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The same gak, ever year, for 2 decades. Recently, while there are some pretty good novels out there like Baneblade, Fire Caste and Master of Sancity, the majority of Black Library novels, especially about Space Marines just feel the same. All of those short stories I read, more than half of them follow the same format: Space Marines kick ass, but take heavy losses in the end. There are also stories with terrible, unresolved ending and stories with plot that makes no sense. Protean by Nick Kyme is one of the worst I have ever read, and I am feeling so depressed by this even now. It should have stayed faithful to what is mentioned in Codex Space Marines.

And why are we having so many stories about Space Marines fighting rebels? That's Imperial Guards duty. Space Marines should be fighting Orks, Necron, Chaos Space Marines, Tyranids, Tau. It feels so dumb and boring reading Space Marine just completely overpowering a bunch of unaugmented humans.

How come there are at least 3 good High Elves novels and NOT A SINGLE GOOD Eldar novel? Path of the Eldar and the Carnac War are both terrible. The books about the Dark Eldar are way better, though Nurgle Marines got nerfed hard.

Can anyone please recommend me a good Space Marine novel that DOES NOT follow the same format like I just said?

I don't know about format, but I enjoyed Battle of Fang. I loved the escalation level of the invasion and much good bolter porn to be had. I can also recommend Hellsreach, the OCD psychopath that is Grimaldus makes for a surprisingly interesting person to follow and it's actually funny to watch how he is surrounded by butthurt battle brothers who didn't approve of his promotion which actually gives a third dimension to an otherwise 2 dimensional person.
Rynn's (Ryn's?) World is also a book I enjoyed, it's far from perfect but it's quite interesting to watch how the perfect and awesome spehs mareewns go from being full force prepared vs the incoming orks, to being stranded up gaks creek without paddles.

I can't think of a single one, because yes, Black Library has been just selling crap lately. All of the writers are so caught up in the Horus Heresy, which isn't my cup of tea with the too-human Space Marines, and actual 40k books have been few and far between. At this point entire authors are on my black list and Nick Kyme is definitely one of them. He is notoriously bad at actually keeping with any vague concept of previously written material.

I really can't think of a decent Space Marine book that I've read.

Definitely.

I'm a huge BL fan, or was at least, and for the last couple of years they haven't published anything of interest.

I was initially a big fan of the HH books, but I have since lost interest since they are stretching it into infinity and I'm pretty sure GW will go bankrupt or I'll die of old age before they finally reach the Battle of Terra. They've gone past book 30 and there are still chapters that have barely been mentioned.

It certainly doesn't help that they've gotten themselves caught up in lame gimmicks like £2 online 5-10-pagers, "audio dramas," and limited editions, and whatever else dumb crap they push out.

They used to publish a novel I'd be interested in approximately every two months that I'd buy. Consistently. I probably have about 50 novels plus extra crap like the Infantryman's Uplifting Primer. But I haven't bought anything from BL since, I guess, early 2012?

 Zewrath wrote:
I don't know about format, but I enjoyed Battle of Fang. I loved the escalation level of the invasion and much good bolter porn to be had. I can also recommend Hellsreach, the OCD psychopath that is Grimaldus makes for a surprisingly interesting person to follow and it's actually funny to watch how he is surrounded by butthurt battle brothers who didn't approve of his promotion which actually gives a third dimension to an otherwise 2 dimensional person.
Rynn's (Ryn's?) World is also a book I enjoyed, it's far from perfect but it's quite interesting to watch how the perfect and awesome spehs mareewns go from being full force prepared vs the incoming orks, to being stranded up gaks creek without paddles.

I do like Battle of the Fang, mainly because I was torn between routing for the Wolves and for the Thousand Sons (the way they are described makes me want to see both of them win so badly, though the ending is terrible), but that has been quite a while now. Dan Abnett is very slow to crack out a new Eisenhorn/Ravenor and Gaunt's Ghosts and not even Ciaphas Cain is as good as before.

Black Library has never been stellar. You are reading them to get novel style fluff. It isn't winning many awards!

bibotot wrote:

 Zewrath wrote:
I don't know about format, but I enjoyed Battle of Fang. I loved the escalation level of the invasion and much good bolter porn to be had. I can also recommend Hellsreach, the OCD psychopath that is Grimaldus makes for a surprisingly interesting person to follow and it's actually funny to watch how he is surrounded by butthurt battle brothers who didn't approve of his promotion which actually gives a third dimension to an otherwise 2 dimensional person.
Rynn's (Ryn's?) World is also a book I enjoyed, it's far from perfect but it's quite interesting to watch how the perfect and awesome spehs mareewns go from being full force prepared vs the incoming orks, to being stranded up gaks creek without paddles.

I do like Battle of the Fang, mainly because I was torn between routing for the Wolves and for the Thousand Sons (the way they are described makes me want to see both of them win so badly, though the ending is terrible), but that has been quite a while now. Dan Abnett is very slow to crack out a new Eisenhorn/Ravenor and Gaunt's Ghosts and not even Ciaphas Cain is as good as before.

I enjoyed it as well, it was some top-notch bolter porn for the first two acts... until the third act where they basically threw out the first 2 acts' narrative and character arcs in favour of some primarch action. To be fair, it was pretty cool, but it was also just a major letdown considering that the first two acts were so strong and interesting.

PhillyT wrote:Black Library has never been stellar. You are reading them to get novel style fluff. It isn't winning many awards!

This. They tend to be pulpy fun or grow increasingly poor as the book goes along. Of all the Black Library books I've read, the only ones I'd say that were legitimately awesome were Prospero Burns and the Bringers of Death short story collection (particularly Xenocide, and excepting the CS Goto crap that was Menshad Korum).

 Andilus Greatsword wrote:

bibotot wrote:

 Zewrath wrote:
I don't know about format, but I enjoyed Battle of Fang. I loved the escalation level of the invasion and much good bolter porn to be had. I can also recommend Hellsreach, the OCD psychopath that is Grimaldus makes for a surprisingly interesting person to follow and it's actually funny to watch how he is surrounded by butthurt battle brothers who didn't approve of his promotion which actually gives a third dimension to an otherwise 2 dimensional person.
Rynn's (Ryn's?) World is also a book I enjoyed, it's far from perfect but it's quite interesting to watch how the perfect and awesome spehs mareewns go from being full force prepared vs the incoming orks, to being stranded up gaks creek without paddles.

I do like Battle of the Fang, mainly because I was torn between routing for the Wolves and for the Thousand Sons (the way they are described makes me want to see both of them win so badly, though the ending is terrible), but that has been quite a while now. Dan Abnett is very slow to crack out a new Eisenhorn/Ravenor and Gaunt's Ghosts and not even Ciaphas Cain is as good as before.

I enjoyed it as well, it was some top-notch bolter porn for the first two acts... until the third act where they basically threw out the first 2 acts' narrative and character arcs in favour of some primarch action. To be fair, it was pretty cool, but it was also just a major letdown considering that the first two acts were so strong and interesting.

PhillyT wrote:Black Library has never been stellar. You are reading them to get novel style fluff. It isn't winning many awards!

This. They tend to be pulpy fun or grow increasingly poor as the book goes along. Of all the Black Library books I've read, the only ones I'd say that were legitimately awesome were Prospero Burns and the Bringers of Death short story collection (particularly Xenocide, and excepting the CS Goto crap that was Menshad Korum).

Based on the codex and rule book fluff, it's clear that the best medium is in the shorter inserts and stories, so I'm not sure why they decided to pulp the stories into hundreds of pages of mediocre writing. Seems like it'd be better to tell an action-packed story in 100 pages, than a meandering story in 400 pages.

It really galls me that they charge 50 dollars for an audio book. I think anybody purchasing those should be killed. Illiterate people shouldn't have enough money to waste on such bs.

BL is artistically bankrupt no doubt about it. I read most of their books as guilty pleasures. A few are objectively good (to me) however:
1. the 3rd HH book, Betrayer, The first Heretic and a Thousand Sons are all amazingly well written, Betrayer ranking the highest due to somehow making feel sad for the WE.
2. parts of priests of mars (the parts with the mechancius were actually poorly written but any part talking about the menials lives was amazing)
3. Helsreach was good for showing how broken SM have ended up after 10,000 years of war and how they have lost nearly every trace of human emotion since the heresy barring a few exceptions.

My biggest issue is their depiction of Orks. They are always shown as mindless savages, despite being the only empire on the same level as the Imperium (size and manpower terms here) and speaking the same language as IOM are never shown interacting with them language wise. Deff skwadron was better than almost 75% of BL. Also a lot of recycling goes on in these books. I can't find it now but a sequence in Mechanicus is repeated almost word for word in Priests of Mars and they seem to repeat a lot of plot points (SM Protagonist #13132121: gasp the mindless orks outsmarted us!)

 Bronzefists42 wrote:
BL is artistically bankrupt no doubt about it. I read most of their books as guilty pleasures. A few are objectively good (to me) however:
1. the 3rd HH book, Betrayer, The first Heretic and a Thousand Sons are all amazingly well written, Betrayer ranking the highest due to somehow making feel sad for the WE.
2. parts of priests of mars (the parts with the mechancius were actually poorly written but any part talking about the menials lives was amazing)
3. Helsreach was good for showing how broken SM have ended up after 10,000 years of war and how they have lost nearly every trace of human emotion since the heresy barring a few exceptions.

My biggest issue is their depiction of Orks. They are always shown as mindless savages, despite being the only empire on the same level as the Imperium (size and manpower terms here) and speaking the same language as IOM are never shown interacting with them language wise. Deff skwadron was better than almost 75% of BL. Also a lot of recycling goes on in these books. I can't find it now but a sequence in Mechanicus is repeated almost word for word in Priests of Mars and they seem to repeat a lot of plot points (SM Protagonist #13132121: gasp the mindless orks outsmarted us!)

Priests of Mars and Lords or Mars leave me with nothing to think. Both's plots are meaningless so far (remember the POINT of the expedition is to find KNOWLEDGE), and the Eldar, my favorite race in Warhammer 40k, have NO purpose in there. The characters are quite interesting, but if I can't put them properly in the story, how can I enjoy them to the fullest? Graham McNeil was just looking for something to have our main characters fight against, otherwise the whole plot would be dump as gak and nobody would read unless there was action. Sorry, but no action at all is better than terrible action where it makes me feel like I have been punched in the face. I might be a bit critical because, after all, there is a sequel coming: Gods of Mars. If it is good, if it gives a satisfying conclusion, if it resolve all the WTF I have had so far, then I will upvote for the whole series.

I stopped reading Priests of Mars after book 1. I just liked the insight into the miserable existence of menials in the 40k universe, a detail that is regularly overlooked by most.

Roll on Dan Abnett's next books, I say. Warmaster and Penitent will most likely be day one buys for me at least (and not be about Space Marines).

 Bronzefists42 wrote:
BL is artistically bankrupt no doubt about it. I read most of their books as guilty pleasures. A few are objectively good (to me) however:
1. the 3rd HH book, Betrayer, The first Heretic and a Thousand Sons are all amazingly well written, Betrayer ranking the highest due to somehow making feel sad for the WE.
2. parts of priests of mars (the parts with the mechancius were actually poorly written but any part talking about the menials lives was amazing)
3. Helsreach was good for showing how broken SM have ended up after 10,000 years of war and how they have lost nearly every trace of human emotion since the heresy barring a few exceptions.

My biggest issue is their depiction of Orks. They are always shown as mindless savages, despite being the only empire on the same level as the Imperium (size and manpower terms here) and speaking the same language as IOM are never shown interacting with them language wise. Deff skwadron was better than almost 75% of BL. Also a lot of recycling goes on in these books. I can't find it now but a sequence in Mechanicus is repeated almost word for word in Priests of Mars and they seem to repeat a lot of plot points (SM Protagonist #13132121: gasp the mindless orks outsmarted us!)

Guy Haley does some good depictions of orks. Engine of Mork, Evil Sun Rising, Klaw of Mork, and Baneblade all show orks that are cunning and intelligent (mainly the first three as they follow a Bigmek and his stompa shenanigans.) Overfiend also shows some pretty intelligent odd boys who manage to outsmart eldar and space marines.

Also if you look at Helsreach, (and Armageddon lore in general) it shows the imperium has underestimated the orks intelligence and how their able to adapt ( The submersible invasion, the space battle where ROKS guarded the ork rear lines, their blitz brigades created to stop sentinel attacks on their walkers.)

And orks aren't one big empire like the IOM. They have no single functioning body of government and likely scorn the idea as it would be no fun. Also were they actually able to form one the lore said they would obliterate every other faction with little effort.

Two books. Helsreach and Emperor's Gift. My two favorite books. I have read Emperor's Gift about five times now and I'm thinking about picking it back up again. Aaron does an amazing job at writing and it is hard to find anything that compares to his first person ability. I highly, HIGHLY suggest reading Emperor's Gift.

The Night Lords trilogy is fantastic, and goes to show that there are still gems out there.

However, I confess myself disappointed with The Unremembered Empire.

I'm not a fan of black library in general, but I'm hanging out for Penitent to hurry up and drop.

Well, I'm not a fan of BL either.
Recently, I tried to read Nick Kyme's book about Salamanders. It's a mess.

Nevermind

My first BL novels were the Night Lords triology, and I absolutely loved them. I haven't found anything that comes close yet, but then again I haven't read many BL novels. I enjoyed Betrayer quite a lot, Mechanicum was mediocre, as was Van Horstmann.

In my bookshelves I have Nemesis, Gods/Priests of Mars and some novel about Lizardmen I picked up for about a pound.

Aaron Dembski Bowden is a quality writer and I am kinda confused how he ended up with BL. The average quality of his works far exceeds all the other authors.

What really bothers me is that everyone here is selling his opinion as a straight fact. I have enjoyed quite some poorly written books simply because I liked the settings or the characters.

 Murenius wrote:
What really bothers me is that everyone here is selling his opinion as a straight fact. I have enjoyed quite some poorly written books simply because I liked the settings or the characters.

I dunno, I haven't read a ton of Black Library books, but they've generally come across to me as just "okay", rather than truly "bad". That's not to say that they aren't enjoyable on some level, but they're not super-quality fiction... and I don't think anyone really expects them to be anyway. They're certainly better than some expanded universes I could think of.

I think there are some great BL novels

Helsreach is simply awesome - likely my favourite BL novel - just great at every level and full of interesting characters.
the C.Cain novels - fun with a dark edge, enjoyable characters and interactions - I have enjoyed these imensely and like ADB and DA he is not afraid to exploe the 40k world beyond the mere battlefield, the last couple have been less good but still interesting
Gaunts Ghost - great work
Wordbearers Trliogy, Night Lords Trilogy and Lord of Night - this is how I see Chaos Marines.
The Emperors Gift was good.
The HH series is a bit hit and miss - there are gems like Legion, , Betrayer, the First Heretic, Propero Burns and Thousand Sons and there is the Dark Angel novels and The Furious Abyss :(
Just read the Deathwatch novel's - very good - again interesting characters and dark stories
Wrath of Iron and Imperial Glory are very good in their sheer grim darkness

It's Black Library. It's pulpy sci-fantasy military fiction. You're not going to get Vonnegut or Steinbeck.

Pffft, what do you know?

Space Marines for example, are such great characters with a wide variety of complex emotions ranging from hatred, anger, vengeance, killing, retribution, slaughter, bloodlust, and violence.

Space Marines work if the story is like Betrayer and Helsreach where they deal with how screwed up and broken SM are. They don't work as heroes though.

I absolutely hate any marine book, bar battle of the fang, which isn't heresy. They are all round awful. Some of the heresy ones are pretty poor too, any DA ones especially. I'm re reading hammer and anvil at the moment and it's freaking great. Guard novels have all but disapeared and inquisition ones are so infrequent they barely count anymore. The dark eldar books have been fun. But bolter porn must sell, I just don't get it.

 Andilus Greatsword wrote:

 Murenius wrote:
What really bothers me is that everyone here is selling his opinion as a straight fact. I have enjoyed quite some poorly written books simply because I liked the settings or the characters.

I dunno, I haven't read a ton of Black Library books, but they've generally come across to me as just "okay", rather than truly "bad". That's not to say that they aren't enjoyable on some level, but they're not super-quality fiction... and I don't think anyone really expects them to be anyway. They're certainly better than some expanded universes I could think of.

true we should be glad, BL could have hired Kevin J Anderson... or worse Karen Travis, to write for them.

Knockagh wrote:
I absolutely hate any marine book, bar battle of the fang, which isn't heresy. They are all round awful. Some of the heresy ones are pretty poor too, any DA ones especially. I'm re reading hammer and anvil at the moment and it's freaking great. Guard novels have all but disapeared and inquisition ones are so infrequent they barely count anymore. The dark eldar books have been fun. But bolter porn must sell, I just don't get it.

Ah good to hear, I was thinking of picking up Faith & Fire and Hammer & Anvil soon.