#okay? im doing it im figuring out how to draw space marines

[quietbluejay]

Know No Fear 2

and we're back with my boy Thiel rip Thiel he tried to justify himself with his captain. it did not work. skjdfhlsdf he's been waiting for three hours and the MOMENT he goes to touch the fancy weapons collection is when someone else shows up, what a mood

welp. Thiel figures he's in about as much trouble as it's possible to be in. in which case…time to practice swordfighting and looking cool with all the fancy weapons around here that he'll never be able to touch again i am reminded of why i love Thiel

Look, Ventanus, they call it a speeder, not a slower

okay so, these two later get established as being married i'm going "huh??"

this doesn't read like he knows her super well

okay i take it back he's definitely wife guy and they're definitely close

thousand sons: am i a joke to you

it's the little bits of horror that get you

lorgar is hilarious i love this guilliman: yeah we have a slight delay of scrapcode that came from outside lorgar: HDU ACCUSE US AFTER EVERYTHING WEVE BEEN THROUGH I AM SHOCKED AND HURT AT THIS HDU HUMILIATE MY WORD BEARERS they talk it out and lmaoooo

just cackling here OHOHOHO IM SURE THEY WILL BE PUT TO REST i love dramatic irony a normal amount

we're back to Thiel who FELL ASLEEP and of course that's when Guilliman comes in the room

Thiel is EXTREMELY relatable sdlkjfshdlf GUILLIMAN COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THIEL and only came in here to think

incredible thiel: it's fine, i'm a minor detail guilliman: There is no such thing as a minor detail and then guilliman goes into thinking about Lorgar out loud Thiel: ???? ok

LET HIM SPEAK

oh, thiel BUT THE NEXT LINE

the beginning of a beautiful friendship XD and then he just leaves thiel there and is like "ok i'll deal with you later"

okay you know what fair's fair this is a good line good couple of lines abnett can sometimes write okay the logistics are bothering me again

well for one ISSTVAN III WAS VIRUS BOMBED then fire bombed how many space marines were there even to harvest Isstvan V though, no objections on that front except WHAT is the timeline here the word bearers had chaos plot holes on their side to organize this whole thing

okay, creepy

erebus, can you be normal about being a dark apostle of the ruinous powers for once in your life i am now 104 pages into a 414 page book and it still keeps drawing out the time before the attack it keeps ominously ending scenes without anything happening just people feeling ominous or the narration making ominous statements or a word bearer saying something ominous OKAY FINALLY

also im finding it fun that the ship the word bearers took over to use as their attack vector is called the Campanile bell tower

current death toll: probably a hair less than a hundred thousand in 1s THE POWER OF THROWING A SHIP AT A BUNCH OF OTHER SHIPS okay this was good

okay for all i complained about the slow pace earlier, i really do like how the whole initial explosion is structured, from a writing perspective it's very cinematic (positive) i say positive because it's not actually trying to be a movie, it's a book that unfolds in a cinematic manner another winner

from what I've seen so far, Know No Fear might be Abnett's best book and I don't mean that as a backhanded compliment like Haley, he had a serious level up from writing Horus Rising though I think Horus Rising had better writing than Valedor tbh

okay this is actually cooler on reread because the whole purpose of this is to basically use Calth's sun up and kill it in order to create the Ruinstorm oh of course the first one to initiate ship to ship combat is Kor Phaeron aw yeah the skitarii dude i remember him being cool also the scene with Hesst dying in Tawren's arms hits even harder knowing that they're married

also, guilliman managing the chaos and putting things together is very cool everyone's freaking out and he's just sitting there listening and reading all the data

he does kind of hammer things in but I think it actually works here probably because there's a lot of different plot threads and POVs going on and yet it doesn't drag and they all feel equally important that's some writing chops it's because it's very much a story about a disaster and how people respond to it the disaster is in fact the main character

also it doesn't get too dark, either, despite all the horror and that in the end the bad guys win, kind of well, they achieve their objective but that doesn't mean that what all the characters do doesn't matter

WHY DOES EVERYONE HAVE TO TALK ABOUT COOKED HUMAN FAT what is with chaos side and this can we not but also it's funny to me that this is used to summon Kor Phaeron

okay our death count is now in the millions rip the southern hemisphere

at least there isn't any onscreen cannibalism

okay so Guilliman had this message on repeat beseeching Lorgar to talk and stop firing except now things are becoming clearer so, well