Could we talk about ADB?

Could we talk about ADB?

I know he used to be Veeky Forumss favorite 40k writer, but this book just feels insubstantial to me, like his editor allowed him to write a series of vignettes loaded up with his favorite cliches and tropes on a timeline leading to the discovery of Abbadon and then they called it a novel. It's like a picture frame without a painting in the middle.

Anyone else now an ADB skeptic?

He'd be average-tier in any other community but is top-tier for 40k because most others are so terrible

Has ADB ever really been good? I dropped the HH series thanks to his work in it. I propose that James Swallow replace him in the holy trinity of BL writers.

Wasnt Firewarrior something like a doom novel

>Khorne himself somehow gets a tau firewarrior under his influecne
>I MUST KILL THE SPACE MARINES

Eh, I enjoyed the book more when I realized it was basically a Black Crusade campaign, from the party being made of a face, a mage and a warrior, down to the moment when Khayon rolls a crit multiple times and psionically tows a starship before tossing it at a city.

You know whats a book I really hated

"Death World"

I dont understand why you would call Catachan the deadliest deathworld that produces the best jungle fighters in the planet only to have half a squad die to some random ass death world

He's too biased. Almost all of his books are pretty much these:

> Cool, edgy totally-not-corrupted-Chaos-fanatic protagonist who has a daddy issue.
> Have valid reason to oppose the Imperium and it's all the Emperor's fault.
> Chaos will win and it's inevitable
> Emperor's a shit fucking bloodthirsty tyrant bitch whore etc etc

yes Fire warrior was an amazing book

Water Caste tried to dress up like Imperial but they clearly have no ideal what is what so they just wore a mess of gear like gasmask with dress uniform and stuff

First Heretic was good

I really haven't read too much of his stuff really

Also the Emperor's Gift was terrible it was just Space Yiff wank

I absolutely loved that moment towards the end. Also, Khayon's sister and DE pet were enjoyable.

First Heretic was where ADB committed to 'winning the argument.' Making his side look good while making the other side look bad. I suppose the technical writing was good.

Dead Men Walking was stellar desu

Abnet is my favorite.

The Emperor's Gift is about Gray Knights dumbass

I liked that Book

"Xeno hunters"

but it was a bunch of different authors.


One story had Cursed 21st in a kill team though

ADB is a fucking god amongst men.

I, for one, welcome our ADB overlords.

Well I be fair I read Know No Fear first so I knew the Word Bearers were a bunch of assholes

Its kinda why I like Word Bearers really
same with iron warroirs

That's actually most of the squad. And being 40k, it was inevitable that they would drop into some sentient world that ups the difficulty with each cycle.

One meh book isn't enough to dethrone him. I'm eager for when he finally finishes Master of Mankind. That's the book that will make or break him. I'm sure I'll love it or hate it.

In First Heretic on Istvaan V the Iron Warriors were shooting down loyalist dropships and they were crashing into Word Bearer lines. When the Bearers voxxed the Iron Warriors telling them to stop firing the Iron Warriors respond "we're all bleeding today, have faith Word Bearer" the IW then laugh, hang up on the Word Bearers and keep shooting down dropships

Fuckin "Lowrun" Lorenzo


I wish Catachans got more books

>tfw no Ciaphas Cain book in forever


I need Cain adventures and dicking eldar

His given name was "Long Run", but I'm with you. The Catachans need more books.

That said, I really like "One Hate", his short story about the Crimson Fists. I felt it was a really punchy short story, full of what makes a Space Marine a Space Marine.

Three of those are literally in every single 40k core rules since second edition.

I mean, as a DA fan, he's written the only not-completely-shit story for us.
But I suppose if you put anyone up against Thorpe/Kyme-tier they look like wordsmiths of the highest caliber.

>DA fan
Why?

What's wrong with the Bastion Wars series? I liked them fairly well.

>It's like a picture frame without a painting in the middle

You just don't understand TRUE ART.

I think he got captured by some DEldar once. I don't think we've seen it on-screen though.

Ciaphas Cain was the shit.

>Smooth talks into an Inquisitor's pants
>Shouts down a bunch of drunk russian assholes having a food fight
>Fights Necrons and Nids even though he afraids of everything

All it was lacking was Eldar bitches.

Plus Eldar would kill Jurgen since they dont like Tana and sandwiches

I wonder if they'll be too busy freaking out over the blank.

Which Hive was Cain from anyway?

Because unlike Curze, the lion actually dealt with the problem on his homeworld.

I mean, also because I'm probably a masochist who likes space arthurian knights in space, but that's beside the point.

Not sure. AFAIK even Vail doesn't really know. Cain has lied about it since he hit the Schola.

Hey! Konrad-senpai totally dealt with the problem on his homeworld! True, his solution was to blow it all up, but that technically counts, right?

it's kept a mystery. people have to have some secrets.

could have done better. Like, a lot better.

That said, horrible agonizing death and disproportionate retribution are viscerally satisfying.

Well, there is that old saying about explosives and problems.

I'll give him half points for eliminating the problem, but the damage had already been done.

I mean, a similar thing happens later for Lion, so I guess in the end they end up being pretty equal.

Lets let bygones be bygones then?

>horrible agonizing death and disproportionate retribution are viscerally satisfying.
Why do you think we like Night Lords?

speaking of which, does anyone have a pdf of their omnibus or something?

your forgetting

>Being best bros with a Vallhallan
>Fucking a Tech priestess
>Being considered a saint
>went into a fucking space hulk came out unharmed

why no third cain omnibus? why?

I wonder if Cain is really buried with full honors. Given how belief works in 40k, maybe there's a zombie Cain walking around somewhere.

Sandy is a lazy guy.

You even saw that in the books already

I wonder how much rambling Cain's notes had pre-Amberley edit.

weren't they all edited by Amberley?

I mean pre-edit. I remember some parts implied Cain slept with Amberley before Amberley cut those parts off. Given Cain's appreciation for the female form, I can only imagine Cain writing a fapfic.

>Given how belief works in
Is this a meme? I've seen it incorrectly applied to dozens of series.

>dis humie finks beliefz don' work like dat

Am I the only one that actually liked Descent of Angels?

Veeky Forums is a fickle mistress, and far too prone to turning on authors

I thought it was mediocre. The best book for the faction so far(not saying much).

It was fun hearing about pre-discovery Caliban and some of the early interactions with the Lion were cool, but it quickly became a bit hamfisted with the themes(Look at my special powers, kinda stupid emperor-assassination plot, and the Lion getting progressively more stupid as the story goes on). It just feels like so many words without any clear meaning towards the end.

It's not as bad as the later books, but it still takes a dive from an ok story about a pre-discovery world that has a decent focus to a lukewarm one with a clusterfuck of ideas and meaningless foreshadowing in the second half. 5/10.

Are his Night Lord novel actually good?

What about Lord of the Night?

I dig the paint scheme and motifs but the lore always bugged me. I don't wanna prey on easy foes and wear shitty skins all over my armor like every other chaosfag.

I wish they would stop giving James Swallow all of the Blood Angels material. He's not completely awful but he's not great either. Stunningly mediocre in his execution of ideas.

Anywhere know where I can download HH stuff? Looking for the Long Night eshort in particular. I need more Sevatar in my life.

>>Khorne himself somehow gets a tau firewarrior under his influecne


You are a cunt that deserves to get shot in the dick. Khorne had nothing to do with Kais. People like you just pick up any random wrong thing that has been said and parrot it to infinity instead of reading the books and getting the right information.

>yes Fire warrior was an amazing book

Don't pretend you read it. If you did, then you would have corrected the other guy on his bullshit.

This.

Rafen is a blatant fucking self-insert and it's horrible. He's so mediocre with giving character's personalities, he made the Blood Angel's into absolute jobbers and turned Dante into an absolute push-over with a crush on Gabriel Seth.

Andy Smilie did a better job of characterizing a BA successor (Flesh Tearers) than Swallow could ever hope to do, and even then it's really hit or miss.

Gav Thorpe has fucking ruined Dark Angels for me, and the fact he's writing for that Deathwing game is worrying.

What didn't people like about The Macharian Crusade? Seeing how Macharius always had an Alexander vibe in the lore, I liked the set up of a guardsman narrator on the periphery of Macharius' total vision. The second book has a pretty good portrayal of Dark Eldar, casually flaying guardsmen in the middle of combat.

Is there anything wrong with any of what you said? Giving Chaos characters that aren't one dimensional psychos is a good thing imo

Also, that bit in Talon of Horus where they talk to an Imperial Daemon was cool af

Anyone know what is happening to all the big name Bl authors most haven;t published any new materials in years I Know abnett has;t written anything new in ages and sandy mitchel author comissar cain has;t written anything lately either.

Except he explicitly did. Kais in the end goes insane and screams BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD.

What the fuck is wrong with Bastion Wars? The series was awesome, fuck everybody who bitches about plagiarism.

Again, you confirmed that you didn't read the novel.

That happened at the LAST PAGES OF THE BOOK, during the last fight. When the Tzeentchian Daemon Lord, who was manipulating Kais the whole time, pleaded with the Khornate shrine for help against Kais and his Utramarine ally.

Khorne responded by turning the Tzeenchian daemonlord into a massive Khornate daemon. The Khornate daemon used his rage aura to infect Kais and to draw him out of cover so that he can torture and kill him.

The daemon's influence over Kais lasted for 2 minutes before Kais regained his focus and defeated the daemon by blowing up the last shrine.

You're a worthless reader or a brainless parrot.

I'm looking at my copy right now

This list is utter dogshit.

>Ciaphas Cain
Meme-tier dogshit books, only the first three were alright, everything after the first three is completely repetitive to the point of being redundant. There's no point in even bothering to read past the third book because "Sandy" is the definition of a hack.

>Storm of Iron
McNeil is also a complete hack incapable of writing any good characters like Rob Sanders or Dan Abnett. Storm of Iron is his best work, but it's only acceptable at best. All of McNeil's work is painfully two dimensional and he is very much the definition of "BL Filler".

>Andy Chambers Dark Eldar
Why the fuck is this not top-tier? Andy's Dark Eldar is among the best 40k books ever written as characters are actually something greater than a cardboard cutout.

>Soul Drinkers
Seriously? The fucking Soul Drinkers, the most retarded characters in any 40k book, so mentally challenged it's astonishing they weren't aborted in their first generation is remotely close to the word 'good'? The Soul Drinkers is one of the WORST 40k book series simply because the characters are written like utter fucking stooges and there's no way the Soul Drinkers would have gone that far without getting their asses purged. Spider leg mutation a gift from the Emperor my ass.

>Salamanders by Nick Kyme
Either it's the best book written for the Super Saiyan Space Marine, or the absolute worst for the Super Saiyan Space Marine

>Space Marine Battle Novels
>Heresy
Disregarding the fact that lumping dozens of books written by a shitload of authors into a single tier is fucking stupid, the Space Marine Battles Series includes some of the BEST 40k books yet written (Legion of the Damned, Rynn's World).

>The Unforgiven
Dude putting that book on the same tier as CS Goto novels is insulting to CS Goto.

That other user is a brainless parrot. You appear to be worthless reader. Scroll to this excerpt.

>‘I sensed you this morning, when you set down on this world. I’ve had millennia to prepare, little tau. Millennia of oozing myself into the minds of mortals. I’ve whispered and hissed into more brains than I can remember, through the years. I tasted your species this morning, like a fine wine, and found it wanting…’

>‘So disappointing, I thought. An incorruptible race. No psychic powers. No dark desires or secret horrors… Hmm… On that count, at least, I was wrong. You merely keep them well hidden…

>‘But you… alone among thousands. I could taste you! Such bitterness! Such shame!

>‘You’re strong, there’s no doubt about it. You’re skilled at your craft. You cut a bloody swathe to me like a knife through the warp, but not because you could…

>‘Because I made you want to…

>‘And now you seriously think you can cast off my gift and kill me? Little tau, you have a lot to learn.’

-From "Fire Warrior"

A Tzeentchian Daemon, who happens to be the BBEG, was the guy who was pushing Kais to continue. He didn't do that by empowering him with daemonic power or anything. He simply made him not give up and die by mentally manipulating him through his doubts and daddy issues.

No Khorne was involved until the very end of the novel where the same daemon drew upon the Khornate shrine for aid to kill Kais. Now transformed into a Khornate daemon, the BBEG used his Khornate aura to twist Kais's mind and bring him into the open. Like i said, this lasted a short time before Kais purified his mind and blew up the Khornate shrine.

He gave us one of the few non shitty Dark Angel stories, so he's bro tier for that alone. Gav Thorpe, please go die in a fucking fire.

Actually he did a good job portraying the Dark Angels as noble. ADB's Lion is practically Bretonnian in nature, apologizing for running Curze through with his sword.

Don't you have a scheduled anal-rape-by-the-lion to attend, delivered by your deity ADB?

>Tarkh’ax scrabbled for vengeance. Its formidable manifestation was denied it. Each in turn, its dark gods had turned their unkind faces away, disappointed in its performance.

>Only one remained, now. One last chance at revenge. One last chance to crush the fleshy maggots that had brought it so low.

>“Mighty Khorne!” the daemonlord raged into the warp, sensing the bloodlust rising in its consciousness, feeling the fleshshape coalescing around it. “Deliver me into form!”

>And Khorne delivered.

The Tzeentchian Daemon Lord asking Khorne for help.

Has James Swallow ever posted here or mentioned Veeky Forums, though?

(Its avian features twisted apart, horned and leering, eyes and beak and nostrils blazing with inner fire. It rolled its head loosely, spine-pillared shoulder-guards shrugging.)

>(It was an armoured slaughterer, wings shedding the last of their coloured feathers to reveal the black-leather folds of batflesh beneath. It curled its vast knuckles, blood patina’d chainmail wrapped and stapled to its very flesh, around an axe that dribbled red fluids, threw back its head, and roared.)

>(It bled. It bled a sticky crimson carpet from every joint in its armour, from every chain mail link and every jagged connection of chains and spines and ancient skulls. It was a blood monster. A gore-ogre. A butcher-giant.)

>(When it moved, striding forth and raising up that sickly slick blade, as big as Kais himself, the red mist of heat and vapour rising off its gory surfaces followed it like a shroud. A blood veil.)

The Daemon Lord who was a Lord of Change was transformed into a Bloodthirster and he gained a Khorne Rage Aura.

>The butcher daemon cocked its head at the tiny thing before it, stretched out a hand, and let its bloody aura, its dark mantle of shadow and gore, slip out of its fingers and into Kais’s mind. The Mont’au devil came slinking out of its mental shadows. Kais couldn’t resist it now. His consciousness rolled over, his rationality dissolved away into the bloody mire trickling through it, and he surrendered himself utterly, without regret or hope of salvation, to the rage.

>His lips had parted before he even knew what he was saying. The air was rising in his lungs. His tongue formed the words without his bidding.

>And all he could see in his mind was his father, staring down from his moral highground, spewing his expectations and judgement upon the youth before him.

>Shas’la T’au Kais threw back his head, choked on bitterness, opened his mouth, and screamed: “BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!”

The only created Bloodthirster sent out its aura to infect Kais's mind. Kais was too mentally exhausted to resist the auras influence.

The newly created*

>''The daemonlord sensed something was wrong. The bloodlust it had gifted to the tau creature was waning. It evaporated like water, unclouding the tiny morsel’s mind and leaving it cold and sharp: a dagger of focus that no amount of insidious corruption could ever penetrate''

>''It didn’t matter. A pure tau died just as easily as a tainted one''

-Fire Warrior

And two minutes later, Kais broke free from the daemons aura of rage and became pure. He went on to blow up the Khorne shrine which weakened the daemon enough for the Crisis team to finish it off.

Now can you guys drop the bullshit about Kais being controlled by Khorne or that Khorne took an interest in Kais?

Kais got out of this alive thanks to a lot of dumb luck, some skill, and a Tzeentchian daemon who acted as a cheerleader. That's it.

The night lords are the closest thing to reasonable marines in 30k, and only intelligent chaosfags left in the 41st millenium. They don't fight unless they know they can win, they remove communications, power and command asap with decapitation strikes, then terrify the populace into compliance. They prefer not to do astartes-on-astartes stand-up fights, and if forced to they prefer to have numerical advantages. You can have completely insane psychos who flay babies to get new armour coverings, or you can have your betrayed sons who raid to survive. And by 40k they havnt changed overmuch, since they scattered throughout the entire northern quadrant of the galaxy in the Heresy and therefore many didnt squat in the Eye and mutate horrifically

Except they aren't at all. When it comes to power the Night Lords are in fact one if, if not the single weakest legion of them all. They are completely unable to fight other Astartes, and when they do they tend to get slaughtered (like when the First Legion raped them hard, or the Ultramarines completely shattered them). Reasonable marines are Ultramarines, Dark Angels, Raven Guard, and the Alpha Legion. The Night Lords are far from it because their entire strategy depends on the opponent being weaker than they are, meaning they fold completely when fighting peer or superior enemies. Which is fucking important when they're one of the weakest forces after the Horus Heresy.

Likewise the entire point of the Night Lords trilogy by ADB was to show the consuming hypocrisy of the Night Lords, and how Talos still believed himself on some level to be a noble being on a quest that meant something instead of a mindless rampaging murderer with no purpose or cause to fight for. Competent Chaos Space Marines remain the Alpha Legion (who are so fucking good they wiped out an entire Ultramarine's successor Chapter, a thousand marines, without losing a single man), Iron Warriors (to a degree, attrition warfare is a losing game for Astartes but Iron Warriors supplement their forces with hordes of cloned/bred slave fodder), Fallen Dark Angels (who at times single handily corrupt entire planets), and some elements of the Black Legion, YMMV. There also should be credit given to the Death Guard, who are pretty good at getting shit done in the name of Chaos.

>in the name of Chaos
>reasonable
wut. NL are not doing it for chaos, and i said they prefer not to fight other astartes. If avoiding fighting other eight-foot tall killing machines is unreasonable, then i dont want to be reasonable. I'm not saying they're a strong legion, but as far as being rational astartes, they're about as good as you'll get-loyalists are mostly religious zealots or tradition-bound to the point of uselessness, and traitors are either serving the gods (rational? nope), dying in corpsegrinders or being memes.

And that's not reasonable. Reasonable is being tactically competent and having a mastery of logistics so you can ENGAGE peer opponents and win. Night Lords don't do this, they're cowards who flee at the sign of anything going south. They almost never dig in and hold a position, in fact they never hold anything. They also suffer greatly from constant backstabbing, looting, and realpolitik in the middle of fucking battle, the first Night Lord to die in the Drop Site Massacre was shot in the back. Night Lords are only "reasonable" if you think real military forces are retarded fuckwits who flee at the first sign of danger and sort out their unit relations by shooting each other when they can blame it on enemy fire.

Also, Night Lords fight for Chaos like everybody else regardless of what they have deluded themselves into thinking. They're led by a god damn Daemon Prince, many of them are mutated, Raptor cults all worship chaos, and the end result of a Raptor Cult is Warp Talons, daemonically possessed super assassin marines.

BROTHERS, THY CHOLER IS UP
CEASE THIS WET LEOPARD GROWLING AND LET US SWEAR AN OATH OF MOMENT

You, my dear friend, have a good taste and I totally agree with you. The Souldrinkers books were some of the worst I ever had to read.

Inquisition War deserves to go up a tier, if only for that fucking amazing Emperor monologue and the Callidus waifu. Path of the Eldar was mediocre as hell. Horribly paced and not a single likable character to root for.

There's nothing wrong with having Chaos be more than 1 dimensional baddies. And the entire series ends with the warband having the utter shit kicked out of them with the only consolation prize being a vague prophecy. Hardly mary sue.

What do you boys think of Dead Men Walking? I absolutely loved it

Abnett got a major contract writing comics
McNeill is moving to USA to do the same - plus the series is starting to insert actual gods and he is a dickhead fedora atheist

Top tier

I thought it had some good parts, and good potential, and was still pretty interesting to read. The way the Guardsmen fight the Necrons is pretty cool as well.

Good action, mostly meh plot and Death Korps wankery.

Any idea when the next Abbadon book will be released?

I liked Talon of Horus but there was too little of the big guy himself.

Also Sigismund BTFO

>Hot potato melta gun

metal as fuck

I think that's just because he gets put on Chaos books, man. He writes for the subject he's writing about, and for Chaos books, that means sympathetic Chaos guys and the Imperium portrayed in a more negative light.

>implying he didn't fake his death and isn't living with Amberly right now

The First Heretic is one of the best of the Horus Heresy novels, and his short stories for HH are also pretty baller.

Talon of Horus is shit though. The whole book is just filler, and whatever editor approved all those sections of Khayon telling the inquisition that everything is going according to keikaku needs to be fired.
French's Ahriman series is fantastic. His phrasing and descriptions for warp shit is great, he manages to make Ahriman sympathetic while still clearly being a bad guy, and the supporting characters are fantastic. The short story anthology with Ctesias is ace as well.

Hell yeah.

Iron Guard should be somewhere on that list. Good, if not better.

I'd put Salanders lower than Redemption Corps.

How the hell is anything The Beast related in Acceptable tier?

Wasn't the plan mostly for them to die like Marines in the defense of their last real home and not like the monsters they grew into?
Everything else was just a bonus.

It wasn't bad. It tried too hard to be a bit of a tearjerker near the end, and focused a bit too much on everyone thinking the Kriegers were weird. Yes, I get it, they're weird and don't act like normal people. But in the context of the story, it doesn't make me feel sorry for them, it just makes me feel like everyone else is wimping out or dying needlessly.

Night Lords trilogy is a great read, but Lord of the Night is miles better.

You mean the First Claw is all those things. And even then half of the PoV characters and most of their warband has fallen. It's true that the Night Lords are less trusty of Chaos than the other Legions, but that doesn't mean much really. And they are one of the most fractured Legions which only gets together to either kill Eldar, cry about their daddy issues or bicker about who should lead them, just to fuck off once again.

...

This list is wrong as 'The Beast Arises' and 'Soul Drinkers' should be bumped down to Heresy Tier.