[Horus Heresy Pre-Review] Know No Fear

[wittdooley]

I don't ever do this sort of thing, but HOLY S#@$. I'm about 30% (according to Kindle) of the way through Know No Fear, and I already know I'll be finishing it tonight. Simply awesome so far. It almost makes me want to lower my score for Deliverance Lost because, even after 30% it is that far superior.

Seriously. If you're not reading it now, do so.

If you don't have a copy, I'll try out my Kindle loan thing. Email me. Seriously.

That good so far.

Dan Abbnett may have a stalker problem if I ever make it across the pond.

Review to follow, shortly.

That is all.

[eldargal]

I stopped reading the HH series a while ago, but I might get this one. Always been partial to the Ultramarines (back before they were the poster boy and it became cool to hate them and call them Smurfs).

[plawolf]

It is an amazing book as usual from Dan.

The only grip I have is that it doesn't feel like a space marine book in that the space marines simply die far far too easily for my liking.

I cannot remember a single instance when power armor actually managed to stop anything, or where a space marine's superior durability and healing powers counted for anything meaningful.

The build up and story are amazing as you would expect, but all the space marines feel like they might as well be guardsmen, and they seem to be wearing nothing more than Star Wars storm trooper armor. You even expect even carapace armor to be more effective.

I just feel that the book would have been far better if it worked with the durability of power armor and space marines to enhance the story instead of having them all be one-shot-killed all the time like a bunch of chumps.

The story also seem to deviate significantly from the established fluff. Although I am undecided if this is a good thing or not.

On the plus side, it explains why the Ultramarines played no further major part in the HH. But it is still a significant departure.

It is hard to discuss this more, as I am aware most people have not read the book yet so I do not want to ruin the book for anyone.

[Colonel Falkenberg]

May contain spoilers:



I liked it. Not a bad read for a HH book. One thing I did not like is that Roboute Guilliman seemed to have a very small part in it... I feel he should have had more of the limelight. Also the casualties seem really high compared to other canon sources and fluff out there. I think the writers need to have a bulliton board where they can post numbers and certain information that may go into other books... keep it a bit more consistant. Otherwise it was a good read.

[Frostclaw]

I just finished it today.

I'll say up front that I wasn't a fan of the Ultramarines before now.

Now, I kind of want to get a few squads, do them up pretty, maybe Calgar and his Honor Guard, too. Not start an army, but just because.

The book itself is very well-done. Yes, there's a huge butcher's bill. But the thing you have to bear in mind is that given the situation (massive orbital calamity, follow-on bombardment of ships, reduction of surface population from orbit), coupled with the aftermath, which, to say the least, left no possibility for marines that were merely incapacitated and put into the red sleep from being recovered, I think the kill-count was understandable.

You really do get a sense that Ultramar was that shining city on the hill that the Imperium was supposed to be. Hell, I even started to like Guilliman, even though he was a fairly cold fish.

There is a very Clancy-esque sense to this one. Abnett sets up a lot of characters in a lot of places, and everything gradually moves toward the moment of crisis, then spills forward in a myriad of threads that gradually come back to each other. I've heard people grumbling about the cast of characters being too lengthy and that they had to go back and refresh themselves at points, but I didn't have that problem. I actually found it helped the scale to realize that the XIII was literally that big that in order to tell the story, you had to be over so many character's shoulders, and that some of them weren't going to make it through.

The melee sequences had a new flavor compared to Abnett's usual stuff. It was much more cinematic and glossy. And the large scale incidents of catastrophe are definitely described to the hilt. Some people think it went a little long on those big special effects moments, but I actually thought they underscored the scale of the Battle of Calth.

I wish we'd seen more of certain characters, but some of them are bound to crop up in later books, if they do go forward with the Scouring after the Heresy wraps up. I think Guilliman got adequate screen time without chewing up all the scenery, and it was actually kind of nice to see certain stereotypical perspectives on him thought about in the ranks of his own Legion. Roboute finally became a lot more three dimensional for me.

All in all, as usual, Dan delivered.