Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi guys,
I am by no means up to date, but for me Fulgrim is still one of the best I read, but I'm a huge fan of the Third so it may have played a role.
Although I thought the plot was good, the characters were good (I LOVED Lucius !) and the battles were too.
I really liked Mechanicum too tbh but I can't say it's my favorite, I was just happy to see the mechanicum and the famous Martian uprising.
What about you ?
I heard good things about Master of Mankind, Wolfesbane and Saturnine (even if this they may be quite divisive with all the revelations).
Let us know !

Do novellas count? Prince of Crows and The Long Night are my favorites. Sevatar is easily the best HH character (possibly the best Warhammer anything character) and ADB writes awesome action. Who else would board a fething battleship by clinging to the side of a starfighter?

Ave dominus nox, baby.

I have to say the first one: Horus Rising. Compelling characters, a fresh canvas of Space Marines before the fall and the sense of impending doom all made for a great read that I honestly did not expect. I've enjoyed the HH since then, but thats my favourite and it can stand alone.

Never read any. Little too Marine on Marine for my taste.

I do like Slaanesh though, so if I was going to read one, Fulgrim probably would be the one.

Well, since it's the only HH novel I ever read I guess "Legion" has to be my favorite by default.

I have always wanted some solid data on the alpha legion and Legion does have some interesting facts. I think I see why the AL doens't always seem to be against the imperium or all for chaos, and may be the least chaosy of the "chaos space marines" now.

Man, there a ton of really good ones!

I think my favorite would either be Thousand Sons or Mechanicum!

I am not the first person to say this, but the first three novels make an amazing trilogy. They help capture the mythic feel of the time period. I remember liking Fulgrim a lot when it first came out, but I re-read it a few years ago and thought that the human characters were not very interesting.

The First Heretic is definitely up there. It has the line that I think best sums up all of Warhammer 40,000:

"Whatever happens, the wrong side will win."
"How can you say that, Brother?"
"Because both sides are wrong." (paraphrased)

My favorite is probably The Outcast Dead. It gives us a great view of Terra during the Golden Age, but goes beyond the events of the Horus Heresy to tell a very original story in that world. It's clearly an example of Horus Heresy as setting, which was the original intent of the series, rather than continuing an important plot, but I think that works to its strength.

I've been reading them very slowly over several years and am up to Deliverance Lost, which I haven't finished because it is pretty bad. I am not a huge fan of the Dark Angels books, but they had some really neat lore in them. It made me more interested in the Legion - like there's a great story there, that just isn't being told in an interesting way.

Actually I don't know if I want even more details about early Crusade and especially the world before. Like, the HH is already a shrouded mystery unveiling, do we need another one ?
I'll soon read Angel Exterminatus btw, I'll let you know !

I agree on Fulgrim, a really interesting read.

I would probably suggest First Heretic, followed by its sort-of-sequel Betrayer. They provide a cool insight to the roots of the heresy, and there is really fascinating insight into daemonic possession as a sort of symbiosis.

Betrayer. I haven't read fulgrim yet. Might have to give it a go.

Horus Rising and Galaxy in Flames are both very good books. I’ve only finished the first 5. Descent of Angels and
Legion have both been canned 6 and 10 chapters in respectively. I can’t stand either of them unfortunately. I bought a bunch more on audible I’ll try, if they don't do it for me I think i’ll likely give up on the series.

What didn't you like in Descent of the Angels ?

The characters and the knightly order. It just didn’t hold my attention.

The prose was also one of the weakest in the series, unfortunately. It was too self-aware - the two main characters, even from the age of seven, would consistently speculate with each other, "how weird would it be if we were raised on Terra instead of Caliban? Wouldn't we be different people?" "You're going back to Caliban with Luther and I'm sticking with the Lion. Won't that be an odd twist of fate that will affect us and how we relate to each other, as a microcosm for the Heresy as a whole? Isn't this appropriately thematic?"

I really don't like bashing other people's creative work, so I'm trying to be as specific as possible with the reasons I didn't like it (on the 0.00001% chance that Mike Lee reads this, I want to have constructive takeaways, because I'm sure he values my opinion oh-so-highly). But there were a lot of problems with it that were hard to overcome, and most of them were the text itself, rather than the events that were happening.

Well I just got Fulgrim and am reading it. Man GW just can't stop price gouging even for kindle books!

I always kinda liked fulgrim in some ways. He was an unusual primarch. As far as I can tell he never had to conquer his world or take power by force. He was just so good at making things better for people as I gather they more or less just handed him more and more power until he ended up running the world by the choice of the people.

Unlike certain primarchs who decreed "All will bow to me or die." and took power by force and threat, and note I did not mention jaghatai khan by name when I said that. fulgrim was chosen by his world to be it's leader because he made things better for people, not because he was the biggest kid on the playground.

I'm reading his book now and am kinda sadly anticipating seeing how he fell.

Betrayer, The First Heretic, Horus Rising and Fulgrim are all amazing books

yeah betrayer was great, it really gave us a great look at Gulliman, Lorgar and Angron

I didn't like Betrayer as much. I thought the relationship with Argel Tal and Kharn came out of nowhere (although I did later learn that it was developed in two novellas I haven't read), and the fact that the entire second half of the book was a massive free-for-all melee got really tedious. That said, ADB is on point in terms of his human characters, and I really enjoyed the way that the mortal captain interacted with her crew and the Space Marines, and the politics going on with the titan princeps. I was glad that we got to understand how the many mortals that accompany the astartes decided to go along with the Heresy - that they were active participants who had their own grudges to bear. That's also on display in Fulgrim, I suppose, although in that case it's a little bit more like a collective madness and long slide to debauchery rather than any characters' specific choice. But I didn't care for the way that the perpetuals were introduced to the story - the subplot with Cyrenen really felt out of place.

I did like the way that Lorgar interacted with his primarch brothers. I loved the way that Angron called Guilliman out. Also I realize that the quote I referenced earlier actually came from Betrayer, not First Heretic, so there's that. It's a bit of a mixed bag and I still consider it to be very good, but not one of the best and certainly not one of ADB's best.

Most of the best have been mentioned but I would put in a vote for "Know no Fear". Showing Rouboute and the UMs discovering Lorgar's treachery for the first time is really well written, as is their slow recovery from the devastating assault on Calth. Not a particular fan of UMs but this book writes them really well.

 Karhedron wrote:
Most of the best have been mentioned but I would put in a vote for "Know no Fear". Showing Rouboute and the UMs discovering Lorgar's treachery for the first time is really well written, as is their slow recovery from the devastating assault on Calth. Not a particular fan of UMs but this book writes them really well.

It easily is the best 30k Ultramarines book, and really does show off the Ultramarines' perspective of the whole Heresy, just a lot of "what the hell is going on, I thought we were all cool, we didn't have anything against you?" and very slowly realising the extent of the Word Bearer' treachery. The descent of the Astrodamicus is also a very fun read.

I think the Ultramarines depiction in the HH novels has been one of the most intreasting parts of it. prior to the heresy series we did't know much about the Ultramarines of the era. And what we did know amounted to "missed the fighting on Terra, showed up afterwards to clean up"

now we're seeing that they where indeed involved.

From what I recall of reading the HH series, 'The Flight of the Eisenstein' was the one I held as my favourite.

Can't remember the point in HH I read up to, or what opinion I'd have now, but while I was into HH that was my favourite.

I just read again the short novela "the crimson fist" about the Battle of Phall, and I can't stop thinking I really hate it.
It's not badly written but the Iron Warriors really look like moustache villains. Especially perturabo that ... Kill his officer because he tells him Sigismund isn't there ? Wtf
The IW have the IF trapped, outnumbered, have a primarch with them, hurt by psychic attack and have full information about every single ship. And they still manage to loose the battle ?
And ... Polux who immediately order withdrawal instead of what, finishing the battle within the hour or two ? It's not like it was a long campaign, the battle was in full climax.
Any way you can make me like this instead ?

Descent of Angels, and any of the dark angel focused books are ones to swerve in my opinion. That side of the story is best seen from the side of the night lords, as although it's only short stories and audios, they're so much better. Ruinstorm was alright, but covered such a weird part of the story that it often seems a bit strange.

The first trilogy was really strong, the 4th book was pretty good (flight of the Einsteinium or something).
I really disliked the 5th one about the emperor’s children. Just not for me. It felt like it was trying too hard and every second adjective was perfect/perfection or some variation of that, in case we forgot it was about the emperor’s children. I really struggled to finish it.

After that it’s a pretty mixed bag tbh. Some are alright. I enjoy them on the whole and I’ve read all the novels and most of the short stories, but it’s hardly top rate SF for the most part.

Anything by Dan Abnett, Aaron Dembksi-Bowden, and Chris Wraight.

Wow, reading fulgrim right now, and I can't believe how fast the EC and fulgrim fell to chaos.

I suppose a ship filled with artists was easy pickings, but still, these guys went downhill faster than the jaws movies...

 Avatar 720 wrote:
From what I recall of reading the HH series, 'The Flight of the Eisenstein' was the one I held as my favourite.

Can't remember the point in HH I read up to, or what opinion I'd have now, but while I was into HH that was my favourite.

\

Indeed a good book - good characters and glimpse into a Legion we know mostly "post-heresy."

godardc wrote:I just read again the short novela "the crimson fist" about the Battle of Phall, and I can't stop thinking I really hate it.
It's not badly written but the Iron Warriors really look like moustache villains. Especially perturabo that ... Kill his officer because he tells him Sigismund isn't there ? Wtf
The IW have the IF trapped, outnumbered, have a primarch with them, hurt by psychic attack and have full information about every single ship. And they still manage to loose the battle ?
And ... Polux who immediately order withdrawal instead of what, finishing the battle within the hour or two ? It's not like it was a long campaign, the battle was in full climax.
Any way you can make me like this instead ?

I have the Crimson Fist on hand, but not read it yet, so my information comes from the TL;DRs I've read elsewhere:
Perty *is* a pretty unhinged Primarch. He ordered 1/10th of his Legion killed when he first met them. Sure, he's strategically brilliant, and has a natural gift for creation and invention, but he's not exactly mentally stable.
The IW don't really have full ship information. They had good intelligence, and had a perfect plan in mind for who they believed to be the intended IF fleet commander. However, with Sigismund out of the picture, and the replacement Captain similarly disposed of, they didn't really anticipate Polux. Therefore, when Polux changes up his whole strategy, it throws the entire IW fleet off balance. Again, a Primarch is good, but in the void, he's just another tactician - and Polux is regarded as a bit of a latent genius in terms of strategy himself. Coupled with an exceptionally well prepared fleet with esoteric weaponry from Terra, Polux's fleet easily stood a fighting chance. And, as real life would have it, there's been plenty of cases where a battle has been won by a far inferior side through sheer dumb luck and the incompetence of their enemies.

Polux withdraws because he is ordered to, essentially. He's put in the position where he could finish the fight, and possibly score a Primarch kill, but his Primarch is telling him to come home ASAP. Now, as far as Polux knows, this could be because Horus has already reached Terra, and the Emperor needs every ship he can muster to fight Horus off. All his Astropaths tell him, IIRC, is that he needs to come home. Polux, weighing up the odds, decides that it's more important to follow orders just in case things are as bad as he thinks they are, and retreats towards what he thinks is the Astronomican.

The books that focused on the arch heretic himself - Horus Lupercal, liked him and the characters that surrounded him a lot. It even shows at one time Abbadon had a sense of humour!