ultramarines: EPIC chutzpah
February 2, 2011 12:20 PM   Subscribe

Ultramarines, in the grim future there is only b-graded adaptions with plotholes you can drive several trucks through. In light of Dan Abnetts salient work on the Horus Heresy books, and other canon, what went wrong here?
posted by xcasex (44 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
It took almost 40 years for Marvel to get a movie adaptation of one of its properties that was worth watching. Just warning you W'hammerheads.
posted by Slap*Happy at 12:27 PM on February 2, 2011


Watching the trailer and listening to the dialog, I could think only one thing: "Bill Leeb's gonna release a whole lot of material after he sees this".

I still love FLA, I don't care who knows it.
posted by boo_radley at 12:29 PM on February 2, 2011 [3 favorites]


Well i watched the whole movie and all i could think of was "wow, the gears of war 2 trailer had better plot and graphics" :/
posted by xcasex at 12:32 PM on February 2, 2011


I have read some of the other cannon, it is entertaining at times, but at no point could it really be considered to be particularly decent as far as literature goes.

Love the setting in spite/because of that though.
posted by BobbyDigital at 12:40 PM on February 2, 2011


Please tell me what Dan Abnett's did on the Horus Heresy books, and why it is "salient." Serious question! I don't have the background to understand the argument you're making, and the links are not helping.
posted by grobstein at 12:42 PM on February 2, 2011


Seriously if there are some books I should know about that are good I would like to buy them. Thoughts?
posted by grobstein at 12:44 PM on February 2, 2011


I say blame it on Chaos's taint. AND THEN ERADICATE IT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT!
posted by srboisvert at 12:44 PM on February 2, 2011 [2 favorites]


Wait, what? "FEATURING THE VOICES OF TERENCE STAMP, JOHN HURT AND SEAN PERTWEE"
posted by boo_radley at 12:48 PM on February 2, 2011 [1 favorite]


"wow, the gears of war 2 trailer had better plot and graphics" :/

Dude, the Warcraft 2 intro had better graphics :/
posted by 7segment at 12:57 PM on February 2, 2011


If that had been a fan video produced using some game engine on a pizza-and-beer budget, I'd be reasonably impressed, although I'd still say the dialog is pretty cringeworthy.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:01 PM on February 2, 2011


grobstein, all of the horus heresy books are Very good, i'm currently reading "Tales of heresy" which features the short story "Blood Games" by Abnett -- It describes a shady character working his way around the globe, to finally gain entrance to the emperors palace, its well paced and does some heavy world building.

There's been a severe lack of backstory describing how the Emperor came into power and how earth was caked into a huge fortress.
Some of the stories in the horus heresy storyline describe quite heavily how it came to pass, blood games is one, there's another i cant recall the name of but its told by the primarch of the imperial fists, Rogal Dorn.

But to get back to your question, read:
* Horus Rising
* Legion
* Prospero Burns
* Tales of Heresy

Abnetts contributions stand by themselves, he's good at world building, pacing and describing surroundings as well as action, that to me, in a sci-fi setting, is very hard to come by, which is also why the movie made such a horrible impression, he's outstanding in his writings, somehow that didn't translate over to the movie script.
posted by xcasex at 1:02 PM on February 2, 2011 [2 favorites]


boo_radley, Yeah. Precisely. That..
posted by xcasex at 1:02 PM on February 2, 2011


Kadin2048, they could've made a better movie by going the machinima route with the q2 engine :'(
posted by xcasex at 1:03 PM on February 2, 2011


All of Abnet's books are good. They ain't fine art, but they are a good yarn, with great characters, well told.
posted by winjer at 1:06 PM on February 2, 2011 [1 favorite]


I just finished Prospero Burns and it's fucking magnificent.

The Horus Heresy series is widely uneven, as is all WH40K literature, because there are people who are really just on like Dan Abnett and maybe Graham McNeil and James Swallow and then there are people who are... not. And it's really, really obvious that there is a gap between the two.

Also, the series as a whole spends a lot of time early on really exploring the roots of the Heresy and ramping up and then... it goes sideways and backwards and all over the place, almost as if none of the authors wants to nut up and get to the heart of the thing, which is obviously the siege on Terra and the confrontation between Horus (a curse upon him) and the Emperor of Mankind.

I think it's funny because a year ago this time I had played a couple Dawn of War PC games but was really oblivious to WH40K. Then there was a post on Metafilter about Dan Abnett and I went out the next day and bought Let the Galaxy Burn and then a week later I bought Eisenhorn and then... Jesus, I think in the last 12 months I've easily read 20,000 pages of WH40K fiction. A lot of it great. A lot of it bad.

I find the entire thing just utterly fucking awesome. I spend hours going through the wikis reading lore.

xcasex is right on with Tales of Heresy - I remember the Blood Games story fondly. It's terrific. You can follow Dan Abnett on Twitter at @VincentAbnett.

I was disappointed with the quality of the film (Ultramarines).

In conclusion, PURGE THE HERETIC.
posted by kbanas at 1:15 PM on February 2, 2011 [2 favorites]


Guess it's too late to call for a WAAGHbulance...
posted by Smart Dalek at 1:20 PM on February 2, 2011 [2 favorites]


By the way, Let the Galaxy Burn is a great primer if you're interested in this stuff. When you're done, I'd move on to Eisenhorn.

Galaxy has a story by Dan Abnett called "The Fall of Malvolion." You can read it here.

There's one part that always stuck with me. I had it in my e-mail signature for awhile, but then I got kind of self-conscious about it:

"Grauss saw the men clamber out. Adeptus Astartes. Space Marines, the Lamenters. They had come, as promised, yellow armour gleaming in the dying light. They had come despite the
odds.
"

I also found a hobby shop up the street that sold the model kits. I don't get into the table top game, but I love building the models. I finished this recently.
posted by kbanas at 1:23 PM on February 2, 2011 [1 favorite]


I went through a mad spate of reading Warhammer novels last year (all the Heresy Books, all of Abnett's books, and some other standalone books, which were so fanficish I've forgotten the names of the authors). The only ones really worth reading (unless you're obsessed with the universe) are Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts series and his two Inquisition omnibuses. The Horus Heresy books are pretty poorly written, except for Abnett's 2 or 3 titles (but I got the sense that he was writing these for the paycheck - they're definitely not as good as the books featuring his own characters).
posted by longdaysjourney at 1:45 PM on February 2, 2011


Meant to add the Heresy books are worth reading for the backstory to the Universe though.
posted by longdaysjourney at 1:46 PM on February 2, 2011


I don't think Dan Abnett's Horus Heresy work is all that great. I'm halfway through his latest Heresy book, Prospero Burns, and I'm really not feeling it. He's trying way too hard, and it's distracting from the very first page. Judging from the comments above, maybe it gets amazing from here and I'll have to eat my words... but frankly, if it was decent so far, I'd have finished it by now. I usually finish his 40K books in an evening, because I can't put them down, but I've had this one for two weeks. The same goes for Legion: I took very little away from that book.

Graham McNeill (Fulgrim, fuck yes!) and Aaron Dembski-Bowden (best new author they've had in a long while) are where it's at when it comes to the Heresy.

That said, I'm a huge Gaunt's Ghosts fan. Abnett does well when he's writing immediate, ensemble-cast combat tinged with vulnerability and unpredictability; in short, he does great things with the Imperial Guard, to the point where he has pretty much single-handedly reinvented the Guard. He does not-so-well with other things, though, especially Space Marines, and he's been stretching a bit too much with the Gaunt books lately, too. Blood Pact was just plain bad -- it reads like the B-plot to some other Gaunt novel -- and much of the two-book gulf between Traitor General (easily his best book ever) and Only In Death (ditto, great stuff) is superfluous and/or hard to connect with. Then the stories in Sabbat Worlds were great again... it's hard not to use the word "uneven" when talking about his 40K work, and that's a shame.

In short, I kind of wish he'd get a good editor, because he'd knock it out of the park every time if someone could only convince him to play to his strengths.

Unfortunately, we're talking about the Black Library, who don't seem to have editors.
posted by vorfeed at 1:51 PM on February 2, 2011


I found this line from AICN (a site that I usually have very little use for) refreshing: For those unfamiliar with the history of the Imperium or the Space Marines, this will seem like a senseless trudge with almost no exposition whatsoever and very little development of the threat. .
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:57 PM on February 2, 2011


He does not-so-well with other things, though, especially Space Marines

I thought Brotherhood of the Snake was pretty good!

I know what you mean about reading them in one sitting, though. I brought "Titanicus" with me on a cruise, thinking its 600-page bulk would pass the time, and I finished it the next day, while getting exceptionally drunk on mojitos.
posted by kbanas at 1:57 PM on February 2, 2011 [1 favorite]


METAFILTER: BURNG THE HERETIC, KILL THE MUTANT, PURGE THE UNCLEAN
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:49 PM on February 2, 2011 [1 favorite]


BURNG THE HERETIC

I'll burng you.
posted by kbanas at 3:11 PM on February 2, 2011


I've only seen the Ultramarines trailer, but the intro to a 6 year old RTS is way better animated.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 3:15 PM on February 2, 2011


I've just finished reading the first Gaunt's Ghosts omnibus, and while I did like it, I think I would have liked it much better if I hadn't already read all of the Sharpe books. I know it's a trite comparison, but that's because it's true. I actually don't remember the names of some of the Ghosts, because as I was reading I was mentally autoreplacing them with their equivalent from the Rifles. I also remember turning a page in the first book, reading the first line of the first paragraph introducing another officer for the first time, and thinking "he's going to be one of those fancy ones who looks down on Gaunt for something and is secretly acting to bring Gaunt down instead of focussing on taking down the enemy," and of course I was right. The second book's unusual framing format took away some of the Sharpeness of it, but overall - they're Sharpe in space.

It's also pretty important to keep in mind that when people say Dan Abnett is a really good writer, they mean he's a really good writer for a dude that writes for the Black Library. It's only so-so as regular reading, but in a relatively trashy genre full of absolute crap it shines like a diamond. I had forgotten to keep this in mind as I was reading, because I was reading them at the urging of some friends who kept saying how great Abnett was without adding the qualifier.

I'm not dissing, mind you. I enjoyed the books and all that.

I watched the Ultramarines movie the other day, with the pals I'm going to be playing DeathWatch with at some point in the near future (after our DM finishes reading her copy of the rulebook - a very important step), and none of us have any idea what it was about. This may be related to the fact that we spent more time talking over it and making fun of Space Marines than paying attention, but judging from others' reviews of it, we didn't actually miss very much.
posted by titus n. owl at 3:54 PM on February 2, 2011 [2 favorites]


making fun of Space Marines

In my experience this is unwise.
posted by kbanas at 4:04 PM on February 2, 2011 [4 favorites]


I've just finished reading the first Gaunt's Ghosts omnibus, and while I did like it, I think I would have liked it much better if I hadn't already read all of the Sharpe books.

The more recent Gaunt books have come a long way from the first three, to be fair. Even the second omnibus ("The Saint") is an obvious step up.

Personally, I think a few of the later books do bridge the gap between being really-good-military-SF and really-good-for-the-black-library -- Traitor General, Only In Death, and maybe Sabbat Martyr make the grade -- but yes, it's Sharpe-in-space genre stuff, there's no denying that.
posted by vorfeed at 4:12 PM on February 2, 2011


kbanas - in your experience, eh? Did you run afoul of a Space Wolf while a furcon was in town or something? Inquiring minds want to know the story!

vorfeed - you raise a good point. I mean, here I am making judgement calls about the guy when I've only read three of his books, and three early ones in his writing career too, IIRC. I'm going to keep on reading them because, well, I read all the Sharpe books even after I realized they all had the exact same plot. The stuff's enjoyable even when it's only so-so, and hell, if it gets better then hooray!
posted by titus n. owl at 4:23 PM on February 2, 2011


kbanas - in your experience, eh? Did you run afoul of a Space Wolf while a furcon was in town or something? Inquiring minds want to know the story!

Heh. I wish it was something as exciting as that. I mostly just meant that in the WH40K universe people who make fun of the Adeptus Astartes usually end up eviscerated by a chain sword.
posted by kbanas at 4:27 PM on February 2, 2011



The more recent Gaunt books have come a long way from the first three, to be fair. Even the second omnibus ("The Saint") is an obvious step up.


My problem here is that I bought all three of the Gaunt omnibuses at the same time, and then read them sequentially. I'm glad I did it, but as a result everything just blurs together. After a certain point, it was just kind of a numbing repetition of war, war, war. But I couldn't stop.
posted by kbanas at 4:34 PM on February 2, 2011


kbanas: "
My problem here is that I bought all three of the Gaunt omnibuses at the same time, and then read them sequentially. I'm glad I did it, but as a result everything just blurs together. After a certain point, it was just kind of a numbing repetition of war, war, war. But I couldn't stop.
"

So you're saying that in all three of the Gaunt omnibuses, there's only... war?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:37 PM on February 2, 2011 [2 favorites]


So you're saying that in all three of the Gaunt omnibuses, there's only... war?

Yes. In the grim dark Gaunt omnibuses, there's only war.
posted by kbanas at 6:54 PM on February 2, 2011 [1 favorite]


They're old now (some of the earliest?), and I'm not sure how well they fit into the canon, but I remember enjoying Ian Watson's WH40K novels back in the days when I consumed trash sci-fi/fantasy by the boxload...

Space Marine
Inquisitor
Harlequin
Chaos Child

Remember them being dark, gritty, and atmospheric, but YMMV.

NB: The author links to the above site from his own homepage.
posted by jet_manifesto at 9:14 PM on February 2, 2011


titus n. owl - I found myself doing exactly the same thing when I read the two books that comprise "The Iron Elves" series. In my head I even refer to the series as "Sharpes' Elves", the dwarf character is so clearly a shorter version of Sgt. Harper that it's ridiculous. The author even uses a different font when the evil character speaks, but I'm still going to read the third one (if it's published) because hey, it's elves with muskets.
posted by Horatius at 10:44 PM on February 2, 2011


The thing about the bets WH40K stuff is that it;s all about taking something inherently ridiculously very, very seriously whilst not losing sight of it's utter ridiculousness. That;s actually a pretty fine line to tread, and easy to fuck up.
posted by Artw at 10:55 PM on February 2, 2011 [1 favorite]


And if you're spending any length of time focusing on Space Marines then it's trickiest of all, becuase lets face it they make mono-dimensional look like it's got an overly fancy number of dimensions, and there's not a lot of interaction with anyone vaguely normal who can act as a foil to that. I think it's notable that Dabnetts greatest success has been with the Imperial Guard, who are by comparison a bunch of workaday blokes and quite vulnerbale to the endless hordes of horrible thinsg that want to squish them.
posted by Artw at 11:10 PM on February 2, 2011 [2 favorites]


I tried to watch this, but it just felt like one long video-game cutscene
posted by 00dimitri00 at 11:51 PM on February 2, 2011 [1 favorite]


In 6 months they'll release a much cooler movie about vastly superior army, but you'll have to buy a new computer to watch it.
posted by chrisulonic at 10:00 AM on February 3, 2011 [2 favorites]


It's also pretty important to keep in mind that when people say Dan Abnett is a really good writer, they mean he's a really good writer for a dude that writes for the Black Library.

Well, Abnett's a really good genre writer in general--he and Andy Lanning (known collectively as DnA) have done fine, entertaining work on Marvel Comics' cosmic characters in recent years; however, that work hasn't inspired me to pick up their latest comic, something to do with the Transformers, which I really don't care about.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:02 AM on February 3, 2011


Me, I'm always going to lean towards 2000ad stuff - his Kingdom is pretty great.

Of course, he's also the person responsible for Sinister/Dexter, which has it's fans but I am just not in to. Oh, and both feature a wide range of shitty puns, which you may or may not find endearing - in Kingdom it's the names of the genetically engineered dogs, "named for the stars", so you get Gene the Hackman and Old Man Gary. The dogs are not really very aware of what kind of stars they are named for.
posted by Artw at 11:54 AM on February 3, 2011


Kbanas: 'making fun of Space Marines'

In my experience this is unwise.


In mine, it is absolutely necessary.

(<-- Necron player. If i don't laugh at them absolutely tromping all over my ass, i'd weep. My kingdom for an updated codex!)
posted by pseudonymph at 8:00 PM on February 4, 2011


kbanas: I also found a hobby shop up the street that sold the model kits. I don't get into the table top game, but I love building the models. I finished this recently.

I forgot to add this above - your painting is fantastic. Mr pseudonymph and I sat here and marvelled at that shading and rusting for a bit.
posted by pseudonymph at 8:15 PM on February 4, 2011 [1 favorite]


Finally finished Prospero Burns. It did get pretty amazing from there, but there's no real excuse for the fact that "there" was page 200 or so... nor for (spoilers, if you can even spoil a WH40K novel) the fact that it's Dances with Space Wolves, with Marty Stu standing in for Kevin Costner.

If I ever read the words "wet leopard-growl", "apex predator", or "golden black-pinned eyes" again it'll be too fething soon, also.
posted by vorfeed at 8:09 PM on February 5, 2011 [1 favorite]


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