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Has anyone read the "Horus Heresy" series?

I've been reading the series for several years now and I'm just starting "The Outcast Dead" by Graham McNeill. It is the 17th novel in that series.

If you haven't read the series yet or haven't even started on it then you are missing out!

I just started book two pretty good so far

Quite a lot of people have read them yeah unfortunately the quality drops off towards the most recent books for the most part. I really like the series as a whole though.

I've read up to book 30 (36 including short stories), haven't read legacies of betrayal yet.

absolutely love them. I think they are better than the 40k books. just the love the history behind it all. its a shame its been a while since one has come out. and they leave a lot hanging they make these huge story arch's and then just leave them be which is disappointing. but I still love them

I disagree that the quality has dropped off - in my mind, this is a copy/paste opinion which is the bane of the Games Workshop.

The truth is, the quality of the series varies. It is by far superior to the mindless trash they're pumping out for 40K, everything about the Heresy series is more professional - characterisation, events, style - and they rarely read like graphic novels, unlike many 40K books. The Astartes are far easier for the audience to get behind because they are much closer to human than the ones from 40K, they're typically free thinkers who don't simply spout "For the Emperor, my brothers!" as their only dialogue.

My only concern is the poor quality of some of the writing. Graham McNeill's novels are often a chore to get through, even though he seems to be the author who advances the storyline the most. Dan Abnett has certainly matured as an excellent writer but I often find his characters flat and annoying, it's hard to get into their heads or empathise with them. The less said about Ben Counter the better.

The quality has always varied through the series yes but the quality as a whole has been getting worse more recently Everything's limited edition lately too, £30 for a 100 page novella unless you want to wait a year, and what was the last actual novel released, Damnation of Pythos? That was a while ago now.

Yea the series has run dry for me at this point.
There were some thoroughly enjoyable novels in there, others that were pretty darn poor but at one point it was motoring along nicely and I looked forward to the new books.
Now, I dont really care.
I think the HH FW books have had a part to play here interms of BL potentially being told not to go too far ahead in the series because it'll spoiler future HH FW books.
Disappointing.

My only issue with them in is that they too much like 40k, I really wanted to see thinks not-40k, how things became 40k, not that 40k is 30k with more xenos. But that's my only gripe. The bulk of it is awesome, and well worth the read.

SJ

There have been some books I have liked better than others.

The books that are just compilations and just contain a bunch of short stories.....I find them harder to follow because there is a lot of jumping around from one thing to another rather than the books that just focus on one particular primarch and/or legion.

I've read all the books, a couple of the digital editions and some of the audio books.

I hate the literally money grab that has been going on with Black Library and this series. Digitial editions literally have no production costs aside from the one-time fee paid to the writer, and the tiny amount of bandwidth it costs to store a few thousand kb of data, and editors to write the thing and yet somehow costs more than the trade paper back book which is released about 1 year after the "Premium" Paperback, which is released about 1 year after the Hard Back, which is 1 year after the Premium, Ultra, Hard Back Edition, which is 1 year after the Super, Mega, Premium, Ultra Hard Back Edition, etc....




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aside from my rage-hate for black library money grabbing the stories can be great. Find the short-stories to be mostly useless and without any real value, story, or feeling of the time.

the Garro Audio books are good, although you pay a lot of money (way too much) for what little actual story you get.

People are really really divided on the various authors. For me Dan Abnett is the best, even his latest works. I loved Prospero Burns but a lot of people don't care for it. Most people like ADB. My opinion is to go through them all, even though some are terrible.