From 1494b8bb94a5089f453b87fea2fa34e41e5557b3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Julio Biason Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2019 17:42:10 -0300 Subject: [PATCH] Book review: Horus Rising --- content/reviews/books/horus-rising.md | 56 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 56 insertions(+) create mode 100644 content/reviews/books/horus-rising.md diff --git a/content/reviews/books/horus-rising.md b/content/reviews/books/horus-rising.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..50ace80 --- /dev/null +++ b/content/reviews/books/horus-rising.md @@ -0,0 +1,56 @@ ++++ +title = "Horus Rising - Dan Abnett" +date = 2019-10-30 + +[taxonomies] +tags = ["en-au", "books", "reviews", "warhammer 40000", "dan abnett"] ++++ + +[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? + + + +{{ 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.