Away from the battlefield

[DukeLeto69]

With the exception of some Horus Heresy novels and the books by ADB I am not actually a massive fan of Space Marine stories. The books I have liked the most have generally been set away from the battlefield (exception being Gaunt’s Ghosts). As such I really wish BL would commission more of these (though signs look good with WH Horror and Necromunda being back).

 

These favourite type of books include (for me):

 

Eisenhorn trilogy

Ravenor trilogy

Bequin (trilogy one day)

Calpurnia trilogy

Dark Heresy duology (never got third book sadly)

Vaults of Terra (2 so far)

Horusian Wars (2 so far)

Rites of Passage

Requiem Infernal

 

The reason I love all these books is the way they expand the setting and give you more of a feel for life in 40k. They enrich the setting (although of course some of the warfare focused books have vignettes / slice of life too).

 

What do you brothers think? Do you want to see more stories and novels away from the battlefield? What factions or settings do you want to see? What kind of stories do you want? Or do you wish BL would stick to warfare?

Edited September 6, 2019 by DukeLeto69

[JustinDHill]

This is a really interesting post, and as a BL writer I broadly agree.

 

When writing it's always struck me that action (guns, shooting, blood) - though fairly easy to write, it's much less interesting than drama, which is about characters and the choices they make, and the consequences that ensue.

 

Dan has always been pretty good at creating strong characters. ADB likewise, and generally the BL authors i enjoy reading do the same. Their stories are more full of drama. 

 

There's a third ingredient in the BL cake though,which is lore - which centres on how well the novelist responds to the fragmentary, contradictionary accumulation of White Dwarf articles etc over the last 30 odd years.  

 

Personally - i've found both horror and Necromunda a ton of fun to write because, while there is action, its much more closely focused on character not warfare. And it does what i always loved about Eisenhorn and Ravenor, it shows us the forgotten, unimportant parts of the Imperium of Man and the lives of the forgettable and ignored.

 

Wrapping up, the good news is that BL seems to be investing heavily into bringing exactly that to the page.  Good news all round. 

Edited September 7, 2019 by JustinDHill

[PeteySödes]

This is a really interesting post, and as a BL writer I broadly agree.

 

When writing it's always struck me that action (guns, shooting, blood) - though fairly easy to write, it's much less interesting than drama, which is about characters and the choices they make, and the consequences that ensue.

 

Dan has always been pretty good at creating strong characters. ADB likewise, and generally the BL authors i enjoy reading do the same. Their stories are more full of drama. 

 

There's a third ingredient in the BL cake though,which is lore - which centres on how well the novelist responds to the fragmentary, contradictionary accumulation of White Dwarf articles etc over the last 30 odd years.  

 

Personally - i've found both horror and Necromunda a ton of fun to write because, while there is action, its much more closely focused on character not warfare. And it does what i always loved about Eisenhorn and Ravenor, it shows us the forgotten, unimportant parts of the Imperium of Man and the lives of the forgettable and ignored.

 

Wrapping up, the good news is that BL seems to be investing heavily into bringing exactly that to the page.  Good news all round. 

 

100% agree. Expanding on that, it's the drama that precedes battle scenes that help you invest in them when they do happen. I think the "bolter porn" of the books i didnt enjoy as much is a result of action without drama investment backing it up.

[theSpirea]

I've always loved Gav's Angels of Darkness. You said you're not a massive SM fan but the characters could easily be members of the Inquisition. In way it's similar to the Interrogation of Salvor Lermentov audio drama (superb as well).

[DarkChaplain]

This is a really interesting post, and as a BL writer I broadly agree.

 

When writing it's always struck me that action (guns, shooting, blood) - though fairly easy to write, it's much less interesting than drama, which is about characters and the choices they make, and the consequences that ensue.

 

Dan has always been pretty good at creating strong characters. ADB likewise, and generally the BL authors i enjoy reading do the same. Their stories are more full of drama. 

 

There's a third ingredient in the BL cake though,which is lore - which centres on how well the novelist responds to the fragmentary, contradictionary accumulation of White Dwarf articles etc over the last 30 odd years.  

 

Personally - i've found both horror and Necromunda a ton of fun to write because, while there is action, its much more closely focused on character not warfare. And it does what i always loved about Eisenhorn and Ravenor, it shows us the forgotten, unimportant parts of the Imperium of Man and the lives of the forgettable and ignored.

 

Wrapping up, the good news is that BL seems to be investing heavily into bringing exactly that to the page.  Good news all round. 

 

Completely agree here, Justin. Working through the Horror stories in particular has been a great deal of fun. The blockbuster action we usually see is few and far between, and sometimes the story is already over by the time bolters are raised.

 

I think Josh Reynolds' The Beast in the Trenches from The Wicked and the Damned in particular was beautiful in this regard. A Guard regiment stationed in, well, the trenches, periodically exchanging fire with an unseen enemy, and yes, some people die in that context - but the story really is barely about that aspect, and more about the politics, the tension, the psychological toll it's all taking on the characters. It's rooted right there in a clear war scenario we've seen countless times in all manner of media, but its essence is so far removed from the obvious that it felt seriously compelling and grim.

 

From the same collection, The Woman in the Walls by Phil Kelly is similar. I can't remember ever really liking a story penned by Kelly, as they've been - at best - dryer than old WD battle reports, with often seriously silly lore conflicts, but The Woman in the Walls? I enjoyed it a great deal. Another Guard story, another story not about the fight on the ground but the time between warzones, the politics, the daily routine, the petty inter-regiment conspiracies... and the spooks, of course.

 

Those stories really showcase that even if you're handed a fairly standard military regiment, you're not limited to writing repetitive war stories about pew pew bang boom, you are dead. While Black Library has always been more of a close-up on the action compared to Codex fluff, which is generally very top-down on a macro scale, BL's novels over the decades have still been focusing on the same aspects as that Codex fluff, just zoomed in a little more, but rarely to the point of experiencing the characters' mundaneties. And the books that did address those have consistently been the ones that stuck with me the longest. It doesn't have to be large scale heroics all the time; the small triumphs and tragedies matter just as much to me as a reader.

 

I guess that's also why I love the classic Legend of the Galactic Heroes novel series by Yoshiki Tanaka so much - galaxy-shaping events, big war efforts, but the novels always find the time to get you down to the micro level, showing you characters as they're having a drink, the banter, their hopes, dreams, regrets and flaws, and how they all play into the politics shaping the galactic war between an autocratic empire and a democratic alliance of planets. Those books do it pretty damn right in my eyes, as the zoom level varies depending on context - they're not above just taking a step back and narrating in hindsight, for example, and give historical accounts shaping the present - and that kind of thing has become one of my favorite things a book can do. And yeah, to the point where my own dabblings always seem to try to come back to echo it, too.

 

Things like that happen in some Black Library novels too, of course. Most often they're interstitials or small bits of chapter epigraphs. Tallarn: Executioner is one example I particularly loved, but I'd argue similar can be said for Ciaphas Cain in a way, being written with hindsight as memoirs and commented on by an Inquisitor. Generally though, I'd say that 40k could benefit a great deal from shifting narrative zoom levels more often, especially with novels that tackle bigger, more important events or characters. I don't just want to see a big Space Marine hero kicking arse for 400 pages, I want that arsekicking to have meaning, to be put into context, and know that there's more to the bloke than the act of powerfisting greater daemons or the like.

 

Either way, one novel on my radar right now is David Annandale's The House of Night and Chain, for WH Horror. A Haunted House story in 40k? Yeah, sounds unique.

 

 

 

Edit: And just to add, I'm still madly in love with John French's Warmaster audio drama, with Ramon Tikaram playing Horus Lupercal. You get context for the wider Heresy War, the awesomeness of the Primarch is never in question, but the 9 minute story just oozes character drama, charisma, tragedy and amazing quotes. It's just a monologue with some recorded messages in the middle, and the narrator, but that's really all French needed to make one of the best pieces of fiction in the entire Heresy series - and all without a single on-screen blow or shot.

Edited September 7, 2019 by DarkChaplain

[DukeLeto69]

@Justin totally agree on the point of lore.

 

I really enjoyed Chris Wraight’s The Hollow Mountain. Sure it had great characters in a ripping yarn BUT for me what lifted it up a few notches was the insight into the workings of the Imperium such as Vellum production, Chartist Captains, the Astronomicon, Halls of Judgement. These were things only hinted at before in fluff pieces. I want more of that type of stuff.

 

I think it was in one of the Ravenor books where we got a (first) view of how the Administratum works and record keeping on a planet as well as shift patterns. It was that “colour / flavour” that lifted the book for me. Abnett did something similar in Titanicus with (I think) a dock worker.

 

Necromunda is definitely a great setting to tell more slice of life stories (domestic).

 

Similarly WH Horror “allows” for grimdark without war.

 

So yes characters are THE most important element as the reader becomes invested and cares what happens in the action scenes, surrounding that with flavour/colour brings the setting to life.

 

Right now am reading Rites of Passage. Great book, well written but what I am loving most is finding out about how Navigator Houses operate and the politics etc.

 

BTW next book is Terminal Overkill.

[b1soul]

Restorer is a short story by Wraight featuring a Space Marine but with almost zero action. Rare...but he pulls it off very well

[JustinDHill]

Restorer is a short story by Wraight featuring a Space Marine but with almost zero action. Rare...but he pulls it off very well

Chris Wraight is one of the best at this, I think. As well as at world building. Listening to Carrion Throne I'm blown away by the amount of crazy and precise gothic detail he crams in. The first one of his that really struck me was the audio drama, The Sigillite.

 

My hunch is that the Horus Heresy series has propelled this change, partly because there was such a long series that needed more than big bangs and car chases to sustain itself, and also probably because the authors got tired of writing that all the time. Either way, it's opened up all kinds of areas for great fiction. 

[bluntblade]

Ironically, Wraight is also one of my favourites for battle-as-story.

[Knockagh]

My favourite books are generally non battle based. The usual suspects people have named Dans inquisitor books, vaults of Terra, Calpurnia books have all fired my 40k lust much more than any battle book. Rights of passage, which I haven’t read sounds utterly amazing and I’ve just finished Terminal Overkill which was superb.

I still like an odd battle book so long as it’s mixed in with some good plot lines which often take you far from the front line in building an atmosphere for the fight. Even then the battle itself I will usually scan read pretty quickly. Good characters will keep me hooked on a battle series, the dynamics in between the fights.

 

Horror is something I won’t be buying into. I really hope that the ‘away from the battlefield’ type books won’t disappear into the horror genre. I’ve been really pleased with BL moving away, once again, from battle story after battle story into some amazing exploration of wider 40k society. I would prefer to see this grow, I want to see Eldar society pushed, pre and post the fall, life inside the eye, more on the insidious genestealer cults, heck I would love the Arbites solving a murder mystery on an agri world.

These tales I would love to read told as good independent stories without a horror bent on them. 40k is weird enough and has its own unique feel without trying to fit an established mainstream genre into it.

[theSpirea]

I see the Horror series as BL's attempt to introduce WH to broader audience. All Horror books went straight to paperback and are in the horror section in the bookstores. Nice things about these books is that you don't need extensive knowledge of the WH lore to enjoy them, unlike majority of BL books. Couple of my friends who are not into WH read a few short stories from this series and are interested to read more, and eventually might pick a "regular" WH book. I think it was a smart move by BL.

[Knockagh]

I see the Horror series as BL's attempt to introduce WH to broader audience. All Horror books went straight to paperback and are in the horror section in the bookstores. Nice things about these books is that you don't need extensive knowledge of the WH lore to enjoy them, unlike majority of BL books. Couple of my friends who are not into WH read a few short stories from this series and are interested to read more, and eventually might pick a "regular" WH book. I think it was a smart move by BL.

This is exactly what I’m saying, it’s a horror story that fits into a book shops horror section. It’s not 40k fiction which has always been a unique mixture of military sci-fi, dystopian future, sword and sorcery and fantasy books. It’s not horror and certainly not the horrible, boom boom, thing that the modern horror genre is.

I agree it probably is BL attempting to reach a wider audience, but not through improving or promoting the culture and feel of it’s product. They are attempting to change the product to fit the public desire for horror, which has gained popularity in recent years.

It’s the unique culture and feel I love about 40k fiction.

It might be just a small section of the library at the minute but from small acorns and all that...

[theSpirea]

If anything, BL is especially bad at attracting new people. Their website is a result of a high school student's final project. It's hard for new people to figure out what to read first, what book fits where, etc. There used to the Horus Heresy recommended reading order, even that is gone. Their series section is a mess, it's not sorted in any meaningful way, again, hard for newcomers. It's going a little bit off topic now but my point is, I'm happy for any attempt by BL to get new fans as long as the main product is not going to suffer by doing so.

[Knockagh]

Haha yes indeed the website is atrocious. I rarely use it now and just go straight to the GW site.

 

Perhaps when we have ‘Warhammer Romance’ and ‘Warhammer Sports’ books we will get a new BL site devoted to all these seeker friendly books were they can be kept along with Warhammer Horror so I know where to avoid!

[Roomsky]

Perhaps when we have ‘Warhammer Romance’ and ‘Warhammer Sports’ books we will get a new BL site devoted to all these seeker friendly books were they can be kept along with Warhammer Horror so I know where to avoid!

 

You mean the Horus Heresy, and Bloodbowl?

 

I generally agree that the non-com stuff is where BL tends to shine, oddly enough. There are certainly some memorable set-pieces out there, but they are far fewer than the memorable stuff that happens off the battlefield. Any great author can make anything into an interesting story of course, ADB can have a combat segment lengthy enough that under any other author I would have given up halfway through, but it certainly seems easier to do so away from the battlefield.

 

Even when an author does attempt to do something thematic with their violence (Annandale), it's usually hard to appreciate because 1: action gets boring more quickly than conversations do and 2: skimming is easy in action sequences so important things seeded there are easy to miss.

 

I really just wish BL would take a page out of Dune's playbook and keep large-scale warfare in the periphery, and focus more on the battles with specifically personal stakes. They don't need to limit it to duels, obviously, but they could always spend the time getting us invested in the characters before thrusting them into a warzone. A blasphemous idea, I know.

[Frater Antodeniel]

I support the idea of expanding the 40K universe, and to show what is away from the battlefield.

 

The 40K universe is vast, and while the "battlefield" experience is important, i think that it is only a part of the 40K immersion/exploration, a novel/novella/short story may offer.

 

In fact, as i think of it, the question could be "How to make the battlefield element work for the background" rather than "How to make the background work for the battlefield element".

[Fedor]

 

I see the Horror series as BL's attempt to introduce WH to broader audience. All Horror books went straight to paperback and are in the horror section in the bookstores. Nice things about these books is that you don't need extensive knowledge of the WH lore to enjoy them, unlike majority of BL books. Couple of my friends who are not into WH read a few short stories from this series and are interested to read more, and eventually might pick a "regular" WH book. I think it was a smart move by BL.

This is exactly what I’m saying, it’s a horror story that fits into a book shops horror section. It’s not 40k fiction which has always been a unique mixture of military sci-fi, dystopian future, sword and sorcery and fantasy books. It’s not horror and certainly not the horrible, boom boom, thing that the modern horror genre is.

I agree it probably is BL attempting to reach a wider audience, but not through improving or promoting the culture and feel of it’s product. They are attempting to change the product to fit the public desire for horror, which has gained popularity in recent years.

It’s the unique culture and feel I love about 40k fiction.

It might be just a small section of the library at the minute but from small acorns and all that...

 

 

imo Horror has always been a part of both 40k and Warhamer Fantasy alongside those other approaches. Particularly Cosmic Horror, Lovecraft, Weird Fiction , Alien/Aliens sci-fi horror etc Slaanesh and Dark Eldar/drukhari is very Clive Barker...there's tons of horror influence throughout the lore over the years from literary and cinematic influences to fairy tales and mythology.

 

Not sure Horror is all that popular either, it's a niche genre that doesn't tend to put out big tentpole releases in cinema or as far as i understand for books either.

[Kenzaburo]

As mentioned by Justin, Chris Wraight's stuff has floored me several times by now. The Sigillite was fascinating and even when he does books centered around big battles like The Emperor's Legion, he just adds so much lore to the recipe. I mean, the insights we got into the High Lords of Terra and how they work, interact and all that - come on, that was absolute gold. I ate that up like a huge bowl of cookie dough. Just that short part where the chancellor has to visit the assassins' temple and talk to their grand master - that was great. 

 

I can't wait for more 40k grand politics books like seen there or in Carrion Throne. Abnett also is pretty great at it for the Sabbat Worlds - it feels like a very real, lived in part of the IP. Especially the one where Gaunt and company are stranded on that planet ruled by Chaos, Traitor General, I think. That was just fascinating and creepy at the same time. I felt, even the recent Dark Imperium by Haley profited especially from the many scenes of Guilliman pondering the philosophical and ideological aspects of M41 or Captain Felix' views on Primaris or Calgar's idea of how to deal with insurrection in Ultramar. 

 

Doesn't mean pure action can't be awesome either, Know no Fear was one of the most riveting reads I experienced in BL and general, with its strong pacing. 

Edited September 11, 2019 by Kenzaburo

[bluntblade]

I'm going to start a thread about good action as story telling in BL, but I'll try and stay within the brief here.

 

But I will be tenuous, and pick the Commissar's speech to some soldiers in Wrath of Iron as a great example of colouring in the world a little.

 

I also really dig the Khan and Mortarion passages in Path of Heaven. Consider that the two share so little pagetime in any sense, and yet the book makes you feel their feud so keenly. There's also a level of vulnerability that the scenes in their chambers lend to both Primarchs, which really informs the story.

[bluntblade]

I think there's a lot of opportunity, especially with Space Marines and Primarchs, to use a non-battlefield setting to elaborate a bit on their character. Particularly their quarters can be used as an extension of their character - that certainly comes up with Guilliman's palace and helps colour in his character.

[aa.logan]

I think there's a lot of opportunity, especially with Space Marines and Primarchs, to use a non-battlefield setting to elaborate a bit on their character. Particularly their quarters can be used as an extension of their character - that certainly comes up with Guilliman's palace and helps colour in his character.

I stand by my claim that the opening chapter of the Fulgrim Primarchs novel is up with the very best things published by BL; diplomacy, protocol and admin will undoubtably require more direct resources from the Imperium that the grind of warfare on galactic scale, so any glimpses of it are going to tell us so much about the nature of the Imperium itself.

[bluntblade]

This is why I'm keen to read it.

[bluntblade]

I really like the bit in Little Horus where the titular character and Abaddon debate the Mournival. The dynamic between the two and the references to past members are cool. Edited September 20, 2019 by bluntblade

[b1soul]

I liked when Bion smashed him silly and Hibou removed his face

[DarkChaplain]

....which didn't happen Away from the battlefield, I'm afraid. Now, Horus removing Erebus' face....