Amazon.com: Customer reviews: The Damnation of Pythos (The Horus Heresy)

Top positive review

An underappreciated close look at the 10th Legion

Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2019

I found myself itching for another Heresy read after taking a hiatus for the past year or so. The amount of books in the series is quite impressive and some find ourselves growing weary of the set up for the end game at Terra. I almost skipped this entry based on the review but I am very glad I didn't. This entry is a first of the series following the legion of the Iron Hands, and Annadale does a great job writing a Legion in crisis. Without their primarch, the marines are wracked by constant doubt and lost amid the growing storms of the warp. Though this novel may not make much progress in the way of the overall Heresy storyline and the inevitable conclusion, it is still very worthwhile for those looking at learning more about the mentality and ways of the Iron Hands, a legion who knows their primarch is gone and struggling to find a way forward.

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R. Marcus Atihsamy

Superfluos

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2015

Gentle reader, are you familiar with the writing convention wherein the author will build up tension in a series of long, descriptive sentences? Where details and exposition are layered on, setting up a scene in which it is clear something pivotal is about to happen? The words pile up and the reader is primed for a big reveal. Then, the author will break from the previous loquaciousness of prose displayed thus far and punnctuate the action as with the following device.

A single short sentence.

When used sparingly, this can be very effective in entertaining the reader. When this technique is employed so often that it feels like it's appearing every other page, it wears a bit thin.

It doesn't help that this is a completely superfluous story that hardly merits inclusion in the Horus Heresy. It could have been a passable short story, but as a novel, this work flounders.

Still better than Battle for the Abyss though.

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R. Marcus Atihsamy

Superfluos

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2015

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16 people found this helpful

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Curry L.

Okay, but better as a space marines battles novel.

Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2015

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This would have been an okay novel if it was not linked to the Horus Heresy, like the space marine battles series. The pacing is very slow and unfortunately it was a fairly predictable ending and none of the plot twists were really twists. The constant battles were there to build tension but in the end became tedious. If you are looking for something that adds to the HH then you can skip it.

4 people found this helpful

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Abby Mallon

Not good

Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2021

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Weird with repetitive over the top and recurring adjectives

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Amazon Customer

Another Heresy loser

Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2015

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Waste of money and time. Book kills off good characters from earlier short stories in a pointless predictable way. AT no time does there seem a cohesive point to the story other than carnage for carnage sake. Does not move the Heresy story forward at all.

5 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

HH series prints it's first miss.

Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2016

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Found out at the end of the book that David Annandales has written Space Marine Battle Novels (I've never been overly impressed by any I've read) and is also big horror buff. Looking back both of these show through a lot. This would have been an "meh/ok" stand alone book like a battle novel; but it has no place in the HH series unless there is a follow up to cover many of the huge plot holes and things that were left hanging. Sadly it does nothing to move the HH series forward and manages to fall into almost every typical horror story trap. On at least 6 occasions I stopped reading and thought "oh come on..." I'm not saying that Annandales is a bad writer, he just wrote for the wrong company.

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Diogenes

Pointless !

Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2014

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What was the point of this book ? A battle on some backwater planet in a backwater system that did not add a single story point to the Horus Heresy. Way too much character introspection and as these books are continued, the Space Marines are seeming to loose more and more of their combat skills and superior strengths. In this book it was like a troop of boy scouts on a camping trip with only a Captain to lead and guide them. Where was a Primarch when you needed him. Please, Black Library, drop Annandale from the HH writers list. What a snooze fest.

12 people found this helpful

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Blake Doelle

and it is by far the worse in the series

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2016

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I've read every Horus Heresy book up to this one, and it is by far the worse in the series. It doesn't do much to add to the overall story shared with many other books, and the author really really likes to describe the same thing over and over again all throughout the book. Most books in the series almost have -too- many things happening at once and this one by far has the least. It gave a little bit of depth for the Iron Hands, but not much. For completions sake you could grab it, but only if. This book is quite skip-able in the grand scheme of the Heresy.

2 people found this helpful

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40knut

I slept on doing a review because I feel bad for the author

Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2015

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Yesterday I finished reading this book. I slept on doing a review because I feel bad for the author. The book isn’t bad or horrifically written it’s just a poor installation into the Horus Heresy. I think you could actually skip this book, just like most reviewers have said.

4 people found this helpful

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Jay Easley

Warning: breathe Plutonium gas before reading this book!!

Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2015

Well, well, well...Book 31 of the Horus Heresy. If I am not mistaken, there may be fewer chapters in the Bible than there are Horus Heresy novels. Some Horus Heresy novels are well written, important to the story arc, with driving narratives. Two of my favorites are Horus Rising and Betrayer, two books some distance apart in the scheme of the arc but both quite good in their own way.

Sadly, the majority of the Horus Heresy books are now like the Damnation of Pythos. You know you are reading a piece of complete drivel when other authors feel the need to add a preface and an afterword to explain the context of the novel you spent two days reading...two days you will never get back in your Life. Let's all acknowledge something, something that should be obvious by now; Black Library and Games Workshop have truly screwed the pooch on producing quality 40K and Horus Heresy fiction. They have managed to piss Dan Abnett off so bad that he refuses to finish the Gaunt's Ghosts series or turn his attention to his beloved Pariah series.

The good authors, the ones who produced quality work are leaving in droves and they are simply hiring guys off the street to bind fecal matter in special "hardcover limited editions" for $30...or $65. I stuck through Pythos all the way to the end and the best thing I can say about it is that the paper inside should be used as wrapping for handing out fried fish at restaurants.

Do not be fooled. You will not miss ANYTHING by skipping this book. In fact, you may actually feel better once you realize you DID skip it. What a steaming pile of mule turd it is.

2 people found this helpful

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JPS

Tedious slapdash HH novel where "Jurassic Park" meets Chaos daemons and Space Marines?

Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2014

While some reviewers may have been not as harsh as others and found that this was not the worst of the series, this is hardly a compliment. The book does have a few interesting ideas and some nice parts, even when they might be unoriginal. However, these are simply not enough of them to make up for its multiple shortcomings.

Among the rare positives is a space battle opposing an Iron Hands strike cruiser full of survivors from the Istvaan V Dropsite massacre (Yes, again!) including a few Raven Guard and Salamander squads and an Emperor's Children squadron made up of a couple of destroyers and a battle barge. While not exactly original and barely plausible, with the damaged strike cruiser and its depleted complement of Space Marines winning comprehensively and very much against the odds, this was one of the few good parts.

Then begin the problems with what seems to be holes in the plot, as if a series of bits and pieces had been assembled together but somebody had not bothered to make sure that they all fitted. One of these is a conversation between Durun Atticus, Company Captain of the Iron Hands and commander of the strike cruiser Veritas Ferrum with two other Iron Hands captains aboard their respective ships, but then nothing more is ever heard of these and they simply disappear from the book.

Another is the anomaly on Pythos that draws the Veritas Ferrum towards the planet to investigate. Why the strike cruiser would even bother with such an investigation when shortly before the loyal Space Marines were hell bent on vengeance and keeping up the fight against the rebels is never really explained. To put it mildly, this did it not make much sense to me.

Then we get treated to a collection of predators populating Pythos, with a number of creatures that look straight out of Jurassic Park. Here, however, a number of interesting ideas - such as a blood consuming moss - are included. A while later our favourite bunch of Space Marines, guided by their astropath, and all subject to increasing mental pressures and nightmares, start to unearth a xenos construct that looks like some kind of temple. The problem, here again, is that you never get to know who these xenos are (or were?) and what exactly is the building's purpose.

Instead, you get a horde of refugees (or pilgrims?) landing on the planet. These are not exactly what they pretend to be and pressure mounts on our Space Marines who, in addition to their own tensions, have to fight it out to the finish against just about everything and everyone else. This includes saurian monsters of various sizes, a good lot of daemons, together with their daemon prince and thousands of Chaos faithful including a priest who seems to have an athame dagger with him, although this is never explicitly stated. This is where the gory descriptions tended to get a bit tedious and boring. They also failed to make up for a rather weak plot.

This is just about it, with the novel ending on the last (heroic, of course) effort to send out a (futile) warning to the rest of the galaxy about the terrible menace that is just about to engulf the last Imperials but which is never quite explained.

An additional point is that even the characterisation is a bit lame and stereotypical, with Atticus in the role of the fanatical and inhuman rationalist, his sergeant Galba full of self-doubt while the Salamander sergeant expresses a "compassionate" streak that it could not help finding somewhat phoney.

One final point on which other reviewers have already commented upon: this book does NOTHING at all to advance the story of the Horus Heresy. At best, it is another filler that tells the story and the fate of a band of survivors, mostly Iron Hands, and which gives the reader a few additional but not always original glimpses into that Legion. Two stars, because of a few good ideas and a good space battle.

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