Rolled 9 (1d10)
> The Merchants' Armada carried all hope with it. It was the last chance. It was the last wall. In the soul of every human on Terra, regardless of belief, was the hard knowledge of how fragile the last wall was.
The Beast Arises: ‘The Last Wall’
David Annandale
Ebook Edition, 2016
If you’re already invested in The Beast Arises, you’re going to want to read ‘The Last Wall’ because it really shakes things up. If you’re not, you don’t want to read this book as a one-off 40k book or as your first entry into the series, because on its own it merits it kind of sucks.
It’s a trap! That might as well have been the tagline for this book. Whether it’s the Orks, the Inquisition, the Officio Assassinorum, or the forces of Chaos, everybody tries to trap everybody else. Except for the Imperium, who do what they do best and launch a crusade on the Ork attack moon hovering over Terra. As you might expect,especially since the newly-released Black Library blurbs for the future books spoiled the fact that the moon continues to orbit Terra five books laterthings go badly.
>"Why keep him alive? If he's worth attacking, he's worth killing."
There is some interesting Inquisitorial/Assassinorum intrigue that takes place over the course of the book as Inquistors Wienand and Veritus struggle for power over the Inquisitors of Terra and Vangorich intervenes to keep Wienand alive and kicking. Vindicare Assassins, whatever Esad Wier is, and a Vanus spy get to show off their skills at sneaking and killing in some of the more interesting moments in the book. I especially enjoyed the Vindicare segment, since it injected some much-needed humor into the story.
>>46260041
The rest of ‘The Last Wall’ is much less interesting and a lot stupider. Characters don’t think, or think in completely illogical ways. Never mind Imperial Guardsmen tempting fate in clichés, or Inquisitors pinning all their complex plans on random luck, and High Lords being willfully blind to the universe around them; no, the real stupidity is how everyone in the book says time and again how they can do nothing, nothing they do matters, and then regret how they didn’t do anything. Annandale uses the same rhetorical device time and again to dismiss character’s acting stupidly just so that the plot can advance to the story’s M. Night-style twist. It’s pathetic.
>Vangorich knew what it meant, though. He had told himself that he had nothing invested in Tull’s folly. He was wrong. He discovered that when he felt a vice crush something in his chest.
The story focuses on one event: the launching of the Proletarian Crusade. Stirred up by passionate rhetoric of saving Terra and serving the Emperor, millions of Terran citizens volunteer to join the thousands of impressed starships in the Sol system to invade the Ork attack moon. This moon hovers over Terra for about three weeks, doing nothing but staring down at the planet while High Lords (Vangorich and the Inquisitorial Representatives) try to assassinate rivals in the shadows of Terra and support the Crusade so that their political standing rises. It’s not really coherent; we have two new viewpoint characters who show off the fervor that sweeps the human population and the attitude of the ship captains forced to support the Crusade knowing they’re doomed to die, and they both just go with the flow and wind up being objects of amusements for the Orks. Who actuallysend ambassadors to the High Lords and demand their surrender. Before mocking them for being fucking stupid and arguing among themselves before peacing out.
>>46260065
Secondary plots include the traitorous Iron Warriors being invaded by both an Ork attack moon and a Black Templar Crusade, and Chapter Master Koorland of the Imperial Fists assembling a force of Successor chapters. And these plots eventually become one plot; the Fist’s mobilization is being held up by the Black Templars wasting their strength invading the Iron Warriors and the Iron Warriors decide they need to focus on one invasion, not two.They probably team up, unless the alliance spoiled by Black Library is one between the humans and the Eldar.
Annadale’s style doesn’t match well with the previous entries in the series. There’s a lot less dialogue, a lot more description and internal monologue. Few of the viewpoint characters spend much time interacting with others; the bulk of ‘The Last Wall’ is devoted to action scenes and introspection, and while not necessarily a bad thing it really slows down the pace of what should be a tense and tight suspense novel. The Orks are right over Terra, and yet the feeling of panic that the book describes never really comes through.
>They did not find strength in each other. They saw and heard and felt only their own fear reflected back at them a hundred thousand times. They shouted as if that might help them stay afloat in the wave of desperation. But they sank. And they drowned.
>>46260095
In one area, Annandale has done better than previous entries in the series. His worldbuilding is better. You see some of how various High Lords maintain their power bases, such as the Speaker for the Chartist Captains maintaining an office where the wealth, culture, and delicacies of the Imperium are rotated through on a daily basis, never repeating, to impress just how important and powerful the merchant marine is.
And the exploration of Terra’s hives as the Inquisition and Assassinorum play cat and mouse with their lives finally creates an impression of this post-Heresy, pre-Vandire Imperial society where things aren’t totally fucked up, just slowly decaying. We finally understand what the book’s characters are fighting to save, as opposed to just being humans reacting to an alien invasion.
>"Don't need an interpreter," the lead ork said. "We tell you how to surrender, you surrender. Easy."
In a way, David Annandale accomplished something very powerful with ‘The Last Wall.’ But he also failed terribly. Finally, the costs of the invasion seem clear. Though I will admit that the chapters about Undine in ‘Predator, Prey’ are in a similar vein, they don’t quite match the tone and emotional weight of Annandale’s rendering of the terror of the civilians of Terra.
And yet Annandale drops the ball by diverting the story away from the actual invasion and the existential terror brought on by the attack moon to play around with the Iron Warriors and the Imperial Fists doing nothing, while kicking the book into action movie territory with the intrigue and fighting of the Inquisition. Imagine playing Majora’s Mask and every few hours you suddenly played Tingle’s Balloon Fight or Super Smash Bros. The shifts in tone and the uneven pacing just turn the book into a generic, undifferentiated mess.
>>46260118
‘The Last Wall’ is a disappointment after ‘The Emperor Expects,’ a story that drags on too long despite bringing some much-needed humanity and warmth to The Beast Arises. While it offers a much-needed ground-level perspective on what the characters are fighting to preserve and why, the slow and deliberate pace of worldbuilding fundamentally conflicts with the, well, primary conflict of the story: the imminent, or so it seems, invasion of Terra. There’s just so much dissonance that the suspension of disbelief is punctured.
Yet, ‘The Last Wall’ was necessary for me to start caring about The Beast Arises. It made the Ork invasion personal, and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.
>>46260041
You know what you should do? Start a blog and do reviews. I'd love to see you do the entire Horus Heresy Series and chart its decline as the series went on.
>>46260310
But I can't stand the Horus Heresy. I can barely take the slow pacing of The Beast Arises.
>>46260472
I was talking to the namefag doing this review.
>>46260310
Where do people say it starts to shit the bed? I read Mechanicum and thought it was acceptable, and even the Battle of Calth one, read entirely on its own without looking at the rest of the series, seemed pretty good.
>>46260494
I take off the trips when it's not the review itself. It's rude to keep it on all the time and I'd rather be anon.
>>46260065
>The biggest warhammer 40,000 fiction event since The Horus Heresy
We are never getting an Age of Apostasy series, are we?
>>46260538
That's definitely happening in 2018. Chronologically, it's like 4000 years after this series, so they're obviously going to get around to the Reign of Blood and rewriting Vandire to be a well-intentioned fanatic who maybe later on goes crazy, and then to the Age of Apostasy after that.
>>46260527
Well, in that case I'd like to know why you can't stand the Heresy series. Your opinions are of great interest.
>>46260570
I'm sure they'll write the SOB out of it when it happens and make it all about Marines. As you can't have an event where marines were only tangential.
>>46260686
If they did that I think there'll be no point for the Sisters to exist.
>>46260686
The Marines did stuff. Just like The Beast Arises, they'll probably be preparing and gathering strength through the whole series and steal the thunder at the end. I mean, just look at what's going on with the Fist Successors; 4 books of doing nothing other than dying while the Iron Warriors show up to do shit.
>>46260745
Now you are thinking like GW!
>>46260749
But it was the founder of the Sortias who killed Vandire. Is that what they're going to change?
>>46260766
It's horrible. Make it stop.
>>46260749
>The Marines did stuff.
Yeah but in the Age of Blood they were a very minor faction. Most of them stayed out of it and even those who didn't only got involved after Thor did.
It's really mostly Ecclessiarchy/Thor/SOB/Imperial Guard.
>>46260638
Too long. Seriously, this is supposed to be a 2-5 year Heresy, and we have more than 30 books? What the fuck are they writing about?
>>46260745
>>46260766
What if Sisters just become female Space Marines?
>>46260745
>>46260766
>>46260781
Honestly, if they were smart with marketing it would be a great time to do a SOB Reboot like they did the Dark Eldar. A sudden burst of story books where they are the core of it AND new rules/models.
>>46260095
>book is called The Last Wall
>book isn't about Fists showing up on Terra and enacting the Last Wall Protocol they've been fucking talking about
jesus
>>46260826
Agony, misery, and pain. All in the guise of a book. May or may not induce kidney stones.
>>46260828
Which they're not.
>>46260828
I really only want to get into Tabletop so I can make IG vehicles like the Griffon and Leman Russ, and play SIsters of Battle. But the prices are too steep right now, or my savings are too small, for me to justify just buying a small squad.
>>46260841
The Proletarian Crusade is considered the true Last Wall. Throw all the millions of armed humans on Terra at the Orks and that's the Last Wall.
Did anything important happen?
>>46260065
>Guy Haley is writing the Eldar entry
Sweet! He's the only writer to have actually given us likeable Eldar characters doing cool Eldar shit. Fuck, that actually makes me kinda want to read this, but I've been burned by 40k novels too many times.
>>46260527
It might be worth keeping it on for followup discussion in the thread itself, if only so we can actually discuss the points with you. Keep it off outside the thread though of course.
