|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
|
title = "Horus Rising - Dan Abnett"
|
|
|
|
|
date = 2019-10-30
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[taxonomies]
|
|
|
|
|
tags = ["books", "reviews", "warhammer 40000", "dan abnett", "horus heresy", "scifi"]
|
|
|
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[Goodreads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/625603.Horus_Rising):
|
|
|
|
|
After thousands of years of expansion and conquest, the imperium of man is at
|
|
|
|
|
its height. His dream for humanity nearly accomplished, the emperor hands over
|
|
|
|
|
the reins of power to his warmaster, Horus, and heads back to Terra. But is
|
|
|
|
|
Horus strong enough to control his fellow commanders and continue the
|
|
|
|
|
emperor's grand design?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
<!-- more -->
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
{{ stars(stars=2) }}
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I hate to say something like this, but you know that messed up fan made story
|
|
|
|
|
with Gordon Freeman, in which there is mostly no punctuation and it’s really
|
|
|
|
|
absurd?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
That’s what I felt when I read the intro of the book. And that feeling stuck
|
|
|
|
|
with me for the whole book.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This book came from a Humble Bundle pack and that’s why I didn’t have any
|
|
|
|
|
previous experience with the Warhammer 40,000 universe. But jumping into this
|
|
|
|
|
book (which is part of a larger series, as far as I know) is not a great way
|
|
|
|
|
to get into it. The fact that the intro is really into the absurd (even if the
|
|
|
|
|
book universe is absurd) just makes it a worse experience all over. Whoever
|
|
|
|
|
came with this decision was not someone smart.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The story is more about Loken, a captain that raises from the lower castes
|
|
|
|
|
into a well known captain (or so I get by the excerpts we get from the past)
|
|
|
|
|
and more much about Horus himself. It feels so weird that it seems more like
|
|
|
|
|
someone calling “Shadow of the Giant”, which is a book focused on Bean,
|
|
|
|
|
“Ender’s Game”. Although there is some overlap between the stories, in which
|
|
|
|
|
Bean finds and fights along Ender, the book is in no way about Ender. The same
|
|
|
|
|
thing goes here. More focus on the titular character would be better, or call
|
|
|
|
|
this book “Loken’s Vision” or whatever. It not “Horus Rising” when it is just
|
|
|
|
|
a sideline character.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Also, the long descriptions of Horus, pointing how beautiful and with a great
|
|
|
|
|
body and some mystical aura around it, doesn't help liking the character. How
|
|
|
|
|
can you like someone that everybody thinks is the perfect example of humanity?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It also feels like too many ideas where cobbled together for the book. There
|
|
|
|
|
isn’t an spinal story that keeps the book together, they are simply different
|
|
|
|
|
moments in Loken’s life — which, again, gives me the feeling that using “Horus
|
|
|
|
|
Rising” as a name was a bad choice.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
So you have a book about a character that should be the main character but
|
|
|
|
|
it’s a secondary one, in a universe poorly presented and with some bad pacing.
|
|
|
|
|
I wouldn’t blame any fellow Humble Bundle purchasers if they decided to drop
|
|
|
|
|
the series altogether after this.
|
