A review by deldir
Battle for the Abyss by Ben Counter

3.0

My rating for this one started at one started but worked its way up to 3 by the end. There are for some reason (this is a revised edition!) a ton of typos of the "discrete when he meant discreet" variety, but more importantly for most of the novel Counter modifies the old injunction to "show, not tell" to "show, then immediately tell" when it comes to characters' emotions. Think along the lines of "'I HATE YOU!!' the space marine said, showing his choleric mood". Sometimes he mangles sentences to the point where it is hard to understand who did what to whom, even on the third rereading.

Somehow Counter left these tics behind for the last third of the novel, and he rounded into the author I enjoyed in Galaxy in Flames and the Grey Knight series. Even so, this has been my least favorite Horus Heresy book to date.