40k Book Recommendations (Again)

[Shroom Man 777]

There's this WONDERFUL new store that has just opened up and it actually has books from the Black Library! It's like the only store that has them in my province, and it's really something grand. The place is a total geekfest! It's got so many sci-fi books and so many comics and graphic novels and animu mangoes.

Anyway, I've bought Scourge the Heretic as well as Brothers of the Snake - by Sandy Mitchell and Dan Abnett, two authors I know I can count on. But there are other books, so many others, and I want to figure out the signal-to-noise ratio before I buy them because I'm to unfamiliar with other BL authors. I'm not gonna mention the Dawn of War omnibus, since I know CS Goto is shite.

Anyway, I'll mention ones that have caught my eye (I think I've heard guys like Necron Lord and Connor mention that they were passable at least).

There's the Soul Drinkers omnibus, Storm of Iron, there are the Ravenor sequels Returned and Rogue but I am very unsure of them since the first book is not there, and there's Red Fury. There are also the Gaunt books, but the ones I saw were Traitor General and Armor of Contempt and if they're in a series, I don't know how I can read them without being familiar with the earlier books.

Gentlemen, which ones should you recommend I get first?

[Aaron]

Do not get the Soul Drinkers Omnibus unless you like one dimensional retarded SM's. I'd get the Ravenor books they have and ask them to order in the first, the series isn't as good as Eisenhorn but it's still pretty decent and it gives an interesting look at an Inquisitors retinue. I'd also see if they can get you The Last Chancers, it follows a penal legion on various suicide missions. Rather like The Dirty Dozen in space. You also cannot go wrong with TThe Space Wolf Omnibus and The Imperial Guard Omnibus: Volume One. That's if you can order books in. Check the Black Library site for things that interest you, they usually have a sample of the books you can read for free.

Edit: Any of the Cain books of course. Might just be the best in the universe, if your into the Flashman aspect.

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh, I already have the Cain omnibus and I'm gonna try ordering the remaining three, and the first Ravenor.

I also have the Eisenhorn omnibus. I bought them on the internet.


If I buy the Ravenor sequels and read them first, would I be in for a treat or would I be lost since I haven't read the first book? How do other books I've mentioned fare, in your opinion?

[Aaron]

If I buy the Ravenor sequels and read them first, would I be in for a treat or would I be lost since I haven't read the first book? How do other books I've mentioned fare, in your opinion?

I don't think you'd be lost at all. There's a few things that are important to the story but the books do a decent recap of the preceding one.

Scourge the Heretic -excellent if a little slow.
Brothers of the Snake -excellent. One of the best depictions of SM's yet.
Red Fury - haven't read it.
Traitor General and Armor of Contempt -haven't read them but I don't care for Gaunt, way to grim.
Storm of Iron - haven't read it. I gather it follows an Iron Warrior that was in The Ultramarines Omnibus and well...I hate the Ultramarines.

Edit: If you like Abnett and air combat, than maybe give Double Eagle a try. It follows a squadron of fighter pilots during the Sabbat Worlds Crusade IIRC. They apparently appeared in the Gaunt series at one point.

[Karza]

snip
Traitor General and Armor of Contempt -haven't read them but I don't care for Gaunt, way to grim.
ship

Edit: If you like Abnett and air combat, than maybe give Double Eagle a try. It follows a squadron of fighter pilots during the Sabbat Worlds Crusade IIRC. They apparently appeared in the Gaunt series at one point.

Traitor General and Armor of Contempt aren't my favorites in the Gaunt's Ghosts series but they are quite good anyway. However, they are very deep into the series (books 8 and 10 respectively) so you might want to look at the earlier parts first (those 7 have been gathered into two omnibuses). Otherwise you might be a bit lost with the characters, since there's an assload of them at this point and all have their own histories.

Double Eagle I found a bit boring. The 40k flavor air combat is basically turbocharged WW2, which really doesn't work for me. The protagonists of DE appeared in Guns of Tanith (Gaunt's Ghosts 5), and the story takes part in another front of the Sabbat Worlds crusade.

[Connor MacLeod]

IMHO most of the Guard novels are pretty good tho Deathworld is fairly average. The first two Last Chancers novels are good but the third sucks. If you can find it the Fire Warrior novel is also good. Storm of Iron is good for the battles if you ignore Honsou (And if you're like most people you probably will.) and Angels of Darkness is also quite good (and a novel I'd recommend.) Dark Apostle and Dark Disciple are very good too. The Space Wolves omnibus is good, as is Woflblade., The last two (by a diff author) are good too but they have a diff flavor to them too which can be a bit jarring.

Inquisition War (when the omnibus comes out) isn't bad for the first two novels (again like Last chancerS) but i despised much of the last novel. Actually you can put Ravenor into that same category too. First book was good. SEcond was.. meh not bad, third book was a totla "WTF". Don't read Ravenor expecting to get another Eisenhorn series, it plays out more like the Dark Heresy game but it can be interesting if you want a look into the non-war sides of the Imperium.

Oh and along those lines Sandy Mitchell's Dark Heresy novel is quite good too.

Soul Drinkers isnt bad if you don't mind reading about the most idiotic Space MArine chapter since whoever did the HEllo Kitty marines. Which is odd because Counter's other characters are written really realyl well, but for some reason he's stuck on writing the Soul Drinkers as being the most inept and bumbling chapter in existence.

Likewise oyu may want to avoid the blood angels novels. They're not totally bd, but in 40K terms they tend to be alot more "off" what is 40K. I remember reading them and never being quite sure I am really reading 40K (The bolter rounds didnt explode as I recall lol)

[Shroom Man 777]

Hrm... it seems that I have chosen wisely out of the available novels. I won't be getting any of the others, then, and will just be ordering the rest of the Cain books. Then I'll see whatever other BL books they'll add to their stash.

[Shroom Man 777]

I just finished reading Scourge the Heretic in two days, and I must say that I found the book rather entertaining. Okay, it doesn't have much epic explosions or big battles, the biggest one just happening round the end, but it's totally awesome for its character interactions. This is a story set in the grim dark future of Warhammer 40,000, a story written by Sandy Mitchell - the author of the also-awesome Ciaphas Cain series. Now this book, it's totally great, totally character driven, and totally in good fun.

It's not as much of a parody of the GRIMDARK of 40k as Cain, though the stories aren't too outrageous, the main character (Cain) is a totally blatant and flippant subversion of everything 40k, in a totally awesome ass-kicking way.

The cast of Scourge the Heretic aren't total dicks like Cain, but they are very likeable and amicable characters, actually very much like Cain and the cast of his stories. That's what makes reading the story so fun, you get to like the characters and care about them.

From the sexy Redemptionist fanatic assassin girl who gets emotionally conflicted between her maturation as a woman and her training as an unstoppable killing machine, to the lowly Guardsman from a confining caste-driven society who is drafted into the Inquisitor's warband and finds himself developing from a shitpiece grunt into a total badass suave secret agent mang, they're all great guys! And it's all in good fun - even when you're uttering one-liners and pumping rogue psykers full of lead with your revolver.

Drake is a total badass, he should be tapping Keira's ass, not Horst!

Come on, he goes from being a shitpiece Guardsman running around in the frostbitten forests and becomes a hardass who says shit like "Do you think they'll have those little cheesy things on sticks?" while chambering his revolver as they prepare to raid opulent partygoing heretics.

It's a story about an Inquisitor's warband. The Inquisitor himself gets little screen time, acting as a central force for the plot and for the characters, but the main characters themselves seem to be his warband, the people under his command and how they go about their duties. Totally awesome!


I wish Drake totally ends up with Keira. Come on! Him ending up tapping Keira's hot sexy assassin ass would cement his transformation into a total suave badass! He's already halfway there!

[Connor MacLeod]

Scourge the Heretic is in my mind what Ravenor kinda wanted to be, but Abnett could never figure out whether he wanted to make another inquisitor novel or make it about the warband itself, so he kinda got stuck in-between and the flip-fllop between the two tends to lose alot of the coherence.

Pity the sequel won't be out for another year at least

If you like 40K tankers then I might suggest getting the Short story compilation planetkill.. its quite good but the last story about the Gunheads is just fucking great. I can't wait til March when the Guard ovel about them comes out. (CAdian tankers, no less)

[Imperial Overlord]

Scourge the Heretic is in my mind what Ravenor kinda wanted to be, but Abnett could never figure out whether he wanted to make another inquisitor novel or make it about the warband itself, so he kinda got stuck in-between and the flip-fllop between the two tends to lose alot of the coherence.

Pity the sequel won't be out for another year at least

It was actually written to tie into the Dark Heresy RPG, where you play members of an Inquisitor's war band ,and I agree its superior to the Ravenor books.

[Shroom Man 777]

Is Planetkill funner than that Let the Galaxy Burn shtick?

(I found the first Space Marines stories in Galaxy LAEM.)

[Connor MacLeod]

Let the galaxy b urn was basically a compilation of a buncha different short story compilations tied into one. And the things with all short stories is they're all pretty much hit or miss.

Planetkill isn't bad because alot of it deals with the fun topic of destroying worlds. I thought alot of the stories looked interesting but then I also admit I tend to read 40K novels for multifold reasons.

[Shroom Man 777]

I'm sorry for the necro, but man - there are THREE omnibii available in that store now!

The Last Chancers, an Imperial Guard omnibus, and a Gaunt's Ghost one - The Saint.

Which one do I pick first?!

help me out guys mang

[dragon]

I'm sorry for the necro, but man - there are THREE omnibii available in that store now!

The Last Chancers, an Imperial Guard omnibus, and a Gaunt's Ghost one - The Saint.

Which one do I pick first?!

help me out guys mang

I've read Last Chancers decent read. Pretty much like the dirty dozen, granted the very end was a bit disappointing. Haven't read the other two though.

[Aaron]

I'm sorry for the necro, but man - there are THREE omnibii available in that store now!

The Last Chancers, an Imperial Guard omnibus, and a Gaunt's Ghost one - The Saint.

Which one do I pick first?!

help me out guys mang

Either The Last Chancers or the IG omnibus, both are excellent and the IG one has both Catachans (space Rambo) and Vostroyans (space Imperial Russians). A lot of fans like Gaunt but I can't get into him, so I would say pass.

[Siege]

I'd personally advise reading The Saint only after The Founding, which is the first omnibus. You probably could read the Gaunt novels out of order if you really wanted to, but if it turns out you like them you'll want to read them in proper chronological order.

[Shroom Man 777]

I'll stick with the IG and Last Chancers omnibii then. On that note, I just finished reading Duty Calls, the penultimate Ciaphas Cain novel. It's pretty cool, a little bit of a rehash of For the Emperor and The Traitor's Hand but with moar of Amberley's cooky warband, and with Cain ruining a rogue Inquisitor's shit, and stuff. It was pretty good, though it didn't have the awesome political stuff of the first novel and neither did it really have the pace or the urgency of the third. Maybe I read it too fast, though, I just bought it yesterday

Goddamn my bed's gonna be littered with 40k books! FOR THE EMPEROR!!!

[Lancer]

I'll stick with the IG and Last Chancers omnibii then. On that note, I just finished reading Duty Calls, the penultimate Ciaphas Cain novel. It's pretty cool, a little bit of a rehash of For the Emperor and The Traitor's Hand but with moar of Amberley's cooky warband, and with Cain ruining a rogue Inquisitor's shit, and stuff. It was pretty good, though it didn't have the awesome political stuff of the first novel and neither did it really have the pace or the urgency of the third. Maybe I read it too fast, though, I just bought it yesterday

Goddamn my bed's gonna be littered with 40k books! FOR THE EMPEROR!!!

You absolutely must get Cain's Last Stand. It's true of anyone who's a fan of the Ciaphas Cain series, but it's especially true for you, Shroom. Just don't get so worked up with that Frank Miller thing of yours that your head explodes.

[Shroom Man 777]

We should totally sticky or do something with this thread so people won't have to make so many threads every once a while about what 40k books would be *awesome*.

[Connor MacLeod]

I'd personally advise reading The Saint only after The Founding, which is the first omnibus. You probably could read the Gaunt novels out of order if you really wanted to, but if it turns out you like them you'll want to read them in proper chronological order.

i thought about this some. that's actually not true. Abnett writes the Ghosts novels mostly in self contained arcs, and while some things from previous novels sometimes carry over the storylines generally don't. (The characters, histories, etc. - thats all.)

The first three novels (The founding) are even more self contained, since they directly don't have much to do with "The Saint" arc. First and Only basically just serves to introduce the Ghosts, Ghostmaker is really just a short story compilation about the Ghosts, and Necropolis is pretty self contained. You could read "The Saint" and not really "miss" alot from the first three, though you can't really say that about the next arc since alot more subplots tend to develop from Honour Guard onwards.