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.

I just finished reading Descent of Angels last night and I was wondering what everyone else's opinion on it was?

Spoiler Warning!!!





I thought Descent of Angels was a pretty well written book. It was written infinitely better than Fulgrim was, but I was disappointed at how seperate the Dark Angel's story seemed to be from the rest of the Heresy. I am not dissapointed with the writing in Descent of Angels. I'm simply dissapointed in its contents.

There were 2 elements lacking from Descent of Angels that the Horus Heresy books 1-5 had.

First, the other books in the series have been filled with interactions between various chapters. Whether sallying forth on the great crusade or fighting each other as the heresy unfolds, an intricate element of all the other books has been the inter-chapter interactions. These interactions have been important because they not only have established the personalities of the individual chapters, but have also established which side each chapter takes as the heresey unfolds.

Second, the other books have been very sequential in regards to the historical progression of the heresy. Each book, at some point, has picked up where the other has left off. Regardless of the chapter specific subplots, in each preceding book, the history of the overall heresy has been steadily advanced one step closer to the final show down between Horus and the Emperor.

Descent of Angels lacked both of these elements.

For the first 250+ pages of the book, there are no Astartes. None. Caliban is an isolated world and for the first 2/3 of the book there is no interaction with imperium. Instead, the main characters of the Dark Angels are established and described in the settting they existed in before the arrival of the imperium. This part of the book establishes the relations between Luther, Lion El'Johnson, and the rest of the future Dark Angels, but it takes a painfully long amount of time to do so. When the Dark angels finally are formed and do have an interaction with another chapter, it's almost irrelevent. In a 20 page span, some Dark Angels attend a ceremony attended by the White Scars. There's a little bit of talking about how boring a job the Angels have in store for them, and then they leave. No alliance or animosity between the two chapters is discussed, mentioned, or implied. They just happen to occupy the same room for a scene.

When the book does introduce the Astartes, not too much changes. Instead of being knights, the main characters are Space Marines or equivalents. The point of the rest ofthe novel is to describe the jealousy that exists between Luther and Lion El'Johnson and knights that were young enough to be turned into Space Marines and the ones who had to settle for surgical enhancements.

The Dark Angels' story is one of civil war and Descent of Angels was dedicated to describing the situations that lead up to this situation. The Dark Angels' story is a subplot of the overall Horus Heresy. Horus is not mentioned once in this book. Where every other book in the Horus Heresy series has advanced the main story, Descent of Angels did not. Instead, it was a book that, though happening at the same time as the Horus Heresy, described events that were seperate from it. It was an interesting story, but I seriously question its relevance to the overall Heresy. The best analogy I can draw up for this would be to imagine that between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi a movie had been made that was about Lando Calrissian's brother who like Lando ran a City that dabbled in smuggling. If this movie had no mention of the Rebellion, and only minimal interaction with the Empire, it would fit in as well to the Star Wars Trilogy as Descent of Angels fits into The Horus Heresy.

Descent of Angels was a good book. I'm looking forward to reading its sequel. I simply don't think it fit into the Horus Heresy series very well.

As a standalone book it was not too bad, but I thought that it was written as a book about the history of caliban first with the horus heresy bolted on to the end. Overall I thought it was the weakest book in the series so far (fulgrim was my favourite though so I think we have different tastes )

I did get bothered by:

I get the feeling that the author was told by McNeil and Abnett that he was not allowed to invent much new canon for the dark angels outside of what already existed and so perhaps that is why it touched so little on the heresy itself?

I get the feeling that the author was told by McNeil and Abnett that he was not allowed to invent much new canon for the dark angels outside of what already existed and so perhaps that is why it touched so little on the heresy itself?

I hadn't thought about that as a possibility. However, if this were the case, why not just postpone Descent of Angels until one of them had the time to write it? The fate of the dark angels didn't affect the Horus Heresy.

I understand that the Dark Angels have a strong following and perhaps the book was written for Dark Angels fans. The book treated them better than the last codex;

The book itself read like it was trying to be stretched for all its worth. The entire tale of the Dark Angels could have been fit into one (though it'd be a long one) novel. I'm going to stand by my original assertion that far too much time was spent developing Zahariel and the Pre-Imperial Knights of Caliban.

If I had to speculate about what influence the higher-ups at GW had in determining the content of the novel, I would say that they demanded the story be spread amongst multiple books. The popularity of the Dark Angels pretty much insures that any book written about them will sell, so why not spread out their tale? I would.

I just wish there had been a little more content to digest. The whole book read like a 400 page introduction to the Dark Angels.




I love the Horus Heresy series and I'm happy to talk about any of the novels! As for the merits of Fulgrim I think Grahm McNeil is over-descriptive and his writing just seems to be a little immature. The content of the book was great, I just thought the writing was...well a little immature. The scene where the orchestra summoned the demons and the soldiers created sonic blasters had me groaning at how silly it was.

That being said, McNeil had a hard topic to cover. He had to make sure he adequately showed how fulgrim slowly fell and how the Emperor's Children succombed to decadence. However, I'm sure Dan Abnett could have done a much better job. I wish he was writing the whole series...

I read this book last week! Its a good book in stand alone format, but it fails to answer key questions about the Dark Angels, and spends way too much time developing "secondary" characters.

I wanted to know more about the Lion! how did he survive on Caliban in the beginning?

??

But perhaps more importantly than all of that, what were the Dark Angels doing when a) Horus attacks the other Legions and b) what delays the Lion on his way back to Terra to defend the Emporer?

Surely these are the things the book should have centered on and not its actual content!

Good book, not recommended for the Horus saga though.....next!

lifeafter wrote:
I love the Horus Heresy series and I'm happy to talk about any of the novels! As for the merits of Fulgrim I think Grahm McNeil is over-descriptive and his writing just seems to be a little immature. The content of the book was great, I just thought the writing was...well a little immature. The scene where the orchestra summoned the demons and the soldiers created sonic blasters had me groaning at how silly it was.

That being said, McNeil had a hard topic to cover. He had to make sure he adequately showed how fulgrim slowly fell and how the Emperor's Children succombed to decadence. However, I'm sure Dan Abnett could have done a much better job. I wish he was writing the whole series...

I cant argue with that, you are spot-on. I think it was just the amount of topics that Fulgrim covered that made me like it so much - it felt like a very full book to me. The writing style is a bit weaker and it is harder to read than Abnett's stuff but I have met McNeil a couple of times and his enthusiasm is infectious which helps me enjoy his books more I think (and curses me to only be able to read them in a scottish accent )

(and curses me to only be able to read them in a scottish accent )

Haha, even with all the references to "armour" instead of "armor" I still haven't succombed to hearing the characters speak with English accents. Although, the occasional "aye" usually gets me (it's really hard to americanize "aye").

I don't know what I'd do if I had to picture all the characters from McNeil's Ultramarines, Grey Knights, and Horus Heresy books that I've read speaking with scottish accents. I'd take my chances though. Meeting Grahm McNeil would be pretty cool. Where'd you get an opportunity to meet him?

I generally give 40k characters a Germanic style accent (I think it's because of the Gothic stylings of 40k). Not in McNiel's books though (as I don't read them, as he is a disgrace. God how he sucks).

lifeafter wrote:
Meeting Grahm McNeil would be pretty cool. Where'd you get an opportunity to meet him?

Every time a new horus heresy book is released, there is a signing here in London at Forbidden Planet, so I go and get the books signed and have a quick chat with them. I have met all except Abnett and Scanlon as I was out of the country when they were signing :(

I felt that they left it open for another Dark Angels book. Or at least, that might not have been the plan but damn they need to do some more with it.

It was definately left open for another book. It's a book that exists to sell the sequel. And I'll buy it right up because they'll slap the Horus Heresy logo on it.

I'm just waiting to see how far they take this. Maybe there'll be a Horus Heresy: "Sleeping Necrons" book in which Grahm McNeil writes a 400 page description of the darkness of the tombs the Necrons were in during the Horus Heresy.

When I was reading "Descent of Angels" after reading the first third of the book I was more and more thinking to myself - when will the main story begin. It all felt like one stretched out beginning to me, and I was expecting to read about the momentous events around the Horus Heresy. So I was disappointed that the story sort of never left the ground, so to speak. Furthermore, I was also quite disappointed at the fact that the momentous events of sending Luther home was dismissed with a bare sentence, and no explanation whatsoever - and then the book just ended... just like that...

Anyway, if a sequel is released and some of my friends ask me if they should read Descent of Angels first, I will wholeheartedly argue that it is completely unnessecary to read an entire novel for what could be summarized on the back of the sequel.

@ Tyfe

I totally agree

One problem I had with it is that the Dark Angels have a librarian pre-Jonson. The other books give the impression that the space marines pre-heresy have no librarians and that as a whole they are clueless about the warp and psychic powers. I got the impression that the Emporer was spreading the secular truth of the imperium everywhere in order to keep humanity safe from the taint of warp spawned powers.
Now I am asking why does the first legion have a librarian to help them destroy a demon, while Horus, leader of the crusade, and all of his captains are almost completely ignorent of the very notion of psychic powers and demons at all. Where were the Luna Wolves librarians helping them fight the nurgle zombies, and warning horus that the weapon was a magical chaos weapon that could hurt him, and helping heal Horus after being hurt by said weapon, and helping the other captains understand how Erebus was planning to heal him with psychic power? All these primarchs tainted by demon weapons, and not a single psycher to say "hey boss, that thing is full of magical warp power. You should be careful with it."
The Emporer himself thanks our young psychic recruit.
Magnus gets reprimanded for dabbling in magic, but its okay for the dark angels to have librarians.

Anyone else get this impression?

It was definately different from the other books that the I Legion had librarians, but some chapters were definately experimenting with Librarians during this time.

I can't remember if it was the Horus Heresy Art Books or some other source, but it's mentioned that some chapters were beginning to experiment with using psychers in their armies during the great crusade. These Psychers, like all other psychers in the imperium are touched by the emperor's psychic power to help protect them against the dangers of the warp. Maybe this is what was going on when the Emperor was thanking/warning Zahariel. However, they weren't used in every chapter. The ones that were using them didn't get to use them indefinately either, because at some point the Emperor does ban the use of psycher powers in his legions. This is one of the event that led to Magnus' turning. Maybe the reasons the two Librarians of the Dark Angels get sent back to Caliban is because the Emperor had banned their positions from his legions?

I really like your theory about secular truth being a defense against warp spawned powers. Remember that in the first novel of the series, Horus knew that warp creatures existed, he simply thought they were mindless, basal creatures because that's what the Emperor had told him. I always had a hard time believing that the Emperor, the most powerful human psycher to have ever lived didn't know that the creatures of the warp were sentient. Also remember that in the III novel, the warp creature tells the saiance that the Emperor was doing something that was destroying the creatures of the warp and insinuated that this was why the chaos powers were trying to influence the legions. Perhaps whatever the emperor was doing to the warp, lying to the primarchs about the nature of the beings in the warp, severely restricting the use of psychers, and spreading secular truth were all a defense agains the powers in the warp.

(first post, woo!)

At the time off descent of Angels all the legions that wanted them had Librarians, it was some time after that when the Emperor banned psykers in the Space Marines legions at the Council of Nikea.

I liked descent of angels. it was a big build up to a heck of a cliffhanger, but I thought it was well written. The only part I didn't like was the foreshadowing. It's somewhat inescapable, being essentially prequels, but in DoA they were just freakin' laddeling it on with a spoon.

Easily the worst of the HH saga. Poorly written with more typos than any other GW novel I have read, and it flows poorly. My main complaint is that it is a HH novel only in name.... otherwise its just a history of the dark angels, and even then not much is revealed or talked about.

I didn't like what they did with cypher. Lack of explanation at the end also frustrated the hell out of me. The whole alien ooze/tentacle monster thing seemed very rushed, like it was added at the last minute because he had to end the story somehow.... it unfortunately reminded me of something Ian Watson would write.

Terribly disappointed.

Feor wrote:I liked descent of angels. it was a big build up to a heck of a cliffhanger, but I thought it was well written. The only part I didn't like was the foreshadowing. It's somewhat inescapable, being essentially prequels, but in DoA they were just freakin' laddeling it on with a spoon.

QFT. I could feel myself cringing as I read some of the foreshadowing in Descent of Angels, it was overly dramatic to the level of a 13 year old's (bad) high school english project.

the lion was not really shown in a good light, and nor should he have been. I cant wait for the next book. people would probably sympathise more with luthour than the lion.

Descent of Angels was in the Horus Heresy series, and they don't tell you anything about the heresy, it's just about the Dark Angel's in the Great Crusade.

@ Beef

Why should The Lion be seen in a bad light? Or more to the point, why does The Lion deserve to be seen a less positive light than the other Primarchs?

The book does nothing to support that point one way or another.....

While I don't think Descent of Angels was bad, it definitely did not fit into the whole HH series. It would have been better as a stand alone book, but with the timeline of the HH releases, I guess they couldn't have avoided it.

Unfortunately, it leaves the Dark Angels storyline in a sink hole of sorts for the rest of the HH series. Like lifeafte mentions in his original post, all the books so far have had some continuity in each book, if the Dark Angels are going to be brought up again, they have to dedicate another book just to their storyline.

Yea it wasnt a HH book but i thought it was ok i also think that IT SUCKED WHAT THEY DID WITH CHPYER

Spoiler

Its a Title GD not a person but i do think Chyper is Zaherial personally but its what ever ....he wrote a good book before (15 hours) but botched this one

The end fight was funny o turn it on Boom lol

I loved ANGELS OF DARKNESS on the other hand did make Loin look like a DB but in a ok way ....was real good

This was a ok read lil repitve at times but not OMG

the whole demon thing was just too much of a stretch. How does a random librarian know about demons in the warp yet NONE of the primarchs knew? Either this book is completely wrong in terms of fluff, or the rest of the HH novels are wrong. There is just too much contradiction.

SetantaSilvermane wrote:One problem I had with it is that the Dark Angels have a librarian pre-Jonson. The other books give the impression that the space marines pre-heresy have no librarians and that as a whole they are clueless about the warp and psychic powers. I got the impression that the Emporer was spreading the secular truth of the imperium everywhere in order to keep humanity safe from the taint of warp spawned powers.
Now I am asking why does the first legion have a librarian to help them destroy a demon, while Horus, leader of the crusade, and all of his captains are almost completely ignorent of the very notion of psychic powers and demons at all. Where were the Luna Wolves librarians helping them fight the nurgle zombies, and warning horus that the weapon was a magical chaos weapon that could hurt him, and helping heal Horus after being hurt by said weapon, and helping the other captains understand how Erebus was planning to heal him with psychic power? All these primarchs tainted by demon weapons, and not a single psycher to say "hey boss, that thing is full of magical warp power. You should be careful with it."
The Emporer himself thanks our young psychic recruit.
Magnus gets reprimanded for dabbling in magic, but its okay for the dark angels to have librarians.

Anyone else get this impression?

The earlier books with the Lunar Wolves/Sons of Horus talk about how the chapters had Librarians before the Emperor decreed a "No Psyker" type law.

twigg wrote:the whole demon thing was just too much of a stretch. How does a random librarian know about demons in the warp yet NONE of the primarchs knew? Either this book is completely wrong in terms of fluff, or the rest of the HH novels are wrong. There is just too much contradiction.

Ummm... Horus knew what a daemon was in the first HH novel. So the Primarchs do seem to know.

Yea he did cause he know what beset that one guy the one in Lokens group .....But i mean not horriable but not for the HH series .......it is odd that he could write 15 hours which was good and this which was medicore