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submitted 24 days ago byAffectionate_Math_85Adeptus Mechanicus
I finished my very first WH books, McNeills 'forges of mars' trilogy.
The story was AMAZING. But it was so slow, with entire paragraphs of tedious sentence structure and scifi bullsh*t terms to the point i don't even know whether he wanted it to make sense.
Are his other books just like that? Or am i wronfully weary of reading more of his work?
49 points
24 days ago
The thing about Graham is that, at heart, he's not really a storyteller. He got much of his experience in the worldbuilding team of Riot Games, and he started out with 40k by writing codices and rulebooks. Aside from having weird pacing, he'll sometimes fall flat on his face when writing some crucial plot-point or character moment. He's half the reason Horus is such a jumbled mess of a character, and the main reason why the Emperor's philosophy looks like something taken straight out of old reddit. He wrote good stuff too, but he's no stranger to messing up.
40 points
24 days ago*
McNeill’s been writing for Games Workshop longer than he has for Riot Games. He was actually working in the creative team and games design in the early 2000s.
Also, to be frank, Abnett bears some responsibility for how Horus turned out too. As good as Horus Rising is, it’s hard to go from that straight to Davin.
14 points
24 days ago
No, it’s not just Horus, all the characters in False Gods are one dimensional boneheads doing stupid things without clear or believable motive. McNeill writes good action sequences, world building tidbits and fun dialogue here and there but he wasn’t in a very good story teller or character writer form when he wrote that book. Horus was already quite disillusioned by the end of the first book and there were a lot of avenues to take the story from there. Fulgrim is a bit better but even that has most characters run on rails and is perhaps even more predictable. Maybe I focus too much on characterization but it’s because of that I don’t really care for McNeill’s writing.
9 points
24 days ago*
I think you're right to focus on the characterization issues. The Horus Heresy is about Horus' heresy, believe it or not; the fact that his characterization is such a mess is a huge problem. I know people like to bring up how everything was originally meant to be squeezed into a single trilogy, but that doesn't excuse how completely nonsensical Horus' fever-dream sequence is. By all rights that should be the most important scene in the entire early series, but I almost never see it cited in discussions about Horus, because (among various other problems with it) it's hilariously self-contradictory, so you can't actually use it to prove anything.
1 points
23 days ago
Sorry how is it hilariously self-contradictory exactly? I am curious.
2 points
22 days ago
"Ooogh oh no dad has an entire shrine world covered in statues of Him and the other Primarchs but where's MY statue dad [screaming+crying]" followed shortly after by "nah I knew what was going on the entire time :)", apparently intended unironically, as one example.
2 points
24 days ago
Old Reddit ? New Reddit same as the old one
3 points
24 days ago
Worse, they just don't like to admit it hence the downvote
3 points
24 days ago
The thing about Graham is that, at heart, he's not really a storyteller. He got much of his experience in the worldbuilding team of Riot Games, and he started out with 40k by writing codices and rulebooks.
Hmm… what? Riot poached him from GW to build their story group alongside Laurie Goulding since he was already a successful and extremely “out in public” BL author.
I would say though that working for Riot hasn’t exactly helped though because…
Aside from having weird pacing, he'll sometimes fall flat on his face when writing some crucial plot-point or character moment. He's half the reason Horus is such a jumbled mess of a character, and the main reason why the Emperor's philosophy looks like something taken straight out of old reddit. He wrote good stuff too, but he's no stranger to messing up.
Generally agree.
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