Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Don't think about it too hard. The Black Library is out of ideas, but they have to continue writing books because finishing the series would kill off the cash cow.

Everything about the Perpetuals ranks among the worst things written about 40K. No surprise it's one of Dan Abnett's babies. His ideas are either really good, or epically awful. The perpetuals were on the latter end.

 da001 wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Don't think about it too hard. The Black Library is out of ideas, but they have to continue writing books because finishing the series would kill off the cash cow.

Everything about the Perpetuals ranks among the worst things written about 40K. No surprise it's one of Dan Abnett's babies. His ideas are either really good, or epically awful. The perpetuals were on the latter end.

Agree.

Only one thing though: I wouldn´t blame all the fault on Abnett. I think they all joined and do some brainstorming to see what to do next after The First Heretic / Prospero Burns and A Thousand Sons. I read it somewhere, perhaps in ADB´s blog.

They didn´t want to move the story forward because "the people want to know more stuff" and they didn´t want to do "origin of Primarch X" style books because "the people dislike them" (I guess they were thinking on the Dark Angels books, because all "origin" books -Fulgrim, TFH, ATS, even Legion- had been a massive success). So they decided to explore the setting in "new and exciting ways". I am rephrasing it but it is more or less what I think I read.

Thus the "Angel Exterminatus" subplot, the "Shadow Crusade" subplot, the "Second Empire" subplot and the "Perpetuals" subplot, all of them brand new to the background. "Signum Prime" and the "Battle on Calth" were the two other, "canonical", subplots involved, and Signum Prime was completely revised, since the original story had the Space Marines getting defeated. No way the nowadays fans will tolerate that. There was also a willingness to give the fans what they "wanted", like explaining that the Lion was loyal, getting the Dark Angels to do something, lots of senseless "dragon ball z"-style fights between Primarchs, lots of spotlight for the survivors of the Drop Site Massacre suddenly turned into superheroes, hated characters like Erebus getting punished over and over in senseless ways... This sort of stuff. The result was as expected.

They thought themselves able to rewrite the original story, changing it all to make it more accesible to fans.

They failed miserably.

I was surprised to learn that the person who wrote the Collected Visions (Alan Merret) was (and is) supposed to be "the overseer of all intellectual property development" in GW. Either he has stop caring about his own job or he has no choice but allow his work to be defiled and turned into a shameless money-grabber.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Don't think about it too hard. The Black Library is out of ideas, but they have to continue writing books because finishing the series would kill off the cash cow.

Everything about the Perpetuals ranks among the worst things written about 40K. No surprise it's one of Dan Abnett's babies. His ideas are either really good, or epically awful. The perpetuals were on the latter end.

 tomball0706 wrote:

 da001 wrote:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Don't think about it too hard. The Black Library is out of ideas, but they have to continue writing books because finishing the series would kill off the cash cow.

Everything about the Perpetuals ranks among the worst things written about 40K. No surprise it's one of Dan Abnett's babies. His ideas are either really good, or epically awful. The perpetuals were on the latter end.

Agree.

Only one thing though: I wouldn´t blame all the fault on Abnett. I think they all joined and do some brainstorming to see what to do next after The First Heretic / Prospero Burns and A Thousand Sons. I read it somewhere, perhaps in ADB´s blog.

They didn´t want to move the story forward because "the people want to know more stuff" and they didn´t want to do "origin of Primarch X" style books because "the people dislike them" (I guess they were thinking on the Dark Angels books, because all "origin" books -Fulgrim, TFH, ATS, even Legion- had been a massive success). So they decided to explore the setting in "new and exciting ways". I am rephrasing it but it is more or less what I think I read.

Thus the "Angel Exterminatus" subplot, the "Shadow Crusade" subplot, the "Second Empire" subplot and the "Perpetuals" subplot, all of them brand new to the background. "Signum Prime" and the "Battle on Calth" were the two other, "canonical", subplots involved, and Signum Prime was completely revised, since the original story had the Space Marines getting defeated. No way the nowadays fans will tolerate that. There was also a willingness to give the fans what they "wanted", like explaining that the Lion was loyal, getting the Dark Angels to do something, lots of senseless "dragon ball z"-style fights between Primarchs, lots of spotlight for the survivors of the Drop Site Massacre suddenly turned into superheroes, hated characters like Erebus getting punished over and over in senseless ways... This sort of stuff. The result was as expected.

They thought themselves able to rewrite the original story, changing it all to make it more accesible to fans.

They failed miserably.

I was surprised to learn that the person who wrote the Collected Visions (Alan Merret) was (and is) supposed to be "the overseer of all intellectual property development" in GW. Either he has stop caring about his own job or he has no choice but allow his work to be defiled and turned into a shameless money-grabber.

The books are progressively getting worse especially the gak written about the Primarchs becoming demon Primarch, Angrons promotion to demonhood was acceptable, purely because I have soft spot, but Fulgrims was just awful. I always thought that when the gates on terra were assaulted, everyone was still in standard primarch mode, just having a few benefits, instead they've made two Primarchs into demon Primarchs and frankly how they actually became them was pretty poor to, Fulgrim even failed in killing Perturabo and still got given demonhood!

 tomball0706 wrote:

Some of the subplots that have been written have been fantastically executed in my eyes, the Angel exterminatus one, purely because it fleshed out Perturabo so much and made him more than the guy who simply liked blowing up walls. The whole Perpetuals was a great idea, but instead it has been more poorly executed than the allies matrix in 40K

The books are progressively getting worse especially the gak written about the Primarchs becoming demon Primarch, Angrons promotion to demonhood was acceptable, purely because I have soft spot, but Fulgrims was just awful. I always thought that when the gates on terra were assaulted, everyone was still in standard primarch mode, just having a few benefits, instead they've made two Primarchs into demon Primarchs and frankly how they actually became them was pretty poor to, Fulgrim even failed in killing Perturabo and still got given demonhood!