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okay this is a slightly incendiary topic but why is the book Deliverence Lost one of the most hated 30k books? I rather like some parts and even though it made me chuckle at some points it was a fun read.

I enjoyed it personally, I liked the background to the RG and thought it was a solid read. There are worse books in the series by far (Dark Angles ones cough cough imho).

 Ratius wrote:
I enjoyed it personally, I liked the background to the RG and thought it was a solid read. There are worse books in the series by far (Dark Angles ones cough cough imho).

Agreed, I liked it. Would have enjoyed more prison riot action but still a reasonable read. The DA books have been awful beyond words.

Why I am not happy with it: Too much Alpha Legion and not enough Raven Guard inside.

Maybe some people hoped they get more about the less known Legions and then found out a lot of them aren't covered pre-Heresy.
The HH series had a nice run until too many novellas and such splintered it. So a title "Deliverance Lost" raised expectations it didn't meet maybe ?

I liked it.

I like the AL a lot, so yeah.

I liked alot of it and found the Alpha Legion character good - and then I thought the last bit threw all the plot and character development away - which was annoying............

the Only 30K books I have not enjoyed are:

The two Dark Angel ones and The Furious? Abyss about the giant spaceship going after the Ultras

Quick reads / ebooks, are ruining the series. I expect a few books that will be bad in a series this size and I expect a few that people will debate. I did not however expect releases on a cheap and nasty digital format. I do hope sometime they bind the ebooks and publish them in a format in line with the rest of the series.

I am not a great lover of the way in which Mr Thorpe has written the Ravens. The book itself is ok and I enjoyed it. I just found it hard to get on with the characters, which is odd because I like his Dark Angels. They seemed quite wooden to me. Also it felt a bit bland and in it's descriptive parts.

I have the same issue with Mr Kyme. I prefer his Iron Hands to his Salamanders, even though the Salamanders are his baby. My favourite so far has been Flight of the Eisenstein.

In the majority I have enjoyed James Swallows offerings, but then Fear to Tread was a bit of a let down, it felt like he went a bit into 40k Blood Angels mode.

 Pilau Rice wrote:


In the majority I have enjoyed James Swallows offerings, but then Fear to Tread was a bit of a let down, it felt like he went a bit into 40k Blood Angels mode.

Fear to Tread had 3 paragraphs on an unconscious Sanguinius lying on a bench. I'm aware sci-fi/fantasy writers are verbose to the extreme, but that was frankly beyond anything I've ever seen. The book is the most poorly written book I've ever read and an insult to literature world wide. To be honest, the whole thing could've been changed to a short story with regards to the plot.

It was a pretty bad book.

I read anything Alpha Legion related and found the book to be ok.

 ChazSexington wrote:
The book is the most poorly written book I've ever read and an insult to literature world wide. To be honest, the whole thing could've been changed to a short story with regards to the plot.

I'll see your Deliverance Lost and raise you anything by C.S. Goto.

 Hubris75 wrote:
I read anything Alpha Legion related and found the book to be ok.

 ChazSexington wrote:
The book is the most poorly written book I've ever read and an insult to literature world wide. To be honest, the whole thing could've been changed to a short story with regards to the plot.

I'll see your Deliverance Lost and raise you anything by C.S. Goto.

I was referring to Fear to Tread actually! But I doubt I'd want to inflict something worse on myself!

 ChazSexington wrote:
Fear to Tread had 3 paragraphs on an unconscious Sanguinius lying on a bench.

Can you extrapolate on this? I don't recall this instance.

I enjoy the Horus Heresy Series because of the stories. It fills in and gives much needed details which I can use to fill in my own imagination about what happened during the civil war. From that perspective, the stories are good. The books have the right taste, the right style, the right atmosphere to them. I said this once before, but from a literary perspective, almost all the books in the black library are written by mostly average writers. If you compare literature, like say the Harry Potter series, to every book in the black library, the line is clearly drawn between the books, showing which ones are superior to the others.

I don't look for character development or vividly painted details in the Horus Heresy series. Like I said, other authors do a far more superior job. But I read those books for the setting, the skeleton to the story, and don't look for much else, because I much prefer filling in the blanks myself.

Raven Guard are awesome. Alpha Legion are awesome. But Deliverance Lost
was not. That is why it sucked.

1. Corax was written like an emo-schoolboy and was written in a very forgettable, mediocre fashion
2, The book and writing is inferior to most of the other novels in the series up to that point (personal taste, I know, but I think most would agree)
3. Too much Alpha Legion

Corax's personalization was bleh.

Writing was mediocre at best.

More stupid Scooby Doo Alpha Legion shenanigans.

No contribution to the greater plot arc.

Conceptually silly to begin with.

 BlaxicanX wrote:

 ChazSexington wrote:
Fear to Tread had 3 paragraphs on an unconscious Sanguinius lying on a bench.

Can you extrapolate on this? I don't recall this instance.

That the author was given a plot and realised this would need to be drawn out if he was gonna make the page quota if anything, when the story would've been fine as a short story.

If I recall correctly Corax's original experiment failed because he basically couldn't improve on the Emperor's design. He turned aspirants into monsters and was horrified at what he had done though he still used them where necessary. In Deliverance Lost he was actually improving on how the Emperor did it and things only went wrong due to the Alpha Legion. The tragedy is lost.

Plus it brings up the questions of why the Emperor used the shorter method in the first place and the Alpha Legion didn't dominate the Horus Heresy with a vastly superior method of Space Marine production.

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

Plus it brings up the questions of why the Emperor used the shorter method in the first place and the Alpha Legion didn't dominate the Horus Heresy with a vastly superior method of Space Marine production.

The second question is easily answered. The Alpha Legion aren't in it to win it. They're just playing a giant game of intergalactic trolling for the lulz.

Or, the writing for the Alpha Legion is almost universally terrible. Up to you which one you choose to believe.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
1. Corax was written like an emo-schoolboy and was written in a very forgettable, mediocre fashion
2, The book and writing is inferior to most of the other novels in the series up to that point (personal taste, I know, but I think most would agree)
3. Too much Alpha Legion

I really really want to argue against this, but I can't. I wanted to love the book, but unfortunately Retrogamer hits it on the head.

I couldn't even finish that book.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

Or, the writing for the Alpha Legion is almost universally terrible. Up to you which one you choose to believe.

I suppose you could argue that the nature of the Alpha Legion means they must be much more careful about the skill and loyalty of their recruits than most Legions since some will be fraternising with the enemy for long periods of time in order to accomplish their objectives. It's still a stretch though.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

SomeRandomEvilGuy wrote:

Plus it brings up the questions of why the Emperor used the shorter method in the first place and the Alpha Legion didn't dominate the Horus Heresy with a vastly superior method of Space Marine production.

The second question is easily answered. The Alpha Legion aren't in it to win it. They're just playing a giant game of intergalactic trolling for the lulz.

Or, the writing for the Alpha Legion is almost universally terrible. Up to you which one you choose to believe.

The Serpent Beneath was excellent actually. I really don't like WH40K books and read them mostly out of a weird guilty feeling to know the fluff, but that one was really good.

I thought DL was okay, but given that I use all the HH audiobooks as just a way to pass the time on my daily commute, that isn't saying much.

That said, I didn't really like it as much as I liked, say, Betrayer, Fulgrim, Angel Exterminatus, Vulkan Lives or Thousand Sons. Probably because Corax isn't particularly interesting in this novel and nothing really of note is accomplished (also, I really hate anything to do with the Raven Guard, Salamanders (other than Vulkan) and Iron Hands).

It was a decent ride, but a forgettable one.