radical weirdos by the priesthood at large, and I can't dislike the books purely because I think making a point about collective bargaining and labour relations via servitors was a stroke of genius

His books tend to follow that pattern a lot; I mostly like them, I enjoy reading them, but there's often one or two wee sticking points that annoy me each time(though usually not enough to dissuade me from rereading them every now and again). Things like the Dragon sub-plot in Mechanicum, or the fact a clan of fething Scottish Highlanders makes an appearance in the Sigmar trilogy for some reason(I get that the Old World's not actually Northern & Central mainland Europe, and the various tribes needed identites and archetypes, but that just felt out of place IMO).

Also, OP's point is somewhat undermined based on him liking Deliverance Lost, one of the most turgid, stultified, simultaneously overwrought and mind-bogglingly dull books I've ever had the displeasure to read. Not just from Black Library, but generally. Thorpe singlehandedly made me uninterested in the Raven Guard's part in the Heresy and soured the Alpha Legion's story, a feat that should have been impossible given the excellent Abnett novel about them. I've heard Thorpe is good at writing Eldar & Elves, he should probably stick with that since his other efforts have made him only the second BL author that makes me groan aloud when I see his name attached to a project(the other is obviously Multilaser McGee himself, C.S. Goto).

I keep confusing C S Goto, who is apparently dreadful, and C L Werner, who is a bit like Graham McNeill but whose Warhammer books are more exciting and compelling than McNeill's Heresy/40K stuff.

You know, with so many authors who are either unpopular or substandard, it's a smack in the face when GW rejected almost everyone on Dakkadakka as not meeting their expectations of quality. Maybe that's a compliment.

CL Werner wrote some of the best fantasy novels out there, including the Bounty Hunter trilogy, the Witch Hunter trilogy and the fething excellent Wulfrik novelization.

 Dozer Blades wrote:
Every novel should be a compelling masterwork where you just keep flipping one page after another until the wee hours of the morning... Yeah

No, books are like food. It's perfectly acceptable to consume one now and then that's essentially bubblegum for your brain, with no nutritional content whatsoever. (Otherwise Preacher wouldn't enjoy nearly the success it does. )

Graham McNeill isn't a bad author necessarily, but his books are pretty consistently like cotton candy for the mind. Candy floss is fine for a while, but you need some substance eventually.

I'll always like him for The Last Church, which is the best thing BL has ever put out

Such is the life of a corporate writer of pulp fiction. He is probably under contract for X amount of books, and the books are scripted already, with the plot already outlined and what characters he can write about dictated to him. He might get 1-2 books with free reign- and those are probably his best books- but for the rest, he just writes what he is told to write. A writer has to pay the bills, ya know?

R.A. Salvatore fell into this "trap" with TSR and later WoC with Drizz't Do'Urden. The couple Star Wars novels he wrote were heavily scripted and he was told what he could and couldn't write (it's why he doesn't do them anymore). Look him up, he has a lot of interesting thoughts about writing for IP's (Intellectual Properties).

Micheal Stackpole is another author that went through a lot of IP writing issues.

Another good example: Margerat Weis and Tracy Hickman and the Dragonlance series.

Writers who have contracts with big IP's do it for the steady money, instead of living book to book (when it can take a year or more to write a book... ). They don't get full control over their works (they sign all those rights away for the pay check), and they are handed scripts/plot outlines and basically told to "flesh them out".

It's no surprise to me that Graham McNeill has a lot of misses and a few hits.

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