cheywood

Only a few chapters in, but this is the good stuff. This is what we’ve been missing all year and most of last year. This is John French giving life to a part of the Heresy that was criminally mistreated, and doing so in a way that will be essential reading for Heresy fans (unless I hate the rest of the book of course).

He’s just busy and a slow writer at the best of times. There’s no internal rule. Lots of GW employees write for BL.

As someone who only casually engages with Mike Brooks’ personal presence online (and has no problem with anything I’ve seen) I quite like this so far. Like all of his books the prose is sometimes good, sometimes a little purple/breathless, but the character interplay and development is excellent.

Also reading it now. I think it’s decent enough. I’m not really seeing much in the way of comparison to ADB’s work. It features the Night Lords, but it’s not a deep character dive by any means. It’s a darker take on the same concept as Shroud of Night in my mind. More plot focused and interested in character interplay between a squad of marines more than introspective depth. The writing is good for a first novel, though I wouldn’t call it especially remarkable overall. I would agree that it seems a little nihilistic, but I don’t mind that especially given some recent works’ tendency to be rather hopeful by 40k standards.

In a functional civic system I think you’re right. But at this point we’re often debating what political violence even is. Who decides when an author has made ‘a clear statement of political violence’? When is political violence justified in defense of a democratic system against authoritarianism? Is it ever or is nonviolent resistance the only path? I just don’t think this forum is the place for discussions like that. We’re here to talk space war not resolve complex political questions. People on both sides love to label their own actions righteous and the actions of the other side as violent. Sometimes they’re correct, sometimes they’re not. Sure if an author explicitly calls for murdering political opponents we can call a spade a spade, but it’s rarely that simple. Better to stay away in almost all circumstances unless it becomes an official issue affecting the product on the page, like when Parrott got fired.

I think it’s pretty easy to keep things 40k centered. There’s a million places to talk politics, and it’s not like anyone here has much of meaning to say on the subject. It’s the same discussion every time. A warhammer author expresses liberal views (because they pretty much all have them) and a few conservative fans get upset. It’s kinda played out.

Looking forward to this. While the first 3/4ths of the year was abysmal, this fall/winter is looking quite good.

That seemed to be the consensus when it was first leaked a few months ago. It’s not a very Abnettian title is it?

Three promising new IG titles? What a beautiful thing to see. I can’t decide which I’m more excited for. Steve Lyons is usually solid and understands the DK, Andy Clark’s at his best with ground level stories, and it’ll be nice to see MacNiven move away from emotionally-deadened Space Marines like the Sharks and Exorcists. He deserves to get to grips with some characters with real personalities hopefully.

Assuming all the announced books get released it’s not going to differ that dramatically from previous years. We’re looking at 20 books right now, maybe more if BL has a surprise or two left to reveal. But its certainly felt like BL was missing in action for most of the year.

By my count there are 8 announced books left to release this year, if you include the standard edition of Abraxia. So hopefully 2 per month until the end of the year.

Sea of Souls is excellent and can be read standalone without missing much of anything.

Finished this last night. As someone who usually likes Haley this didn’t really hit the notes it needed to for me. There are some good moments and the prose is enjoyable enough, especially where Cawl and Athagey are involved, but it all felt disjointed and weightless. As a whole I think Dawn of Fire failed in large part because it wasn’t able to introduce recurring characters worth caring about. The Heresy, for all its failings, is filled with rich and memorable characters, both those preexisting in the lore and created for the novels. Dawn of Fire has resulted in a few characters I enjoyed, such as the cast of Sea of Souls, but there’s no where near the same degree of presence in most of the writing as I expected going into it. I would go on in my criticism, but I’d honestly rather forget the series and move on. I suspect that’s what BL is going to do. The Silent King feels like a relatively clean break, setting up Dark Imperium and introducing little in the way of new plot threads that would demand Dawn of Fire be read. Good riddance I have to say, hopefully whatever follows is more inventive, cohesive and overall enjoyable.

Oddly enough the only place you can find evidence of Final Deployment existing is a digital library app called overdrive, which has a sample here. It says the book’s out on the 30th so maybe it’s just delayed a week? Either way it obviously exists and is ready to be published. My assessment after reading the sample: pretty good. The prose honestly isn’t the best or the worst, there’s a lot of reused words (colors other than ‘ochre’ do in fact exist) and instances where it feels like a thesaurus was used, but there’s also good descriptive language and engaging dialogue. The characters seem lively and had decent interplay. It felt appropriately detailed and crunchy, you can tell Wilt has military experience. Looks like it’s going to be a relatively brutal novel as well. I think it’s exactly the sort of slightly exaggerated, American military fiction inspired piece the Scions deserve.

Still no sign of the Final Deployment ebook on any platform. Bummer, was looking forward to checking that out. Hopefully the paperback still comes out next week. I wonder what happened.