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warning: spoilers ahead !

Ok so I just finished the big Eisenhorn book, and
I didn't enjoy this read, overall.
There is some good, but so much bad, I don't get it why people think it is such a great story.
All I found was unbelievable circumstances , easy deus ex machina, unskilled enemies, etc... even the others inquisitors don't have half the means/ressources/cunning of Einsenhorn AT THE BEGGINING of the story. It beggins with him owning a fighter plane, almost immediately a blank (then more than 40 blanks...), he is a wonderful psyker, has incredible weapons...
and even when his opponents are aware of this, later when he is famous and fight others inquisitors, they just have slow land speeders, lasgun, no blank, no psy...
and it is like that for 900 pages...
and when there is an impossible situation, just ask Cherubael !
Cherubael, the incredible indestructible deamon able to destroy a warlord titan.
He even said about himself he is not a good pilot, and this is why he hired Betancore in the first place. Then, later, he successfuly destroys 4 or 5 speeders with autocannons, while acknowledging one of his opponent pilot is one of the best he ever met.
and he did that with a civilian speeder.
what I am saying is just that ok he is good, and that's pretty cool, but why is he soooo good that half the books are himself describing how much his opponents are powerful for the rest of the book being him slaughtering them without any effort ?
For example, I quite liked when he fought on the freezed train, loosing his sword and shooting the mercenary: he won, but it feeled credible.

He even get a blood transfusion by a blank in Malleus...

But I pretty much liked how we see him deepen, little by little, into heresy, and the growth of his organisation, I liked most of the characters. It could be a good book if not everything was so easy and if there wasn't the «blank issue» ! :p

To long, did not read. Not all the wall of text anyway.

I liked them, and the Ravenor novels. Both series are quite pulpy books, we are in power fantasy 40k teretory here. But enjoyable pulp. On a general note Abnet makes me care about the main character. Often enough a problem in some of the horus heresey books I have read.

To bad you did not like them. If you want power fantasies might I sugest Name of the Wind by Patrick Rotfuss? Quite good, even if the main character manages everything and the books never gets finished.

 godardc wrote:
warning: spoilers ahead !

Ok so I just finished the big Eisenhorn book, and
I didn't enjoy this read, overall.
There is some good, but so much bad, I don't get it why people think it is such a great story.
All I found was unbelievable circumstances , easy deus ex machina, unskilled enemies, etc... even the others inquisitors don't have half the means/ressources/cunning of Einsenhorn AT THE BEGGINING of the story. It beggins with him owning a fighter plane, almost immediately a blank (then more than 40 blanks...), he is a wonderful psyker, has incredible weapons...
and even when his opponents are aware of this, later when he is famous and fight others inquisitors, they just have slow land speeders, lasgun, no blank, no psy...
and it is like that for 900 pages...
and when there is an impossible situation, just ask Cherubael !
Cherubael, the incredible indestructible deamon able to destroy a warlord titan.
He even said about himself he is not a good pilot, and this is why he hired Betancore in the first place. Then, later, he successfuly destroys 4 or 5 speeders with autocannons, while acknowledging one of his opponent pilot is one of the best he ever met.
and he did that with a civilian speeder.
what I am saying is just that ok he is good, and that's pretty cool, but why is he soooo good that half the books are himself describing how much his opponents are powerful for the rest of the book being him slaughtering them without any effort ?
For example, I quite liked when he fought on the freezed train, loosing his sword and shooting the mercenary: he won, but it feeled credible.

He even get a blood transfusion by a blank in Malleus...

But I pretty much liked how we see him deepen, little by little, into heresy, and the growth of his organisation, I liked most of the characters. It could be a good book if not everything was so easy and if there wasn't the «blank issue» ! :p

Ok first of all he does not own a "fighter plane" he owns a Gun Cutter.
More a Spectre Gunship then a F-15. but having a ship like that just makes sense, Inqusitors travel, lots it stands to reason they'd own a ship, and it stands to reason it'd be capable of getting out of a jam. Having a Blank in his Employ (I think Bequin would argue against him OWNING her ) isn't that odd, he's far from the only Inqusitor whose stumbled on a blank and brought them into his/her employ. andafter seeing their use going out of his way to build a cadre of them isn't that odd, being a powerful psyker? pretty normal for a Inqusitor (in fact several other inqusitors where noted as being more powerful then he). as is having decent weapons, Power weapons, force weapons and bolt guns, pretty normal for someone in Eisenhorn's position.

As for the equipment other Inqusitors have remember they use what they have when it's avaliable, you don't have access to an emepror class battleship on a covert mission. As for fights, fights tend to be over fast in real life, and the person who wins them is sometimes just the luckiest person not the best. It happens

no offense is meant here man but if you dislike the eisenhorn books give up on 40k fiction. it doesn't get better

Eisenhorn may use his psychic powers to augment his combat ability, be it shooting or in melee... It's something he is capable of as a powerful psyker.

He forged some of his own weapons, namely the force staff.

He wouldn't be the only inquisitor to have a daemon host. He also wouldn't be the only inquisitor to have an alpha level psyker in their host, it just so happens his daemonhost is also his alpha level.

If I'm not mistaken he also has the absolute pulp beaten out of him on multiple occasions, resulting in him having some pretty nasty permanent injuries/disabilities.

Yeah some of it is out there, the one I didn't like was the warlord titan standing up from a lying position if I remember correctly, otherwise I'm really not that fussed about how hyperbole some of it is. It's a fantasy sci fi novel with a hero, it's going to be a bit out there.

Keep in mind that the tension of the Eisenhorn trilogy isn't if he'll survive or not, (it's a first person narrative we KNOW the answer) but what he loses and surrenders of himself during the course of doing what he feels he has to, and the answer to that is EVERYTHING, by the end of the trilogy the guy's basicly lost everyone and everything he cared about.

Thing about Cherubael is that his power is intentional because he's the ultimate temptation. "Gee things are tough, ya know you could get out of here if you called on the deamon host, sure it would lose you a piece of your soul, but wouldn't that be worth it?" It's a common literary trope. NORMALLY in these things the brave hero resists the temptation and wins anyway...

Not so in Eisenhorn.

The complaint that the good guy wins all the time in unbelievable circumstances means that you would hate Indiana Jones...or Batman...or James Bond even. All of these guys go up against crazy huge forces and unwinnable odds and somehow come out on top through luck, being stronger, being smarter, having better gadgets, or even better friends.

Except in Eisenhorn he gets is butt kicked repeatedly. He gets his hand blown off, he gets tortured, he gets his mind melted, his friends die or get maimed all the time. He fails to save innocent lives and tries to keep his head above water repeatedly.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the books

 Icculus wrote:
The complaint that the good guy wins all the time in unbelievable circumstances means that you would hate Indiana Jones...or Batman...or James Bond even.

Or the bad Superman writing from the 80s, where the hero goes about the adventure looking totally oblivious until the end. Then he apprehends the bad guys and explains that he saw their plot coming miles away but played along so he could catch them.

Eisenhorn is powerful but he suffers losses along the way, and one strong theme I think the OP missed is that his greatest enemy often is the Imperial bureaucracy and other Imperial institutions, not the heretics/aliens/daemons themself. He's constantly hounded by a priest accusing him of heresy, and fellow inquisitors would like to investigate him at times. If everything was "too easy" for Eisenhorn everyone would fall into lockstep on his mere word, never questioning his motives or methods.

Spetulhu wrote:

 Icculus wrote:
The complaint that the good guy wins all the time in unbelievable circumstances means that you would hate Indiana Jones...or Batman...or James Bond even.

Or the bad Superman writing from the 80s, where the hero goes about the adventure looking totally oblivious until the end. Then he apprehends the bad guys and explains that he saw their plot coming miles away but played along so he could catch them.

Eisenhorn is powerful but he suffers losses along the way, and one strong theme I think the OP missed is that his greatest enemy often is the Imperial bureaucracy and other Imperial institutions, not the heretics/aliens/daemons themself. He's constantly hounded by a priest accusing him of heresy, and fellow inquisitors would like to investigate him at times. If everything was "too easy" for Eisenhorn everyone would fall into lockstep on his mere word, never questioning his motives or methods.

You have to admit, he gets lucky with plot armor quite a bit. My favorite bolt pistol, a gift to me from a Deathwatch Librarion, which has never jammed or had any functionality issues, suddenly jams.

 Apple Peel wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:

 Icculus wrote:
The complaint that the good guy wins all the time in unbelievable circumstances means that you would hate Indiana Jones...or Batman...or James Bond even.

Or the bad Superman writing from the 80s, where the hero goes about the adventure looking totally oblivious until the end. Then he apprehends the bad guys and explains that he saw their plot coming miles away but played along so he could catch them.

Eisenhorn is powerful but he suffers losses along the way, and one strong theme I think the OP missed is that his greatest enemy often is the Imperial bureaucracy and other Imperial institutions, not the heretics/aliens/daemons themself. He's constantly hounded by a priest accusing him of heresy, and fellow inquisitors would like to investigate him at times. If everything was "too easy" for Eisenhorn everyone would fall into lockstep on his mere word, never questioning his motives or methods.

You have to admit, he gets lucky with plot armor quite a bit. My favorite bolt pistol, a gift to me from a Deathwatch Librarion, which has never jammed or had any functionality issues, suddenly jams.

gets lucky? or gets hit by, seems with Eisenhorn there's a bit of both

It's the old lore. You have to consider the fact it was written a long time ago where 40k was simpler.

bibotot wrote:
It's the old lore. You have to consider the fact it was written a long time ago where 40k was simpler.

in fairness none of the complaints listed relate to that, although thats certainly the case, there are some minor disprerencies with the new lore in this stuff for sure

 Apple Peel wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:

 Icculus wrote:
The complaint that the good guy wins all the time in unbelievable circumstances means that you would hate Indiana Jones...or Batman...or James Bond even.

Or the bad Superman writing from the 80s, where the hero goes about the adventure looking totally oblivious until the end. Then he apprehends the bad guys and explains that he saw their plot coming miles away but played along so he could catch them.

Eisenhorn is powerful but he suffers losses along the way, and one strong theme I think the OP missed is that his greatest enemy often is the Imperial bureaucracy and other Imperial institutions, not the heretics/aliens/daemons themself. He's constantly hounded by a priest accusing him of heresy, and fellow inquisitors would like to investigate him at times. If everything was "too easy" for Eisenhorn everyone would fall into lockstep on his mere word, never questioning his motives or methods.

You have to admit, he gets lucky with plot armor quite a bit. My favorite bolt pistol, a gift to me from a Deathwatch Librarion, which has never jammed or had any functionality issues, suddenly jams.

I believe you're talking about the unless I am thinking of a different part than you are.