Editing Aaron Dembski-Bowden (section)

==Criticisms==
Lest you think we're going soft, though, we should point out that he has received some pretty harsh criticism, particularly for his portrayal of the [[Emperor]] as a raging torrent of incompetence and jackassery the likes of which Earth had not seen since Mussolini made his last public appearance upside down at a petrol station. Then AGAIN, this view isn't exactly unheard of; while it's been acknowledged that Emps might've been a bit of a dick in some aspects, and the idea of the Emperor as a completely flawless human being can read like something clung to heavily by Imperial propaganda, some of these portrayals Big-E are from the point of view of Traitor Legions, who already have a... [[Heresy|less-than-positive view of the guy]], and this is where the joke that "the D in ADB stands for 'Daddy Issues'" springs from.

Some have even accused him of turning the ''Horus Heresy'' books into a public therapy session for his daddy issues, which, to be fair, is comparable to [[C.S. Goto]] using his books as a public therapy session for his depression and not having the chops to be a Hollywood screenwriter. He also has a major issue with making the characters he likes look perfect while shitting on other groups: see his [[Grey Knights]] book especially, which just becomes a [[Space Wolves]] wank, (it really doesn’t, if anything the guys getting shit on are the Inquisitors stupid enough to allow the Months of Shame to happen). and ''The First Heretic'', which is often considered utterly fantastic ''outside'' of the two pages his beloved Night Lords show up and snark all over Lorgar and the Word Bearers. Oh, and let's not forget a chapter serf of the Mentors being armed with a shotgun with an underbarrel grenade launcher rocking three [[Warp_Weapons#Vortex_Grenade|Vortex Grenades]]. You know, the kind of of weapon [[Cato Sicarius]] himself was issued only one of during the second battle of Damnos where the honour of the Ultramarines chapter was supposedly at stake?

More and more, he seems to be getting his way at Black Library, especially in the Horus Heresy series, and some well-loved fluff is being rewritten after a very long time going unchanged. Many point at ''Master of Mankind,'' the book specifically about Big-E, which no one at BL was smart enough to realize they shouldn't assign to the guy constantly criticized for how he writes that character. Another small but telling example of man's writing is the inclusion of Arkhan Land. While it was established in canon that Arkhan disappeared before the Land Speeders he had rediscovered were implemented in the Legiones Astartes (decades before HH), ADB either didn't know or didn't care, so old Techno-archaeologist was crammed into ''Master of Mankind''. There is also the matter of the [[Blood Ravens]], whom in older lore were heavily implied to be missing loyalist offshoots of the [[Thousand Sons]]. ADB apparently tried to jettison this theory by having the "missing" Thousand Sons from the Horus Heresy reappear in one of his novels. A later index would retcon them to be Ravens afflicted by flesh-change, but the 'damage' was already done: Some neckbeards [[RAGE|just don't like it when you fuck around with the bread and butter]], and who are we to blame them? As indicated in the sections below, his approach to writing more female and non-white characters into the setting has also caught some [[Skub|inevitable flak]].

He also said in one interview he had wanted to add female Custodians and kill off Lorgar "like a dog", and the only reason he didn't was because of direct intervention from his superiors. That's an odd thing to say for someone who sought to assassinate the Emperor's character via a terribly written plot point in the Heresy series just to make Lorgar's treachery look justified. In another one, ADB admitted he adds aforementioned female/minorities characters in his works just to trigger the haters. Yeah. That strategy always certainly "[[Not as Planned|does]] [[Fail|wonders]]" for the attached property, just ask ''[[HHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhnnnnnnngggggg-|Ghostbusters 2016]]''.

Insofar as one can actually speak for a large, completely anonymous community, [[/tg/]] appears to have mostly turned against old Aaron as of late, and even in a best-case scenario opinions will still be mixed. That said, "as of late" are the keywords; some of the hate is just as likely to be aggravated newer posters as it is some of the older guard changing their mind, or some mixture thereof; ADB still has his fans, of course, but mentioning him is much more likely to generate [[skub]]. Well, let's face it, he writes Big-E like he were a Chaos God of Shakespearean rage.

Another notable fuck-up is in [[Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters]]. As writer of the games' script, he apparently saw nothing wrong with having [[Mortarion]] (and hordes of his best men) be defeated by Draigo and a few chosen Grey Knights while in the Garden of Nurgle. This was the first time a [[Primarch]] has ever been directly portrayed and fought in an official 40K game (BFGA2 and its nominal appearances notwithstanding), and ADB made Mortarion look like a complete joke. It's quite likely to be worse than the heart-carving incident too. When Draigo carved the heart, he spoke a true name created by the God Emperor. But in Daemonhunters, no such excuse exists for defeating Morty in the WARP. Making things even worse is that this is a mistake ADB should've known better than to make: Eldar fans will be particularly insulted to see a few Grey Knights successfully storm the Garden when an ENTIRE ARMY of Craftworld Lugganath's most powerful psykers were killed casting their minds into that realm after a few days of battle to try and free Isha.


ADB has once again made himself skub-bait with his ''Siege of Terra'' book, ''Echoes of Eternity''. Reception by fans has been somewhat mixed thus far, with many vociferous complaints leveled against his entry to the series. Some readers (but [[World Eaters]] fans in particular) were beyond livid to see [[Angron]] beg as [[Sanguinius]] banished him by ripping the Butcher's Nails from his skull. Defenders of the novel counter that this is a logical endpoint of a daemon primarch who is by now a demonstrable shell of himself, and/or that Angron was saying no to the nails being ripped out because of how fundamental they are to Angron now. But detractors point out that Angron did in fact beg for his life and that the text explicitly portrayed it as something that was meant to be shameful for Angron. This was preceded by Angron feeling cowed in the face of Sanguinius' fury so much that it not only exceeded his own but it made Angron JEALOUS. At the time of the incident, Angron's fury was being bolstered by the Butcher's Nails, the voices of Khorne and (an increasingly panicked) Horus themselves, and Angron's justifiably pre-existing rage. Whatever his goal, ADB's result was severe character assassination. The detractors go on to claim that such a moment and behavior is unbecoming to a character who only sought death over servitude to anyone; servitude that he never chose, either. [[FAIL|This also makes terrible advertising for Angron's new model]].

Another sore spot was the duel between [[Magnus the Red]] and [[Vulkan]], with Vulkan essentially acting as a walking soap box for the author to cast aspersions at the 'Magnus Did Nothing Wrong' meme. On the one hand, the points Vulkan makes are admittedly hard to refute. But what's much less convincing is why they're even being brought up in the first place within the context of the story, especially when these points largely rely on knowledge that seems odd for Vulkan to have at this point. While it's mentioned a few times earlier in the book that Vulkan had been asking around about the previous events by speaking to the Custodes, Sisters of Silence, Mechanicum, and others who had been party to prior events, as well as receiving some supplemental information from Malacador (and maybe even the Emperor during the duel), this doesn't prevent the scene from coming off as contrived and ham fisted.

That's to say nothing of how the defining sequence of ''Fury of Magnus'' was retconned into being an elaborate hallucination by a fragmented Magnus, used to highlight the primarch's martyr complex, arrogance, and continued fall in his subservience to chaos. ADB denied 40k a heartbreaking, tragic, and more complex portrayal of Magnus, who loved his sons so much that he'd choose eternal damnation if it meant a chance at saving them. His retcon erased pretty much all of it with some 'whoops turned out you just imagined this' twist and left him looking like some big red evil retard instead. Fucking yay...

Yet another issue raised was about the book being filler. Instead of spending the penultimate entry in the Siege of Terra tying up unresolved plotlines and building up to clashes between significant characters, the book focuses on shit no one cares about. The [[Blood Angels|Revenant Legion's origins]] didn't need so much coverage when a Sanguinius Primarch novel is being released later on. Far too much attention also goes towards plotlines with people that even the book stated were meaningless, if their unceremonious and unregarded deaths didn't already convey that to you. Hundreds of pages are dedicated towards setting a mood/scene that's blatantly obvious to anyone who's picked up the SoT series or even has an interest in 40K.

There were other minor-yet-jarring mistakes, such as Arkhan Land referring to [[Rogal Dorn]] as the [[Perturabo|4th]] (this is Arkhan being deliberate) - and Dorn not knowing (or pretending not to know) Vulkan was on Terra.

Staying on topic with [[Angron]], ADB's retcon of Angron's backstory was absolutely terrible. He wrote it so the Emperor would look uncharacteristically like an ass. Instead of helping Angron win his rebellion with the aid of the Custodes or the War Hounds against a planet that enslaved and mutilated his OWN SON, ease his suffering, and bring him under His tutelage, the Emperor simply kidnaps Angron, leaves his comrades to die, and tells him to quit bitching before handing him a legion to lead in galactic conquest. Even to this day the community keeps trying to theory-craft and come up with some sort of head-canon that doesn't arrive at the painfully obvious conclusion of shit writing.