Lion? If you’re a human in 40k you’re more likely to be a mangy street cat forced to work in a factory processing other cats into fancy feast. Fuck yeah I’ll be the Taus little pet over that, I can work in at a space turnip farm or something, maybe they’ll give me little human treats.
Not really relevant but wow those prose are rough :|
Most of the 40k novels are hot garbage but I’ve heard some of them are decent, like the Ciaphas Cain ones and the ones with Trazyn the Infinite
I’ve enjoyed a lot of garbage books in my life but I can’t imagine making it through a book
where every, single sentence. Is made of, three to four word. Fragments.
And paragraphs, normally longer, are two sentences long. Filled with, mundane, details.
It feels like reading in stop motion, no flow. They’re contracted out right? so presumably there are authors that are more and less skilled.
TBH while I am impressed by Jane Austin’s elegant and impassioned prose, and enjoy getting lost in the dreamlike world of Gene Wolfe diving through layers of meaning, most of the books I’ve got the most joy from are pulp SciFi. I’m just a sucker for overwrought and supererogatory phrasing :p jack Vance for example, or Rodger Zelanzy. I went through appendix N a few years back and had a blast.
I should clarify that the “stop-motion” effect is largely an artifact of that specific half of the book where the narrative is largely internal dialogue with the POV character actively dissociating while experiencing a full-blown planetary assault for the first time
I think Abett was trying to do a ‘Saving Private Ryan Beach’ scene but in literary form, gruesome details interwoven with the POV’s reactions, with occasional dialogue from the Commissar and commanding sergeant characters interrupting
The other half of the book that follows the actual main cast reverts to the more natural dialogue-heavy form Abett’s known for, where he typically keeps detail paragraphs siloed to their own parts of a chapter
The difference in form between the two halves of the book was definitely noticeable in the audiobook and to my ears gave the book a cinematic feel
I don’t want to shit in your cereal. My love of purple prose is heretical in the modern age so I am standing on a hill of shit and sneering down :p
Critiquing a random passage in isolation is just about the laziest form of literary criticism there is anyway.
It’s one of those things that can really improve a work when done well but is so, so damn easy to screw up and just make things borderline unreadable.
That’s the mainstream opinion but imho even when a narrative dissolves into weird flowery prose poetry I am here for it as long as it’s moving.
I just love watching people do weird shit with language.
Yeah, I would rather read something that is trying to be unique and interesting instead of something “playing it safe” and just being generic slop.
You’re not writing licensed slop if you’re good enough to sell your own original stuff
Idk, you might. It’s pretty brutual trying to get an established fan base that’s large enough to make a living from, or even to break even on the cost of writing a book.
Plenty of people who could run their own business work for someone else just for the stability and ease. I imagine ghost and contract writing is simular, although I’m sure there also talentless people.
Yes. You’ve got some real stinkers who are writing bolterporn fanfic and other ones who can actually write. I like Dan Abnett’s Eisenhorn/Ravenor novels because they are very much written to be 40k neo-noir.
E) I wouldn’t mind knowing, from more discerning 40k readers, if Infinite and the Divine is actually worth reading or if people just like the meme of the two old uncles feuding.
The lore slop YouTuber i watch sometimes has said it’s pretty good
It’s functional and punchy; that’s the best you can hope for when it comes to 40K writing
I would say stiff and repetitive but opinions and arseholes.
My wife is suuuuuper into 40k books, they’re basically the only books she reads. I live in hope she’ll enjoy something more literary one day but I had no idea they were written that poorly. I figured they were like military fiction fluid action stuff.
Weird to think that pulp SciFi paid-by-the-word can churn out more interesting phrasing.
I tried to get into 40k books ten years ago, and the only ones I enjoyed were commissar Cain series.
The Infinite and The Divine is fun, because it’s about two immortal robot grandpas in a petty feud that’s being going on for hundreds of thousands of years.
Are “Criid” and “Boulder” two names for the same person, or are they separate personalities in one body, or is the writer doing two POVs in the same paragraph?
Two separate characters, Criid is the POV for that section of the book, a kid fresh out of boot camp thrown into the deep end and in that scene witnessing one of the bootcamp bullies (Boulder) getting domed by a commissar
huh. maybe it’s more obvious when it’s in context because to me it looked like it started out in Boulder’s POV until suddenly there’s a second POV character with another name
Yeah I think the redditer who transcribed the scene from the book probably cut off a few contextual sentences
That or my sneaking suspicion that Dan Abett deliberately writes with the audiobook adaptation in mind