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So I have like 3 codexes (dark angels and imperial knight 7th edition and chaos marines 6th edition) and I am looking for a good lore book, no rules and no ebooks, I whant something the fat guy behind the counter in my local hobby store can order for me.
No Matt Ward bull gak, and if possible something to do with the Dark Angels, Tzeench or Slanesh as those are my 3 favorite factions.

Horus Heresy. Read them all.

Best writer for Black Library is Dan Abnett (Eisenhorn/Ravenor (Inquisition), Gaunt's Ghosts (Guard)), the Heresy books (Marines/Chaos Marines pre-schism) are well put together despite being functionally a chain story. Ciaphas Cain (Guard) is funny if you've got an irreverent streak, most factions don't really have much content.

There technically exists a Dark Angels trilogy, but after seeing what Gav Thorpe did to the Path of the Eldar novels I hasten to recommend against trying to read it.

Horus heresy stuff, dan abnett stuff, I highly recommend the grey knights series of novels, also the soul drinkers omnibus is a definitely must read!

Others I have enjoyed were Dawn of War, and the space wolves series of novels though not as much as I've thoroughly enjoyed all of the heresy novels, grey knights series, and the soul drinkers series.
Hope this helps!

Having yet to read it myself, I often hear very good things about A Thousand Sons HH novel, which involves (I imagine) Tzeentch-y shenanigans.

 Anfauglir wrote:
Having yet to read it myself, I often hear very good things about A Thousand Sons HH novel, which involves (I imagine) Tzeentch-y shenanigans.

Takes a while to get started but when it does it's really good.

If you're a fan of Tzeench, the Ahriman series Ahriman Exile, Ahriman Sorceror and Ahriman Unchanged are bloody epic.

I'd recommend but not insist on reading Talon Of Horus and Atlas Infernal before staring the series.

Daemonworld is a trippy book that features a Slaaneshi cult on a planet inside the Malestrom, which is similar to the Eye of Terror. You ever wanted to know how a greater daemon's (like a bloodthrister) mind works and feels like? This book is for you.

So the people are living on a planet thats engulfed in the warp, all kinds of daemons and sorcery and gak. Think intense medieval culture with some technology left behind by previous expeditions of chaos marines and xenos. The 4 chaos gods on this planet have been fething with each other for millennia ever since it was engulfed in the Maelstrom.

Now Slaanesh owns it, with a giant hedonistic empire, a bunch of sick feths, mutated humans everywhere... with some xenos, mostly as slaves. The slaaneshi champion, a mutated human, she even got approval from the Violators Chaos Space Marines chapter, who sent like a platoon of marines and some weapons to help solidify Slaaneshi's rule of the planet.

The book focuses on the locals of the planet, plus a few Word Bearers chaos space marines chasing one of their own who betrayed them. The Word Bearers just barely manage to track down the traitor thru the maelstrom to this Slaaneshi planet. Meanwhile, the locals on the planet who have not pledged their service to Slaanesh, and who remain independent, who do not worship any chaos god - they are trying to fight back against Slaanesh. No matter the local's goals, secret forces on the planet, as well as big battles soon to unfold, these events start attracting the attention of other deamonic forces

Khorne eventually pays a visit to Slaanesh, and its epic.

- - - -

I also recommend Lord of the Night. Its about a Night Lords chaos space marine terrorizing a planet to find a relic to help him regain control of his army. The Inquisition is in his way though. This novel is just sick, I love it. Its not bolter porn AT ALL, its kinda like a horror story in some parts, when the Night Lord with his jet pack (he's like a raptor chaos marine) is stalking the inquisition and guardsmen patrols, making them all piss their pants.

 DeffDred wrote:
Horus Heresy. Read them all.

Please don't. A lot of it is really bland and boring. Only read it if you are really interested in the Horus Heresy, and even then only read the ones that are the most important to the main plot. Unless of course you want to know every little detail of every little thing that went on during the Heresy. It is a perfect example of a series that is being drawn out way too long. If you are a fan of the Dark Angels, you will probably enjoy the Heresy books about them though. These are:
Descent of Angels
Fallen Angels
Angels of Caliban
There are also a few shorter stories and audio dramas about the Dark Angels in the Heresy:
Call of the Lion
Master of the First

In general 40k novels are usually a lot more varied and interesting imo. Especially those that focus on things other than Space Marines or the Imperial Guard.
I reccomend my one of personal favourite novels, Wrath of Iron. It features the Iron Hands vs a Slaaneshi cult. (but is mostly from the viewpoint of normal humans). It does a really good job of showing the inhuman monsters that Space Marines really are.

Others have already mentioned:
Daemon World is a great read if you like Slaanesh. One of the best 40k books imo.
The Ahriman series is awesome, especially if you like Tzeentch and the Thousand Sons.

Gav Thorpe has written a pentalogy about the Dark Angels in 40k, but as with much of Gav Thorpe's writings there are a lot of people who really dislike it. However, I actually liked a lot of parts of the series quite a bit, but maybe that is just because I got used to Thorpe's writing through reading his Fantasy novels. Anyways, as a Dark Angels fan you might like them as well. They also tie in with the Heresy DA novels a bit. They are:
Angels of Darkness
The Purging of Kadillus
Ravenwing
Master of Sanctity
The Unforgiven

^^ HAHAAAA, this guy knows Daemonworld! He knows, man... this guys knows...

I'm gonna read Wrath of Iron next, sounds awesome

The main thing to find in these books: do they portray the epic and insanely evil WH40K? Everything in the book, being a reference to the supposedly badass 40k universe - is everything accounted for? Is everything presented properly? Does everything seem appropriately badass and otherworldly?

Another great thing about Daemonworld, it portrays "psykers" properly, IMO. Anyone sentient that is unlocked and mingling with alternate dimensions, anyone that is "awakened" can become a psyker. But its still pretty much impossible for the layman, because the ruling elite and the chaos gods themselves do not wish for much competition. hence the full scale galaxy wide effort to suppress each and everyone specie's psychic potential. Keep them dull, keep them busy. Let the Emperor protect you...

ahahahaaaa! See? Another possibility, the Emperor is deliberately taking hold of humanity's gestalt psychic energies, all for himself! Just a thought, not concrete. But it is possible for your consciousness to reconnect to the ether! The Eldar know what I'm talking about.

The Dark Eldar only do it when they are in real space (not commoragh)... even the Dark Eldar can still become psykers. But since they are negatively aligned with Slaanesh, since they are so intertwined with the chaos "god" Slaanesh, their species' soul energy vortex is stuck in a hypnotic embrace, and its quite draining to say the least.

Battle of the Fang's not a bad one if you want something about the 1k sons.

I hereby predict Red Tithe will make this list upon release.

Soul Hunter, by ADB
One of my most enjoyable reads ever, 40k or not.
About the hopeless and pointless existence of a Night Lords Warband, in the 40k era.
Brilliant, must read.

Edit: Get the Omnibus, it has the trilogy, and other in between short stories.

Mechanicum is good if you want to read more on knights and dark mechanicus.

Dead Sky, Black Sun...Iron Warriors done right.
Execution Hour and Shadow Point: Space battles in the Gothic War.

From recent releases I'd recommend

http://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/fabius-bile-primogenitor-ebook.html

or

http://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/genestealer-cults-ebook.html

the a-fore mentioned Red Tithe book has also had good reviews thus far.

It's on my list anyway.

Mr Thorpe's DA trilogy is also well worth picking up.

The first 5 HH books are like a must read, the garro series is pretty damn good as well.

As mentioned there does technically exist a dark angels trilogy, actually think there are 4 books now technically in the series, by gav thrope, who does a really good job with dark angels.

Aaron Dempski-Bowden, IMO, writes the best stuff on traitor legions. He really shows how the legions fell and shows the reasons why, rather than simply tell you.
The First Heretic is my buddy's absolute favorite Horus Heresy book. It walks through the fall of the Word Bearers and gives you insight into jusy how manipulative Erebus is.
A good one to follow First Heretic (read calth first though), is Betrayer. This also follows some of the characters from First Heretic as well as Kharn and Angron! This is a close second favorite of mine, and shows how World Eaters are more than just berserk meatheads.
But by far, my favorite (by Dan Abnett) is Angel ecxterminatus. Im a big IW fan, and this book just makes the 4th legion shine. There is so much light on Perturabo and his legion, it really shows that Pert, despite his harshness and relative cold towards everything is just a front to hide his fears about himself.

Those are my favorites, and since reading (and rereading) them, other HH books just don't seem as deep. Could just be bias, lol.

Always and forever: Let the Galaxy Burn. Not the HH novel, but the short story compilation edited by Christian Dunn and Marc Gascoigne. It's a massive collection of stories, featuring pieces on every faction in the game and showcasing work from boatloads of authors. Several of the stories are even tied in to ongoing works. This is the best jumping off point into the Black Library, because it offers a huge sampler platter of lore, allowing you to get a taste of factions you're already interested in, as well as finding factions you might not have known you liked, or authors whose writing styles you'd like to see more of.

Voidraven5829 wrote:
Aaron Dempski-Bowden, IMO, writes the best stuff on traitor legions. He really shows how the legions fell and shows the reasons why, rather than simply tell you.
The First Heretic is my buddy's absolute favorite Horus Heresy book. It walks through the fall of the Word Bearers and gives you insight into jusy how manipulative Erebus is.
A good one to follow First Heretic (read calth first though), is Betrayer. This also follows some of the characters from First Heretic as well as Kharn and Angron! This is a close second favorite of mine, and shows how World Eaters are more than just berserk meatheads.
But by far, my favorite (by Dan Abnett) is Angel ecxterminatus. Im a big IW fan, and this book just makes the 4th legion shine. There is so much light on Perturabo and his legion, it really shows that Pert, despite his harshness and relative cold towards everything is just a front to hide his fears about himself.

Those are my favorites, and since reading (and rereading) them, other HH books just don't seem as deep. Could just be bias, lol.

slight correction there, Angel Exterminatus is by Graham McNeil. and almost reads as a preqal to Storm of Iron (which if you've not read is must reading for an IW fan

A Thousand Sons
Horus Rising
Pariah
Titanicus
Dead Men Walking
Fabius Bile
First Heretic

Eiseonhorn hands down. Not only a great warhammer series, a great series overall. A lot of warhammer books fall into the trap of shallow characters where everyone is just a one dimensional killing machine. Not so with eisenhorn, an engaging story, great characters, gives you a look at imperial life instead of 300 pages of different ways for a space marine to cut an ork/chaos/other xeno, in half with a chain sword.

Which is kind of why I can't get into the Horus heresy, seemed like a bunch of jerking space Marines off who can cut a planet in half, space marines are boring.

For the Horus Heresy I've mainly been sticking with the audio books. Of them the original three made for a good long story leading into the larger series, Thousand Sons gave a good insight to what that legion was all about and served as a good side-quel that tied into the three first books.

On the 40k side, the Cain books are extremely fun and adventurous, but it's a fair criticism that they're somewhat samey. If you will only pick one, either For the Emperor to see its very strong first entry, or Death or Glory which I think is its best entry.

Another one I really love that doesn't get mentioned often is Death of Integrity. It's a space hulk story featuring two space marine chapters working with the mechanicum and each other to try to get to the core of a space hulk.

Most 40k novels are world building efforts in maintaining the status quo, the HH series, on the other hand, is great (barring a few entries).

I'd recommend just consuming them in the order they were released but if you want to cherry pick the ones relative to your factions then these ones are for you:

Slaanesh:
Fulgrim
The Primarchs (A Reflection Crack'd to be specific)
Angel Exterminatus

Tzeench:
Thousand Sons
Prospero Burns
The Outcast Dead (not really about Tzeench but a Thousand Son is the main character)

Dark Angels:
Descent of Angels
Fallen Angels
The Primarchs (The Lion to be specific)
Angels of Caliban (continuation of Vulkan Lives, Unremembered Empire and Pharos, you don't need to read those first but they're all pretty decent).

If you plan on just reading the entire Heresy, please, for the love of the Pantheon, skip Battle for the Abyss. It's not worth it.

First off all Eisenhorn. No book is quite as good at taking you through the Imperium.

Second is Ciaphas Cain for the humor. You will not find better light and fun 40k reading material.

Third is let the galaxy burn. A collection of 38short stories touching on many aspects of 40k.

So that's top three but here's two bonuses: salvation. You follow a scribe on a quest through an underhive. The scribe has never been outside of his administration HQ and is thrilled about getting to do his noble houses bindings. One of the Necromunda books and a personal favourite.

I'll also recommend fire cast. It just oozes 40k out of every pore.

EDIT: on the 30k side of things the original triology is worth a look.

Dan Abnett's Double Eagle - frequently overlook in favour of his Ghosts or Inquisitor stories (thought to be fair it's a spinoff from the Ghosts stories). It's straight-up my favourite Black Library book.

first 3 horus heresy novels.

Wordbearers trilogy.

soul drinkers trilogy is solid!

storm of iron is class.

the older stuff is normally pretty solid.

gaunts ghosts series

night lords trilogy.

Atlas Infernal features a good bit of Tzeentch stuff, albeit as the antagonists, and is a good read.

any suggestions for Space Wolves novels?

I gotta second Mr. MaNiven's Double Eagle suggestion. Possibly my favorite 40K book. It really gives a great glimpse into the Imperium at war from a very different perspective than we are used to seeing.