While Iron Warrior Fans hate French, it's because he has a different opinion of them and
Perturabo that fits another side to them but backs it up with shitty logic and a very obvious bias against the IW. French paints them as a grim force that cares nothing for casualties, to the point where their Primarch would kill a tenth of his Legion just to teach it a lesson. His Peturabo is the Iron Tyrant, Space Stalin, all the bloodstained dictators of history but as a Primarch. Some non-IW fans argue that this interpretation is equally valid, or even Perturabo's "true" personality, but there's a clear line between being brutal and merciless in order to win and pissing away valuable resources to prove a point
that's already been proven.
In
Extermination, French writes that Perturabo decimated his Legion to make them willing to accept any number of casualties in order to win,
after the Legion had just crippled itself as a military force because it was willing to accept any casualties. Yes, you read that right. He literally wasted a tenth of his available manpower to get the Iron Warriors
to do the exact damn thing they were already doing. Their whole shtick may be not giving a shit about casualties, but French writes them as pointlessly wasting lives where other writers who have a better grasp of the Iron Warriors show them being evil and grimdark, but
calculating and efficient rather than "
Chenkov, but with Astartes instead of Guardsmen". That being said, however, it might be worth noting that he's also behind one of Perty's most
Awesome victories on Deluge where he coldly, methodically cut the World Eaters down to size with artillery and killboxes to rob them of wanton slaughter and weaken Angron long enough to collect him for Horus's muster.
So did he get better over time? Is it a broken clock being right twice a day? Is he just a victim of fan overreactions? YOU decide!
Has an often-overlooked knack for portraying the more surreal and ephemeral aspects of Chaos as a force and faction, as demonstrated in the phenomenal Slaves to Darkness (where Perturabo had the aforementioned big win against Angron). He also showcased a bit of this talent when brought on to write Solar War, the first book of the
Siege of Terra (though the full product was overall somewhat middling, some legitimately fantastic prose sprinkled throughout aside).
He's also part of the (large) writing team of
Warhammer 40K: Darktide.
And now he's contributing to
Dawn of War IV. Remember people, no pre-orders!
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