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So there is a bewildering amount of black library novels, I'm keen to dip my toe, but I have absolutely no idea where to start.

Help me dakka dakka, you're my only hope.

If you like Space Marines, then the Horus Heresy series seems like an obvious place to start.

What are you interested in?

Guard? Marines (what Chapter(s))? Inquisition? Chaos Marines? Eldar? 30K?

Looking at the Library as a whole, yes, it's going to be overwhelming. Once you narrow it down to a particular faction or campaign it gets significantly easier to offer suggestions.

I'm going to be no help at all narrowing it down. I guess I collect marines and other imperial stuff so that would be a good place to start. Tbh I love all the fluff so I'm just looking for easy to get into grimdark sci fi novels.

Start with Dan Abnett then. Eisenhorn and Ravenor, or Gaunt's Ghosts, or Titanicus - although Titanicus references the other books he's written a lot and is a bad place to start, thinking about it.

Matthew Farrer is also a good alternate option - Enforcer is basically 40k's answer to Judge Dredd.

I've read some of his non BL stuff so that's not a bad shout. Thanks.

Morning Kroll,

If I may, I would suggest one of these books to start with:

Like Miko already said, if you want a stand-alone adventure series set in the 41 millennium (that you can read with minimal knowledge of the fluff), pick up Dan Abnett's Eisenhorn (and if you like it, follow up later with Ravenor).
Another good starter novel by Dan is the first one in his Gaunt's Ghosts line, First and Only.
If you'd like to read something a bit less depressing about 40K, these is a tongue-in-cheek comedy series by Sandy Mitchell; Caiphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM. First book is called For the Emperor. Due note that these books are not indicative of the rest of Black Library.
These books focus more on the (more-or-less) normal humans in the Imperium.

If you'd rather start out with some modern astartes, You could try Graham McNeill's Utramarines books, starting with Nightbringer.
If you'd rather take a look at our favorite traitors, the Word Bearer trilogy comes to mind, starting with Dark Apostle. These are by Anthony Reynolds.

If you're interested in the Eldar, the Path Of books seem come highly recommended (I haven't gotten around to them yet, so this is hearsay), starting with the Path of the Warrior. These are by Gav Thorpe.

And last, starting with the Heresy is just a case of following the production dates. Horus Rising by Dan Abnett is the best place to start, followed by the two direct followups, False Gods and Galaxy in Flames.

Those were some suggestions to get you started, hope they help.

Thanks, decided to get book 1 of the Eisenhorn trilogy.

Let the Galaxy Burn. Not the Horus Heresy novel, but the short story collection edited by Christian Dunn and Marc Gascoigne. It has a HUGE array of short stories across a wide spectrum of authors, tones, and subjects. Many of them tie in to larger works, too. It will give you a really good idea of which authors you want to hear more from, and which subjects or groups maybe aren't as fun to read about.

Ciaphas Cain and Dan Abnett are going to get tossed around in this thread quite a bit; both were introduced to me via this short story collection.

I started with the Gaunt's Ghosts series, then just blazed through all the Imperial Armor books I could get my hands on, either borrowing or buying. Having IA 1 & 2 IMO are must haves for Imperial Guard/Astartes players.

Siege of Vraks, Mymeara, Taros campaign, Anphelion project, etc. were actually kinda crappy in terms of writing IMO, but the fluff and ideas in them are great and still worth reading.

Just starting Ciaphias Cain, after getting bored of the first 2 Horus Heresy books.

I'd say any Dan Abnett books are a great starting point. And you have a good number of books/series to start from.

Eisenhorn and Gaunt's Ghosts series are the traditional starting points. I would also highly recommend the excellent Night Lords Omnibus and Armageddon, which features Helsreach and its follow-up novella.

If you can, track down the Hammer and Bolter anthologies from a few years ago. They collect the short stories and serials from BL's monthly e-magazine that ran for a couple of years, and literally everything from both 40k and Fantasy are covered in there. There are some epic standalone pieces, but also plenty of tie ins to everthing from the HH to Eisenhorn, Gaunt's to the Eldar Path series. If you want a nice collection with great breadth and a taste of most of the authors/series BL have, you can't go far wrong with them.

When the word is about Eldar novels, I'd recommend Path of the Renegade, Path of the Incubus and Path of the Archon, before Path of the Eldar (Warrior, Seer, Outcast). I've liked Path of the Eldar but feel they're on the weaker side to what's available. Farseer by William King is also interesting, although it's told from human point of view. I've read about 1/4 of Valedor and really enjoyed it thus far.

Perhaps as they say, start at the beginning?
I started with the first Horus Heresy book, not knowing what to expect, and it was a little bit of joy. It is clearly meant to encourage you to carry on with the rest of the series, though, I'll say that.

I then read the first Gaunt's Ghosts book, and that was likewise good fun. Stands alone pretty well.

I wouldn't advise starting with Horus Rising. Most of its value lays in references and 40k in-jokes, and the Astartes characters are boring. Very Astartes, but boring as a result.

I respectfully disagree because I read that book knowing absolutely nothing about the setting, and thinking Space Marines were just two dimensional talking tanks. I came away totally enamoured, especially with the human characters.
The world building on board the ship alone charmed me. I won't say it's the most eloquent book, but it's still totally accessible to someone who just wants to read a story, with depth of reference you also refer to.

I wouldn't bother with Horus Rising simply because McNeil butchers everything by being a joke of a writer in False Gods.

Go to the BL website and pick a few books which you like the look of. Most of them will have an extract for you to read. I would recommend, as has been done before in this thread, that you read something like Let the Galaxy Burn or Planetkill as they give you a wide range of writers and perspectives of races. Let the Galaxy Burn has got some all time classic shorts in it like Pestilence by Dan Abnett and Deus ex Mechanicus by Andy Chambers.