[Horus Heresy] Battle For The Abyss [spoilers, probably]

andrewgpaul · Post by **andrewgpaul** » 2008-08-11 02:49pm

Is this out in the US yet? It's been out in the UK for a fortnight or so now.

Ben Counter, you suck. Stop it, please. This book is drivel. At least the other less-well-written HH novels added something to the setting. This ... is entirely pointless, in-universe and out. Despite appearances, this isn't about the battles between the Ultramarines and Word Bearers. It's the tale of some daft Word Bearers super-ship on its mission to destroy Macragge, being chased across the galaxy from Terra to Ultramar by a Navy squadron commandeered by a company of Ultramarines and his buddies from a couple of other Legions (Space Wolves, World Eaters and a Thousand Son turns up later on). So far, not so bad. However, the characters are flat, what little character development and conflict we get turns out to be the machinations of a totally unnecessary daemon and the Word Bearers leader is a cliched incompetent villain who delights in killing off his more competent minions. I wouldn't be surprised if he twirled his moustache whilst doing so. And then to top it all off, the plot fails, and everyone dies. Without even managing to inform the rest of the Legion what the fuck is going on. I mean, Legion and Descent of Angels made stuff up out of nothing, but at least those have some ongoing relevance to the story.

The editor deserves a kicking, too; the opening chapter is subtitled "Death of Cruithne". Pity it's a moonlet of Jupiter that gets blown up.

Bah. I'm off to read Duty Calls to get the nasty taste out of my brain.

The Grim Squeaker · Post by **The Grim Squeaker** » 2008-08-11 03:01pm

Goddamit, this is the third time that I get back from abroad with a 40K book and find a SDN review trashing it

.

Is it really that bad? I barely got into the first chapter....

andrewgpaul · Post by **andrewgpaul** » 2008-08-11 03:11pm

It's the worst one I've read yet. Partly, as I say, because it's totally meaningless in the grand scheme of things. If I were to go back and read Galaxy in Flames again, it's probable that the writing would be as bad, but at least there, the plot was important. This whole book is a sideshow, and if you don't read it, it won't matter.

Ironically, I liked the opening paragraph; the depiction of Mars was quite good, I thought.

Block · Post by **Block** » 2008-08-11 03:32pm

Both Legion and Descent of angels were meaningless and horribly written. They were clearly made to simply soak people of money, I haven't read this one, but it sounds like more of the same. The first three were the best so far, and nothing since has touched them. Maybe when the actual story gets back on track it'll get more interesting again.

andrewgpaul · Post by **andrewgpaul** » 2008-08-11 03:42pm

The last two at least added something to the mythos - Alpharius being a twin, for example, or El'Jonson's life before the Dark Angels. This didn't even have that.

Morilore · Post by **Morilore** » 2008-08-11 03:47pm

Goddammit, Dan Abnett should have been writing this whole series. Horus Rising kicked so much ass and yet every book after it that I've read so far has been utter shit, except maybe Fulgrim.

Both Legion and Descent of angels were meaningless and horribly written. They were clearly made to simply soak people of money, I haven't read this one, but it sounds like more of the same. The first three were the best so far, and nothing since has touched them. Maybe when the actual story gets back on track it'll get more interesting again.

It won't unless we get competent writers. The second book was a piece of shit, and the third only worked because of the gravitas and epicness of the situation. Similar reason Fulgrim kind of worked. Dan Abnett had the slow-moving nothing-happens first book, and made it good because he can actually depict gripping characters. Although to be fair, I haven't read Legion yet.

Also, Euphrati Keeler needed to die in a fire.

Jaevric · Post by **Jaevric** » 2008-08-11 04:01pm

I, too, found this book completely underwhelming.

I'm just hoping when they get around to the Thousand Sons they manage to make the book actually meaningful. My understanding is that the fall of the Thousand Sons can be almost entirely attributed to the Emperor being a jackass.

andrewgpaul · Post by **andrewgpaul** » 2008-08-11 04:31pm

Not quite. Magnus' psychic warning to the Emperor causes daemons to almost break through the Emperor's warpgate. Mind you, if the Emperor had told people what e was doing, perhaps Magnus would have known not to do that.

Oh, that reminds me; according to Ben Counter, the Ultramarines apparently know all about the Warp, unlike the Luna Wolves, for example.

DocHorror · Post by **DocHorror** » 2008-08-11 04:32pm

Jaevric wrote: My understanding is that the fall of the Thousand Sons can be almost entirely attributed to the Emperor being a jackass.

That is debatable.

white_rabbit · Post by **white_rabbit** » 2008-08-11 07:21pm

Boring as fuck, retarded plot, the only characters I liked were the World Eater Captain, and maybe the Thousand Son's bloke.

This didn't even cover anything that happened in the Heresy that we knew of, it was basically like conjuring the freaking Bismarck out of the Dark Mechanicus' ass, and handing off to the Word Bearers Short Bus squadron so they could go Pearl Harbour the Smurfs.

The lead character smurfs were boring fuckers, and the Space Wolf was a cliche drenched dickhead.

It makes no difference ultimately, because theres an entire fleet of Wobbie ships ready to ream the Smurfs, and the Furious Abyss can't take on a handful of smaller vessels without getting repeatedly boarded.

Its uber weaponry ? Some burrowing emp and explosive torps, plus a large lance array, and a fucking retard commander.

WOW

the next book better blow my socks off, or I'll actually regret whorishly purchasing it.

Teleros · Post by **Teleros** » 2008-08-11 08:13pm

Got to agree with the majority here - I kept reading it, hoping for some nice action between the Word Bearers & Ultramarines clashing over Calth. Did I get that? Like hell I did. I can only assume that the Word Bearers commander was being influenced by some daemon with a twisted sense of humour, because I cannot believe someone that retarded could ever have made it into a Legion.

I'm just hoping when they get around to the Thousand Sons they manage to make the book actually meaningful. My understanding is that the fall of the Thousand Sons can be almost entirely attributed to the Emperor being a jackass.

He had sound reasons for stopping research into psychics, but he was stupid not to make sure than Magnus at least knew why he shouldn't contact the Emperor in an emergency.

Icehawk · Post by **Icehawk** » 2008-08-11 08:46pm

Block wrote:Both Legion and Descent of angels were meaningless and horribly written. They were clearly made to simply soak people of money, I haven't read this one, but it sounds like more of the same. The first three were the best so far, and nothing since has touched them. Maybe when the actual story gets back on track it'll get more interesting again.

Descent of Angels was a pretty decent book but it doesnt have ANY place in the Horus Heresy series because not one part of the novel takes place at all during or even really close to the Heresy, its really just a history of the Dark Angels and in that aspect it was good and IMO decently written.

I also enjoyed reading Legion as well, I liked how they focused on a section of the Imperial forces that was actually an army that had existed prior to the Emperor unifying earth and were allowed to keep there own force structures and traditions and such. The Alpha Legion could have used more of a showing but what was revealed about them and how they ended up allying with Chaos was very well handled IMO.

I was planning on getting Battle for the Abyss next as I have collected all the books in the series so far but from what has been said here I may just very well skip it as I am getting tired of these one off books that don't really advance the actual Heresy storyline.

Falkenhayn · Post by **Falkenhayn** » 2008-08-11 09:01pm

The best thing about this book was confirming a bunch of stuff from Connor's analysis threads. Light speed weapons taken seconds to reach their targets, attack craft have ranges in the tens of thousands of km, hundreds of km constituting point blank range etc.

According to Abnett

Horus manipulated Leman Russ into attacking the 1ksons by invoking the Council of Nikea. Magnus' Psyker Wolf form tried to prevent Horus' fall. Horus recounted this to Leman, and Leman goes all batshit off to Prospero.

dragon · Post by **dragon** » 2008-08-12 03:07am

Ben Counter, you suck.

Hey I liked his Hammer of Daemons, granted my tastes in reading piticular.

andrewgpaul · Post by **andrewgpaul** » 2008-08-12 06:21pm

As an aside, there's a thread on Warseer wanking over this book. It's sad, really.

Flakin · Post by **Flakin** » 2008-08-13 12:31pm

Just got finished with it last night. It strikes me in a similar vein as Descent of Angels - frankly, that it was a short story or manuscript already written, that someone at the BL picked up and said "Hey, we can change a couple of things around here and make it a HH book!"

I really hope things start picking up again soon, because apart from Fulgrim, it's been one turd after another.

Post by **Kuja** » 2008-08-14 05:18pm

I first picked up Battle for the Abyss a few weeks ago, but due to intervening circumstances only recently got around to reading it. Finishing the book took me three days, reading about one-third of it with every chunk. I'd been looking forward to the book a long time, mostly due to the dearth of 40K literature appearing on the shelves.

However, eagerness turned to a bit of unease when I opened the book that found it to be lacking in the quote page that has been the hallmark of the Horus Heresy novels. I've always found these little openings to be endearing and a good way to set the mind for the story to follow. With that missing, it felt like the book had lost a bit of personality before I'd even begun.

My uneasy feeling got worse as I looked through the dramatis personae. Earlier books had featured the bold, and powerful names of the primarchs emblazoned across their character lists - HORUS, FULGRIM, ROGAL DORN, ALPHARIUS. But this book held no such names. Likewise, it lacked any names I recognized - there was no Abaddon here, no Fabius or Cypher, no Nathaniel Garro to rouse my interest. The names I had expected to see - names like Guilliman and Lorgar and Kor Phaeron - were absent.

I hadn't even read the first page of the story and already I was beginning to second-guess buying the book. The seed had been planted in my mind: was this even a real Heresy tale? It certainly didn't feel like one.

The story opened on Mars, describing the alliance between the Mechanicum and Horus' rebellion. It quickly moves to the giants of the solar system, to a massive loading dock containing a behemoth of a battleship named the Furious Abyss - somehow contrsucted in total secrecy. A massive force of Word Bearers, having somehow snuck into the Terra system undedected, board the ship and leave on their mission.

With this strange and somewhat off-putting introduction over, the focus shifts to the future heros of the book: Ultramarines Cestus and Antiges. After a brief bit of characterization in which we are introduced to the Space Wolf Brynngar, events naturally collide and the good guys pile off to chase the Furious Abyss towards Macragge.

The book progresses through a series of sorties fought between the loyalist forces and the Abyss. Naturally, the Abyss hammers the good guys time and again through sheer dint of power and a few helpings of Deus Ex Machina. The first half of the book is painfully transparant and boring - the Ultramarines are totally flat characters and uninteresting, as are the stereotypical backstabbing Word Bearers. For as much as they preach brotherhood, these men are constantly two seconds from tearing each other apart.

However, around the halfway point, in the midst of a reckless boarding action, I felt things beginning to change. Two characters that had previously sat in the background came to the fore, demonstrating their own determination and drive that quickly put them front and center. One was brother-captain Skraal of the World Eaters Legion. The other, Mhotep, a librarian and captain of the Thousand Sons.

Before this, we had recieved little insight into the men of these two legions. Naturally, we have seen much of them after their respective betrayals, but two see a pair of loyalists is fascinating. As a result, Skraal and Mhotep quickly supplant the boring Ultramarines and the absurdly stereotypical Wolf Brynngar as the heroes of the book. These two men singly-handedly kept the book afloat where otherwise it would have drowned in the abyss of its namesake.

As the final act comes to the fore, we are given a few insights into the working of the Word Bearers, including appearances by Kor Phaeron himself and the Chapter Masters of the legion. Though Kor Phaeron himself comes across as flat and wooden, several of these captains showed interesting promise as future characters. Unfortunately, their potential did not pan out in this book.

The final scenes of Battle for the Abyss take place in a wild boarding action over the skies of Macragge as main characters begin dropping like flies. A vicious psychic attack gives us a bit of insight into the life and superstitions of a Macragge supplicant before the plot drives full-force into the final skirmish. Mhotep sacrifices himself to destroy the Word Bearers' pet daemon. Skraal dies having reaped a greater tally of named enemies than anyone else in the book. Brynngar is killed setting off explosives in the reactor of the enemy ship. And in the final pages of the book, Cestus and Word Bearer captain Zadkiel kill each other. The book closes with a reading from the Epistles of Lorgar extolling the virtues of the revolution against the Emperor.

////////////////////////////

Battle for the Abyss is not at all what was expected. It is not a tale of Guilliman or Lorgar. It is not the story of the ferocious battle that erupted on Calth when the Ultramarines and Word Bearers locked horns. Rather, it is the story of the Furious Abyss and the men that spent their lives to stop it.

The book has numerous problems. The main characters are flat, stereotypical, and uninteresting. Captain Cestus might as well be named Uriel Ventris for all the character he shows. Brynngar is absolutely no different from every Wolf we've seen in the Ragnar series of books. Likewise, Zadkiel and his coterie of battle-brothers might as well be any Word Bearer we've ever seen in fluff. There is absolutely nothing interesting about any of them.

For the first half of the book, there is virtually no tension. We know that the Furious Abyss is going to shake off everything the good guys throw at it - it's broadcasted from the beginning. Likewise there is little interest in the ship itself. We are told its mission is to annihilate Macragge - since we know Macragge still exists in the 41st millenium, this tells us little more than that we can be absolutely certain its mission will fail.

In the end, Battle for the Abyss is little more than a side-story; a glimpse at an untold tale from the days of the Heresy. I hesitate to condemn it as a bad book, but it is far from stellar. All told, it's average. Mediocre. Run of the mill. If the outcome had not been more or less pre-determined, I think it would have had a great deal more tension to it, as the stakes would have been far higher.

As I said earlier, what saves this book are the two second-string heroes; Skraal and Mhotep. Though they are stereotypical members of their legions - a reckless bloodletter and a mysterious psychic - they pull off their roles with such flair and panache that it's hard not to like them.

At the end of the day, I'll give Battle for the Abyss a fair rating. It's not great. It won't blow you away. But by the same token, I don't think it's the horrific, soul-sucking horror it could be. Enjoy it for what it is: an action-packed fight to the finish.

...

Mechanicum better kick all manner of ass though, that's for sure.

---------------------

Favorite quote: "Talk is cheap, fanatic!" - Cestus to Zadkiel

DocHorror · Post by **DocHorror** » 2008-08-14 05:47pm

Hmm, haven't read it yet, but can see the problem you have. I've no issue with 'untold tales of the heresy - as long as they don't degenerate into fanwank' - but considering this series is supposed to be only 12 novels I would have thought they'd put alot more effort into quality control, and only cover the main aspects of the HH.

Fingolfin_Noldor · Post by **Fingolfin_Noldor** » 2008-08-15 02:29am

What does puzzle me is the ship. First, it was made in secrecy. Second, what I don't get is this: If it was made in secrecy, yet a ship like this takes ages to build, what were the Ad Mech planning to do when they were done with the ship, even if they weren't allied with Horus? What doesn't seem to make sense is the part that if the traitors requested for a super ship, then out pops out of nowhere one suited for the job. I mean, huh?

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2008-08-15 04:51am

Morilore wrote:Also, Euphrati Keeler needed to die in a fire.

She should just keeler over and die.

Block · Post by **Block** » 2008-08-15 05:19am

His Divine Shadow wrote:
Morilore wrote:Also, Euphrati Keeler needed to die in a fire.
She should just keeler over and die.

You can't kill the first living Saint.

Post by **Kuja** » 2008-08-15 02:11pm

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:What does puzzle me is the ship. First, it was made in secrecy. Second, what I don't get is this: If it was made in secrecy, yet a ship like this takes ages to build, what were the Ad Mech planning to do when they were done with the ship, even if they weren't allied with Horus? What doesn't seem to make sense is the part that if the traitors requested for a super ship, then out pops out of nowhere one suited for the job. I mean, huh?

My theory about the Furious Abyss is that it was going to be some kind of gift to the empire as an uber-flagship and was being constructed in secrecy so that the Mechanicum could pop out one day and go "HEY GUYS CHECK THIS OUT!" and hand this swanky new ship-o-doom over to Horus or the Emperor.

Then the Mechanicum split and since we know some of the guys really high up on Mars were batting for Horus' team, they must have hijacked the project for the revolution. He handed it off to the Word Bearers for their super-important "Project: Kill all the Ultramarines" and you know the rest.

Bedlam · Post by **Bedlam** » 2008-08-15 02:18pm

I wonder if a faction of the Mechanicus were getting ready to backstab the Emperor and take over even before the Heresy kicked off.

They have a planet killer in position in the Solar System when most of the Imperial forces were spread around the edge of the galaxy. They could just BDZ earth and proclaim themselves the rulers of Humanity.

Might be one of the reasons the Emperor recalled the Imperial fists to fortify earth.

When Horus started making a deal with them the faction just decided backing him was a better bet and handed over the keys to the family tank.

New trust the Coggies

Post by **NecronLord** » 2008-08-15 02:34pm

Block wrote:You can't kill the first living Saint.

She has to become a dead saint somehow.

Also, I got the impression the Furious Abyss was constructed from the hull on up specifically for the Word Bearers, and that it had been in the works for quite some time.

andrewgpaul · Post by **andrewgpaul** » 2008-08-15 02:40pm

Note on the Black Library website; after Mechanicum, the next book will be Tales of Heresy, a short story anthology (Due April 09).

Also, has anyone got The Dark King and The Lightning Tower audiobook? Totally missed this the first time round. Any good?