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.

Wow this is bad. Did Abnett really write it?

I mean I know it's tough to write an interesting marine story but this...

OK I liked the idea that 1 marine, a clerk and a dog can kill and Dark Eldar army and will be citing this story for years to come in fluff arguements.

And I had to chuckle as the 'snakes' grappled with the 'dark tusks' in oil. No, no subtext there.

But the rest, flat characters, flat action, bad puns about Khorne and Corn...

Just no.

Is there the line in the indicia page about the author has asserted his moral right?

The book is a mess, I agree. It's about as bad as that one where "Gaunt Battles the Bureaucracy." A disjointed mess. A few nice details about the practices of the Snakes were nice, but the structure of the book was awful, a relic of its origin as a series of short stories in Inferno.

It's not as bad as Heldenhammer. Sigmar so lacked personality that I felt the life being sucked out of me while I struggled to read that piece of crap. By the way, I believe that a clerk and a dog could demolish the entire Dark Eldar race.

@ Warpcrafter

Dude, your avatar is the bees knees! Remind me, is that Fighting Fantasy 'Deathtrap Dungeon'? I used to love Fighting Fantasy....awesome stuff.

Right, as for the book, I agree its a pile of pants. The way they handed the Chaos faction their arses without much of a fight was a joke.

Delephont wrote:@ Warpcrafter

Dude, your avatar is the bees knees! Remind me, is that Fighting Fantasy 'Deathtrap Dungeon'? I used to love Fighting Fantasy....awesome stuff.

Right, as for the book, I agree its a pile of pants. The way they handed the Chaos faction their arses without much of a fight was a joke.

Yep, it's the FARTING SLUGGOTH". It is only appropriate that I should come with a warning label. The only GW fiction I've read lately that I liked was the Vampire Wars trilogy. No emo pretty-boy Vamps, just lots of blood and evil.

I loved the Iron Snakes book. It was the first BL book I read though, but I still thought it was pretty awesome.

Once I realised that it wasn't a novel so much as a series of incidents loosely connected I enjoyed the book more. It gave a reasonable overview of what it meant to be the protectors of many worlds and how isolated many of the imperial citizens actually were from those that serve and protect them.

I agree with you OP. Look, when you write as much as Abnett does it is impossible to be consistent.

I really enjoyed it. The whole point of the book was to prevent an overview of Space Marine life from the experience of one Marine. It was like Sin City, but as a novelization. For the most part I enjoyed it greatly, especially the bits involving the clerk and the dog. The only 'scene' with a touch of suck was the Marines in the field fighting the Khorne thing.

Well I finally finished it. The last story is a definite improvement over the others but it's still pretty poor. I gave it 2 stars in Amazon.

My review:

"Dan Abnett has, until now, been a fairly reliable producer of entertaining novels set in the Warhammer 40,000AD universe.

Unfortunately this collection of short stories about the 'Iron Snake' Space Marine chapter is sub-par.

Space Marines are notoriously hard to write about. They are fanatically loyal, invincible warriors without much in the way of personality. They're usually differentiated by their choice of weapons and their choice of warrior archetypes (Vikings, Romans etc).

These stories center around a group of Greco-Roman warriors called the Iron Snakes as they fight innumerable foes. Most of the stories read like a 13-year old's account of a video game. The Iron Snakes land, take one hoards of shadowy enemies and soon lose count of how many they have killed. In the very first story a single Marine, assisted by a clerk and a dog, slays an entire army. Sadly the clerk and the dog are much more interesting than the Marine. Later a Marine single-handedly kills a Godzilla-sized sea serpent with his trusty harpoon. Another story is filled with unintentional homoerotic humor as the 'Snakes' grapple with the 'Dark Thorns' in oil.

It is only in the last story that the Iron Snakes start to get personalities and depth. But it takes 300+ pages to get there.

Warhammer fans are better off seeking out Abnett's Eisenhorn, Ravenor or Gaunt's Ghosts books than spending time with the Brothers of the Snake."

How many dark eldar are in this army that is refered to?

No specific number mentioned, they're the survivors of a downed cruiser. From the reading it felt like 20-25....

cadbren wrote:How many dark eldar are in this army that is refered to?

Does it matter? The problem with 1 character vs an army is there's no drama. He's going to win. Yeah maybe if Ian Watson was writing the story would end with the 1 marine dragged off for centuries of torture but for a heroic Abnett story, there's only one possibility.

Now if he won through some extremely clever tactic there might be some drama. But he won by well... shooting them. A lot. And because his armor was real, real tough so they couldn't hurt him.

Plus the dog and the clerk were there to help.

Actually it was only because the clerk was fairly interesting that I didn't give it 1 star.

You've reccomended GG and Ravenor books. I think anyone that likes Ravenor 3 or GG 3 onwards will like BotS just fine, given the description you've offered.

@ Kid_Kyoto

While I agree that the book was lame, as most Space Marine books tend to be....I'm not sure what to make of your "homoerotic" statement.

I read the book, and found nothing to instigate a notion of homosexuality in the novel.....however, they do say that each person interprets what they see based on their own mental conditioning......

i liked the book too it was beater than most warhammer 40k
books i read and it cool

Jazz is for Losers wrote:You've reccomended GG and Ravenor books. I think anyone that likes Ravenor 3 or GG 3 onwards will like BotS just fine, given the description you've offered.

BotS simply isn't up the Abnett's usual standards, that's all. It just isn't very good, that's all. It's the same KIND of story as those other ones (pulp mil SF), but it's poorly-structured and lacks interesting characters.

Abnett really cranks 'em out, so it doesn't surprise me that he's a bit "hit or miss."

Delephont wrote:@ Kid_Kyoto

While I agree that the book was lame, as most Space Marine books tend to be....I'm not sure what to make of your "homoerotic" statement.

I read the book, and found nothing to instigate a notion of homosexuality in the novel.....however, they do say that each person interprets what they see based on their own mental conditioning......

If you don't see why burly men called 'snakes' and 'thorns' fighting in oil is unintentionally homoerotic I really can't explain it to you.

Jazz is for Losers wrote:You've reccomended GG and Ravenor books. I think anyone that likes Ravenor 3 or GG 3 onwards will like BotS just fine, given the description you've offered.

It's all in the execution. With GG, Eisenhorn and (to a lesser extent Ravenor) Abnett was able to set up well fleshed out characters and rich worlds as back drops to his war stories.

In Snakes you see bits of it, the first and last stories with the clerk and the dog for example, but the stars of the show are dull as cardboard.

Yeah the snakes do get a nice bit of greek culture thrown in but somehow it never really works.

I dunno, the later books in some of his series' tend to be very flimsy, in my opinion. I was a big GG fan until the 3rd novel, but I haven't bought any after that (got some from the library and was most dissappointed). I greatly prefer his stand alone books, the exception being Eisenhorn. Rav 1 & 2 were above average BL standard but the final book really ruined them for me. He's done well in HH so far, I suppose we should be glad others are helping with that series (we save money and shelf space while Abnett gets time to write proper books).