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What is your favorite Horus Heresy book and why?

A Thousand Sons

Not just space marines, they are scholars and more. Magnus is the thinking man's Primarch. It is absolutely tragic that they do their best for their Legion and Emperor and it all goes horribly wrong. From Magnus's early bargain for his sons through to his attempt to warn his Father. By the end of the book, despite what happens with the Wolves, the Sons of Magnus are still loyal.

Honourable mentions to Know No Fear and Fear to Tread. Sanguinius has to be the most human and least prone to rage of all the Primarchs.

WABTY

Know no fear

I havent read a galactic battle sequence like it before and the way in which it counts down to the event is brilliant. The addition of mysterious characters who have nothing to do with the HH but are becoming wrapped up in the events is great. As Dan Abnett says himself - the HH is like Titanic. We know what happens at the end ultimately but the story of what happens on the way there is untrodden ground and Dan Abnett and ADB have done the best books out of the lots so far.

Flight of the Eisenstein.

Grulgor <3
birth of the plague marines.
Great journey through the unknown, on a vital mission. Loved it from start to end.

Legion - it open doors to an entirely different way of doing warfare.
Followed by Mechanicus. The Titan Legion fight it out and more on how the Mars works.
Thousand Sons, more to life in the legions than just war

Fulgrim, followed by Galaxy in flames... although im only up to fallen angels...

Legion and Mechanicum because the main characters weren't man-child Space Marines. Honestly most of the Marines characters have as much depth as a puddle.

Most of them are great - my favorite so far is still Horus rising followed by Thousand Sons though. For so long people were fairly happy with the entire setting of the current universe simply explained as a (very) thinly veiled fall of Satan story. We had a few short stories or wildly varying non-canonical accounts of the Heresy in other books but in general most of the 40k Background fluff was simply "Things were great, then they sucked, then they sucked more and now - Aliens"

Either way back to Horus Rising I think it was great to see the Imperium as it was meant to be. It did an excellent job setting the scene for the slow unraveling of the grand plan and showing how even the best intentions can create the ripples that would eventually turn the great Empire of Man into the 15th Century catholic Church - IN SPACE. I think the two books together also give some rare and interesting insight into Imperial life when people aren't shooting at each other (Dan Abnett in particular has always been my favorite in this regard)

MarsNZ wrote:
Legion and Mechanicum because the main characters weren't man-child Space Marines. Honestly most of the Marines characters have as much depth as a puddle.

Haha. I agree mostly. I think much of the problem is that the authors are tasked with taking a faction that is only ever portrayed as highly advanced bullet delivery systems and making them human ANNNNND GO! It's like trying to write a 300 page love story between a plumber and his favorite hammer, but *record scratch* the hammer is the main character.

Some people write them very well - as biological tools who were "built" for a very specific purpose who are suddenly left without their driving ethos and forced to start thinking way out of their comfort zone (or at all). In a way I think the fact that they all kind of start of Angry Mehrines is a bit of a wink and a nod to the fact that they were never expected to have much depth prior to this series.

Others unfortunately fall into what I like the call the "Ben Counter" trap; where they can't think of a way to write about what a Marine reads on the can so they work around it by making them grimace and punch things every other page. It doesn't make for bad books, just don't expect a lot of pesky plot or character development before the bullets start flying.

1st, Legion. The fact that a whole side story of a secret galatic cult of super beings that want to enlist the Emperor's being into their midst to destroy the powers of Chaos and then recruit the Alpha Legion w/ the assistance of Jon Grammaticus and the 1000+ year old, un-killable humans, is amazing, and I DESPERATELY want more. That story creeps up a few times in other books, but it leaves so much more open for interpretaion.
Actually, there are SEVERAL books that I love reading from this series. The short stories book that describes the Emperor coming to the last lone church on Earth before removing religion was an amazing read.
Mechanicum with it's amazing backstory and information that hint about the history of the Emperor and his battle against the "Dragon".
Know no Fear was a hard read for me, because of the shear amount of destruction the Ultramarines took, being a fan of the Ultramarines in general.
The Assassin book (I've read all 23, I can't remember the early ones) was an excellent look at how the Imperium uses it's Cult Assassinorum.

Know no Fear. I've never seen destruction on the level played out so masterfully. It was like reading a symphony. I never knew the Word Bearers had it in them.
Thousand Sons. This is by far the most tragic of the books and it unfolds with beautiful pathos.
Mechanicum. I love those mechanicus freaks. They're my #1 wishlist for an army. I also liked seeing a none-space marine view of things.

Glad to see so many like my favorite as well. My vote goes to thousand sons, then galaxy in flames, then probably betrayer.

Thousand sons was the mos compelling for me and really made me feel for Magnus and his sons.

I liked the ones with great revelations.

Horus Rising: We got to see the universe as it was when gods walked among the stars. It even explains why there are statues and stuff EVERYWHERE in the galaxy.

Legion: Explains the whole point of everything.

Thousand Sons/ Prospero Burns: So that's what happened!

Nemesis (the only one I've read more than twice): So those are the other two Assassin temples!

I hated the ones that had no purpose.

Anything Dark Angels: Boring....

Short Story books: Well that was nice... wow only took me 2 hours to read the whole thing? Let's hope I left that book mark in The Stand.

Battle for the Abyss: Why bother?

But that being said... My favorite books so far have been:

Legion, Know No Fear, First Heretic and Outcast Dead (though not the greatest, perhaps one of the worst, I really liked a few parts of it)

I just think it's too bad that they're stretching them out so long. I'm at the point where I no longer care and just want to read about the Emperor fighting Horus.

Mainly, I just want to know why Horus dropped the shield... or to see if Alpharius/Omegon dropped it!

Legion because of Jon Grammaticus.

Flight of the Eisenstein and as a close second First Heretic, but I don't get the hype neither for Legion nor Fulgrim. The only thing I want to do after reading Fulgrim is to punch Lucius in the face and the end was imho very disappointing.
And Legion was way too much "It was us all along"

Horus Rising ...it captured that feeling of Chaos I had when I first read the Realm of Chaos books back in the late 80's and got hooked on 40k.

Thousand Sons because of all of the Pre-Heresy Black Templar Librarians in it.