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I was wondering, We know tons about the Imperial Guard, Ad Mech, Space Marines, and all those different facets of the Imperium's forces, but what about the Navy?
Aside from a few snippets here or there when a Guard regiment is in transit I haven't seen anything. Are there any novels focusing on Naval vessels? Thanks in advance for any helpful information you guys can give me.

 Skycrawler wrote:
I was wondering, We know tons about the Imperial Guard, Ad Mech, Space Marines, and all those different facets of the Imperium's forces, but what about the Navy?
Aside from a few snippets here or there when a Guard regiment is in transit I haven't seen anything. Are there any novels focusing on Naval vessels? Thanks in advance for any helpful information you guys can give me.

Lexicanum is always a good place to start.

Abnett's Double Eagle is good (not surprisingly). It's primarily about the Phantine Air Corps, which are technically part of the Imperial Guard, being a permenantly attached arial asset. However, they use Thunderbolt heavy fighters and are deployed in Navy Wings for inter-planetary air operations - so they are Imperial Navy in all but on their force organisation papers, practically.

Other than that (and the Ghost's novel which features the Phantine), I've not read any. Therefore I'd also like the hear about any good IN fluff, particularly space battles - and not the crappy Rogue Trader series!

A little googlefu and I have found a novel called "Execution Hour" by Gordon Rennie and a novel by Richard Williams called "Relentless"

I recommend GW's Battlefleet Gothic rules and the BFG magazine.
Some articles are available on their website for free: http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?catId=cat480005a&categoryId=6700003a§ion=&aId=21500018a

Lexicanum and various novels probably offer more detailed insight, but may conflict each other as well as GW fluff, so it probably depends on your personal stance regarding that situation. It's at least a good source for inspiration, though. I loved the short story "Small Cogs" in the Dark Imperium anthology.

There's some good bits of Navy fluff in one of the Gaunt novels, too.... the naval battle that precedes the invasion of Vervunhive, iirc.

 Psienesis wrote:
There's some good bits of Navy fluff in one of the Gaunt novels, too.... the naval battle that precedes the invasion of Vervunhive, iirc.

I assume you mean the Chaos assault on Herodor's capital Civitas Beati from Sabbat Martyr? Necropolis doesnt have any space battles IIRC

Execution Hour also had a sequel Shadow Point I think it was called. The Battlefleet Gothic books are a good start and the supplement Warpstorm has a good Leoten Semper story in. FFG have the Battlefleet Koronus book as well which is pretty good.

Ugly Green Trog wrote:

 Psienesis wrote:
There's some good bits of Navy fluff in one of the Gaunt novels, too.... the naval battle that precedes the invasion of Vervunhive, iirc.

I assume you mean the Chaos assault on Herodor's capital Civitas Beati from Sabbat Martyr? Necropolis doesnt have any space battles IIRC

Might be it. I'm getting old, the memory is not what it once was.

The first Eisenhorn novel, Xenos, has a cool representation of the Navy Security Forces, who are described as being just like Kasrkin for the Navy.

 Sturmtruppen wrote:
The first Eisenhorn novel, Xenos, has a cool representation of the Navy Security Forces, who are described as being just like Kasrkin for the Navy.

Which pretty much conflicts any mentioning of Naval armsmen everywhere else.

Hence my warning earlier. The whole thing is a bit tricky in that we don't know what kind of info OP is looking for. Does he want to learn more about the Imperial Navy as represented in GW's books? Or is he looking for further inspiration for fleshing out his own idea of it? At the end of the day, any fluff anywhere is about as "valid" as what he could make up himself. Just like with 40k as a whole, there is no "one" Imperial Navy, there are thousands of different and overlapping interpretations by various game designers, novel authors, gamers and readers.

Lulz my two books have been spoken but Its the gothic war series is really good. I want to know out of all the factions which are the most deadly in space!!!!

I would like a Battleship Yamato/Battlestar Galactica-style 40k book to be honest. A lone Imperial Cruiser gets lost in the warp and ends up in uncharted space, and tries to find its way back home while fighting through hordes of Chaos/Orks/Necrons/new xenos/whoever you want. Along the way they come across human worlds that haven't even met the Imperium, but are still in dire straights.

Could be quite an epic novel series if done right.

 Thousand Nuns wrote:
Execution Hour also had a sequel Shadow Point I think it was called. The Battlefleet Gothic books are a good start and the supplement Warpstorm has a good Leoten Semper story in. FFG have the Battlefleet Koronus book as well which is pretty good.

I have read both Execution Hour as well as Shadow Point and they are both EXCELLENT Imperial Navy books. I highly recommend them not just as good reads, but also a good source of Imperial navy info.

willhman wrote:
Lulz my two books have been spoken but Its the gothic war series is really good. I want to know out of all the factions which are the most deadly in space!!!!

Before Ward came along it was the Necrons,

 TheCrazyCryptek wrote:

 Thousand Nuns wrote:
Execution Hour also had a sequel Shadow Point I think it was called. The Battlefleet Gothic books are a good start and the supplement Warpstorm has a good Leoten Semper story in. FFG have the Battlefleet Koronus book as well which is pretty good.

I have read both Execution Hour as well as Shadow Point and they are both EXCELLENT Imperial Navy books. I highly recommend them not just as good reads, but also a good source of Imperial navy info.

Absolutely agree, I'm a complete sucker for any Navy or space battle related stuff. I read Execution Hour twice. Semper is a cool character and the books have some decent supporting characters too.

Also forgot to mention that some of the imperial armour books have some Navy battles in. Vraks and also the tau focussed book have some good sections from the space side of the conflicts.