While I already play them, I second his statement.
I should note that I don’t play WH the tabletop game, so all of my opinion is based on the novelizations rather than game mechanics, armies I prefer to build, my favorite P&P memories, etc.
As has been mentioned already, anything by Dan Abnett (for the record, I’m also a fan of his Malus Darkblade series if you get into WH Fantasy). The Gaunt’s Ghosts series is far and away my favorite of his, but that’s a view based on the fragility of the people rather than the writing: more-or-less regular humans like Ibram Gaunt face Chaos Space Marine level shit in the universe. And definitely all the Eisenhorn stuff (some of the spinoff Ravenor stuff isn’t as good, but still better than most).
Non-Abnett stuff: The Grey Knights series by Ben Counter. I also liked Counter’s single volume novel Demon World and his Soul Drinkers series was mildly above average. The Space Wolves omnibuses are worth your time. Also Angels of Darkness by Gav Thorpe and the various Dark xyz books by Anthony Reynolds were passable. I didn’t hate the Ultramarine stories as some here, though they weren’t as satisfying as some of the others. I’ve heard good things about the Horus Heresy series, but because it is ongoing and I hate waiting on stuff, I haven’t started it yet.
Honesty, there’s more good than bad in my opinion.
If you get into WHF stuff, there’s plenty more to read. Abnett’s Darkblade series, multiple Gottrek and Felix omnibuses, Matthias Thulmann Witch Hunter series, in fact most of the WHF novels by C.L. Werner, and Curse of the Necrarch by Steven Saville.
Read the comic book mini-series Damnation Crusade. That’s what made me realize that this wasn’t some generic game universe.
I’ll second the recommendation of the Ciaphas Cain series, especially now that the first six novels are split between 2 omnibuses.
shift6, recommending the Witch Hunter books to anyone makes my brain hurt. They’re fucking awful.
As for Ciaphas Cain, the books are good but they are a rather different take on 40k. They’re no “In the grim darkness of the far future”, that’s for sure.
I quite like the Witch Hunter books myself. I thought they were a fun read, and presented an interesting side of the WH universe, which I hadn’t explored before. The writing is quick and easy, and there’s good action and pretty interesting character development.
Of the WH fiction I’ve read Gotrek and Felix is the “gold standard”. I haven’t quite decided on the new Nathan Long books (I’ve only read one, which was okay, but not my favourite), but the William King books (1-7) are great fun, and very well written.
The Nathan Long’s Blackhearts Omnibus was pretty decent, but not up to G&F level (and I personally preferred the Witch Hunter Omnibus to it, although both are pretty close in terms of how well I liked them).
Some of the short stories are great. I recommend the “Tales of the Old World” short story collection.
Ciaphas Cain is essentially Flashman in space. It’s very much against the grain of the rest of the output.
The very best Black Library series ever written is the Genevieve trilogy - Drachenfels, Beasts in Velvet and Genevieve Undead - by Kim Newman (writing as Jack Yeovil), it’s available as an omnibus edition and is one of the few examples of Warhammer fiction that stands up on its own without the licence crutch.
The Enforcer Omnibus (Matt Farrer) is a good read but I would recommend you read some other ones first.
As it is heavily steeped in WH40k Lore, especially the Arbites and you’ll have to devour a lot of information even for a “veteran” reader.
Salamander (Nick Kyne) isn’t to bad either but suffers a little in the middle, but you’ll be rewarded in the end.
Soul Hunter was also one I liked (Aaron Bowden) but it’s about Chaos Space Marines.
I picked it up on a boring wednesday and read through the whole book in one or 2 days.
At risk of edging off topic, what of Ravenor did you think wasn’t as good as Eisenhorn? I loved Eisenhorn but I found Ravenor to be superior to it, as the author seemed to be able to do a lot more when not constrained by the first person perspective. I also liked the supporting cast a lot more.
Why? I like Matthias’s frailty. He’s nearly always one enemy’s natural 20 away from insta-death and yet, as a true believer in the Empire, continues on his holy quest. Plus he a complete asshole, which is exactly how an aristocratic zealot ought to be portrayed. And there were only two or three times in the whole series that I felt the author had to deus ex machina his way out of a story-telling corner (admittedly, one of those was right at the beginning of the first book and thankfully I didn’t decide to set it down for good). Far less often than I felt happened in the Ravenor series.
Fair points. My thoughts on Ravenor aren’t about the writing (which is still incredbile, I agree). However, I felt that many times they were rescued from a situation by something implausible. For example
SPOILERS
I felt that the duality between Eisenhorn and the demonhost Cherubael was much more in tension and realistic* in that series than when the two of them popped up together like old pals at the abandoned tower in Ravenor. Granted this wasn’t about Ravenor, but it was in that series. There were other things like that, where all of a sudden some past tension or frailty was totally resolved and now everyone was just kind of showing up at the right time.
- given the universe, natch.
I also felt that the fine line between zealot and heretic was much better explored by the Eisenhorn books. Ravenor was all “hey, the boss is semi-aligned with Chaos by using a forbidden book to entrap a daemonhost, so what the heck why not ally with Eldar” and his team was like “Ra-veh-nor! Fuck yeah!” I mean, entrapping a daemonhost is something you might conceive the Inquisition sanctioning in dire circumstances (followed by expunging the demon), but getting along with Eldar scum?
That said, I really liked the idea of Chaos flecks and of the twisted machines of the Administratum and of Zygmunt Moloch. I feel like it started great, sagged in the middle, the was great at the end kind of opposite the first Star Wars trilogy. ;) Except even the execution of Molotch was kinda meh. Again, the Ravenor series was great but just not Abnett’s best in my view.
END SPOILERS
So just my views. I also like protagonists that have frailties and legitimately could die at any time but for their will/character/soul. The exception is Gottrek who is unique because it is his desire to die that makes him so nigh unstoppable and that’s a far different archetype.
I agree.
As far as Gotrek and Felix goes, Felix is the one with frailties, who struggles internally, and could die at any time. I think the stories would be pretty boring if they had only indestructible Gotrek without Felix along. Their friends who appear in various novels also all have their own human frailties.
You know, that’s interesting. The only book I have tried is the Gaunt’s Ghosts Omnibus, having read the general suggestion to start with Abnett elsewhere as well.
I quit about 1/3 of the way through the Omnibus, as I just didn’t care for it. Part of that was with my familiarity with the Imperial Guard and how it is supposed to work in the 40K world. I just don’t feel like Abnett captured that very well.
I picture (and I think the 40K lore and theme backs me up) that Imperial Guard is essentially the Russian army at Stalingrad, but with more tanks. They fight and win with mass and expendable troops - life expectancy of 24 hours and all that. I was expecting Abnett’s books on the Imperial Guard to be at a higher level, or focused specifically on Gaunt, as it is hard to focus on small unit tactics and individuals in a force where individuals last for a couple of days. Instead, he has his cadre of amazingly talented soldiers who take on Chaos Marines and other overpowering creatures as if they themselves are Space Marines. It just didn’t feel right. And I didn’t think that Abnett’s storytelling and plots were good enough to make up the difference.
(In fact, I think I recall that in the 40K universe, Imperial Guard divisions are relatively routinely liquidated in their entirety after they go into combat with chaos forces - they are considered expendable so much that it is better to simply kill them all rather than risk chaos contamination. What I read of Gaunt just doesn’t seem to capture that “feel.”)
That is the general approach to the Imperial Guard, yes, but (presumably in deference to the need to tell a story with actual characters and continuity), Abnett has chosen to tell stories about an elite unit within the guard whose commissar/commander actually cares about their lives and resorts to execution only when he deems it genuinely necessary. They are still men, however, and Marines simply aren’t. Consider that, while at times the stories about the Ghosts involve smaller operational teams, they’re generally deployed en masse with hundreds of men alongside multiple other Guard units, while Space Marines typically deploy ten or a hundred at a time (and the hundred would probably be on a planetary scale).
Also, while the main Ghosts are perhaps unusually lucky (and talented), major characters do die or get permanently injured periodically, and the ancillary background characters die in droves. By the point the series is currently at, they’ve had to merge at least twice with other Guard units to maintain any kind of operational strength.
That’s why I love them. They don’t take themselves too seriously, which is the problem I have with most of the other W40K novels.
Thanks for responding! I was actually thinking about this today after I asked the question, and I think that while Ravenor has great supporting characters that I really like more (Nayl, Patience, Carl, etc), Eisenhorn had better setpieces (The attack on the parade, the realms of the xenos where all the angles seemed off, the depths of the mines on the mechanicus rogue planet).
When you talk about meeting up with Eisenhorn and Cherubael in the abandoned tower, are you referring to the short story that bridges the two trilogies, or am I forgetting part of a book? Also, I seem to recall a great deal of unease about working with the Eldar in Ravenor, which is to say that it was tolerated a great deal better than the often outright disgust of working with Chaos, but I wouldn’t put it quite in Ravenor, Fuck Yeah! territory.
I totally think both series are masterful. Ravenor is just my favorite 40k fiction, period.
I know the Ciaphas Cain books are -themed- to be along the lines of Flashman in space, but I’m not sure if they actually are. I’ve not read the Flashman books, but my understanding is that he’s essentially a terrible person in a lot of ways but has managed to stumble through cowardice, lechery, avarice, and similar into unearned and unwanted heroism and a reputation for such. Whereas Cain makes a big thing about how selfish his motives are and so on, but underneath all that really pretty much comes off as an intelligent, likeable and frankly pretty heroic character who’s just keen to avoid blatantly dumb “heroic” moves that mostly would accomplish his own death.
I was going to start a new thread but I’m doubting they’ll be much interest -
I saw the new Ultramarines DVD last night. Overall, it was great.
Pluses:
- Great fan service. They’re not trying to make this appeal to woman. This movie is for 40K fans.
- Well directed. Shockingly so.
- Great VO - Terrance Stamp, John Hurt. Really well done.
- Great violence, gore, a real homage to the universe and miniatures.
- Soundtrack - Gothic, operatic, incredible. Wish they sold the CD.
- I actually thought quite a bit about the film after seeing it, so it has resonance, which also is sort of shocking to me.
Minuses:
- CG looks circa 1990. Faces are really bad, even worse than modern games.
- Some of the universe comes off as cheesy on screen. Some of the armor/weapons do to.
- Short (though for me this is a plus) about 75 minutes
- Only currently (legally) available as a $40 collectors edition. And DVD only, not blu-ray.
If your a fan of Sci-Fi, Horror, and/or the 40K universe this really is a must see. If you can’t overlook the poor CGI, only like films staring Jason Schwartzman, or hate movies like Conan the Barbarian - avoid at all costs.
I don’t understand this. I know quite a few women who play 40k, including my wife.
I was just playing to stereotypes - mine being the bigot, apparently. By it I mean they didn’t try to add in a romance, a feel good sub-plot, and none of the Marines had a pet kitten. It’s just brutal, unapologetic war.
FWIW, after going to several Gamesdays, on both coasts, the number of woman who play 40K number in single digits. Double at best :)