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Wolfsbane HH49


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I have finally finished this novel. It was most enjoyable however the ENTIRE NOVEL WAS RUINED by a single line...

 

“wet jungle growl”

 

Yes I’m not joking. We had wet leopard growl for so long and I hadn’t seen it for a long time but now apparently a jungle can growl too ... in a wet way.

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To be fair, the line was "Grimnr growled, a wet jungle sound of warning" :p

When it's raining in the jungle or something like in predator or one of the myriad creatures in the jungle book?

I can so see Russ doing "I want to be like you"

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Have just finished this and was truly a solid, enjoyable read. It was great seeing Russ given some actual fleshing out; exploring his duality and the nature of why he was created and the "Real" Russ etc was lovely. Meeting Terran Leman was fab.....now if only we could find out what his true name is!

 

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I have finally finished this novel. It was most enjoyable however the ENTIRE NOVEL WAS RUINED by a single line...

 

“wet jungle growl”

 

Yes I’m not joking. We had wet leopard growl for so long and I hadn’t seen it for a long time but now apparently a jungle can growl too ... in a wet way.

it's things like this that shouldn't even make it to the editor, certainly not past it, that's not exposition, it's just nonsense 

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I'm actually enjoying the Cawl chapters so far. Not as interesting as the Rout chapters, obviously, but his origin here is handled well, and it also winds back on the ridiculous stuff from the Codex (Cawl has been alive for a couple of decades, not well over two centuries and designed Space Marines with the Emperor, as the Codex claims, for example).

 

I suspect that, if the notion that Cawl "learned his genecraft from the Emperor Himself" turns out to be true, it will only be true in the sense that Cawl absorbed the knowledge of someone who actually did work on the original Space Marine project, the same way he ended up absorbing the knowledge of Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma.

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That's my expectation, and fits incredibly well with Cawl as an upstart opportunist. He's a genius, undoubtedly, but he's a cleptomaniac, and seeing how his memory was supposedly wiped at least twice over those ten millennia, it doesn't seem strange whatsoever if he, before long, even believes that he himself did x and y when really, he just stole the knowledge and memories.

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That's my expectation, and fits incredibly well with Cawl as an upstart opportunist. He's a genius, undoubtedly, but he's a cleptomaniac, and seeing how his memory was supposedly wiped at least twice over those ten millennia, it doesn't seem strange whatsoever if he, before long, even believes that he himself did x and y when really, he just stole the knowledge and memories.

That's a great way of viewing him/it - an eccentric programme or virus emulating a man who once lived, which has debased to perpetuating myths about that man to justify its present state of being in a closed ideological system that would reject it otherwise!

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I'd love if they do this with Cawl. He's already got so many "gaps" in his memory, it's perfect to have it that what he believes are his memories are actually stolen fragments layered on top of his own. It'd also help explain why he's waited 10,000 years to get approval from a dead (as far as everyone is concerned) Primarch before releasing his new inventions. He's not a person anymore, he's got elements of that person at his 'core', but its layered over with fragments of other memories and personalities.

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I have finally finished this novel. It was most enjoyable however the ENTIRE NOVEL WAS RUINED by a single line...

 

“wet jungle growl”

 

Yes I’m not joking. We had wet leopard growl for so long and I hadn’t seen it for a long time but now apparently a jungle can growl too ... in a wet way.

it's things like this that shouldn't even make it to the editor, certainly not past it, that's not exposition, it's just nonsense 

 

 

well, either way it's not exposition anyway?

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I think an entire novel ruined by a single line that doesn't click with some people maybe slightly extreme...but hey its your hobby. :)

 

BCC

I was joking. The whole novel wasn’t ruined for me really. Far from it in fact because I thoroughly enjoyed it all.

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I'm halfway though and quite liking it, but man, do I find Cawl boring.

His chapters just seem shoehorned into the main story and make me want to close the book every time.

Perhaps they'll come together going forward...

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I'm halfway though and quite liking it, but man, do I find Cawl boring.

His chapters just seem shoehorned into the main story and make me want to close the book every time.

Perhaps they'll come together going forward...

 

I didn't mind Cawl himself. As the book only really had a couple of protagonists and no antagonist POV I think a story B was needed and it was as good an addition as anything.

 

However, I did find the Cawl bits far too wordy/longwinded/too descriptive in the middle. I found that I was having to re-read paragraphs to get the meaning and this just bored me. Same with the battle bits towards the end (the non-Russ bits). I'm not a fan of Guy Haley's style, but his plot and characters are pretty good.

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So I said eff it and read this one a couple of weeks ago and wanted to comment but just couldn't. I read the Jaghatai Khan Primarch book thread which spurred me to comment on this one because there are so many similarities in all of the primarch novels and this book, the chief of which being the reinforcement of the Primarch's central conceit or whatever you want to call it pinning down the book. Idk what word limits the authors are given so I don't wanna whine too much but every single time Russ is "on stage" so to speak we're constantly being told "his barbarity is a mask from which a true intelligence lies". I'm wondering, every single time in the multiple books Russ appears in who is this message supposed to be for? The reader, his legion, his brothers? It turned something that may have started off interesting into a complete trope IMO, especially since we're shown his his introduction into the wider world of the Imperium and the Great Crusade which he could presumably be called a "barbarian" (as if a Primarch could ever be so "simple" as we obviously know) and now centuries later still affecting Fenrensian culture is supposed to make him ignorant. It just bothered me personally. I do appreciate the perspective given to Russ as far as belief in Imperial Truth as opposed to superstition and how he's open to both, but the main point is if it can kill him then it's real. Makes sense to me.
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What do you mean by "trope" in this context, DarKnight?

They way I mean is that the idea Russ is pretending to be an uncivilized barbarian while actually intelligent is not something that is used as a starting point to further explore his character, but is just jammed down our throats as hamfisted characterization. It's just lazy IMO

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Have just finished this and was truly a solid, enjoyable read. It was great seeing Russ given some actual fleshing out; exploring his duality and the nature of why he was created and the "Real" Russ etc was lovely. Meeting Terran Leman was fab.....now if only we could find out what his true name is!

 

BCC

remember what the erlking said, he took the appearance of what Russ BELIEVED he should've been had he not been take(sent) from Terra

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What do you mean by "trope" in this context, DarKnight?

They way I mean is that the idea Russ is pretending to be an uncivilized barbarian while actually intelligent is not something that is used as a starting point to further explore his character, but is just jammed down our throats as hamfisted characterization. It's just lazy IMO

 

 

Not only that, but the fact that his 'hidden intelligence' never actually works as he says it does. He gets manipulated pretty easily by Horus, he acts exactly how everyone excepts him to at Prospero, and in Wolfsbane he walks right into an ambush that he knows is there. And his justification for it is 'Horus expects me to act like this, so I'm going to act like this, because it's the last thing Horus would expect!' No Russ, its actually exactly what Horus would expect, that's why he put the ambush there in the first place. Whether Russ is actually an intelligent savage (like he says he is) or just a normal savage (like he says everyone thinks he is) the end result of his actions is exactly the same

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At least it’s Russ that causes the chink in Horus’ armour allowing The Emperor to shoot his soul bullet. I’m so glad it isn’t Sanguinius anymore. I can’t stand that crying girl with wings.

 

 

/sarcasm

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