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Arthur B on Same Drek, Different Day at 22:40 on 07-04-2014 - link I had a lot of fun with this expansion up to the APEX fight, and now I know the console commands I anticipate continuing to have fun afterwards.

I am slightly sad that you don't get to meet a lounge singer who calls herself Lady Day (or occasionally Caroline, but the people all call her Alaska), or a shaman called Joe who invokes his leonine spirit guide by nailing himself to a car, or get to declare yourself the "neighborhood threat" if you run the little slice of the Flux State you've become responsible for like a manic thug. Possibly I have very specific expectations of Berlin that aren't actually supported by reality, even when you add cyber dragons.

Though at least the campaign kicks off with you taking up a new career in a new town.
Arthur B on The Runestaff and the Empire's End at 22:26 on 07-04-2014 - link
It reads sort of like Homer with superpowers and superpowered weaponry.

This is definitely better than the Runestaff nonsense.
Ashimbabbar on The Runestaff and the Empire's End at 19:16 on 07-04-2014 - link To stick to the battle part, we have a Random courtier with clairvoyance who tells the Useless blind king how his Evil hundred sons' large army gets thrashed by the smaller Heroes' army. For 18 days. But then, the Heroes have Vishnu's avatar along, so how can they lose ?
It reads sort of like Homer with superpowers and superpowered weaponry.

The fun part is that the Evilest son's best surviving friend swears revenge, goes all avatar of Shiva, summons a host of rakshasa monsters and slaughters the Heroes' army in the night ( luckily, the Heroes were absent, but he kills their sons and in a touching gesture presents their heads to his dying friend, to try and convince him he dies avenged ). After which the avatar of Vishnu kicks his butt ( but he too will get his comeuppance in the end; he has proved quite a dodgy fellow ).
Daniel F on Fists of Mediocrity at 14:45 on 07-04-2014 - link Arilou:
I actually thought/think the stuff following the Traitor Legions was a fair bit more interesting than the loyalist ones, I really liked Angel Exterminatus and it's focus on Perturabo, for instance, as well as A Thousand Sons and even The First Heretic, not neccessarily for the plot per se but for the (admittedly very hammy) character studies.

I suppose I would agree, though I didn't much like A Thousand Sons. I find that Heresy novels have a remarkable talent for shooting themselves in the foot at the end: I really liked both Vulkan Lives and Betrayer until almost literally the final chapter of each.

I read the Nagash books, and they weren't very good. (although the blatant attempts to create the possibility of a pre-undead Nehekharan army list was kind of fun to spot)

The Nagash omnibus was not one I picked up. I made do with McNeill's Sigmar trilogy and Thorpe's Sundering trilogy.

Arthur:
In Warhammer, not only is there a plurality of human nations, but nonhumans are humans' direct neighbours and in some cases live amongst humans, so the Black Library let more people like elves and dwarves because there's more commonality of experience between them and humans.

I think that might be it, really. WHF allows a variety of perspectives much more than 40k does, particularly when it comes to race/army.

This should never dissuade you from doing a review, "I don't know how I feel about this in the end" is a legitimate conclusion and often the process of writing a review will help you nail down your response too.

Oh, indeed. I should say: I have written some fairly long-winded reviews of 40k novels before, albeit on forums rather than blogs. If you ever want an opinion on Ravenwing or Betrayer, I can provide. ;)

I think that's the real enjoyment of writing a review? Defining your thoughts helps to develop them. It'd be fun to have an excuse to do that for some of those Time of Legends novels.
Arthur B on The Runestaff and the Empire's End at 14:22 on 07-04-2014 - link
You have to need fast money in order to ripoff the Mahabharata

Having not read that, I missed the connection, though I'd bet money it's better in the original.
Ashimbabbar on The Runestaff and the Empire's End at 14:12 on 07-04-2014 - link " Moorcock blinds Meliadus so that his squire can briefly narrate the clash on the Silver Bridge linking the Granbretanian town of Deau-Vere to the French town of Karlye, a neat way to allow Moorcock to dodge out of having to write a full battle scene. "

You have to need fast money in order to ripoff the Mahabharata
Arthur B on Fists of Mediocrity at 13:07 on 07-04-2014 - link Oh, also:

The idea of a full review of some of the omnibuses has been floating around in my head. There's lots to say about them; I'm just very conflicted about the ultimate verdict.

This should never dissuade you from doing a review, "I don't know how I feel about this in the end" is a legitimate conclusion and often the process of writing a review will help you nail down your response too.
Arthur B on Fists of Mediocrity at 13:06 on 07-04-2014 - link I think the big distinction between Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 is the scale, and the knock-on effects from that. Namely:

- Warhammer has one planet, with the focus being very much on one particular corner of that planet. The consequences of any particular story cannot radically alter the status quo being a very, very local level; a village or two might be destroyed, but nations will not fall. Warhammer 40,000 has a huge galaxy dominated by an Imperium so vast it can lose dozens of worlds through bureaucratic oversight and not really feel the pain. This means a story can have utterly cataclysmic consequences and not really trouble the rest of the setting; entire star systems and Space Marine Chapters and Imperial Guard regiments can be destroyed and provided they aren't ones which are critical to the setting it's all cool.

- The Warhammer world's fine detail is much more pinned down - every region of the world has basic details established about it, and the Empire and its neighbours are very carefully detailed, so there isn't much in the way of blank spaces on the map (aside from settlements on the scale of minor villages) for authors to adopt and make their own. In Warhammer 40,000 authors can make up entire sectors to play with if they wish.

- In Warhammer 40,000, if you aren't part of the Imperium (or a former part of the Imperium), you're an alien who's emerged in an utterly different environment from humanity, which somewhat justifies the Black Library's policy of only letting a select few authors that they trust to convey a genuinely nonhuman viewpoint to tell your stories. In Warhammer, not only is there a plurality of human nations, but nonhumans are humans' direct neighbours and in some cases live amongst humans, so the Black Library let more people like elves and dwarves because there's more commonality of experience between them and humans.
http://arilou-skiff.livejournal.com/ on Fists of Mediocrity at 13:05 on 07-04-2014 - link I actually thought/think the stuff following the Traitor Legions was a fair bit more interesting than the loyalist ones, I really liked Angel Exterminatus and it's focus on Perturabo, for instance, as well as A Thousand Sons and even The First Heretic, not neccessarily for the plot per se but for the (admittedly very hammy) character studies.

You're probably right about the WHFB novels: I liked the Vampire Genevive stuff, but it barely classifies as Warhammer. King's Tyrion & Teclis books are decent (honestly, the genocidial elf civil war has always been one of my favourite bits of the setting, so much overdrawn pathos) although it suffers from having a very similar plot/climax to another few books (whose name I can't even remember) that came out earlier.

I read the Nagash books, and they weren't very good. (although the blatant attempts to create the possibility of a pre-undead Nehekharan army list was kind of fun to spot)

I did rather enjoy the Thanquol novel that ended up with him on a boat eating his latest Boneripper :p
Daniel F on Fists of Mediocrity at 12:26 on 07-04-2014 - link
I do rather like the Heresy novels in general, they give a nice little peek at the various legions and the "familiar but so different" feel is pretty neat. The entire "legion discovers the heresy" plot is getting a bit tired (then again, I think they've done all of them by now?) and they seem to have dropped the "beginnings of the Imperial Cult" plot thread (which was always one of the most interesting ones) but still, I rather like it.

A few months back I went through a period of catching up on Heresy novels I skipped, and you're right, there really is a sense that BL are spinning their wheels and repeating their plots. I would say that I moderately enjoyed Fear to Tread, but could not help noticing that it was hitting all the same notes as Horus Rising/False Gods all over again. Ho hum, rationalist atheist crusaders of the 41st millennium discover that a universe they thought ran on scientific laws actually runs on magical laws, they meet daemons, their minds are completely blown, it's really the same story.

There are still some reasonable ideas, and I'd be very happy if they started to resolve some of their subplots. The actual course of the Heresy is mostly boring: we all know it. Maybe some people would be interested in the Cabal subplot being resolved; I personally hate it. I would be very interested to see more of the Imperial Creed plot arc (as I really enjoyed that part of The Flight of the Eisenstein), but as you say, it seems to have been dropped. A shame.

Then again, I was always more of a fantasy man than a 40K one.

I'd go out on a limb and say that Warhammer Fantasy is probably a more interesting and better-constructed setting that 40k, myself. Maybe it's just that where 40k is absolutely dominated by an Imperial narrative voice in general, not to mention a myopic focus on Space Marines and war, WHF allows itself more diversity?

I'm not sure about the novels, though. After that recent Heresy binge, I treated myself to the WHF Time of Legends imprint, and I can't quite decide whether I think it's any good or not. The idea of a full review of some of the omnibuses has been floating around in my head. There's lots to say about them; I'm just very conflicted about the ultimate verdict.
http://arilou-skiff.livejournal.com/ on Fists of Mediocrity at 11:11 on 07-04-2014 - link To be fair, the Horus Heresy isn't ALL Space Marines. (there's like... Two books that aren't about them entirely
, just mostly.

I do rather like the Heresy novels in general, they give a nice little peek at the various legions and the "familiar but so different" feel is pretty neat. The entire "legion discovers the heresy" plot is getting a bit tired (then again, I think they've done all of them by now?) and they seem to have dropped the "beginnings of the Imperial Cult" plot thread (which was always one of the most interesting ones) but still, I rather like it.

Then again, I was always more of a fantasy man than a 40K one.
Arthur B on Professor Genki's Empty and Overplayed Joke at 09:12 on 07-04-2014 - link Eventually.
Craverguy on Professor Genki's Empty and Overplayed Joke at 08:45 on 07-04-2014 - link So, Arthur, any plans to review Saints Row IV?
Daniel F on Fists of Mediocrity at 02:33 on 07-04-2014 - link
Are the imperial fists really popular in the game or something? They seem to feature a lot in these books.

They're not the most popular Space Marine faction, though they do often get a mention or a page or two in the codex. I'd say they're around mid-tier popularity: not exactly Ultramarines or Space Wolves, but still regularly mentioned.

Curiously, for a while they had a reputation for being massacred ignominiously, to the point where the Black Library officially apologised for it.
Arthur B on Fists of Mediocrity at 02:23 on 07-04-2014 - link I think you're right - the Horus Heresy stuff gets a huge push and more or less all the best authors are being drawn into putting out material for that.
https://me.yahoo.com/a/pwQl65QjyO_qKzMVXCk4NkWmA93bTB40uqFXg0tjtoso59j2K3E-#74262 on Fists of Mediocrity at 01:32 on 07-04-2014 - link I blame the success of the Horus Heresy books, which seems to have led the editors to assume that the future of Black Library fiction is: 1. Retellings of events that are already canonical in-game and 2. Space Marines, Space Marines, Space Marines! The interesting stuff that you got when someone came up with an idea of their own and explored it in the 40K setting--Ciaphas Cain, Gaunt's Ghosts, Shira Calpurnia etc. isn't what they're interested in any more.
Arthur B on Fists of Mediocrity at 23:56 on 06-04-2014 - link They're popular on Ferretbrain because I'm very juvenile and am good at getting people to snigger along with me.

As far as the game itself goes, the Fists specifically, along with their offspring, have had a big presence in the game since the inception (the cover of the first ever Warhammer 40,000 rulebook features a squad of Crimson Fists being overwhelmed by Orks, possibly at the battle of Rynn's World itself, and Rynn's World was the subject of the second ever scenario published for the game, for instance). I don't know if they're the most popular faction, but they're not exactly an obscure one either.
http://ronanwills.wordpress.com/ on Fists of Mediocrity at 23:44 on 06-04-2014 - link Are the imperial fists really popular in the game or something? They seem to feature a lot in these books.
Alasdair Czyrnyj on Twentieth Century Remix at 22:04 on 06-04-2014 - link It's been a while since I last read it, but the book does touch on the communist world in a few places. The main divergence of the book is a communist takeover of Germany in the 1920s, which has the side effect of bringing Trotsky to power after Lenin's death. The first part of Ché Guevera's section are set in Moscow during Trotsky's funeral in '68, and the implication is that Trotsky's Soviet Union differs from Stalin's more in details than fundamental trends. There's offhand mentions of the "Seventh Permanent Revolution," which is probably a Five Year Plan by another name, and of the executions of Stalin and Khrushchev some years prior. In fact, Guevera's arc is mostly concerned with his growing disaffection with Moscow's geopolitical games and his increasing interest in Third World revolutionary politics.

In the book's coda, set in the early 1990s, the Soviet Union seems to have liberalized, with Andrei Sakharov running the country. However, the German-Soviet alliance has finally broken down, and it is speculated that the two may kick off a new round of global conflict.
Ashimbabbar on Twentieth Century Remix at 15:26 on 06-04-2014 - link It sounds like a very intersting book, however the review does not tell us of what is happening in the Communist world at the time. After all, part of the point of 1968 in our world was that Soviet communism was pretty much discredited as well: for the radicals, it was part of the world order they tried to topple.
https://me.yahoo.com/a/pwQl65QjyO_qKzMVXCk4NkWmA93bTB40uqFXg0tjtoso59j2K3E-#74262 on Twentieth Century Remix at 14:55 on 06-04-2014 - link In case the first commenter is still looking, the book is probably Them Bones by Howard Waldrop.
Ashimbabbar on We Need to Talk About Conan at 00:09 on 04-04-2014 - link I have just discovered the Phoenix on the Sword actually was a King Kull short story Howard rewrote for Conan. I don't know them well, but I understand the King Kull stories are far less into bloody sword-wielding and more into would-be philosophical considerations - although born a barbarian Kull gives points to civilization.
Also, Picts are good guys there.

Possibly the evil magic-user part was taken by Kull's nemesis Thulsa Doom ( THERE's a heavy metal name for you ! ).
Arthur B on Forget It, Reader, It's Low Town at 14:27 on 01-04-2014 - link The presence of trench warfare as such wasn't the issue so much as the fact that on the one hand, the way the trench warfare was described made it unambiguously clear that we were supposed to see the war in question as a World War I analogue (right down to the names of the battlefields), but Polansky isn't able to capture a similarly vivid and coherent sense of place and time and theme when dealing with Low Town itself, which is kind of a problem when it comes to the setting that most of the book actually deals with.
Ashimbabbar on Forget It, Reader, It's Low Town at 02:04 on 01-04-2014 - link It's a very minor point, but you can have trench war in heroic fatasy IF you have magical heavy artillery - the best example is I know being the amateur gamebook Raid on Château Fekenstein by Al Sander ( it won the windhammer prize in 2008 so it can be found and downloaded on the arborell site ).

Some of the missies used actually turn people within the area of effect into mindless hideous ravening monsters ( and you'd understand why frontline troops need drugs to hold on )

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