Favorite Warhammer Novels

[Critteranne]

I tried to read some of the earliest Warhammer novels and couldn't get into them for whatever reason. But today, I started looking at some of the Warhammer omnibus editions at the local bookstore, and many of them looked realllly interesting. I bought one... or two... but really want to try some of the others as well.

So what are your recommendations, particular recommendations for omnibus editions? I've heard great things about Dan Abnett and Graham Mcneill, but of course, there are always some people who don't like them and recommend someone else instead. Also, as Warhammer is a really complex setting, which books are best for people who are fairly unfamiliar with the setting?

I'm interested in Warhammer 40,000 because right now, I have a space opera/military fiction jones. But I'm also intrigued by some of the fantasy ones as well.

P.S. FWIW I did download the two free Warhammer ebooks from Black Library. Both were books from authors I had been interested in, so we'll see how I like them.

[ProjeKtWEREWOLF]

The Ciaphas Cain novels are great, as are the Space Wolves, Grey Knights and Word Bearers. I am nearing the end if the Horus Heresy (The Outcast Dead), but will be going back to the Imperial Guard series soon.

I don't play and never have but I love the setting due to the obsessive detail. The Hammer & Bolter e-magazine is a good read for more background.

[jbcohen]

Here is a quick synopsis of the War Hammer 20K novels that I think I know so that you can know everything that I think I know:

Warhammer 20K takes place in the far disntant future where humanity has expanded to include a vast empire. Many centuries ago there was an empreror who sat on the thrown of man and ran the vast empire, however that person is long dead and gone. Now no one ocupies the thrown and no one proivdes a central command and/or direction to the vast empire or the people who fight for it. Often times imperial units will wind up fighting each other as they act as an empire within the empire of man.

Short I know but that is what I think I know about the war hammer 20K environmnet.

[theenframed]

Is the Black Library the best place to get W40K ebooks?

[ProjeKtWEREWOLF]

Originally Posted by theenframed

Is the Black Library the best place to get W40K ebooks?

It's the only LEGAL place to get them

To be honest, BL ebooks are not much cheaper than the RRP for new paperbacks so is only good for brand new titles for geeks like me. I'd buy used paper copies normally though due to cost.

[sabredog]

Dan Abnett's Commissar Gaunt series , Ciaphas Cain by Sandy Mitchell and the Ultramarines series by Graham McNeill are my favourites.

I find some of the books far too gothic and dark for my taste. I enjoy the tabletop game though, having played it for many years.

Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Warhammer 40,000, known informally as "Warhammer 40K" or just plain "40K", is a miniatures-based tabletop strategy game by Games Workshop. Drawing heavily on their previous Warhammer Fantasy game, it began as "Warhammer In Space", but has over time grown distinct from (and much more popular than) its counterpart.

What makes 40K unique in the gaming genre is its extreme darkness. Set thirty-eight thousand years in the future, the game's basic premise, insofar as it can be summed up, is that of an eternal, impossibly vast conflict between several absurdly powerful genocidal, xenocidal, and (in at least one case) omnicidal factions, with every single weapon, ideology, and creative piece of nastiness imaginable turned Up to Eleven. As a result, the galaxy has been twisted into a hellish morass of horrors that rival even the foulest and most disturbing Lovecraftian monstrosities.

The central faction, the Imperium of Man, once held immeasurable glory, but is now a fascist theocracy whose messiah has been locked up on life support for the past ten millennia, laid low by his most beloved son. An incomprehensibly vast Church Militant commits horrible atrocities in his name on an almost-daily basis. Millions of capricious, fanatical, genetically engineered Super Soldier Knights Templar and equally fanatical, pyromaniacal battle nuns serve as the Imperium's special forces, while its trillions-strong regular army takes disregard for human life to new and interesting extremes. A futuristic Inquisition ruthlessly hunts down anyone with even the slightest taint of the heretic, the mutant, or the alien, to the point of authorizing the destruction of entire planets. Technology has, at best, hardly progressed for twenty thousand years, is largely considered magical because the science behind it has been long forgotten, and the deranged machine cult that preserves and replicates what remains of it considers innovation to be blasphemy against the wisdom of the ancients. The Warp, the Faster-than-Light Travel the Imperium must rely on, carries with it a good chance of being raped by daemons, and the Astronomican, the navigation aid used to negotiate Warpspace, is powered by the God Emperor's soul and has the souls of one thousand psychic humans sacrificed to it every day, dying by inches to feed the machine.

The problem is, as bad as the Imperium is, it's not quite as bad as many of the other factions; dying when facing them is about the best fate you can hope for. The ancient and mysterious manipulator race, hovering near extinction, contrives wars that see billions dead so that small handfuls of their own may survive, while their depraved cousins must spend their lives perpetuating mass slaughter and Cold-Blooded Torture to stave off their own destruction. Vast Bug Swarms are trying to eat every organic thing in the galaxy as part of their natural life cycles. An entire civilization of incredibly advanced, undying, living metal conquerors are awakening after millions of years of slumber, ready to reclaim a galaxy they see as rightfully theirs. A genetically-engineered warrior species infests every corner of the galaxy and is cheerfully trying to kill everything else (including each other, if nothing better presents itself) because it's literally hard-wired into their genetic code to do so... and because it's fun. The closest thing to the "good guys" you can find in this setting is a tiny alien empire sandwiched between all the other factions, and they may or may not have a thing for forcing new subjects into their empire through orbital bombardment, concentration camps, and possible mind control by a few benevolent elites... but at least they'll offer you admittance into their club before doing any of that stuff. Many of these factions have a common foe in the forces of Chaos, which infests the Warp, exists to corrupt all it touches, and is best known for two light-years-wide holes in reality through which countless daemons and corrupted daemon-powered super-soldiers periodically attempt to bring the universe to further ruin.

[ProjeKtWEREWOLF]

@Sabredog

I agree that the Gaunt series by Dan Abnett is excellent, and may be a good jumping off point for many; I started 40k with the Ravenor and Eisenhorn novels but I had some background info from Space Hulk gaming and reading White Dwarf magazine.
I've always found the Ultramarines to be a bit starchy really, but love Grey Knights and Soul Drinkers novels. You can't go wrong with the Space Wolves omnibus as a start point though as it provides TONS of detail on creating the Astartes.

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by ProjeKtWEREWOLF

@Sabredog

I agree that the Gaunt series by Dan Abnett is excellent, and may be a good jumping off point for many; I started 40k with the Ravenor and Eisenhorn novels but I had some background info from Space Hulk gaming and reading White Dwarf magazine.
I've always found the Ultramarines to be a bit starchy really, but love Grey Knights and Soul Drinkers novels. You can't go wrong with the Space Wolves omnibus as a start point though as it provides TONS of detail on creating the Astartes.

What can I say I field an Ultramarines Company on the battlefield, so I am a tad biased...

I still have the original edition GW novels of Space Marine, Inquisitor and the Deathwing omnibus. Classic older WH40K fiction.

The problem, like all franchise stuff, is that there are not many really good novels, so you have to fossick through the chaff to find the wheat.

[ProjeKtWEREWOLF]

Originally Posted by sabredog

What can I say I field an Ultramarines Company on the battlefield, so I am a tad biased...

I still have the original edition GW novels of Space Marine, Inquisitor and the Deathwing omnibus. Classic older WH40K fiction.

The problem, like all franchise stuff, is that there are not many really good novels, so you have to fossick through the chaff to find the wheat.

Yes, even the Horus Heresy seems to be running out of steam. I think anyone would be safe with Abnett, McNeill or Counter to be fair. There's a lot of hype around Dembski-Bowden and Kyme though, most of it justly deserved; the Night Lords novels are a good read.

[ProjeKtWEREWOLF]

I am on the second of Gav Thorpe's 'Last Chancers' series; "Kill Team". I stumbled across these in a second hand book store and I am really impressed. Very well written military sci-fi.

[Belfaborac]

I second the recommendations of Space Wolves (the original trilogy; the quality of writing drops markedly past those), Horus Heresy (at least until book 7, which is where I'm at right now) and Space Marine and I also enjoyed Grey Knights, Sisters of Battle and others I can't remember here and now. The writing is somewhat variable, but rarely dips below fairly good.

The one exception so far is Space Hulk, the first book I read (or tried to read) since I have fond memories of the computer game. Unfortunately I found it awkward, repetitive and it ended up being one of the very few books I've ever given up on. So basically I'd suggest you keep well away from that one.

Otherwise I love the WH40K universe: it's vast, it's ancient and it's extremely well thought through and constructed. And I positively adore the dark, gothic, quasi-medieval, über-violent and frankly often quite deranged settings.

[jbcohen]

In my humble opinion before you delve too far into War Hammer someone with a better under standing of the story line then me needs to set the stage for the novels. In other words say a little bit about the setting for the books? I think that this is some of the background, making no representations to be correct:

The books take place in the far distant future where mankind has established a far reaching empire, ruling the known galaxy. An emperor sat on the thrown of man many centuries ago but has now past away and now no one sits on the thrown. There is no central command to the human empire and each group of marines do their own thing and often do wind up shooting at each other. There is no sense of what a rogue marine is since there is no central command to define what that is.

Originally Posted by Critteranne

I tried to read some of the earliest Warhammer novels and couldn't get into them for whatever reason. But today, I started looking at some of the Warhammer omnibus editions at the local bookstore, and many of them looked realllly interesting. I bought one... or two... but really want to try some of the others as well.

So what are your recommendations, particular recommendations for omnibus editions? I've heard great things about Dan Abnett and Graham Mcneill, but of course, there are always some people who don't like them and recommend someone else instead. Also, as Warhammer is a really complex setting, which books are best for people who are fairly unfamiliar with the setting?

I'm interested in Warhammer 40,000 because right now, I have a space opera/military fiction jones. But I'm also intrigued by some of the fantasy ones as well.

P.S. FWIW I did download the two free Warhammer ebooks from Black Library. Both were books from authors I had been interested in, so we'll see how I like them.

[Belfaborac]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

The books take place in the far distant future where mankind has established a far reaching empire, ruling the known galaxy. An emperor sat on the thrown of man many centuries ago but has now past away and now no one sits on the thrown. There is no central command to the human empire and each group of marines do their own thing and often do wind up shooting at each other. There is no sense of what a rogue marine is since there is no central command to define what that is.

Eh...no, that's not really it.

Here's the intro which appears in every book and on every WH40K fan site. Given that it can be found everywhere, there should be no copyright issues (but if I'm wrong, feel free to wipe this post).

IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE THERE IS ONLY WAR

"It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor of Mankind has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day so that he may never truly die.Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in His name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat to humanity from aliens, heretics, mutants -- and far, far worse. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be relearned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods."

And that sums it up pretty well. Carnage and chaos, both created and held at bay by superhuman bio-engineered warriors. Dark heresies, demonic forces, former Space Marines corrupted by evil powers and rabidly violent aliens pushing at the borders of a slowly crumbling, stagnant and decrepit empire, nominally ruled by a long dead and yet still sort of living Emperor of Mankind. Future tech added to a cauldron containing Medieval and Roman culture, attitudes and even dress, with a heavy dose of religious fanaticism mixed into the resultant heady broth. A universe where evil is really evil, good is almost just as evil and where war, blood and brutality are the only universal constants.

Lovely, lovely stuff.

[jbcohen]

Thanks belfaborac I do not recall there being a summary like this in the books, I guess I will have to go downstairs where the books are stored and look once more. Did you see that Criteraine? In addition to this perhaps a short discussion of the enemies of mankind in the saga, to help criteraine understand the books. I think there are Dameons and the forces of Chaos. I do not understand this topic to well so I am not going to give a lengthy discussion only start the ball rolling.

At approximatly four bucks per book War Hammer is a great deal when you compare them to mainstreem boosk that typicaly are around $14 per paperback. I am venting here, the prices of books these days is a sore subject for me. Now is I can seem to find some time to read some of these books that would be great, troubble is that my kindle is rather stocked with my to be read stack, that I need to limit the growth of before it gets out of hand.

[Belfaborac]

I would suggest that for Critteranne and anyone else interested in learning more about the Warhammer 40.000 universe, the best and easiest place to start is Warhammer 40K Wiki. On the very first page can be found lists of Space marine chapters, Xenos (enemy alien races) and the forces and allies of Chaos, as well as everything "known" about the history and organisation of the Imperium of Man.

Additionally there are the Warhammer 40K Forums and the Lexicanum. At the former you'll find both useful and useless info and advice, like at any other forum, and the latter is another fan-made encyclopedia like the WH40K Wiki, only not as good or as easy to use (in my opinion of course).

Finally, Wikipedia has a page listing WH40K novels, which is a handy resource.

Check those out and pretty much all questions will be answered.