DukeLeto69

More than that, Marc was “one of us”, an active fan on the forums before getting a BL gig. In particular he was an alumni from the good old days of thebolthole site.

Attracting new customers and concurrently retaining existing customers are not mutually exclusive!

It never ceases to amaze me how many companies treat existing loyal customers with (pretty much) contempt, while simultaneously always chasing after new customers. It’s so much easier (and cheaper) to retain a loyal customer than win a new customer!

And THEN they gave the third book to Ben Counter

Nice theories but I am sticking to the one I have been saying since Pariah came out. The Yellow King is actually The God Emperor Himself! He is a ruler who wears gold AND this persona of TGE is the antithesis of The Dark King that He nearly became. It *could* be the shard of himself that he cast off? In fact TYK by another name may now be an updated Star Child concept! The identity of TYK in Penitent is, IMO, a bait and switch by Abnett. The BIG REVEAL is that the Emperor is alive and well and operating in the psychic realm / Warp and still very much steering things albeit esoterically. Why? Because Abnett is harking back to the 1st edition lore and the books by Ian Watson. Because the Star Child idea has been revived (and Haley has been peppering hints in his Dark Imperium trilogy and entries in the Dawn of Fire series).

Sorry to be THAT GUY but Abnett’s third Bequin novel is called Pandaemonium not Pandemonium. Subtle but different and more unique to the W40k setting, ie they call them Daemons and it means the city of daemons.

Have to say this… READ EVERYTHING BY PETER FEHERVARI…EVERYTHING! If you want mature sophisticated fiction set in the 40k universe.

After all these years how do you guys actually remember???? I have more of a “feeling” about the HH series and that tells me that several of those earlier books were indeed excellent AND more distinctly 30k than proto 40k. Before the bloat kicked in. Before the ever increasing author stable diluted the focus and discipline to keep HH feeling like its own thing. And yep I feel like Mechanicum was one of the good ones!

Lion “Don’t you ever wonder what happened to our two lost brothers!” Gulliman “Have you forgotten the first rule of Primarch Club!?”

So…with these newly branded Horus Heresy novels (branded to link with the game) do we think GW/BL are now trying to have the HH as a setting where any story can be told at any time rather than trying to be a sequential series (ie do what they should have done from day one)?

Black Library DEFINITELY hold novels back (or are told to). One example being TBA. Abnett wrote the first novel years before the series actually started to appear. Then they fluffed it with condensed time for other authors to hit the once per month schedule meaning at least two books had similar plots! I also know from a very good source that pretty much every novel is finished and on the stocks a good 9-12 months before we see it. But yeah…The Scouring seems odd!

Agreed. Imagine if that had been ADB! We’d have got at least four books by now!!! Joking aside, the HH series should have had a spine, a critical path if you like, taking the story from Ullanor to the Horus/Emp showdown all written by one author (ahem Abnett ahem). Perhaps 12 novels. And then other authors could pick up other events with standalone books, trilogies etc. The HH then becomes a setting that can expand as much as BL and fans want, but the core story is told coherently.

We probably need Horus Rising the Director’s Cut or like LotR the Extended Edition ha ha. For symmetry (I like symmetry and elliptical narratives etc) Abnett should go back and rewrite Horus Rising as three big door stopper books to match tEatD… only kidding, I think that would kill a few of us! Edit: Although actually they COULD do another (8 books we promise) mini series like The Siege of Terra but at the start called The Great Crusade that ends with Ullanor. Then the HH becomes Act 2 sandwiched in the middle hmmmmm!

I know you know but just to add to this discussion… Originally the HH series was conceived as maybe 9 to 12 books. The opening trilogy was Act 1. I think in the context of a series on that scale Horus Rising works very well. It also set a different tone to W40k. It is a shame other writers could no maintain that different style as soon the HH books were just like 40k books. Clearly once the series bloated into the behemoth it became, a 3 novel opening Act was inadequate. Had the series been planned as a 60+ book series from day one, then that opening salvo would inevitably looked different and taken longer. Act 1 would arguably have panned out over maybe 10-15 books. You only need to look at how Isstvan was skirted over to see how the approach changed as the series went on. So I think you need to judge something by the context of the time and plans at that time. BL had the opportunity to address the imbalance with The Primarch series as Act 1 and The Siege of Terra series as Act 3. But they fluffed The Primarch series which SHOULD have been purely focused on the discovery of the primarchs and actions during The Great Crusade to set up and explain/foreshadow whether they would be loyalists or traitors. If they had done that then Horus Rising becomes “merely” the first book in Act 2 (sort of).

I missed out on getting the HB (first time ever with an Abnett book - I actually forgot which shows my diminishing interest in W40k) so feeling a bit salty. Hoping they come out in paperback as don’t do ebooks.