I own the Last Chancers omnibus. I thought the first one was fantastic and did a good job capturing the feel of a penal regiment in 40k, the second one was ok, but the third one was just so nonsensically stupid that it ruined the trilogy for me.
Ultramarines series (in the HH)? Up until recently, it was just the abomination we of which we shall not speak and Know No Fear, which I really liked. I know a lot of people rag on them for being the definition of vanilla, but I kind of like that about them. No wulfen geneside curses, no fucked up disagreeable primarchs, no mindblowingly stupid decisions or inherent character faults, just despised by most of the other primarchs for being the largest legion by dint of being so clinically vanilla that it wins wars more efficiently than all others. I really dig the Theoretical/Practical approach, and warmed more to Guilliman when he become less of a robot in KNF and Betrayer.
Ultramarines are my favorite Chapter. I said series, not books, as in I can understand people not liking the Ultramarines series. I didn't say anything about the Heresy books. While Battle for the Abyss has been pretty universally panned as the absolute worst book in the Heresy series, I thought Know No Fear was pretty fucking awful. Nothing happens in the book, it's nothing but filler. In fact it was basically the exact same amount of terrible as Abnett's previous book for the series, Prospero Burns. In fact, I didn't like Legion either, so I guess the only Heresy book of Abnett's that I like is Horus Rising.
Nothing happened? What about that whole "massive battle between two of the biggest legions" thing that went on? I admit if you've already read up on the HH, you know about it beforehand, but I'd consider that a pretty major event. And, of course, Ollanius motherfucking Persson.
There was no massive battle between two of the biggest legions in Know No Fear. There was a bunch of unconnected short stories that were set to the backdrop of the invasion of Calth, an invasion that was somehow still a huge surprise despite the destruction of the Furious Abyss. I knew that the Word Bearers attacked the Ultramarines at Calth to keep them out of the fight from Earth, I've been a 40k nut since I first learned about the game in 2nd ed. I was expecting something epic on the scale of, say, the similarly epic battle for Signus Prime detailed in Fear To Tread. Know No Fear was a massive disappointment of a book that had basically nothing to do with the Battle of Calth, just like Prospero Burns had basically nothing to do with the Battle of Prospero.
I fail to see how a book that details solely the battle being fought planetside and in space between thousands of capital ships, hundreds of thousands of marines, and extremely detailed descriptions of the war happening on the tactical scale across multiple theaters isn't epic in scale. FFS the Ventanus arc alone is about nothing else but the war on the ground for Calth, complete with thousands of legionaries supported by ultra heavy armor, titans, greater daemons, and orbital strikes.
I'm being a little harsh. The book isn't completely terrible, but it really has almost nothing to do with the conflict on Prospero. It's mostly a bunch of back story to the pre-Heresy Space Wolves. Parts of it are really really stupid though.
fucker- he's spot on about Prospero Burns. I wouldn't say it's abadbook per se, but I was expecting the battle for, you know, Prospero. Instead that was in A Thousand Sons. Prospero burns is this weird disjointed tale following some random guy in a bunch of random places over a long time, and ends up leaving you thinking, to sum it upwtf did I just read?
Dude, you read my mind. After I got done with Outcast Dead I was like... What the fuck? Why the shit was this even written? Who gives two shits about a thunder warrior who dies anyway? And the revelation is that the Emp knows he might lose? He's the single most powerful psyker in the galaxy OF COURSE HE FUCKING HAS A HINT. FFS ten thousand years later people use a goddamned deck of cards to tell the future on the off chance it's him giving you a stock tip or something.
Meh. Chapter War, Hellforged, and Phalanx are really good imo, even if the series started out kinda rough. Ultramarines series is the same, the series starts out pretty rough but after the first three it really picks up. Ben Counter is probably the least consistent author in the Black Library. The first two Grey Knights books basically come across as fan-fic that got published, but Hammer of Daemons is a much more interesting and engaging read. Ben Counter also has the unfortunate distinction of having written Battle for the Abyss, which might be why he hasn't been called upon to write another Heresy novel since.
I find it fascinating that Gulliman would want Sanguinus to be the new Emperor. Of all the Primarchs, Gulliman was pretty much the only one to build a successful interstellar empire, and he did so long before the emperor found him. Gulliman screams Emperor v2.0 to me, not Sanguinus. I'm curious as to his reasons.I expect to see more from him in the upcoming book Abnett's working on, Unremembered Empire. Cover art tells more of the story than anything else, but if I had to guess it deals with Guilliman setting up the Imperium Secundus centered around Ultramar as a backup plan with (possibly) Sanguinius as Emperor of the new Imperium should the big E, you know, end up getting his ass kicked. Either that or it has to deal with Sanguinius helping to counter Angron/Lorgar's Shadow Crusade.
Spoilers ahead.
when asked who should have been the Warmaster instead of him, Horus said this. You find this quote in False Gods