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What are people's biggest gripes about 40k books? Personally mine is getting rid of interesting characters and storylines for the sake of warporn. I love action but sometimes 40k seems to use it to cover up all its other failings.

Looking back over them, I think they've been a little too familiar with the Primarchs. At this point, fans are wondering what makes the Primarchs awesome because they're coming off as so ... er, down to earth, I guess?

My number one complaint about the series, however, is that the most important moment -- the turning of Horus -- was told in such an unimaginative and unconvincing way. For every good thing I can think to say about Graham McNeill's writing, there will always be this to counter it.

Yeah, turning of Horus was terrible...It's like he is idolising Emperor, then *bang* ,chaos supreme...
I also was most disappointment with fight "Sang vs Ka'Bandha"; beacause I was expecting a little more from Khornes bloodiest bloodtirster,so that Sangs victory on Terra would be sweeter...

P.S. war-porn is perfect term for majority of the books....cheers

Bolterporn and uninteresting Space Marine characters are rife in the Black Library. Also, not enough books from a non-Imperial perspective.

Too many Space Marines. There's only so much you can do with "superpowered warrior monk people", time to move on.

I also don't like Gav Thorpe's interpretation of the Eldar; it's fine if he wants his version of Alaitoc to be a hippie Communist utopia, but I'm tired of people deciding that represents all Eldar. If I say that my Craftworld runs a feudal organizational structure and uses currency, Gav Thorpe doesn't get to tell me otherwise.

Oh where to start.

There's the incredible inconsistencies, with Space Marines portrayed as everything from big guarsdmen to demigods.

Then there's the utter lack of understanding of scale by most authors, treating galactic warfare like medieval battles or portraying war fronts of thousands of light years and invasions that threaten the most vital galactic positions with troops numbers smaller than those of the Eastern Front in WW2, etc. Or on the opposite end (going with the above) having ridiculous situations where a few thousand marines land on prepared and fortified worlds entrenched with tens of billions of guardsmen and it's of course seen as a foregone conclusion that the marines being outnumbered tens of millions to one will win handily...

Of course, we also have the tendency to bolterporn over story (getting better at this in some ways). Most Marine characters are completely uninteresting.

And I'm definitely not saying that there are no good moments or characters. I actually liked Horus and his refusal to just exterminate the advanced human-alien union he encountered and preference for negotiations did a lot for me personally. But his fall from grace had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the face. Though that certainly isn't inherent to the 40k. For example in SW I could stomach Anakin's betrayal of Mace Windu. He had seen dreams of his mom dying and she did. The huge emotional pressure to not have it happen again could easily erupt in a split second, in the do or die moment of Mace swinging in to kill Palpatine. And he didn't even kill Mace himself, Palpatine did that within seconds of Anakin's intervention. But then they completely ruin the moment by having Anakin stab baby eyes out and bitchchoke Padme. I remember sitting there even back then going "this is bs!". But the truth is it can be dealt with well. Breaking Bad is a great example of a fall from grace done right. 40k writers just need to not be afraid to show a little humanity (whether it's good or bad) in the story.

Poor characters (half of the space marine and primarch characters have the maturity of kindergarden children ), idiotic villains ( to allow the equaly "challenged" protagonists to win ), bolterporn ( and then protagonist-brother xy gunned down dozens of vile traitor mehreens ), no sense of scale ( single companies fighting wars almost entirely by themselfs ), poor plots.
I accept that almost everything ( there are notable exceptions, the Eiseonhorn trilogy, the Nightlords books and some others ) BL publishes is pulp, nothing wrong with that. The problem is that far too much of that pulp is simply boring.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I also don't like Gav Thorpe's interpretation of the Eldar; it's fine if he wants his version of Alaitoc to be a hippie Communist utopia, but I'm tired of people deciding that represents all Eldar. If I say that my Craftworld runs a feudal organizational structure and uses currency, Gav Thorpe doesn't get to tell me otherwise.

That doesn't really strike me as a "literary" problem so much as it strikes me as a problem with fans.

Though, objectively, a Craftworld that runs on a feudal and oppressive currency system makes absolutely no sense. A craftworld wouldn't be able to thrive in that manner. You're fluff is you're fluff, though.

- - - -

Anyway, my biggest issue with WH40K is mostly just the plot-armor. From Guilliman shrugging off getting a his throat slit by Kor Pharon, to the twenty different occasions of "just as the heretic raised his knife to finish me, an explosion/my ally/the reinforcements knocked him off balace/killed him", I'm just so, so tired of seeing the good guy survive due to some BS.

Thinking about it more critically, not all the authors actually do it. It's just fething Dan Abnett. That man loves his action cliches. All the BL books have their share of them due to it being warporn, but no BL author so blatently uses action movie cliches like Dan Abnett. The Gaunt's Ghosts series was my first foray into the Black Library, and I cherished the book. But at this point, I'm tired of Abnett's writing.

At this point, after having read my 20th Space Marine-centric novel, Im really wishing that BL would write something from a more xeno perspective. I tried Gav Thorpe's "Path of X" but Im really not a fan of Gav Thorpe's writing at all and the Eldar just come off largely as I expected them to. I want my 40k Ork novels!

Ronin wrote:At this point, after having read my 20th Space Marine-centric novel, Im really wishing that BL would write something from a more xeno perspective. I tried Gav Thorpe's "Path of X" but Im really not a fan of Gav Thorpe's writing at all and the Eldar just come off largely as I expected them to. I want my 40k Ork novels!

I agree, fortunately they're coming out with a book "Fire Caste" that will be from both the Tau perspective pretty soon at least. Will be about remaining Imperial forces waging a guerrilla war against occupying Tau forces and Gue'vesa collaborators on some Jungle World.

Of course at the end they'll both unite to fight Chaos, as any human-Tau story must go....

As for Ork stories, they're very hard to do in an entertaining fashion. I recommend the comic "Blood and Thunder" which manages to pull off the story of an Orks rise from lowly boy to Warboss of a Waaagh!, occasionally narrated from a human captive.

I thought Blood and Thunder sucked ass, lol.

Deff Skwadron (sp?) was great though.

 Harriticus wrote:
As for Ork stories, they're very hard to do in an entertaining fashion. I recommend the comic "Blood and Thunder" which manages to pull off the story of an Orks rise from lowly boy to Warboss of a Waaagh!, occasionally narrated from a human captive.

Sounds perfect, I'll look it up. Read Deff Skawdron once though, AWESOME read that 'wun was.

Brothers of the Snake.

Seriously, I understand that the author wanted ''300 in SPAAAAACE'', but there's some fething limits. I'm apparently one of the few on these forums who seem to think that Astartes are actually what the BL authors want them to be, i.e. war gods, but that only works if you make them great warriors, not dumb brutes who actually win whatever stupid plan they devise.

At one point, 50 Marines form a line against an incoming horde of thousands of orks. Most of them are fresh recruits right out of the scout company. They then proceed to wait until the orks are 5 meters away to start shooting at them. 5 meters, on a gun that probably has an effective range of, what, 400-500 meters? Assuming they want to be precise with their shots. What's the point of upgrading your warriors to Ubermensch level of awesomness if they are going to throw away all the advantages brought by technology anyway? Oh and of course, they go through these orks like a power sword through butter, not a single casualty taken.

That and the plot line is absolutely ridiculous.

 Manchu wrote:
Looking back over them, I think they've been a little too familiar with the Primarchs. At this point, fans are wondering what makes the Primarchs awesome because they're coming off as so ... er, down to earth, I guess?

My number one complaint about the series, however, is that the most important moment -- the turning of Horus -- was told in such an unimaginative and unconvincing way. For every good thing I can think to say about Graham McNeill's writing, there will always be this to counter it.

Like, Star Wars Episode III and Anikan's fall unconvincing?

Yeah, but worse.

At least with Anakin, Lucas threw in multiple hints and foreshadowings of Anakin's issues and eventual fall. With Horus, he was literally like "Me and the Emperor are bros" RIGHT up to the very second when he decided to rebel. He had, literally, zero reason or foreshadowing to decide to turn traitor.

I only have a few issues.

I don't like that the first chaper of Soul Hunter says "RARE smile" only to have the word "smile" on every other page.

The Souldrinkers series is just terrible.

As for the HH books... I think they've watered down the Primarchs too much and they have too many stories that are too far removed from the subject matter that I want to read about.

Some of the other books are just annoying only because they create problems for the fans. Xenology being a key point.

I also don't like the limited run of certain books like the Imperial Guardsmens Uplifting Primer.

My main gripe with Black Library is flat, boring characters. I don't care what happens to them, they don't act in ways that I can empathize with, and they don't act realistically.

Like Grey Knights, yeah I have to agree with you there.

I don't care for their handling of the Primarchs personally. Like how some are clearly better at some things then others but they are all equal. Unless the story at hand need them to be better. But after that situation is done they are back to being equally good as the next.

For example Corax looks at Angron in Raven's Flight and says that only Sanguinius and Horus could defeat him. Then in Deliverance Lost Corax muses on how he and Horus are equals in sparing matches.

Or how Russ is called a "Brawler" often. 2nd ed SW codex, Aurelian, A Thousand Sons ect. He fights the Lion to a standstill (Fist fighting/ wrestling because we only hear about punches and the like). Which should show the Lion as being equal or near equal to the Primarch that's so often identified as being the "Brawler". But then when fighting Curze. All Curze had to do to get an advantage was start brawling. And the Lion folds.

Its just bad form to have perhaps the 20 (18 Primarchs+Empy+Sigilite) most important personalities not fleshed out to the point were they have a consistant showing in every book.

 Ronin wrote:
Sounds perfect, I'll look it up. Read Deff Skawdron once though, AWESOME read that 'wun was.

You may be disappointed.

The story was dull and uninteresting, the action was boring, the characters were nondescript, there was virtually no Orky humor or humor at all to be found, really, it was just pretty boring IMO.

The art was pretty good though.

Just how poorly the Space Marines are conceptualized. It's really the same reason most fantasy writers fail at writing elves, and other types of characters whose lifespans and lifestyles are so incredibly different from a normal human.

Heck, if a western author were to try and write a convincing Japanese samurai, it would be extremely difficult, just because they don't inherently understand the values that shape that kind of person. By that same token, the Space Marines in most novels are either too human, or they're just kinda two dimensional and cardstock.

In fairness, trying to write Space Marines that are convincing if going to be incredibly difficult, and then they aren't going to be likable or interesting. So it's something of a problem. They write books to be profitable about characters that aren't meant to be protagonists of novels, lol.

ADB abuses those "smiles".

Probably my least favorite is the HUR DUR COURAGE AND HONOR and GARBLE GARBLE CHAOS GARBLE GARBLE marine characters who have deep inner conflicts like "Should I do what the codex says or what is both right and practical?"

My second least favorite is how there is rarely moral ambiguity with protagonists. Sure, other characters can be jerks, but the main characters must be idealistic and pure, because heaven forbid that things get grimdark in 40k. Don't get me wrong, I like Gaunt's Ghosts and Ciaphas Cain, but it's a bit ridiculous when the most famous commissars in the Black Library are the ones who don't act like commissars.

I am personally tired of all the Space Marine and Primarch works, because often Space Marines just act as author or reader wish fulfillment stand-ins. They end up being the classic square jawed action hero that never really faces moments of doubt or inner conflict, and who can single-handedly defeat improbable numbers of mooks through manly macho feats and bravado. When the Space Marines are shown being so disproportionately capable in raw force, then it becomes all too easy and forgiving for them to bash their way out of problems instead of using skill and tactics, which they are supposedly good at.

Space Marines shouldn't be viewed by readers like Superman. They are characters so far removed from the normal human's experience that they shouldn't really be protagonists, save in those cases where this difference is brought out. One example of this would be the old Ian Watson novel Space Marine, where the characters have been in the all-male environment of the Chapter for so many years that the idea of women (not in the sexual sense but of simply existing differently compared to men) becomes alien and abstract, and the things that people deal with become either alien or viewed as petty and irrelevant. They lived in an endless cycle of fighting, training, praying.

1068SCP wrote:
ADB abuses those "smiles".

Probably my least favorite is the HUR DUR COURAGE AND HONOR and GARBLE GARBLE CHAOS GARBLE GARBLE marine characters who have deep inner conflicts like "Should I do what the codex says or what is both right and practical?"

My second least favorite is how there is rarely moral ambiguity with protagonists. Sure, other characters can be jerks, but the main characters must be idealistic and pure, because heaven forbid that things get grimdark in 40k. Don't get me wrong, I like Gaunt's Ghosts and Ciaphas Cain, but it's a bit ridiculous when the most famous commissars in the Black Library are the ones who don't act like commissars.

A commissars job is to inspire the troopers they are attached to and keep discipline, by any means necessary. Which means that they don't have to BLAM every guardsmen that does something wrong but they do have the authority to if they feel the need to (to lead by either fear or being loved)

Some warporn is good. I enjoyed both the Space Wolf and Blood Angel Omnibus's despite their massive flaws.

My main literary gripe is that the spell checkers are too busy trying to re-enact the warporn that they don't actually read the damn book. There are so many spelling errors and insensible paragraphs it's just become silly.

Finally (and off-topic), I love the White Scars and was looking forward to Khan and his Heresy book. My £30 Limited Ed, Brotherhood of the Storm came the other day, all 100 pages of extra large and crappy cover of it. It took me an hour and half to read, some was good, but 1st person doesn't really work for 40K. Khan was pretty cool and it introduced some new White Scars fluff but besides that it was very underwhelming.

 phantommaster wrote:
Finally (and off-topic), I love the White Scars and was looking forward to Khan and his Heresy book. My £30 Limited Ed, Brotherhood of the Storm came the other day, all 100 pages of extra large and crappy cover of it. It took me an hour and half to read, some was good, but 1st person doesn't really work for 40K. Khan was pretty cool and it introduced some new White Scars fluff but besides that it was very underwhelming.

That's a shame. Woulda thought the White Scars first HH debut would be better than that...

 Ronin wrote:

 phantommaster wrote:
Finally (and off-topic), I love the White Scars and was looking forward to Khan and his Heresy book. My £30 Limited Ed, Brotherhood of the Storm came the other day, all 100 pages of extra large and crappy cover of it. It took me an hour and half to read, some was good, but 1st person doesn't really work for 40K. Khan was pretty cool and it introduced some new White Scars fluff but besides that it was very underwhelming.

That's a shame. Woulda thought the White Scars first HH debut would be better than that...

Not many of the others have been that great, lol. Why would you have such high hopes for the Space Mongols book?

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Ronin wrote:

 phantommaster wrote:
Finally (and off-topic), I love the White Scars and was looking forward to Khan and his Heresy book. My £30 Limited Ed, Brotherhood of the Storm came the other day, all 100 pages of extra large and crappy cover of it. It took me an hour and half to read, some was good, but 1st person doesn't really work for 40K. Khan was pretty cool and it introduced some new White Scars fluff but besides that it was very underwhelming.

That's a shame. Woulda thought the White Scars first HH debut would be better than that...

Not many of the others have been that great, lol. Why would you have such high hopes for the Space Mongols book?

Because they're (Space) Mongols. And Mongols are always the exception.

i wish there where more tau and or xenos oriented books.