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.

Just forced myself to finish this book.  Lost hours of my life I can never get back.  The two characters in the book oddly remind me of another small sci fi book I read in the past called Dune.  The prophesied one in the golden spider (gimp) and his little abboration witch sister.  Any one else have thoughts or opinions on this piece of work.

At least you didn't read the Black Sword Trilogy if thats even the name of it. 3 Books one worse than the next, with a conclusion about as exciting as unflavored oatmeal.

Its a C.S. Goto book. What do you expect?

Before anyone jumps my edited for being "Negative" or "hateful", I dare anyone to read his books and not scoff at children ramming rocks into a eldar falcon and thus immobilizing the vehicle because a laser from the pulsar lance cannot penetrate it, so it blows up the falcon.

The only place you will find readers of C.S. Goto being compassinate to his "work" is on the BL forum where there is a sound round of knob slobbing of any writer who posts there.

Are you serious?

Hell, I could write BL books, apparently.

Posted By Hellfury on 04/05/2007 3:11 PM
Its a C.S. Goto book. What do you expect?

Before anyone jumps my gak for being "Negative" or "hateful", I dare anyone to read his books and not scoff at children ramming rocks into a eldar falcon and thus immobilizing the vehicle because a laser from the pulsar lance cannot penetrate it, so it blows up the falcon.

The only place you will find readers of C.S. Goto being compassinate to his "work" is on the BL forum where there is a sound round of knob slobbing of any writer who posts there.

ROFL!!!

At least you didn't read the "Inquisition War" trilogy....that's 6 hours I'll never have back.

Anybody with your average American high school student's tenuous grasp on the English language could write better BL books. By and large, BL is barely a step above fanfic, or, in the case of CS Goto, several steps below...

Arent the Horus Heresy books good though? I hear nice thi8ngs asbout them, but that might just be the 'fluff' gleaned from them.

I have reasd some of the Gaunts ghosts and consider them average. The other GW books I have read are those from way back. Of which the best was Drachenfels. Thats good enough to deserve the title of literature.

Dan Abnett is a passable author, and as far as BL authors are concerned he's Hemmingway. Counter on the other hand needs to learn that simile isn't the one and only literary tool. I think the word 'like' is used seven thousand times in 'Grey Knights.' Plus if I didn't know any better I'd say that GW forces the BL authors to self edit.

I've actually liked most of the BL books I've read. I have a wide range of tastes in literature and usually they're an entertaining, low-brow diversion from more serious stuff.

I've read all the Gaunt's novels and I consider Abnett to be very similiar to David Drake in this respect. Also,the Eisenhorn trilogy was okay and, so far, I liked the Ravenor books. Most of the anthologies are pretty good and I just picked up Lord Of The Night, which sounded interesting on Amazon

At least you didn't read the "Inquisition War" trilogy....that's 6 hours I'll never have back.

I did. 

I believe I might have even mentioned in another thread that there was no Inquisition War in Inquisition War.  The guy basically played a game of Inquisitor, went home and jerked off, then wrote three books about it.

I think the worst BL book I ever read was about the Tau warrior who stormed a ship full of marines on his lonesome with minimal effort because the marines were powerless against his grenade throwing skills.

Sure the Inquisition war book was terrible, but it certainly had far more "40k flavor" than most of the other GW fiction out there.  The grit, the poverty, the quest to find a single bolter shell... where else is "fallen empire" so well displayed?  Most of the other books are about battlefields and death, or alternately the demonic dealings of the rich and privilaged.

As for the other BL books, only Dan Abnett's stuff is consistantly good.  The comparison to Drake is a good one, although the heros rarely win by shooting up a mass of people with bursts of their power guns, as in several Drake's books.

Hmm....most of the issues I have with GW books are the discrepencies between authors versions of the GW fluff. One book will state the average height of a Marine is 2m and 2.5m, and so on and so forth.....

It bothers me because these things are easily solved with a little project planning and organisation. For example, GW could issue each author a list of standards, ranging from the average height of a Marine to exactly how probable it would be to destroy an Eldar Falcon with rocks.....problem solved. Now if this were too much effort, then you have a BL team who actually read the books and edit the areas where the Author has been silly.

Can you imagine a writer doing a meaningful fictional novel based on the Gulf War, where US Marines are all 2 ft tall and a Iraqi extremist can destroy an entire armoured division with nothing more than a sling shot and a marble??

So if the public wouldn't tolerate that kind of rubbish why should a fan based genre be any different.

Posted By Breotan on 04/06/2007 11:30 AM
The guy basically played a game of Inquisitor, went home and jerked off, then wrote three books about it.

Which is a neat trick, since Ian Watson wrote those books a good 10 years or thereabouts before the Inquisitor game was created...

I have read most of the BL line up and find most of it is very entertaining and most keep in line with the fluff. I know going into a BL book not to expect fantastic literature just entertainment but Eldar Prophecy was just plain horrible fluff wise and it has to many similarities to Herberts characters. The wastelands, the rag tag bunch of gaurdians coming out of nowhere, can you say fremen. Bene Geserit were thier talking with each other in thier heads, blah, blah, blah.

Which is a shame as Dune is a great piece of literature and the 40K universe is a great bit of background that Goto decided to piss all over.

Words fail to describe how much of an utter pratt he is.

Which is a neat trick, since Ian Watson wrote those books a good 10 years or thereabouts before the Inquisitor game was created...

D20 System. 

Posted By Breotan on 04/06/2007 11:30 AM

At least you didn't read the "Inquisition War" trilogy....that's 6 hours I'll never have back.

I did. 

I believe I might have even mentioned in another thread that there was no Inquisition War in Inquisition War.  The guy basically played a game of Inquisitor, went home and jerked off, then wrote three books about it.

That would be very surprising considering those books were written in the early 90's if I remember correctly, and I don't think they were called the Inquisition War trilogy either.  Doesn't make them good, but they date back to RT era/ early 2nd ed. 

BTW, Ian Watson, the author has since gone on to write screenplays (including AI) and direct TV shows (like Farscape).  That is, unless there are two of them and I'm confused.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

EDIT: Damn, Insaniak beat me to it...

Posted By insaniak on 04/06/2007 1:08 PM

Posted By Breotan on 04/06/2007 11:30 AM
The guy basically played a game of Inquisitor, went home and jerked off, then wrote three books about it.

Which is a neat trick, since Ian Watson wrote those books a good 10 years or thereabouts before the Inquisitor game was created...

Wasn't it touched up to exclude all references to squats?



I have never read this "Goto" person, but on the whole the only decent books I have read from the Black Library are all older and are either by Bill King or named Drachenfels.

I have to admit, if your not looking for a masterpiece of writing then take a look at these books.

Yes there is a variance in writing styles between all the different authors but the story line does flow well between the books.

Some books take me longer than others to get hooked from the series but once i get my teeth into them I can't put them down.

I think GW are trying to tie up the HH fluff with these sets of books. I think they need to do this. There's too much counter fluff in the past and wondering whats the most recent. At least it'll be a current baseline and one which I am enjoying rediscovering.

I recomend reading them.

Cheers

ps Dan Abnett is my prefered author.

Posted By Dice Monkey on 04/06/2007 4:02 PM

Posted By insaniak on 04/06/2007 1:08 PM

Posted By Breotan on 04/06/2007 11:30 AM
The guy basically played a game of Inquisitor, went home and jerked off, then wrote three books about it.

Which is a neat trick, since Ian Watson wrote those books a good 10 years or thereabouts before the Inquisitor game was created...

Wasn't it touched up to exclude all references to squats?

That'd be pretty tough, since one of the main characters is a Squat.  However, one of the connecting stories, where an Inquisitor is reading a report of the events, remarks on how difficult it is to actually verify any of them, since it happened far enough in the past that the known participants are all dead or missing, and that because of the Tyranids, they couldn't even try to get any records from the Squats.

The scene in the first book of the Inquisition War trilogy that takes place in the Emperor's palace is the greatest thing I ever read.

When I was nineteen.

Those Inquisitor war books are great for the time they were written... its just a different flavor to the game now. In the current Imperium no one has heard of a Squat, but during those books they'd let them tag along and fix their stuff.

That and the Dark Angels only recruited from one world, which is why the terminators that saved the planet got all the termie armor painted white. No "we is unforgiven and dark and grrr" and floating around space on a giant rock. In that story (which has to be in the chapter's far past since its back when they were still wearing black) there isn't even a mention of caliban.. Which looking at it with the current fluff revisions makes the whole story seem too weird to be that much fun.. but the randomly inserted rouge trader pictures in the book are fun

Inquisition War was the bestest literatures ever. But it should have had the book Space Marine too cause that's where the marines shoot boarding torpedos up tyranid spinchers! Good times.

On Squats: before Watsons Inquisition War books he wrote a short story with Squat Engineer Grimm.

GW later reprinted it, changing the character to Techpriest Grill.

But when the IW books were reprinted Grimm was back.

You don't know how happy it makes me to read this thread.

I bought "Eldar Prophecy" read the first 5 pages and sold it. To an Australian.

A small victory but a victory nevertheless.

Plc

Just finished Lord Of The Night. Honestly, I enjoyed it thoroughly. The story was kinda "meh, s'okay" and, like most BL books, the editing left something to be desired. However, the 2 main characters - a Night Lord who's been in stasis since just after the Heresy named the Talonmaster and a psychic Inquisitorial Interrogator named Mita - more than carried the entire story along. I don't want to give anything away but I'll say that, unlike most of the other BLbooks, this is a true tragedy, in the classical sense. Very good, unexpected, and none of that "one person taking on a squad of Space Marinez" bs.

I like the pen name "Ben Counter" (= Bean Counter).  Maybe it's someone in GW corporate?

Posted By Abadabadoobaddon on 04/11/2007 9:12 PM
I like the pen name "Ben Counter" (= Bean Counter).  Maybe it's someone in GW corporate?

Nah, just another gamer obsessed with army lists.

Agree. Read it last year? Not bad and there was supposed to be a second book but nothing yet. I liked the fact that the main character was some what disgusted when he finds out what some of his brethren had become by giving into chaos ect.