Vulkan Lord of Drakes

[b1soul]

@ SkimaskMohawk

 

What about Haley's Night Lords in Pharos rubs you the wrong way?

[SkimaskMohawk]

A lot. They were comical in both their incompetence and their levels of villainy/betrayal. It felt like I was reading about power armoured skaven, who only succeeded due to sheer weight of numbers.

 

The first scene with night lords doing anything really set the tone. 60+ night lords ambush 20 ultramarines in the dark; theyre in their element, have the numbers and have surprise on their side. They kill one ultramarine but take 3 casualties in return. In the dark. With three times the guys. In the ambush they sprung.

[Indefragable]

That’s more the fetishization of the Ubermarines and how they can do no wrong.

[mc warhammer]

I just want the Alpharius novel to be done by Haley, to get a fresh perspective and milk his talent some more.

Also so it can include his Guilliman and deal with Eskrador, the stolen Primarch genetech, and set up / cameo Cawl with the Primarch stuff.

 

I just don't want Sanders or French to write the Alpharius one. Or Abnett. They had their turns, and while The Serpent Beneath was great, I feel like they've become too gimmicky over the years, and could use a new approach that straightens up the various incarnations. The Scouring-era, post-Siege Alpha Legion also strikes me as more interesting a subject than filling in the Heresy years, post-Cabal, or the Great Crusade, which we had glimpses of in Praetorian of Dorn already.

 

 

 

i’d be totally happy with a fresh perspective BUT i’d also be happy with a continuation of a previous thread by an author who did a great job (pretty much the guys you mentioned).

 

if for no other reason than I think the AL could benefit from a bit more cohesion in their depiction, which would hopefully come through in a returning author.

[Roomsky]

Vulkan: Lord of Drakes

It's a book about space marines and orks, and its written by David Annandale. I assure you, if a previous book you've read fits that description, you've probably read this already. I didn't hate it, I prefer his Sallies to Kyme's and Vulkan has a bit more charisma to him, but unless you really want to swap out bad 18th for mediocre 18th, there's not much here. I'd probably tie it with Magnus for my least favorite ATM. 5.5/10, probably generous as I listened to it and Annandale fares batter in audio (and I'm desperate for non-painful Salamanders)

 

What I would actually like to complain about, rather than how Annandale wrote the same goddamn book for the 18th time, is how the man doesn't have the editor he deserves. Anyone read Spear of Ultramar? It's genuinely good, because he didn't jizz 150 pages of orks or daemons all over my book. 

 

​Lord of Drakes is lazy because it would have benefited so very much from things Annandale has already proven he's good at. The story is apparently how Vulkan first arrived before his legion, and saved them from their own psychotic martyr-complex. That is a very interesting premise. If only he had shown Vaughn unaware of his own self-destructive nature, perhaps even let us into his head and convince the reader his plans are sound, only for an external force to reveal his lack of foresight. You know, like how Annandale did in Ruinstorm.

 

Maybe combine that with the primarch earning the trust of a wary legion by putting in place policy that initially seems counter-productive, only for it in the end to reveal his true wisdom. You know, like how Annandale did in Lord of Ultramar.

 

Maybe even create an interesting and unique antagonist to head these orks. I mean, if they have an (accidental?) Attack Moon, maybe you could make their leader a smidge more cunning, maybe the warboss trying to prove something by wiping out a legion entire. Or maybe give the antagonist a backwards outlook on existence, something alien to us but making for a compelling foe as they attempt to outplay their foes in non-standard warfare. You know, like how Annandale did in Spear of Ultramar.

 

Huff. Would it kill them to get the guy to push himself a little? Like, can we get someone on David who throws ping-pong balls at him whenever he starts lapsing into nebulous amounts of orks or indescribably grotesque hordes of Chaos? The man has good ideas and genuine talent, in my most honest of opinions. He just doesn't seems to want to use them.

Edited December 6, 2018 by Roomsky

[Indefragable]

Speaking of audio....

 

...the best part about the audio version of this is that Vulkan + some other characters have some pretty :cuss great African (Nigerian? I can't place) accent. Jonathan Keeble is talented.

 

@Roomsky: on your comment about Annandale pushing himself for once, I feel like it's a production thing. The demand by BL for work must be so great that authors are resorting to copy+pasta of things like "thousands of orkz."

 

Guy Haley is the exception to the rule in that he is able to crank out a ludicrous quantity while maintaining a relative level of quality. By his own admission, Haley credits having to work in magazines and periodicals for that skill ("a deadline is a deadline is a deadline...better be good" mindset). Compare to Abnett and ADB or such who (IMHO) turn out generally great work, but it takes them a bit longer.

[Karhedron]

This is the first Primarch novel I have picked up and it is definitely underwhelming. Not actually bad but nothing particularly interesting either. I did not come away from the book with a deeper understanding of either Vulkan or his Legion than I had before I started. It has the feel of a box-ticking exercise. Picking up old hints about the Salamnders having a martyr-complex pre-Vulkan and tying it together. Not actually bad but it could have been far more interesting than it actually was.

[Knockagh]

You couldn’t really have picked a worse one to be honest. Perhaps Gulliman, there’s not much between the two. The rest of the series has been superb. Everyone seems to have their favourites, Lorgar, Perturabo, Corax and Angron are my pick of the bunch and I found them wonderful, truely top BL fiction Edited June 4, 2019 by Knockagh

[Tymell]

This is the first Primarch novel I have picked up and it is definitely underwhelming. Not actually bad but nothing particularly interesting either. I did not come away from the book with a deeper understanding of either Vulkan or his Legion than I had before I started. It has the feel of a box-ticking exercise. Picking up old hints about the Salamnders having a martyr-complex pre-Vulkan and tying it together. Not actually bad but it could have been far more interesting than it actually was.

 

Agreed, it's not offensively bad, it's just very standard and doesn't leave much of an impact. As Knockagh says, Vulkan's one probably shouldn't be taken as indicative, quality-wise, of the rest of the Primarchs series. For me, it's alongside Guilliman and Ferrus Manus as the weakest. Poor loyalists :p

 

Perturabo, Corax, Lorgar, Fulgrim and the Khan all have great books.

[Karhedron]

Perturabo, Corax, Lorgar, Fulgrim and the Khan all have great books.

I have picked up the Khan book so it will be interesting to report back in a few weeks and see if my opinion of the series has improved.

[Manchu warlord]

This book is by far my least favorite (which is a polite way of saying bad) BL book. 

Why couldn't Annandale have written about Vulkan's upbringing during his youth on Nocturne, fighting Dark Eldars and his eventual meeting with the Outsider.  I imagine this topic would be so much more interesting. 

[Knockagh]

This book is by far my least favorite (which is a polite way of saying bad) BL book.

Why couldn't Annandale have written about Vulkan's upbringing during his youth on Nocturne, fighting Dark Eldars and his eventual meeting with the Outsider. I imagine this topic would be so much more interesting.

That would indeed have made for a great tale, and a pivotal one in his life that hasn’t been properly explored.

Annandale is a poor storyteller imo. I’ve no idea why he gets to write key stories. He has been consistently bad, it’s not just a one off.

[DarkChaplain]

This book is by far my least favorite (which is a polite way of saying bad) BL book. 

Why couldn't Annandale have written about Vulkan's upbringing during his youth on Nocturne, fighting Dark Eldars and his eventual meeting with the Outsider.  I imagine this topic would be so much more interesting. 

 

Because that's already been written in Promethean Sun, for example. It also popped up in other Kyme works on Vulkan. Might as well reinvent the wheel, while we're at it.

 

As for Lord of Drakes, it didn't excite me as much as I would have liked, but I didn't consider it a bad one either. It explored the self-sacrificial / self-martyring nature of the Legion before Vulkan pretty well, while playing on pretty much all the thematic aspects of the Legion post-Vulkan.

 

It didn't really occur to me until the end when Vulkan arrives, but as stereotypical as the book may be looking on first glance, knowing especially Kyme's works, Annandale banked on that. Because they're not the "Salamanders" yet. Those stereotypes of flame this, drake that obviously exist in chronologically later stories, but here, we basically see the genesis of them and, in a way, the key even that prompted them to perpetuate them. Vulkan calls them Salamanders after seeing the results of the planet-side war, and gives the Legion a strong identity based on their actions.

 

Where the book suffers for me isn't with the characters or events per se, but with orks being used instead of, say, Dark Eldar, although the two are so drastically different, the plot would have needed to change a great deal and likely let slip a bunch of the thematic elements. On the flipside, it could have allowed for a bigger involvement of the civilian populations that the Legion is trying to shield from the xenos assault by drawing their attention.

On top of that, I simply didn't care much for the attack moon thing. It basically existed to cement the unstoppable advance of the Waaagh and to keep Vulkan off the main stage while still doing something Primarch-worthy. There was meaning in his success in the long run, but that plotline felt least engaging to me.

 

Since I don't follow the ForgeWorld Black Books basically at all, I wonder how many of these choices may have been because of those. They keep mentioning events in broad strokes, defining forces involved and key events, so I wouldn't even be surprised if this particular battle was a FW invention in the first place, seeing how it's the war that sees Vulkan united with his Legion at last.

Edited June 19, 2019 by DarkChaplain

[Tymell]

 

Annandale is a poor storyteller imo. I’ve no idea why he gets to write key stories. He has been consistently bad, it’s not just a one off.

 

 

All a matter of taste though. For you, and for some others, he's been consistently bad. For me, while he certainly isn't among top tier HH authors, I've enjoyed plenty of his works. The Traveller, Sermon of Exodus, Iron Corpses, Ruinstorm, The Binary Succession, Spear of Ultramar, all good stuff. The Unburdened wasn't great as a whole, but I did thoroughly enjoy the central WB character. And I'll defend Damnation of Pythos to my dying breath.

 

Vulkan's Primarchs book certainly suffers from a lack of stand-out moments or characters, though I'd still argue that Ferrus Manus' is a worse book in terms of what it does with its focal character/legion.

[Knockagh]

 

 

Annandale is a poor storyteller imo. I’ve no idea why he gets to write key stories. He has been consistently bad, it’s not just a one off.

 

All a matter of taste though. For you, and for some others, he's been consistently bad. For me, while he certainly isn't among top tier HH authors, I've enjoyed plenty of his works. The Traveller, Sermon of Exodus, Iron Corpses, Ruinstorm, The Binary Succession, Spear of Ultramar, all good stuff. The Unburdened wasn't great as a whole, but I did thoroughly enjoy the central WB character. And I'll defend Damnation of Pythos to my dying breath.

 

Vulkan's Primarchs book certainly suffers from a lack of stand-out moments or characters, though I'd still argue that Ferrus Manus' is a worse book in terms of what it does with its focal character/legion.

Of course your right. I’m only expressing an opinion on personal taste. I can’t say I enjoyed Ferrus either.

 

@ DC, I had forgotten about Promethean Sun, that feels like a long long time ago.

The black book does indeed mention the Tara’s division. The main battle the book focuses on is a unification wars battle - the conquest of the Caucasus Wastes. An area worthy of exploration in the book would be the years after Vulkans discovery staying under the Emperors direct tutelage.

[Manchu warlord]

 

This book is by far my least favorite (which is a polite way of saying bad) BL book. 

Why couldn't Annandale have written about Vulkan's upbringing during his youth on Nocturne, fighting Dark Eldars and his eventual meeting with the Outsider.  I imagine this topic would be so much more interesting. 

 

Because that's already been written in Promethean Sun, for example. It also popped up in other Kyme works on Vulkan. Might as well reinvent the wheel, while we're at it.

 

As for Lord of Drakes, it didn't excite me as much as I would have liked, but I didn't consider it a bad one either. It explored the self-sacrificial / self-martyring nature of the Legion before Vulkan pretty well, while playing on pretty much all the thematic aspects of the Legion post-Vulkan.

 

It didn't really occur to me until the end when Vulkan arrives, but as stereotypical as the book may be looking on first glance, knowing especially Kyme's works, Annandale banked on that. Because they're not the "Salamanders" yet. Those stereotypes of flame this, drake that obviously exist in chronologically later stories, but here, we basically see the genesis of them and, in a way, the key even that prompted them to perpetuate them. Vulkan calls them Salamanders after seeing the results of the planet-side war, and gives the Legion a strong identity based on their actions.

 

Where the book suffers for me isn't with the characters or events per se, but with orks being used instead of, say, Dark Eldar, although the two are so drastically different, the plot would have needed to change a great deal and likely let slip a bunch of the thematic elements. On the flipside, it could have allowed for a bigger involvement of the civilian populations that the Legion is trying to shield from the xenos assault by drawing their attention.

On top of that, I simply didn't care much for the attack moon thing. It basically existed to cement the unstoppable advance of the Waaagh and to keep Vulkan off the main stage while still doing something Primarch-worthy. There was meaning in his success in the long run, but that plotline felt least engaging to me.

 

Since I don't follow the ForgeWorld Black Books basically at all, I wonder how many of these choices may have been because of those. They keep mentioning events in broad strokes, defining forces involved and key events, so I wouldn't even be surprised if this particular battle was a FW invention in the first place, seeing how it's the war that sees Vulkan united with his Legion at last.

 

I was not aware, sorry, I have not read that one.

[MegaVolt87]

I read this a while back, I got the vibe the Emperor deliberately put the Salamanders that Vulkan saved into that campaign as a way of a test/trial or something for Vulkan.