Dlatrex
02-06-2014, 10:31 AM
Ok, so I just finished listening to Wolf-Hunt. The first audiobook for me; since I do not have anything else to compare it to I would say that I enjoyed the voice acting and Foley work, but I was not completely blown away. Maybe if I had listen to more murder-radio I could better critique it.
That said, I would like to air a grievance which may or may not be fair, towards Mr Graham McNeill. Over the summer I finally got to read The Outcast Dead (I am through Angel Exterminatus in sequence) and one of the largest issues that many readers have is the apparent inconsistency of the timeline of the Horus Heresy, specifically dealing with the warning of Magnus the Red to the Emperor at Golden Throne. In McNeill's previous 1,000 Sons it is pretty clear that the warning occurs before the Dropsite Massacre, which lines up with the end of Fulgrim and the addition of Magnus to the Traitor forces. The Outcast Dead, seemed to throw that all askew, with Terra receiving word of the Massacre *BEFORE* Magnus shows up and causes all sorts of pyschic shenanigans.
Fast forward to Wolf hunt, at the very end of the story Malcador comes as the God From Machine and interferes with the standoff. He then explains to Nagasena, that Magnus' warning to the Emperor occurred 2+ years ago, and "...the emperors wards were able to contain it from escaping. A host of pskers from the hollow mountains attempted to dissipate that enormous reservoir of power before it broke the psychic levees. But the energy Magnus unleashed eventually overcame them... and the entire world felt the results of that."
Typically I am the first to give an author a great deal of latitude with apparent 'ret-cons' and reason that we perhaps just did not know the full story, but this particular case just seems hard to swallow. That massive a psychic undertaking ongoing for 2+ years apparently under the radar? There would have been no reason to 'hide' this fact in The Outcast Dead only to reveal it here in the Wolf Hunt, other than to cover up a previous mistake!
Admittedly McNeill does seem to like to wildly contradict the concluison a reader draws from one book, with a following book. The Possession/Entrapment of Fulgrim/Daemon in the painting springs to mind. I am torn over this: half of me is happy that the timeline is patched back together, but it seems to have been done in a kind of blunt way.
Am I being too hard on the guy? I do like his stories, but I wonder if his notes just got confused...
That said, I would like to air a grievance which may or may not be fair, towards Mr Graham McNeill. Over the summer I finally got to read The Outcast Dead (I am through Angel Exterminatus in sequence) and one of the largest issues that many readers have is the apparent inconsistency of the timeline of the Horus Heresy, specifically dealing with the warning of Magnus the Red to the Emperor at Golden Throne. In McNeill's previous 1,000 Sons it is pretty clear that the warning occurs before the Dropsite Massacre, which lines up with the end of Fulgrim and the addition of Magnus to the Traitor forces. The Outcast Dead, seemed to throw that all askew, with Terra receiving word of the Massacre *BEFORE* Magnus shows up and causes all sorts of pyschic shenanigans.
Fast forward to Wolf hunt, at the very end of the story Malcador comes as the God From Machine and interferes with the standoff. He then explains to Nagasena, that Magnus' warning to the Emperor occurred 2+ years ago, and "...the emperors wards were able to contain it from escaping. A host of pskers from the hollow mountains attempted to dissipate that enormous reservoir of power before it broke the psychic levees. But the energy Magnus unleashed eventually overcame them... and the entire world felt the results of that."
Typically I am the first to give an author a great deal of latitude with apparent 'ret-cons' and reason that we perhaps just did not know the full story, but this particular case just seems hard to swallow. That massive a psychic undertaking ongoing for 2+ years apparently under the radar? There would have been no reason to 'hide' this fact in The Outcast Dead only to reveal it here in the Wolf Hunt, other than to cover up a previous mistake!
Admittedly McNeill does seem to like to wildly contradict the concluison a reader draws from one book, with a following book. The Possession/Entrapment of Fulgrim/Daemon in the painting springs to mind. I am torn over this: half of me is happy that the timeline is patched back together, but it seems to have been done in a kind of blunt way.
Am I being too hard on the guy? I do like his stories, but I wonder if his notes just got confused...