Best Tie-ins

[Jon AS]

Jon - Don't get me wrong, the Cain books rock, and the fact I'm a fan of the Flashman novels makes it better, but I stand by what I said regarding Abnett. It's fine that you don't agree, but, umm, it's a taste thing, so don't use lines like "but, y'know better", because it's pretty subjective.

Wait, this is the one thread we weren't supposed to give our subjective opinion in? My bad.:P

But - on to the second point. You are right, it's 5 minutes to midnight, or even later (the C'Tann, really?), and the Emperor is totally out of play, for most purposes. Except that Abnett keeps putting subtle little bits in both the Heresy stuff, and his "modern" 40k stuff, that implies the current state of teh Emperor is changing. My buddy (who also plays the stuff, and is far better versed in the "lore" than I) has said that Abnett appears to be forcing GW to decide how to resolve the situation, making them actually choose one of their many hinted at fates, etc.

There have always been these kind of hints. About the Emperor, various Primarchs, the ultimate, this-time-it's-totally-the-biggest-and-final Black Crusade etc. Nothing ever changes.

Yeah, the current situation is that the Emperor's life support machinery is failing, so either the Emperor dies and the entire Imperium is overrun and destroyed in a matter of years (since the Emperor maintains the beacon which makes warp travel possible for humanity, and the destruction of the beacon would allow the Imperium to be cut up, divided and conquered by its myriad foes very easily), or one of the various 'rebirth' prophecies comes to fruition (though having the Emperor as a walking, talking, active character in the setting could be a bit corny). Or I suppose they simply fix his life support machinery, which would be a bit dull.

Bring back the Sensei/Starchild stuff, I say. Instead of the Emperor becoming an active character (though how much would that fuck with the way the Imperium is run, given that he apparently set out to create something very unlike its current state?) he becomes a full-fledged Warp God.

Random nitpick: warp travel is possible without the Astronomican (that's how they did it during the Dark Age of Technology after all), it's just even less reliable.

[Nukelavee]

But that's the point, Jon... it appears that Abnett may be locking GW into finally having to commit to moving past the whole "5 minutes to midnight" by locking them into one of the possibilities they've been scattering, namely that humanity won't be hamstrung by the Golden Throne stuff.

Like I said, it seems that Abnett favours putting the Emperor all the way into the Warp, or at least making him less of a zombie.

Maybe subjective was too weak and not specific enough - simply saying "y'know, but better" might as well be "I like that, so it's better", which is pointless. Tell me WHY it's a better portrayal of things Imperial that aren't just marines and armies.

[Grack21]

edit: This is going to go nowhere. Suffice it to say I think people are to harsh on Travis herself for past incidents.

[Galactus]

But that's the point, Jon... it appears that Abnett may be locking GW into finally having to commit to moving past the whole "5 minutes to midnight" by locking them into one of the possibilities they've been scattering, namely that humanity won't be hamstrung by the Golden Throne stuff.

Like I said, it seems that Abnett favours putting the Emperor all the way into the Warp, or at least making him less of a zombie.

Maybe subjective was too weak and not specific enough - simply saying "y'know, but better" might as well be "I like that, so it's better", which is pointless. Tell me WHY it's a better portrayal of things Imperial that aren't just marines and armies.

And I'd fucking hate any of that.

The point about 40K is that it's the one fucking setting where humans aren't bloody special, where humanity is one giant corrupt unwieldy, schizophrenic msss. A totalitarian state that would be the most horrific totalitarian dictatorship ever imagnied if it wasn't kept in check by corruption, bureaucratic inertia and the sheer bloody size of it.

The corpse-god is the perfect symbol of that. And that's why it works.

Heck, I hate all the Horus Heresy stuff simply for making hard fact out of what should be myth and hearsay. Giving the 40k-verse anything even resebling a reliable history is just a bad, bad idea.

[Jon AS]

Maybe subjective was too weak and not specific enough - simply saying "y'know, but better" might as well be "I like that, so it's better", which is pointless. Tell me WHY it's a better portrayal of things Imperial that aren't just marines and armies.

Some reasons:

Neither of the two is writing about shining examples of heroism. Cain is very open about looking out for number one and the Dembski-Bowden novels I've read were actually about villains as well as civilians who get caught up in the events of the story (his next book is about Grey Knights, I might read that to see how he handles more "heroic" protagonists).

Gaunt on the other hand is written as a very conventional hero, including shouting "Do you want to live forever?" as a battlecry with a straight face. Not a whole lot to hold my interest there.

Both avoid the endless, repetitive action scenes that make up a large part of the Ghosts novels but they also show more care in creating believable scenarios for their military conflicts. Necropolis is the best Gaunt novel I've read, but the fact is that the whole siege doesn't make any sense considering the Imperium has complete space dominance in the system.

Both explore some more cultures than just the pseudo-Scottish Tanith.

At this point I feel like maybe we should take this to a seperate 40k thread.

[Derfel Cadarn]

Sorry, my first post was done on my iphone, wasnt drunk, just too hasty to hit send.

Truce at Bakura was a horribly written book. The author's New Jedi Order book was an improvement.

The LEgacy star Wars comics graphic novels are pretty good.

I've never read the Travis Clonetrooper books, I've heard even from her detractors that the first one is decent. In fairness to her, the low clonetrooper number is Lucas's fault. The cloners wouldnt have had time to churn out millions more at such short notice. Though her attempt to make it stick by presenting the Jedi as exaggerating the threat is just stupid. A better explanation would be that the clonetroopers were effectively shock troops; they moved in, cleared a world and moved onto the next one leaving local militia and the Republic fleet to defend it. Still way too a number though.

Her attempt at portraying the Jedi in an objective light turned farcial due to her Mando-fetish. Boba Fett was a bounty hunter, and going by the films not especially badass; he relied on the Imperials to capture Han and the others. Then he got beaten by a blind guy through clumsiness. In any case, the Travis LotJ books retconned Fett to make his wife and child abandonment something noble. The Mando's also end up with invulnerable fighter-craft. Her Jedi act weird even in their own POVs. A Mando even gets the drop on Darth Caedus but lets him go as Fett wants Jaina to kill him. WTF?

And then Jaina, who spent her adolescance on the front lines against the Yuzhon Vong for 5 years, fighting in Rogue Squadron at times and leading her own squadron at other times, who spent the years after that fighting pirates, is presented as a spoiled princess. Who can apparently learn essential skills from the guy her blind dad accidently knocked into the sarlaac pit.

Interestingly, in the follow-up series Fate of the Jedi, the authors seem to be taking great pains to be presenting the Mando mercenaries as amoral scum. They raid the Jedi temple and get taken out by some padawans. They ruthlessly murder an unarmed aide coming out for negotations.

The Rogue/Wraith squadron books (and I, Jedi, a sort of follow-up) are enjoyable for what they are. I've mixed views on the Thrawn trilogy. Like most of the pre-prequel books on Jedi, the author has no real idea about them and resorts to quoting Yoda as if his every comment is some big philosophy. He writes as if the clones were power-mad conquerors, he has the clone wars taking place too long ago. Also, a lot of the older books assume Light Jedi all vanish on death and dark jedi all explode in a wave of dark Force energy. The Thrawn clones sucked, no idea why they had an extra vowel (Joruus, Luuke) and was kind of stupid. As was also stated, the fleet sizes seem too small.

On the bright side, Zahn's enthusiasm definately shows in his Thrawn trilogy. The follow-up dulogy is almost as good, ending the civil war. One problem is that he refers to Leia as a Jedi Knight when she isn't. Another problem is that the duology is chronologically Chewie's last books prior to his death in Vector Prime. And he spends the books off-screen, babysitting the Solo kids.

[Lord O' Bones]

I see the Star Wars nerds have overrun this thread.

[Grack21]

I see the Star Wars nerds have overrun this thread.

We are legion.

[Spaceman Hobbes]

We are legion.

Actually we're just 3 million copies of Star Wars kid....

[Grack21]

Actually we're just 3 million copies of Star Wars kid....

I always thought I look more like the numa-numa kid.

Anyway, yay Warhammer recs. I'll check some of those out on my weekly why-am-I-buying-more-books-dammit jaunt.

[Nukelavee]

See, Jon? It's our duty to Hold this thread to the last man.

[Rob B]

Although I have only one piece of fiction with which to judge him, I was VERY impressed with Graham McNeil's False Gods, the second Horus Heresy novel. I get why the folks at Black Library consider him one of the top writers after Abnett. I'm really looking forward to reading his Sigmar trilogy.

[Jon AS]

See, Jon? It's our duty to Hold this thread to the last man.

Right. Death to the false emperor!

Other tie-in novels I enjoyed back in the day were some of the Battletech stuff. The Warrior Trilogy, the Clan invasion trilogy and some of the stand/self-contained stories were pretty good I, thought.

Though, as I think I mentioned in a recent Battletech thread, I think they should never have tried to tell a continuous epic story without cast changes from the people who took centre stage way back in Lethal Heritage over the course of several decades, but for a while there I read pretty much every BT that was published.

[Nukelavee]

Just finished False Gods, and, yeah, I liked it quite a bit. Descent of Angels kinda sucked, tho.

I read teh original BattleTech books, by, umm, Keith, I think.

The Starfire tie-ins, by White and Weber, were all fairly solid for what they were, vast space opera battles with cardboard overwrought characters...but I wasn't reading for the damn characters, lol.

[casrot]

I haven't read it, but Adam Roberts's hilarious review of the Warhammer 40k novel, Inquisitor (alt. title Draco) by Ian Watson makes it seem like the best thing in the history of EVER.

Link: http://punkadiddle.blogspot.com/2011/06/ian-watson-warhammer-40000-inquisitor.html

"Other great buildings were giant mutated solo genitalia. Horned phallic towers arose, wrinkled ribbed, blistered with window pustules. Cancerous breast domes swelled, fondled by scaly finger-buttresses. Tongue bridges linked these buildings. Scrotum pods swayed."

Best thing in the history of EVER.

[Galactus]

That's pretty much standard slaaneshi fare. Shem's the god(ess) who was born out of the debauchery of an entire race, after all.

[Seli]

....

The Rogue/Wraith squadron books (and I, Jedi, a sort of follow-up) are enjoyable for what they are. I've mixed views on the Thrawn trilogy. Like most of the pre-prequel books on Jedi, the author has no real idea about them and resorts to quoting Yoda as if his every comment is some big philosophy. He writes as if the clones were power-mad conquerors, he has the clone wars taking place too long ago. Also, a lot of the older books assume Light Jedi all vanish on death and dark jedi all explode in a wave of dark Force energy. The Thrawn clones sucked, no idea why they had an extra vowel (Joruus, Luuke) and was kind of stupid. As was also stated, the fleet sizes seem too small.

On the bright side, Zahn's enthusiasm definately shows in his Thrawn trilogy. The follow-up dulogy is almost as good, ending the civil war. One problem is that he refers to Leia as a Jedi Knight when she isn't. Another problem is that the duology is chronologically Chewie's last books prior to his death in Vector Prime. And he spends the books off-screen, babysitting the Solo kids.

Personally I blame Lucas more for changing the way the Universe worked in the prequels than Zahn for any continuity problems in his early books. But then I have only read a few book in the Starwars EU, and if push comes to shove I am perfectly willing to limit canon to the first 3 films, the X-wing games and some of the earliest novels. But that belongs in a completely different discussion.

I don't remember much of any tie-ins I have read, technically Feist's Midkemia is probably one big tie-in series but let's ignore that.

One book I did enjoy recently was Peter Watts' Crysis 2 novelization, you have to ignore the game-limited plot a bit but I did enjoy the elements injected around it.

[Nukelavee]

Is that the same Peter Watts who did Blindsight and Starfish?

[casrot]

Yes, it is.

[SkynJay]

I am loving this thread now. We have two separate conversations, as well as occasional recs.

Star Wars and Warhammer rule the day it seems. But which can control the thread?