Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
Times and dates in your local timezone.
Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.
Weird I can't find a thread on Saturnine, so here we go.
First off my spoiler-free review:
With over 50 volumes the Horus Heresy series is a masterclass in padding, drawing out story points over years. So it should be no surprise that the climatic Siege of Terra series is just as padded. After the first few books I was ready to give up on this, or at least de-prioritize it, but rave reviews on the internet (plus an impending 12 hour flight) got me to buy it.
And it was OK.
I can see what got some people excited, there are massive battles, individual duels, clever tricks and revelations. Sanguinius and Rogal Dorn get prominent roles and finally face off against some of the traitors. Several secondary characters meet their fates. The Imperium gets a victory of sorts. Noted plot device John Grammaticus stops by to reveal information about the history of the Emperor, the immortal Perpetuals and the origins of the Space Marines and the Primarchs.
But... it all feels very rote. Author Dan Abnett is bound by the same rigid plot outline as the other authors in this series so the major characters all have miraculous escapes so they can be there for the next book. Abnett pads this out by introducing several new characters, well-fleshed out soldiers fighting in a massive battle between gods and demons and providing humanizing perspective. Which is cool, except that's exactly what the previous books did.
So... this book is more of what you've come to expect from the Horus Heresy and Siege of Terra. But since this is the fourth book in the series it is really starting to drag. How many more accounts of soldiers manning the walls, ever more hopeless odds among the smoke and dust do you want to read? At this point a book focusing on the rest of Terra, or the space war, or anything except walls and trenches, would be welcome.
And with spoilers:
Spoiler:
This took me the better part of 3 weeks to finish, including 2 12-hour flights. After several books of walls and mud it just felt claustrophobic, dreary and redundant. Even Abnett complains about running out of ways to say 'big, huge, explodes' and so on. There's some neat scenes like a bunker overrun with Nurgle flies, but a lot of this could have been moved to First Wall or Lost and the Damned.
I think a lot of the raves comes from 3 things, Grammaticus discussing the secret history of the Emperor, Abaddon and the Mournvial fighting Dorn's kill teams, and Dorn vs Fulgrim. But, as I said above, Abnett is trapped in the overarching outline so Abaddon gets a miraculous rescue thanks to teleporters that are now Star Trek level (Solar War had the same issue) and Fulgrim just like walks away like he's read somewhere he wasn't allowed to kill Dorn in this book. The revelations on the Emperor are.. I dunno. They are there. Nice to have them. But nothing mind-blowing.
DOUBLE SPOILERS! . . . . . .
Turns out he's a perpetual, and worked with other perpetuals including a new (?) character named Erda to make the Primarchs as artificial perpetuals so she's basically the mother of the Marines. Oh and we learn his name. Neoth. Or at least it was a name the Emperor used. As far as I can tell it means nothing, maybe a variant of North? But since it's just one of his many names it may as well have been Steve.
[/spoiler]
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/11/02 08:28:12
I think the lack of a thread is probably due to the lack of investment people have in the books now. The main HH was ridiculously padded out, as you mention, but at least we got a look at each of the Legions along the way. The Siege of Terra is almost beyond parody now with how inconsequential the stakes are.
The biggest problem with the HH was always that we knew how it ended, which robbed it of a lot of the excitement it might otherwise have had but at least it explored a rich and varied galaxy (albeit too often through the uninspired visor of a Space Marine). The Siege is just a non-event right now. The books lack any sense of scale and geography for me. I have no idea where things are taking place in relation to one another or why I should care. Then you have the various moments where main characters meet in mortal combat...and obviously survive because we know they're still alive in the 41st millennium.
It's often said sieges are long stretches of boredom interspersed with sudden, devastating bouts of action but I don't think that's something you should try to emulate in your novel series about a siege.
Slipspace more or less summed it up. The mythos of the Heresy has been watered down and over-explained in the HH series, and having inconsistent characterization/writing between multiple authors makes it so it's largely down to who is writing the book you're reading than the content/plot that determines its relative quality.
Perturabo, Fulgrim, and Horus himself are all examples of characters in the HH that are written inconsistently. Unless you have someone like the Khan who gets picked up by an author like Chris Wraight that sets up their character arc, it's very hard to stay invested when you know the outcomes and their personality is at the whims of whoever is writing them.
It doesn't help that they make the mistake of having 30K civilization sound very similar to 40k civilization, since it's supposed to be the Renaissance of humanity after all. You barely get any viewpoint from the baseline humans that are dragged into this conflict and why any of them support Horus at all. It just makes Guilliman's despair at seeing the state of the Imperium somewhat confusing given that the main changes seem to be primarily be on religion and the existence of the Inquisition.
It's also mainly marines on marines, there's enough of that in 40k, I don't need an entire series of that on top of it.
Frankly, I'm more interested in the pre-Heresy books rather than those in the HH timeline. The Valdor is a good example of that.
Purely personal opinion, but anything involving Perpetuals is a total turn-off for me, and the most recent HH books have brought in a massive level of fan-fic standard demystification.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/11/03 13:37:42
There's a lovely comment in the novel Paradise Postponed where one of the characters is thinking about how nice it is that music get uglier as you get older, so you don't miss it so much when you're dead.
harlokin wrote: Purely personal opinion, but anything involving Perpetuals is a total turn-off for me, and the most recent HH books have brought in a massive level of fan-fic standard demystification.
I don't mind the perpetual stuff so long as it's building towards something, and I do think it is.
Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two
harlokin wrote: Purely personal opinion, but anything involving Perpetuals is a total turn-off for me, and the most recent HH books have brought in a massive level of fan-fic standard demystification.
I don't mind the perpetual stuff so long as it's building towards something, and I do think it is.
Well the problem is...
Spoiler:
It may have just been leading up to this information dump about the Emperor, Primarchs and marines. It's not quite 'a wizard did it' but it's almost there.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Hrm just found this on the 40k wiki. Is it true?
The Horus Heresy: Siege of Terra will consist of eight main novelswith an unknown number of novellas, short stories and audio dramas. The first novel, The Solar War, was released in May 2019.
If so 8 books is probably 3 too long but at least gives me an end point and lets me know we're 50% done.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/11/04 13:57:13
harlokin wrote: Purely personal opinion, but anything involving Perpetuals is a total turn-off for me, and the most recent HH books have brought in a massive level of fan-fic standard demystification.
I don't mind the perpetual stuff so long as it's building towards something, and I do think it is.
Well the problem is...
Spoiler:
It may have just been leading up to this information dump about the Emperor, Primarchs and marines. It's not quite 'a wizard did it' but it's almost there.
Seems a bit of a waste imo. I'm still expecting a #nottherealemperor moment myself, but knowing GW, they would be as likely to have already wasted the build up as you've described.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/11/04 20:59:53
Saturnine was a decent book in my opinion. I preferred it to lost and the damned which was a long slog for not much return.
My favourite part was the sons of Horus section. Abaddon was portrayed well too. I also liked how the writing style changed between the seperate elements of the story.
Wolfspear's 2k
Harlequins 2k
Chaos Knights 2k
Spiderfangs 2k
Ossiarch Bonereapers 1k 
Heresy World Eaters/Emperors Children 