grailkeeper

Some we know exactly how they disappeared, others we dont. One up side of the beast arises is that we know Vulkan was one of the last to go, and it was long after the scouring. Hopefully we either have very little Vulkan, or if we must have Salamanders, a different author will be given a chance to write them.

The dream is that they've been preparing this for years and have a slew of novels by great authors stored up and ready to go.

If you had told young me, right after reading Horus Rising, that the series would continue to pump out books when I was almost 40 I would not have beleived.

Gulliman has to have one foot on a higher step to be able to make eye contact with Dorn. Once again Ultracels be seething over Fistchads.

Interesting that Raldoran is there with the primarchs. He's the most senior blood Angel now that Sanguinius is dead. The Blood Angels should be dealing with a lot in book one in a way other chapters aren't. Will we see Sanguinius being recovered and his blood being used to make flawed gene seed? Honestly the human part interest me most. Seeing politics of the Imperium as we know it being created is a lot more interesting to me than Marine fight no 275.

Vulkan's in this.

I'm pretty sure this was done a long time ago in Lord of Night by Si Spurrier, with ADB following up on scenes from that book in the Night Lords Trilogy. It is mentioned in old Space Marine Codexs. I havent read the black books so cant say for sure, but the lack of material on it in the various wikis makes me think not.

Interesting that Gulliman is not wearing the gauntlets of Ultramar. One of the few things we knew about the heresy before it started was he recovered them from a chaos champion at the Gamalia Reclusiam Massacre. during the heresy We never found out what that was in the heresy books. Its an event that could still happen during the scouring. I did find a post here from 2008 which says it happened after the heresy, which means its pretty fitting he not have them yet. It'd be cool if theres a chaos character who has a pair of power fists with bolters attached. Knowing what is going to ultimately happen to someone when we first meet them is sometimes great fun. It'd be an interesting twist if it turns out Gamalia is actually a Word Bearers world. The assumption has always been that chaos were the ones carrying out the massacre. What if they weren't?

Couple of preliminary thoughts. I'm glad that its a new series you dont need a priori knowledge of the heresy to enjoy. There are some interesting unfinished stories out there, but there's a lot more uninteresting bloat. If you dont beleive me check out the era of ruin anthology where some of the stories seem to be "Here's how my OC finishes his story" in a way that doesnt affect the main story in any significant way. I think a clean slate is probably better than requiring you to know what happened in 60+ other books and novellas. That said, if its all new characters its going to have to involve a lot of flash backs if its going to show a relationship between a traitor and a loyalist character. A betrayal is a pretty interesting story after all. The heresy always had a fixed end point. The scouring doesnt. This could result in it going on forever. I'd rather a nice tight series with a plotted out beginning middle and end. It could turn into a soap opera with space marines, the way the heresy did.

They refuse to be drawn on how many books there'll be. I'm old enough to remember when there were meant to be a single digit number of heresy books...

The deathwatch marine with the hammer reminds me of Wulf Sternhammer.

Shrike might be the first character whose gotten worse with every new model.

Described as a multi book, multi author megaseries. Its going to last years. 3 themes= what happens to marines, what happens to chaos marines (gods with draw some of their power), what happens to humanity. The scouring can be treated as a series in its own right, so you dont have to read the heresy books.

Robert Rath could write a novel about them updating the phonebooks after the heresy and I'd be first in line to buy it.

Having finished this, its very mush skippable. I bought it for the ADB story cos I love ADB. Most of the stories are "fine" at best, but some are dull. I could have bought two or three pints for the price of this book, and my enjoyment of them would probably have lasted longer.