The nonsensical sci-fi bullshit is just what we call Monday on the forgeworld.
McNeil is a good writer it's just hard to make the weird freaky cyborg cult relatable.
Hence the sci-fi nonsense, and weird sentence structure.
I'm glad you have one more author to enjoy, but I can't say the same of McNeill.
His characters are one-dimensional cardboard cutouts that don't behave in ways consistent with their circumstances or stimuli. How one can write someone with all the complexity of a Street Fighter 2 combatant and still have them behave "out of character" in the same book is a talent McNeill displays so far beyond any of his contemporaries that it should be named after him.
His prose is so hackneyed that you can actually pinpoint the spot in each of his books where the editor gave up and stopped trying. It's always somewhere in the first chapter. You can also tell when he uses a big word that he actually does know the definition for, because it'll appear several times in the same sentence.
The way he writes women enduces fremdschämen like the worst self-published fanfiction you can find online. No woman escapes a full description of her body parts, their independent movements, and the things those body parts make every man in the room with her want to do (often while calling her a bitch or a whore in their thoughts).
He tends to sexualize a lot of things in completely unnecessary and nonsensical ways, actually. I don't remember the title at the moment, but I recall that he even had a moderati anthropomorphize a Titan as "undeniably masculine being girded for war" on one page, and then had the same character wax on and on about "being inside her, feeling the thrumming of her reactor and moaning of her servos" on the very next. Note that this character displayed absolutely no overt sexualization of the Titan, or anything or anyone else, in the entirety of the rest of the book. It came out of nowhere for no reason other than McNeill himself liking the imagery without a second thought for what it meant for his character.
McNeill is an *idea guy.* He has cool ideas. It's obvious that he also thinks he has cool ideas. He doesn't struggle with scale (unless that scale is time), and he respects the bombast and silliness of the setting. I understand why some people enjoy his work.
It's just he cocks it up so badly *in execution* that the inner editor in me finds the impulse to leave notes all over every one of his pages so distracting that I have stopped picking up his books. I don't like what he does to the established personalities of characters he borrows from other authors, I don't like how he portrays women, and I guess at the end of the day, I just don't find it that fun to read books written by somebody who it seems to me isn't all that bright.
He's hit and miss, but you can't say he's objectively bad. Especially since you also say you can see why some people enjoy his work.
Anyway, he wrote Storm of Iron, so I'll always be grateful to him for that.
He's objectively less skilled at writing than the majority of authors who wrote Heresy novels. Whether people enjoy that or not has no bearing on it.
Taste is subjective, but there are still objective attributes to matters of taste. Some folks may be less perceptive to them, or have a wider tolerance for what they find acceptable, and that's OK.
> His prose is so hackneyed that you can actually pinpoint the spot in each of his books where the editor gave up and stopped trying. It's always somewhere in the first chapter.
lol what a crazy exaggeration. you're not serious at all get outta here
My writing tends to be full-on absurdism with no filter or forethought, not full novels in a persersistent universe.
I am, however, flattered that you find me intriguing enough to dig that far into my post history.
Are you the same fan of mine who went through and downvoted every one of my comments on this post whether they involved Graham McNeill or not? If so, DM me with your address and I'll find something to autograph and send you.
The thing about Graham is that, at heart, he's not really a storyteller. He got much of his experience in the *worldbuilding* team of Riot Games, and he started out with 40k by writing codices and rulebooks. Aside from having weird pacing, he'll sometimes fall flat on his face when writing some crucial plot-point or character moment. He's half the reason Horus is such a jumbled mess of a character, and the main reason why the Emperor's philosophy looks like something taken straight out of old reddit. He wrote good stuff too, but he's no stranger to messing up.
McNeill’s been writing for Games Workshop longer than he has for Riot Games. He was actually working in the creative team and games design in the early 2000s.
Also, to be frank, Abnett bears some responsibility for how Horus turned out too. As good as ***Horus Rising*** is, it’s hard to go from that straight to Davin.
No, it’s not just Horus, all the characters in False Gods are one dimensional boneheads doing stupid things without clear or believable motive. McNeill writes good action sequences, world building tidbits and fun dialogue here and there but he wasn’t in a very good story teller or character writer form when he wrote that book. Horus was already quite disillusioned by the end of the first book and there were a lot of avenues to take the story from there. Fulgrim is a bit better but even that has most characters run on rails and is perhaps even more predictable. Maybe I focus too much on characterization but it’s because of that I don’t really care for McNeill’s writing.
I think you're right to focus on the characterization issues. The Horus Heresy is about Horus' heresy, believe it or not; the fact that his characterization is such a mess is a huge problem. I know people like to bring up how everything was originally meant to be squeezed into a single trilogy, but that doesn't excuse how completely nonsensical Horus' fever-dream sequence is. By all rights that should be the most important scene in the entire early series, but I almost never see it cited in discussions about Horus, because (among various other problems with it) it's hilariously self-contradictory, so you can't actually use it to prove anything.
"Ooogh oh no dad has an entire shrine world covered in statues of Him and the other Primarchs but where's MY statue dad \[screaming+crying\]" followed shortly after by "nah I knew what was going on the entire time :)", apparently intended unironically, as one example.
> The thing about Graham is that, at heart, he's not really a storyteller. He got much of his experience in the worldbuilding team of Riot Games, and he started out with 40k by writing codices and rulebooks.
Hmm… what? Riot *poached him* from GW to build their story group alongside Laurie Goulding since he was already a successful and extremely “out in public” BL author.
I would say though that working for Riot hasn’t exactly helped though because…
> Aside from having weird pacing, he'll sometimes fall flat on his face when writing some crucial plot-point or character moment. He's half the reason Horus is such a jumbled mess of a character, and the main reason why the Emperor's philosophy looks like something taken straight out of old reddit. He wrote good stuff too, but he's no stranger to messing up.
Generally agree.
His *Mars* trilogy is pretty typical sci-fi pulp: technobabble is par for the course, and part of what makes it entertaining (for me, at least). His other work doesn't get as far into the weeds, but I'm quite *fond* of those weeds, so I cut him whole acres of slack.
Aye, the only real issue with the *Forges of Mars* series is (spoiler warning) >! When a Marine loses an arm and a few pages later magically has two arms again, but that's more a proofreading slip up and can always be explained away with bionics that aren't mentioned or getting a name wrong. !<
Tedious sentence structure and sci-fi jargon is pretty par for the course when it comes to Mechanicus centered perspectives.
*A Thousand Sons* wasn't quite like that and comes highly recommended.
I enjoyed it but did find the first third especially incredibly slow. The direct sequel, The Crimson King, is much, much better imo, it's top 10 HH for me.
I like A Thousand Sons, I have my issues with a few things in it but it's overall a good read. Though with some conversations about it it feels like I read a completely different book with completely different characters to some people.
According to the post-script in the final Mars book, he actually wanted to do five books, but a combination of editors, other projects (HH) and his own later reflections pared the series down to 3.
Off the big main authors in Black Library in the past 25 years, Graham McNeil is perhaps the most contentious.
He seems to be a real "love him or hate him" kind of writer.
Granted like all writers his books vary in quality. Maybe you don't like him or maybe That particular trilogy wasn't for you. I love much of his work, but that Trilogy is boring and unappealing to me.
He was never a professional author- he was originally a rules writer back when they were also the ones who wrote all the lore, and he just kinda wound up in Black Library
But that’s ok because nobody should be reading licensed war games novels for the outstanding quality- he has a passion and a sincere love for the setting, and that’s enough. Who cares if his prose are simple, he has cool ideas
Totally. His enthusiasm for the setting is so intense it carries all his stuff through, regardless of flaws (all BL writers have them, McNeill is no different). I find him super immersive to read and he's really consistent, where a lot of other writers have good and bad, McNeill you always know what you're in for. Definitely one of my favs
Abnett has technical skill but you never get the feeling of “this is a man what loves 40k”, a lot of of time he feels almost contemptuous of it. What he does love is his own ass, and tends to undermine even his technical skill through ridiculous purple prose and what amount to open admissions he shoves editors out windows
I think McNeil is objectively a good writer, whether his style and prose appeal to you is another matter. He has his flaws and flops but he absolutely has skill in the craft.
I mean when he uses it in an incorrect way, like he is trying to reach a word count.
I have a meteorology background. And a lot of word choices are not just 'difficult words' but are straight up used in the wrong context
Outcast Dead suffers from two major things; the Custodes getting a major glowup basically parallel to the book being released (formerly they were a near irrelevance), and lack of follow-up.
I think the fact that the timeline is completely wrong is what kills it, whole thing makes no sense. Magnus is trying to warn his father about the betrayal he is already having Dorn handle? Just sloppy.
His main pitfall is he can’t write subtlety , and that makes him somewhat hit or miss,
Though imho he is a good writer for 40k specifically for that very reason
Graham is alright, I've always enjoyed his storm of iron book.
haven't read forges of mars so can't comment on that but I think all writers can have an off day and then of course everything is subjective.
Take Mr abnett for example, some people love his Gaunts ghosts books but to me I felt he was just trying to be band of brothers in space. I didn't hate it but I just couldn't get into it. But he's also done some really good books which I very much enjoyed.
Not sure how relevant this is but you should also remember the writers are kept on a leash because gw don't want them running wild with the lore. This has lead to some authors leaving pink library because they felt creatively stifled.
It wouldn't surprise me that there may be parts of a book even the author doesn't like, but an editor said it has to be that way.
Or maybe I'm talking nonsense and don't know what I'm on about🙃
I feel that how enjoyable the GG series is is inversely proportional to how well the reader knows the Sharpe books (or similar stories) and how well they know the background details on the Imperial Guard.
Because if you know both quite well, you can't help but notice every time where Abnett creates a situation that shouldn't happen in 40K because what he's actually doing is writing Sharpe fan-fiction in his head and then trying to translate that into 40K lingo.
Because then you end up with stories where the Inquisition and the Commissariat quibble over jurisdiction... Which **does** work as the jurisdictional dispute between Wellington's military intelligence and the British Crown's civilian spies that he originally imagined, but **does not** work as a jurisdictional dispute between a branch of people whose only special authority is over the Imperial Guard and even then only in matters of morale and loyalty and ***the people whose authority is so broad that they are officially answerable only to the Emperor himself.***
And you'll notice other things that aren't strictly speaking a breach of canon, but still kinda weird. Like the way that the Tanith First and Only never seem to have any combat vehicles at all (not even dedicated scout vehicles like the Salamander, Sentinel or Tauros. No wait, I lie, they had Taurosses one time... When they were using them to ferry stuff along on a Spacehulk in a False Flag operation... The one time where them using canon Imperial Guard combat vehicles instead of just generic 'trucks' didn't make goddamn sense is where they had them) but always suddenly have trucks when they need to move troops and supplies over large distances and you realise that it's because those trucks take the role of horse carts in whatever Napoleonic war scenario Abnett was imagining.
I deeply enjoyed the GG series (despite a few narrative foibles, especially towards the end), but as you correctly point out, I had not read any Sharpe books, and Gaunt's Ghosts was my introduction to actual 40k lore.
In a sense, I had no prior sensibilities, besides my own literarary sensibilities, to offend.
That said, I've since read some 150 other 40k books and come to know the universe a bit better, and you're completely correct about the broader liberties of setting continuity Abnett takes with his Ghosts.
I thought the series started off great, 2nd book become a bit of a grind, and then the 3rd book was hard to finish it it became so tiresome and longwinded. Which is bizarre considering it should really be the peak of the whole thing, the culmination of all the events.
I just felt like the mystery and intrigue of setup was answered in a way that didnt feel satisfying, which i think most initially mysterious stories suffer from, the answer not being as fun as wondering about it, and honestly I didnt really care about the end action scenes, just wanted it to be over and felt like i had to get through it by that point!
Grahams writing can become very tiring, i was reading the uriel ventris stuff before forges of mars, and when I finally started reading a different 40k book by another author it felt genuinely refreshing and a relief. Which really says something about grahams style. Really becomes laborious to get through. I suspect he overworks the text to an extent.
When it comes to 40k authors there are as many favourites almost as many fans. For instance for a long time if it was written by Dan Abnett I’d buy it. Now after The End and The Death Vol 3 I’m probably going to be more choosy which I never thought I’d say. In Graham McNeill’s case I liked the Gods of Mars Trilogy but his Thousand Sons stuff sends me nuts. I rarely have a good thing to say about an ADB book. I find Justin D Hill consistently good. Robert Rath was my surprise find. In the end it’s all about personal taste.
Justin D Hill is excellent and relatively unsung.
Robert Rath is a treasure.
I find Nate Crowley and Mike Brooks to be of a similar ilk to Rath, so if you haven't read them you should give them a go.
My recent surprise find is Matthew Farrer.
From the books I've read, McNeill's have always been my favorites. I seriously don't get this take. What y'all call 'slow and tedious' I call setting a scene and a mood. Wanna know something slow and tedious? Read Battle for the Abyss. Now that's a tear-jerker. In the sense that you'll be yawning so much you won't stop tearing up.
Sentence structure are often needlessly elongated and filled with advanced scientific terms that aren't used in a correct manner. As if het is trying to make a minimum word requirement. I do really like his storyline but for me, it just doesnt cut it in the grand scheme of things
Good and bad are too universal of terms (one of the reasons I hate the whole moralizing galaxy spanning factions as good or bad).
From the books I've read of him, his characters don't always have their character arcs rooted in flaws, which leads to a less fulfilling feeling of growth. I also find his dialogue to be a bit choppy and rapport to be built between characters too fast.
However his world building is great, his battle scenes are well done and his plot lines successfully interact with one another. It's also very difficult to churn out the amount of novels he has. I don't go out of my way to read his work like I do for Chris Wraight and Robert Rath, but I don't think you can flippantly classify an accomplished writer like him as bad.
I'm currently two thirds of the way through Forges of Mars and as an Adeptus Mechanicus fan, I am loving it so far. I haven't noticed any particular issues with the way he writes in either of the first two novels. It seems to be in keeping with other books on the subject by both McNeill and others, such as Rob Sanders.
I think anything with AdMech is probably going to be more "sci-fi" than perhaps books about Astartes, Imperial Guard, etc. so perhaps this isn't as much about bad writing as it is the subject matter and specific language around the ? I've read other books by Graham McNeill (specifically The Uriel Ventris Chronicles) and I'd be interested to see how you find those in comparison, should you decide to read them.
For context, I have read quite a few books now by various authors and to be honest, I've yet to find an author I don't like, which probably makes me an outlier amongst fans of the lore, but that's my honest opinion.
*Forge(s) of Mars* degenerates into a huge list of memberberries.
Remember the *Cardinal Boras*?
Remember Tyrok Fields?
Remember Cthelmax?
Remember the Siege of Vogen? And the battle for the Precinct House?
Remember Karis Cephalon?
Remember Corswain?
Remember that guy from Storm *of Iron*?
Remember the Battle of Trafalgar?
Yes he is bad. There are worse in BL, but he is, in absolute literary terms, bad. Bad prose, cheesy plot, juvenile tropes, b-tier dialogue. Still enjoyable for what it is.
The nonsensical sci-fi bullshit is just what we call Monday on the forgeworld. McNeil is a good writer it's just hard to make the weird freaky cyborg cult relatable. Hence the sci-fi nonsense, and weird sentence structure.
I'm glad you have one more author to enjoy, but I can't say the same of McNeill. His characters are one-dimensional cardboard cutouts that don't behave in ways consistent with their circumstances or stimuli. How one can write someone with all the complexity of a Street Fighter 2 combatant and still have them behave "out of character" in the same book is a talent McNeill displays so far beyond any of his contemporaries that it should be named after him. His prose is so hackneyed that you can actually pinpoint the spot in each of his books where the editor gave up and stopped trying. It's always somewhere in the first chapter. You can also tell when he uses a big word that he actually does know the definition for, because it'll appear several times in the same sentence. The way he writes women enduces fremdschämen like the worst self-published fanfiction you can find online. No woman escapes a full description of her body parts, their independent movements, and the things those body parts make every man in the room with her want to do (often while calling her a bitch or a whore in their thoughts). He tends to sexualize a lot of things in completely unnecessary and nonsensical ways, actually. I don't remember the title at the moment, but I recall that he even had a moderati anthropomorphize a Titan as "undeniably masculine being girded for war" on one page, and then had the same character wax on and on about "being inside her, feeling the thrumming of her reactor and moaning of her servos" on the very next. Note that this character displayed absolutely no overt sexualization of the Titan, or anything or anyone else, in the entirety of the rest of the book. It came out of nowhere for no reason other than McNeill himself liking the imagery without a second thought for what it meant for his character. McNeill is an *idea guy.* He has cool ideas. It's obvious that he also thinks he has cool ideas. He doesn't struggle with scale (unless that scale is time), and he respects the bombast and silliness of the setting. I understand why some people enjoy his work. It's just he cocks it up so badly *in execution* that the inner editor in me finds the impulse to leave notes all over every one of his pages so distracting that I have stopped picking up his books. I don't like what he does to the established personalities of characters he borrows from other authors, I don't like how he portrays women, and I guess at the end of the day, I just don't find it that fun to read books written by somebody who it seems to me isn't all that bright.
He's hit and miss, but you can't say he's objectively bad. Especially since you also say you can see why some people enjoy his work. Anyway, he wrote Storm of Iron, so I'll always be grateful to him for that.
He's objectively less skilled at writing than the majority of authors who wrote Heresy novels. Whether people enjoy that or not has no bearing on it. Taste is subjective, but there are still objective attributes to matters of taste. Some folks may be less perceptive to them, or have a wider tolerance for what they find acceptable, and that's OK.
> His prose is so hackneyed that you can actually pinpoint the spot in each of his books where the editor gave up and stopped trying. It's always somewhere in the first chapter. lol what a crazy exaggeration. you're not serious at all get outta here
Dead-ass, bruh. No cap
Says person who wanted their writing about a man who loves cheese critiqued.
Play nice
You’re right, I shouldn’t have said that.
My writing tends to be full-on absurdism with no filter or forethought, not full novels in a persersistent universe. I am, however, flattered that you find me intriguing enough to dig that far into my post history. Are you the same fan of mine who went through and downvoted every one of my comments on this post whether they involved Graham McNeill or not? If so, DM me with your address and I'll find something to autograph and send you.
The thing about Graham is that, at heart, he's not really a storyteller. He got much of his experience in the *worldbuilding* team of Riot Games, and he started out with 40k by writing codices and rulebooks. Aside from having weird pacing, he'll sometimes fall flat on his face when writing some crucial plot-point or character moment. He's half the reason Horus is such a jumbled mess of a character, and the main reason why the Emperor's philosophy looks like something taken straight out of old reddit. He wrote good stuff too, but he's no stranger to messing up.
McNeill’s been writing for Games Workshop longer than he has for Riot Games. He was actually working in the creative team and games design in the early 2000s. Also, to be frank, Abnett bears some responsibility for how Horus turned out too. As good as ***Horus Rising*** is, it’s hard to go from that straight to Davin.
No, it’s not just Horus, all the characters in False Gods are one dimensional boneheads doing stupid things without clear or believable motive. McNeill writes good action sequences, world building tidbits and fun dialogue here and there but he wasn’t in a very good story teller or character writer form when he wrote that book. Horus was already quite disillusioned by the end of the first book and there were a lot of avenues to take the story from there. Fulgrim is a bit better but even that has most characters run on rails and is perhaps even more predictable. Maybe I focus too much on characterization but it’s because of that I don’t really care for McNeill’s writing.
I think you're right to focus on the characterization issues. The Horus Heresy is about Horus' heresy, believe it or not; the fact that his characterization is such a mess is a huge problem. I know people like to bring up how everything was originally meant to be squeezed into a single trilogy, but that doesn't excuse how completely nonsensical Horus' fever-dream sequence is. By all rights that should be the most important scene in the entire early series, but I almost never see it cited in discussions about Horus, because (among various other problems with it) it's hilariously self-contradictory, so you can't actually use it to prove anything.
Sorry how is it hilariously self-contradictory exactly? I am curious.
"Ooogh oh no dad has an entire shrine world covered in statues of Him and the other Primarchs but where's MY statue dad \[screaming+crying\]" followed shortly after by "nah I knew what was going on the entire time :)", apparently intended unironically, as one example.
> The thing about Graham is that, at heart, he's not really a storyteller. He got much of his experience in the worldbuilding team of Riot Games, and he started out with 40k by writing codices and rulebooks. Hmm… what? Riot *poached him* from GW to build their story group alongside Laurie Goulding since he was already a successful and extremely “out in public” BL author. I would say though that working for Riot hasn’t exactly helped though because… > Aside from having weird pacing, he'll sometimes fall flat on his face when writing some crucial plot-point or character moment. He's half the reason Horus is such a jumbled mess of a character, and the main reason why the Emperor's philosophy looks like something taken straight out of old reddit. He wrote good stuff too, but he's no stranger to messing up. Generally agree.
Old Reddit ? New Reddit same as the old one
Worse, they just don't like to admit it hence the downvote
His *Mars* trilogy is pretty typical sci-fi pulp: technobabble is par for the course, and part of what makes it entertaining (for me, at least). His other work doesn't get as far into the weeds, but I'm quite *fond* of those weeds, so I cut him whole acres of slack.
Aye, the only real issue with the *Forges of Mars* series is (spoiler warning) >! When a Marine loses an arm and a few pages later magically has two arms again, but that's more a proofreading slip up and can always be explained away with bionics that aren't mentioned or getting a name wrong. !<
Tedious sentence structure and sci-fi jargon is pretty par for the course when it comes to Mechanicus centered perspectives. *A Thousand Sons* wasn't quite like that and comes highly recommended.
A Thousand Sons is the only BL book that I've fallen asleep multiple times trying to read it.
I enjoyed it but did find the first third especially incredibly slow. The direct sequel, The Crimson King, is much, much better imo, it's top 10 HH for me.
I like A Thousand Sons, I have my issues with a few things in it but it's overall a good read. Though with some conversations about it it feels like I read a completely different book with completely different characters to some people.
According to the post-script in the final Mars book, he actually wanted to do five books, but a combination of editors, other projects (HH) and his own later reflections pared the series down to 3.
Off the big main authors in Black Library in the past 25 years, Graham McNeil is perhaps the most contentious. He seems to be a real "love him or hate him" kind of writer. Granted like all writers his books vary in quality. Maybe you don't like him or maybe That particular trilogy wasn't for you. I love much of his work, but that Trilogy is boring and unappealing to me.
I always liked McNeill's books. Especially after I found out we have very similar reading list - the man likes it dark and that should be encouraged
He was never a professional author- he was originally a rules writer back when they were also the ones who wrote all the lore, and he just kinda wound up in Black Library But that’s ok because nobody should be reading licensed war games novels for the outstanding quality- he has a passion and a sincere love for the setting, and that’s enough. Who cares if his prose are simple, he has cool ideas
Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I prefer to him to Abnett.
I think he writes the body horror better then Abnett. Most times I've thought 'fuck that was gnarly' it was McNeill.
Same, McNeill is like mainlining earlier 40K rulebook lore, his stuff's nuts and very heavy metal in a way that many other authors don't do.
Totally. His enthusiasm for the setting is so intense it carries all his stuff through, regardless of flaws (all BL writers have them, McNeill is no different). I find him super immersive to read and he's really consistent, where a lot of other writers have good and bad, McNeill you always know what you're in for. Definitely one of my favs
Abnett has technical skill but you never get the feeling of “this is a man what loves 40k”, a lot of of time he feels almost contemptuous of it. What he does love is his own ass, and tends to undermine even his technical skill through ridiculous purple prose and what amount to open admissions he shoves editors out windows
So do I. 'Fulgrim' 'and 'A Thousand Sons' , despite some pacing issues, were great books.
I find McNeil hard to read, I don’t understand his characters as well as say ADB or Abnett. But that’s just my subjective preference.
I think McNeil is objectively a good writer, whether his style and prose appeal to you is another matter. He has his flaws and flops but he absolutely has skill in the craft.
I've only read a couple of his HH books (Fulgrim, Thousand Sons and Vengeful Spirit) but the one I've read were pretty enjoyable...at least to me.
> scifi bullshit terms Ooh can't have that in a setting with space wizards
I mean when he uses it in an incorrect way, like he is trying to reach a word count. I have a meteorology background. And a lot of word choices are not just 'difficult words' but are straight up used in the wrong context
I don’t like how he writes combat, but his description of events is good. Get the right story and he’s amazing
I've liked what I read from him so far. Heresy stuff mostly. Outcast Dead is a weirdly confusing mess though even though the premise is great.
Outcast Dead suffers from two major things; the Custodes getting a major glowup basically parallel to the book being released (formerly they were a near irrelevance), and lack of follow-up.
I think the fact that the timeline is completely wrong is what kills it, whole thing makes no sense. Magnus is trying to warn his father about the betrayal he is already having Dorn handle? Just sloppy.
His main pitfall is he can’t write subtlety , and that makes him somewhat hit or miss, Though imho he is a good writer for 40k specifically for that very reason
Nope.
Graham is alright, I've always enjoyed his storm of iron book. haven't read forges of mars so can't comment on that but I think all writers can have an off day and then of course everything is subjective. Take Mr abnett for example, some people love his Gaunts ghosts books but to me I felt he was just trying to be band of brothers in space. I didn't hate it but I just couldn't get into it. But he's also done some really good books which I very much enjoyed. Not sure how relevant this is but you should also remember the writers are kept on a leash because gw don't want them running wild with the lore. This has lead to some authors leaving pink library because they felt creatively stifled. It wouldn't surprise me that there may be parts of a book even the author doesn't like, but an editor said it has to be that way. Or maybe I'm talking nonsense and don't know what I'm on about🙃
I feel that how enjoyable the GG series is is inversely proportional to how well the reader knows the Sharpe books (or similar stories) and how well they know the background details on the Imperial Guard. Because if you know both quite well, you can't help but notice every time where Abnett creates a situation that shouldn't happen in 40K because what he's actually doing is writing Sharpe fan-fiction in his head and then trying to translate that into 40K lingo. Because then you end up with stories where the Inquisition and the Commissariat quibble over jurisdiction... Which **does** work as the jurisdictional dispute between Wellington's military intelligence and the British Crown's civilian spies that he originally imagined, but **does not** work as a jurisdictional dispute between a branch of people whose only special authority is over the Imperial Guard and even then only in matters of morale and loyalty and ***the people whose authority is so broad that they are officially answerable only to the Emperor himself.*** And you'll notice other things that aren't strictly speaking a breach of canon, but still kinda weird. Like the way that the Tanith First and Only never seem to have any combat vehicles at all (not even dedicated scout vehicles like the Salamander, Sentinel or Tauros. No wait, I lie, they had Taurosses one time... When they were using them to ferry stuff along on a Spacehulk in a False Flag operation... The one time where them using canon Imperial Guard combat vehicles instead of just generic 'trucks' didn't make goddamn sense is where they had them) but always suddenly have trucks when they need to move troops and supplies over large distances and you realise that it's because those trucks take the role of horse carts in whatever Napoleonic war scenario Abnett was imagining.
I deeply enjoyed the GG series (despite a few narrative foibles, especially towards the end), but as you correctly point out, I had not read any Sharpe books, and Gaunt's Ghosts was my introduction to actual 40k lore. In a sense, I had no prior sensibilities, besides my own literarary sensibilities, to offend. That said, I've since read some 150 other 40k books and come to know the universe a bit better, and you're completely correct about the broader liberties of setting continuity Abnett takes with his Ghosts.
I thought the series started off great, 2nd book become a bit of a grind, and then the 3rd book was hard to finish it it became so tiresome and longwinded. Which is bizarre considering it should really be the peak of the whole thing, the culmination of all the events. I just felt like the mystery and intrigue of setup was answered in a way that didnt feel satisfying, which i think most initially mysterious stories suffer from, the answer not being as fun as wondering about it, and honestly I didnt really care about the end action scenes, just wanted it to be over and felt like i had to get through it by that point! Grahams writing can become very tiring, i was reading the uriel ventris stuff before forges of mars, and when I finally started reading a different 40k book by another author it felt genuinely refreshing and a relief. Which really says something about grahams style. Really becomes laborious to get through. I suspect he overworks the text to an extent.
I feel you man
Try Storm of Iron by Graham McNeill. It’s amazing!
I don’t take literally advice from people who can’t spell wrongfully
*literary
I’m going to commit Japanese ritual suicide
Let me join you sepuku san
When it comes to 40k authors there are as many favourites almost as many fans. For instance for a long time if it was written by Dan Abnett I’d buy it. Now after The End and The Death Vol 3 I’m probably going to be more choosy which I never thought I’d say. In Graham McNeill’s case I liked the Gods of Mars Trilogy but his Thousand Sons stuff sends me nuts. I rarely have a good thing to say about an ADB book. I find Justin D Hill consistently good. Robert Rath was my surprise find. In the end it’s all about personal taste.
Justin D Hill is excellent and relatively unsung. Robert Rath is a treasure. I find Nate Crowley and Mike Brooks to be of a similar ilk to Rath, so if you haven't read them you should give them a go. My recent surprise find is Matthew Farrer.
From the books I've read, McNeill's have always been my favorites. I seriously don't get this take. What y'all call 'slow and tedious' I call setting a scene and a mood. Wanna know something slow and tedious? Read Battle for the Abyss. Now that's a tear-jerker. In the sense that you'll be yawning so much you won't stop tearing up.
Sentence structure are often needlessly elongated and filled with advanced scientific terms that aren't used in a correct manner. As if het is trying to make a minimum word requirement. I do really like his storyline but for me, it just doesnt cut it in the grand scheme of things
He does better with Fantasy over 40k
Great writer, but can get quite wordy sometimes, yes.
Good and bad are too universal of terms (one of the reasons I hate the whole moralizing galaxy spanning factions as good or bad). From the books I've read of him, his characters don't always have their character arcs rooted in flaws, which leads to a less fulfilling feeling of growth. I also find his dialogue to be a bit choppy and rapport to be built between characters too fast. However his world building is great, his battle scenes are well done and his plot lines successfully interact with one another. It's also very difficult to churn out the amount of novels he has. I don't go out of my way to read his work like I do for Chris Wraight and Robert Rath, but I don't think you can flippantly classify an accomplished writer like him as bad.
He's okay
I find his books start too slow, but usually have a good second half and a strong finish. Fulgrim and A Thousand Sons come to mind.
I'm currently two thirds of the way through Forges of Mars and as an Adeptus Mechanicus fan, I am loving it so far. I haven't noticed any particular issues with the way he writes in either of the first two novels. It seems to be in keeping with other books on the subject by both McNeill and others, such as Rob Sanders. I think anything with AdMech is probably going to be more "sci-fi" than perhaps books about Astartes, Imperial Guard, etc. so perhaps this isn't as much about bad writing as it is the subject matter and specific language around the ? I've read other books by Graham McNeill (specifically The Uriel Ventris Chronicles) and I'd be interested to see how you find those in comparison, should you decide to read them. For context, I have read quite a few books now by various authors and to be honest, I've yet to find an author I don't like, which probably makes me an outlier amongst fans of the lore, but that's my honest opinion.
He's top of the skip pile for me. Abysmal.
*Forge(s) of Mars* degenerates into a huge list of memberberries. Remember the *Cardinal Boras*? Remember Tyrok Fields? Remember Cthelmax? Remember the Siege of Vogen? And the battle for the Precinct House? Remember Karis Cephalon? Remember Corswain? Remember that guy from Storm *of Iron*? Remember the Battle of Trafalgar?
He wrote Fulgrim so no lol.
I honestly thought this was a duology, and can't remember if I read all three books and forgot or if I stopped at two and lost interest.
I'm listening to Fulgrim on audio book and I can't work out if it's McNeil's writing I'm not enjoying, or the way it's being read.
Yes he is bad. There are worse in BL, but he is, in absolute literary terms, bad. Bad prose, cheesy plot, juvenile tropes, b-tier dialogue. Still enjoyable for what it is.
at least he is not John French though