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Honestly a downgrade from the last novel. While I do enjoy the characters, especially Thrawn, it feels like he never really feels like he’s winning. In universe and real life people always hype Thrawn up as a genius military tactiction, and while he does come up with interesting plans and is quite intuitive, he always loses as someone comes up out of left field. It makes the titular character of the trilogy feel like he’s not actually a threat most of the time. Another thing that isn’t necessarily a major issue is that to me the Dark Force’s existence and peoples knowledge of it is strange. I get that its a legend that probably wouldn’t have been in the original trilogy movies, but literally everyone knows what this fleet is, and that really bothers me. Despite all this, the book is still enjoyable enough, but not nearly as much as the first unfortunate.

This collection contains the novels Elric of Melniboné, The Fortress of the Pearl, The Sailor on the Seas of Fate, and The Weird of the White Wolf. Elric of Melniboné is a very different story to what I have ever read previously. The writing feels somewhat strange, but I find it rather appealing, the way that characters talk in a very fantasy way to me, pulp fantasy you could call it. Things also just tend to happen in the story. A giant butterfly monster appears out of nowhere? Ok Elric can deal with this. A boat appears and transport Elric across time and dimensions? Sure lets see what happens. Its all very weird and I enjoy it quite a bit even if it can be difficult to explain or understand. Also, Elric is an interesting character, and seeing the way he views and goes about things is enjoyable to read, even if often his solution to any problem is to call upon some deity to solve it for him. Out of the 4 novels contained within The Weird of the White Wolf is my least favorite, maybe it is because it was the first few Elric stories put together and the way he wrote the character hadn't formed into how he did for the 3 novels preceding it chronologically. The shift of events from Sailor on the Seas of Fate to The Weird of the White Wolf was very sudden, to the point where I had to look up forums to see if I had missed something that explained Elric's actions. Even then though, the story was still very enjoyable to read, if just less so that the preceding stories. If you're interested in reading some old school pulpy fantasy that I'd highly recomend Elric of Melniboné.

The End and the Death: Volume 3 is the End and the Death of me. Its the final part of the final novel of the final subline of the Horus Heresy and I really wish that it was better for a series I’ve been reading for the last 5 years. When it comes down to the negatives of the book, they’re pretty much all the same as my complaints for Volume 2. There are too many plot lines that don’t feel like they matter, the Dark King doesn’t really matter whatsoever, and its just too long. The fight between Horus and the Emperor was featured in a short story all the way back in 1988 in Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned, and I just wish that the duel in this book was better. In the original William King short story Horus gets a nice little speech to the Emperor, which is basically just homaged in the novel, and the fight lass several chapters. It feels like the book is confusing an epic conclusion for a long one. Of course there is also the little recurring feature of warhammer novels of the chad loyalist vs the soy traitor conversation, where a traitor talks about their conviction just for a loyalist to respond with essentially ‘nuh uh’ or ‘i know you are but what am i’. Here it is between Horus and Loken, and I dislike it just as much as usual.

For the positives, I like Abaddon i guess. It was shorter than volume 2, it made it drag on less so thats good. Really the fact that Abnett is good at writing is the only thing making the book remotely enjoyable. In the end (and the death) this 3 parter has left me very sadly disappointed that this is 50 books lead up to. For the 3 parts together id probably give the book 4/10? Maybe that will change if I ever reread them, but thats all it gets for now.