Just finished Aaron Dembski-Bowden's THE LAST HERETIC, another of the Horus Heresy novels, this past weekend. ADB has been called "The new Dan Abnett," and I can sort of see why. He's pretty good--and certainly better than most of the other Black Library writers--but not quite in Abnett's category.
I really find two distinct ways in which Abnett is superior to the rest of their stable. One is simply his mastery of the skills of laying out a story and writing in a compelling fashion. In other words, his stuff is better-constructed and is more fun to read. The other way is that he's very skilled at approaching stories from unexpected angles and using secondary and tertiary characters to provide interesting perspectives on the major characters. For example, in HORUS RISING, he could have made Horus Lupercal himself the main character. Alternatively, he could have gone with Torgaddon or Aximand or one of the other Mournival members. Instead, our POV guy is Garviel Loken, an Astartes whom no one had ever heard of before, and who rises through the ranks very quickly to provide us with a sort of "looking up at them" view of Horus and company as he gets to know them personally and begins to work (and fight) alongside them. That may sound pretty basic, and it is-- but it's wildly radical compared to the more pedestrian writing you get from a lot of those guys. I'm starting now on KNOW NO FEAR, the newest Abnett 40K book and essentially a sequel to THE LAST HERETIC, where we see what happens when the renegade Word Bearers decide to seek revenge on the Ultramarines for their affront in that previous book. Should be fun, particularly in Abnett's hands. And I also just saw that Graham McNeill's A THOUSAND SONS is now on unabridged audio. I may have to get it for the drive down to Memphis next week for MidSouthCon 30. It was the first 40K book to hit the New York Times Bestsellers list, a while back. --Van -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Unique Geek" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/theuniquegeek?hl=en.
