The Founding Fields - Latest Comments

Re: Mistborn: The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson – Book Review [Bane of Kings]

The Portsmouth Review — Sat, 20 Aug 2016 13:18:35 -0000

I know this was a while ago but I just finished this third in the trilogy now. I was blown away. So - did you ever get to the second Mistborn trilogy?
Rebecca @ The Portsmouth Review
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Re: Horus Heresy: The Damnation of Pythos by David Annandale – Book Review [Bellarius]

Garviel Loken — Wed, 10 Aug 2016 01:29:39 -0000

Interesting

Re: Horus Heresy: The Damnation of Pythos by David Annandale – Book Review [Bellarius]

Julius Nilsen — Fri, 15 Jul 2016 06:43:34 -0000

I disagree. Annandale is one of the best BL writers when it comes to capture the alienness of the mindset of the non-humans in the 30-40k universe. I think that the Damnation of Pythos was a return to form for the Horus heresy series.

Re: Ghouls of the Miskatonic by Graham McNeill – Book Review [Bellarius]

ANevskyUSA — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 22:23:50 -0000

The characterization and plot shift in this book is because it is licensed fiction. It is one book of a trilogy in a series of tie-in novels for Fantasy Flight's Arkham Horror boardgame (and related games - Eldritch Horror, Mansions of Madness, Eldar Sign). Most of the supporting characters in this book are characters from the games, and the basic plot is that of the game - group of investigators thrown together to prevent the manifestation of the Great Old One before it is too late.

Re: Starlight by Mark Millar – Comicbook Review [Bellarius]

bookwraiths — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 07:20:19 -0000

Great review. I really loved this book as well. Thought it was one of the best.

Re: Daemon World by Ben Counter – Review [Lord of the Night]

Captain Loken — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 23:56:05 -0000

Nice review of this! I am very anxious to get started on this novel. (Waiting for it to come in the mail!)

Re: Red Country by Joe Abercrombie – Book Review [Bane of Kings]

Dale Pearl — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 22:30:33 -0000

I loved Red Country. I understand the parallels that many make by labeling this a western but realistically most fantasy novels with fit into either Europe's medieval times or America's wild west. The tempo and pacing of this book I actually found to be substantially better than the other first law books. In Red Country you could feel the pulse of the separate story lines beginning to merge, for me it was almost like a hidden story. On top of that the prose, the dialogue was superb. I came away with over 120 quotes from this book, probably the same number I caught from the first law 1-3 combined.

One thing we can agree is that Joe is right up at the top as far as fantasy writers go right now. George Martin... yes he is good but 1 book every 5 years doesn't cut it and Mr. Martin also leaves you hating half of the wretched characters. Joe has this way of making you absolutely adore the bad guys. Remember Glotka? Yes he was freaking awesome!

This book gets my vote for best fantasy in the past 20 years. Out of the thousands of books that I have read I place this one squarely at the top. Since reading this book I haven't stopped dreaming about it or lounging around imagining that I am in Creasine, standing in a crowd watching Logan AKA Lamp pulling out Golden's moustache.

Re: Star Wars: Aftermath by CHUCK WENDING – Book Review [Bellarius]

Bellarius — Tue, 15 Sep 2015 04:27:52 -0000

Trust me, you don't know the half of it. I can honestly flip the book open to any page and find something so utterly moronic, so mind-numbingly stupid that it warrants a refund.

No, really, I tried this. I flipped the book about, landed at random on page 180 and saw someone (accurately) stating that Wedge's weakness is that he isn't used to hopelessness fights. Again, even ignoring the EU this is the same guy who fought at Yavin, Hoth and Endor, and apparently he isn't familiar with hopeless, desperate battles according to this.

Re: Star Wars: Aftermath by CHUCK WENDING – Book Review [Bellarius]

bookwraiths — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 09:48:02 -0000

Damn. I can't say I'm surprised by what you've written here, but I am disappointed. Against my better judgment, I was hoping this "new" Star Wars mythos might be okay and incorporate the good points of the Expanded Universe. Guess Disney has decided to go in a different direction. :(

Re: Kingdom Come Absolute Edition by Mark Waid and Alex Ross – Comics Review [Bellarius]

Steven Irizarry — Sat, 15 Aug 2015 18:46:21 -0000

Kingdom come movie

Re: Bioshock: Rapture by John Shirley – Book Review [Bellarius]

Commissar Ploss — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 11:29:38 -0000

Holy fuck, dude! Shut the hell up, honestly, nobody cares about your messianic complex. Comment about the book or lurk. Your choice. - CP

Re: The Gates of Azyr – Novella Review [Bellarius]

Andrew Burgess — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 03:37:46 -0000

I have now read the novella & I feel you were to0 generous in your appraisal - the story was bad. The story was badly under developed & the characters varied from dull to invisible in fact the only even moderately interesting character was the tribeswoman & she spent the whole story running from chaos forces.
Worse the main "good guys" are these stormhost eternals that are basicly space marine wannabe's that have had everything that was interesting about space marines removed leaving them as dull & annoying tropes we could do without.
And worst is the setting, the story - what there was of it - seemed to be saying that chaos has conquered all the realms & left them a wasteland & now Sigmar's stormhost eternals have come to take it back. Which seems to leave us with these cheap space marine knock offs battling generic chaos forces across a wasteland. Where are the vampires & undead, Dwarves & Elves, Orcs & Skaven? The whole thing was supposed to replace an ailing world and what we get is THIS!!!!?
Unless there is some massive rewriting from GW soon you can count Age of Sigmar as DOA.

Re: Deathfire by Nick Kyme – Book Review [Bellarius]

Nihlathak — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 07:36:33 -0000

While I agree in that it tells very little in many Words, I do not think its as bad as this damning review. We get a continuation of stories at least I want to follow, like barthusa narek, and the book certainly has its good parts. Just too bad than the inbetweens are quite dry and plentiful.

Also, the title as you are probably aware of comes from the mountain 'deathfire' they try to reach.

I'd say the book is worth it If you can handle some dryer parts but want to follow the story of how vulcan was sent home to nocturne.

Re: Deliverance Lost by Gav Thorpe – Advanced Review [Bane of Kings]

Phil73805 — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 09:10:15 -0000

Back when I was reviewing for a popular American website I wanted to review this book. The sheer tonnage of hatred that this author seems to generate made me to want to read this book and tell the haters to sit down and shut up. I have a rule when reviewing, if I don't read the whole book (at least once, often twice) I won't write the review. I never wrote the review. I couldn't get through it. This is not to say that the hate he receives is justified, it most certainly isn't. I found the book undreadable, the prose - undeveloped and the characters - two dimensional. For me the series is all about larger than life characters exploring the big themes of brotherhood, loyalty and betrayal with some gratuitious bolter porn thrown in. They need to be larger than life, powerful figures who dominate the stage and his characters came across as weak and emotional, more of an emo bromance than the mighty Astartes struggling for survival. It drained my will to read their story, I just didn't care. But here's the bit that baffles me, everyone loves the book! What am I missing?!

Re: Horus Heresy: The Unremembered Empire by Dan Abnett – Book Review [Bellarius]

Phil73805 — Tue, 16 Jun 2015 08:58:17 -0000

I really struggled with this novel. I am a huge fan of Dan Abnett and didn't think he was capable of writing a bad book so when I read this it felt like the sky was falling. I had battled through half of Vulkan Live before throwing it down in disgust and I took comfort from the thought of some Abnett as a soothing balm. I was disappointed. The scenes lacked Abnett's penchant for great drama and fell rather flat and the whole novel feels rather...tired, rushed. In the 'enhanced' hardback version Abnett says in the afterword that this was the hardest novel he'd ever had to write. Sadly, it shows.

Re: Horus Heresy: The Damnation of Pythos by David Annandale – Book Review [Bellarius]

Commissar Ploss — Thu, 21 May 2015 03:48:37 -0000

No worries, just wanted to clear that up.

Re: Horus Heresy: The Damnation of Pythos by David Annandale – Book Review [Bellarius]

Valérian Charloteaux — Thu, 21 May 2015 03:44:05 -0000

Okay, first, about getting paid by GW, I was sarcastic, because I'm not naive enough to think GW and BL care so much about their PR that they would pay reviewer. (Hell ! Even I I think the idea quite mad...)

So I apologize, if you took that seriously.

Second, I think that bothered me about this book was the feeling of a HUGE overstretched filler.

I will not complain about the downer ending in itself, even if I prefer a little more high spirited one, but I seriously I founded the story a little bit pointless in the grand schemes of things, and there was no real justification to give it a whole book. (Maybe in a novel anthology ?)

Re: Horus Heresy: The Damnation of Pythos by David Annandale – Book Review [Bellarius]

Bellarius — Wed, 20 May 2015 17:47:31 -0000

Well, now you've met one. I honestly fully enjoyed this book, and I think in part that's due to three factors which were overlooked by other readers. As such I was coming into this from a different mindset to other readers.

A) I went into this expecting it to be a side-story. Many complained that this added nothing to further the plot of the Heresy, yet the fact is that this was focusing upon the Shattered Legions. Their role in the Heresy was done, over, and beyond playing a few supporting roles they were not going to be a primary focus from here on. I was expecting it to be a minor distraction to help flesh out elements of the universe, and ultimately that's what I got.

B) I went into this expecting it to be a horror story of sorts with big action at points, and a bleak ending. This comes from looking at Annandale's influences and the title itself, a book called the Damnation of Pythos is hardly going to have a bright ending, and in all honesty I was given the outcome I wanted for this story. Bleak, horrific, but with plenty of action and some atmospheric scenes. A little heavy handed to be sure at points, but I did like the use of horror tropes here and there.

C) This came following the creation of Codex: Clan Raukaan. A codex which not only horribly misrepresented the Iron Hands but, to be blunt, was a concentrated stripping down of any of the chapter's unique elements while insulting anyone who actually supported the prior depiction. The vast bulk of Iron Hands players who actually cared about the lore prior to this effectively swore off buying 40K until it was done, and some were so insulted they were on the verge of swearing blood oaths against the writers. Following that, any depiction which actually tried to stick to the Iron Hands' true depiction I was going to be a little more forgiving towards.

If you didn't like this book, fair enough, but I honestly got what I wanted out of this. I'm more than willing to heavily criticise Black Library and its authors when the need calls for it, but in this case I quite enjoyed the story, themes and overall events. It's certainly not the best book of the Heresy by a long shot, but it's been fun enough to read a few times over.

Oh, and as a final note, Black Library stopped caring about reviewers at about the same time they stopped sending out review copies. You'd have a better chance of finding the Holy Grail than convincing anyone in that company to even consider paying others to improve public opinion of them.

Re: Horus Heresy: The Damnation of Pythos by David Annandale – Book Review [Bellarius]

Commissar Ploss — Wed, 20 May 2015 15:47:10 -0000

Outside of the book itself on rare occasions, the staff at TFF does not get financially compensated for their reviews. We do this out of a joy of reviewing and our mutual love of books. The opinions expressed in TFF reviews are expressly those of the reviewer.

Re: Horus Heresy: The Damnation of Pythos by David Annandale – Book Review [Bellarius]

Valérian Charloteaux — Wed, 20 May 2015 15:04:30 -0000

Huuh, you got paid by GW for your review ? Because I've yet to find any people who found this book a good one...

Re: Horus Heresy: The Damnation of Pythos by David Annandale – Book Review [Bellarius]

Garviel Loken — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 19:16:27 -0000

i've read a few books by Annandale, i think he is absolutely terrible

Re: Horus Heresy: The Damnation of Pythos by David Annandale – Book Review [Bellarius]

Garviel Loken — Wed, 01 Apr 2015 19:14:27 -0000

I can't agree more! This was awful. I feel it was a waste of time and money.

Re: Halo: Glasslands by Karen Traviss – Paperback Review [Bellarius]

D00000m — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 14:02:51 -0000

Popularity does not mean quality, Jersey Shore and Twilight are evident enough of this. Karen Traviss is a hack, pure and simple. One might say her quality is subjective, but when you don't pay attention to the setting, when you have a character act out of character for no reason, when your own writing contradicts itself, there is a problem.

Re: Horus Heresy: The Damnation of Pythos by David Annandale – Book Review [Bellarius]

Ravens — Thu, 08 Jan 2015 22:07:30 -0000

I found this book to be completely worthless. I read almost all
warhammer 40k books. From 30k to 40k to everything lol. So when I read a
HH novel I expect it to be slightly better and deeper than 40k. But
this was just one long pointless battle for nothing. I mean all this
work for a message sent that is completely disregarded, sacrifices
pointless, I mean I don't think it a bad read. No that is not what I am
saying. I am just saying that it was not worth writing. This story was
not worth telling, ok so a few remnants of the loyalists get killed and a
demon ship is raised. Great. Not really the epic story that "Damnation
of Pythos," suggest. Still its not a bad book, just not worth the money.

Re: Skulduggery Pleasant: Death Bringer by Derek Landy – Review [Lord of the Night]

bobbymoorejk — Sat, 06 Dec 2014 12:08:27 -0000

i love the book as well :D