I know it’s not high-brow literature, but I’m almost finished with the first book of this series and was wondering if the rest are as good? I tend to have trouble these days finishing books for some reason but have been burning through this one 100 pages at a sitting.
I know Dan Abnett is considered one of, if not the, best writer of Warhammer fiction, but he didn’t produce the whole series himself. So how’s the quality of later books? Is it worth it to hit the local Half-Price and stock up on the later volumes?
As with any such long running multi author series, the quality is variable.
The first 3 books are basically a trilogy, so i’d definitely read them. After that you can pretty much dip in as you like.
Books i’ve particulaly liked are Fulgrim, A Thousand Sons, Nemesis. Plus I’ve really enjoyed every book from Know No Fear onwards.
If you get tired of the Heresy but still fancy some more bolter Porn, try some of the more modern (in the timeline) books.
Titanicus by Dan Abnett is great, and centres, as the name suggests around Titans.
The Eisenhorn trilogy, also by Dan, centre around the activities of an Imperial Inquisitor and are widely considered amongst the best thing he’s ever done.
The Night lord trilogy by Adam Dembski-Brown is based around the exploits of a band of Chaos Marines and is again universally thought to be great.
For straight Space Marine action, there’s the Space Marine Battles books, each a stand alone novel. I’d say the best ones are Battle for the Fang, Helsreach, and Wrath of Iron.
Finally there’s the Ciphais Cain books. Which are a blend of action adventure and dark comedy (no really). Basically they’re Flashman in the 41st Milliennium novels and they’re really fun.
I really loved how descriptive he was in the first book, and the Titans seemed especially intriguing in their few passages so I will certainly check out** Titanicus**.
I bought his **Gaunt’s Ghosts **collection (one volume) awhile back and started it but fell off the wagon as it were, I’ll probably try it again after this experience. I know quite a bit about the WH40k universe from the computer games, mostly, and I like the scrappy “regular army” types a bit more than the Astartes - I tend to root for the underdogs, and play them in the computer game exclusively when I can. I think the stories of the Imperial Army troopers are just more compelling due to the fact that they’re not 8’ tall demigods on the battlefield, just regular people.
Also, the fact that this series shows the very earliest days of the Imperium of Man helps actually understand their point of view, and how they became, in the 41st Millennium, essentially religious fanatics. Many people I’ve talked to about the setting of the games/stories seem to have a problem with Mankind being “fascistic” or something, brutal and uncaring, but this series and backstory really puts it in perspective. They HAVE to be and do what they do and who they are or quite literally humanity will cease to exist. I’ve heard many people say that there are no “good guys” in the setting, and that’s what turns them off, but it is the ultimate example of “hard men doing hard things” that I’ve encountered, and it’s pretty compelling military fiction.
As far as Gaunt’s Ghosts go, the first book that introduces the series isn’t very good.
The second book was short stories, nothing spectacular.
The third book however is where it started to get interesting. Books Four-Seven form a story arc that is probably the best. After that it wasn’t quite as good, but if you read four books already you’ll probably keep going anyway.
The more recent Horus Heresy books have been fairly good – both Betrayer and Angel Exterminatus managed to make a several of the enemy Primarchs you’d think would be uninteresting into rather compelling characters.
However, some of the mid-series books were wildly variable – descending into downright awful for Descent of Angels. Avoid that one utterly; you miss nothing by skipping it. Nemesis wasn’t very good. I didn’t care for Flight of the Eisenstein, Fulgrim, or Battle for the Abyss but know several people who quite liked those.
A Thousand Sons and Prospero Burns were quite good.
Agreed, if you’re in any way short of time/money you could just skip the middle books entirely. I definitely get the impression the High Lords of Terra (the Black Library editors) weren’t quite sure where to take the series/how many books there were going to be/who was going to do the writing etc, after the opening trilogy. There’s a lot of meandering about, lets retell Istvan V from another angle, lets jump back in time to tell this legions story.
I’d almost say read the openers for the set-up then jump to Know no Fear (which i think is my favourite one in the series so far), which is where you start to get some forward momentum and carry on from there. Maybe dip into some of the middle volumes that sound interesting to you.