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Canon defilement, idiot plots, Gary Stu protagonists, cringeworthy dialogue, try-hard edginess, author fetishes... What are the Black Library novels that should be consigned to the fires of the Inquisition?

Doesn't have to be a recent novel, or to be about 40k specifically. If it's a novel based on GW intellectual property, it fits.

Literally anything by C.S. Goto.

Fat Eldar, SMs with Multilasers, Backflipping Terminators and children taking out Falcon Grav Tanks with sticks and stones to name but a few.

I did not enjoy the HH Dark Angels novels at all - found them dull, lacking interesting characters and completly divorced from the rest of the series plus too much Emo D.Angels - especially when I enjoy the HH Space Wolves much more than the 40k travesties. Gave them away

In a similar vein Furious Abyss is not a good story. Gave it away

Soul Drinkers novels are just really odd and jar.

The Salamander's Omnibus by Nick Kyme is a travesty against the lore.

I've read a lot of truly forgettable ones.

The Inquisition Wars by Ian Watson were the first 40k books and I love them to death but many people hate them with great hate.

Sons of Dorn strikes me as a book I read and then tossed in the Goodwill bin.

My old review:

To the point about the Dark Angels books, I would agree that they were not the strongest of the HH series, but I do give them credit for making me appreciate the Dark Angels more. I had previously dismissed them as Nothing But Angst (which, in retrospect, I think comes from them being the popular choice among my friends when we all started playing around 13 years ~ "Space Marines are cool, feelings are confusing!"). The novels made me appreciate the conflicting layers of loyalty to the Chapter, to the Imperium, to the Inner Circle, etc. - but I was frustrated that the lore was presented in such an (in my opinion) unsatisfying series of books. I think the first one is probably the weakest of the series.

I enjoyed Dark Imperium, and found it to be basically well-written, but it felt more than any other 40k book I've read like sponsored content. It showcased the different Primaris units available for purchase and the specialties of each in a way that felt very forced. Also was not happy with the anti-Chaos slandering - promises of "false-immortality" are hardly false when they are in fact, immortal, no? And some people find tentacles to be very becoming, by the way. I don't think I'm in the minority in saying that I am interested in how the plot for 40k has progressed (especially given that it happened while I was taking my 7-year hobby sabbatical), but am not entirely satisfied with how that plot progression has been depicted in the literature so far.

I'm trying hard to think of any books that I did not enjoy - I still got something out of the three books above. I remember thinking that Battle for the Abyss was pretty good, but I felt kind of gotten that it ended up being completely unconnected to any other story happening during the Horus Heresy.

It took me a long time to get into the Outcast Dead - up until I was three-quarters of the way through I was pretty certain I wasn't going to finish it - but it is absolutely one of my favorites now. I think it was a risky choice to focus the action so far away from the the frontline of the Heresy and it really paid off.

I liked the first Soul Drinkers book, but I never finished the Omnibus.

 iGuy91 wrote:
The Salamander's Omnibus by Nick Kyme is a travesty against the lore.

Details please!

-Guardsman- wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:
The Salamander's Omnibus by Nick Kyme is a travesty against the lore.

Details please!

One of the Salamanders librarians basically goes super-saiyan and solos a lord of change running amok through the whole blasted chapter. Including all kinds of nonsensical feats of psychic nonsense.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Literally anything by C.S. Goto.

Fat Eldar, SMs with Multilasers, Backflipping Terminators and children taking out Falcon Grav Tanks with sticks and stones to name but a few.

I don't know about the first two examples, but the second two are just memes and don't actually happen.

Goto's books are pretty garbage - there's no need to make up complaints about them...

Some of the Necromunda novels are good cyberpunk novels with the Necromunda setting bolted on afterwards (or not at all!).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Henry Zou's Bastion Wars trilogy is pretty terrible.

The word bearers omnibus wasn't very exciting

The horror novel wicked and damned had a lot of flaws imo

I've found the John French novels of the HH series pretty lacklustre too.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
The word bearers omnibus wasn't very exciting.

I particularly liked the bit in Dark Creed where the maguffin just doesn't work according to its previously established rules of operation when the protagonists want to have a big climactic fight.

Also how the spelling of the tower in Dark Apostle changes from one page to the next. Didn't feel like adding it to the spell check dictionary I guess...

Honestly, pretty much the entire HH series is horrible.
Particular low points for me are the way the Space Wolves are portrayed, changing Ollanius Pious from a simple guardsman to an immortal something-or-other -seriously, that was the whole point of the character- and the Alpha Legion book, which just makes no sense whatsoever.

You'll see a lot of people going 'eurgh, I didn't like X because it didn't fit with my view of Y' (be it the Inquisition War, Horus Heresy, or whatever); but that's usually a matter of personal taste. You have to look at it more on the basis of the individual authors and their collective work.

Speaking from a lore perspective, Goto is generally considered the worst. He read nothing about the background, and just went to town with gross exaggerations and poor writing for a paycheck.

Stylistically speaking, Nick Kyme is one of the worse authors. His work has shown gradual improvement over the years (I've read them all), but he just struggles ona technical level to write a good character or an interesting plot. It isn't for lack of a desire to 'be' a good author as it were, and you can very much see the metaphorical sweat on his writer's brow. But his work is just rather bland and sub-par. He also apparently doesn't tend to have his own stuff edited (I've no idea if that's true or not), but would explain a lot.

Gav Thorpe probably gets the most unjustified hatred. His writing can vary from 'plot riddled and bland' to 'Pretty decent'. And that inconsistency earns him a lot of ire. But the guy really churns out so much stuff and had such a sketchy background in terms of actual training as a writer that it's not surprising. He's the very definition of a self-made man in a literary sense, and whilst he'll never be Abnett? I can still enjoy most of his stuff.

Interesting to see what people don't like. On some of those mentioned:

I've only read the first book in the Salamanders trilogy, and other than the 10k year old space marine, I thought that was pretty good. It sounds like it's later books where it descends though.

Again with Bastion Wars, I've only read Blood Gorgons, which while it wasn't great, I didn't think it was terrible.

I'm on book 6 of the HH. I'm actually doing them on audiobook so far as I got a bunch in various bundles. I found False Gods pretty tough, although necessary. I'm currently 6 chapters into Descent of Angels, and it's absolutely dire. I couldn't care less about the characters and I'm seriously considering abandoning it.


Onto my personal gaklist:

Malodrax by Ben Counter - Ben Counter is an author who I thought I hated all works by, then I listened to Galaxy in Flames and realised it's only when he gets into details within the warp it all goes to gak. This is the story of Imperial Fists Captain Lysander, and it's one of the worst books I've ever read (not just Black Library books, all books)! I struggle to follow some of the things the author is talking about when inside the warp. I feel like it makes sense in his head, but when he pens it, he gets carried away and the descriptions go to gak. Aside from all of the 'in the warp' shenanigans, the story is just stone cold boring.


The House of Night and Chains by David Annandale - This is one that started well, but just dragged on and was utterly predictable. The last third of the book was just an utter slog. The story barely leaves the house in the setting, and while it's big, it's not described well, and most of the 'spooky' things that happen have little consequence other than the main character devolving further into madness.


There's more as well, I'll edit as I think of them.

Re. the HH series, I think Rick Priestley best articulated why a lot of it is so bad:

"The trouble with the Heresy as envisaged by GW is it just feels like 40K - it doesn't have the feel of a genuinely different society that ten thousand years separation would give you. Whenever I wrote anything that referenced back to those times I always wrote in a legendary, non-literal style. It's as if you were dealing with something like the Iliad rather than literal history - and there you're only talking three thousand years - ten thousand years - that takes us back to the end of the last ice-age... and I don't get any sense of understanding about 'deep time' when I look at anything GW have set in the 40K 'past'."

Even the best HH books feel like they're set a few centuries at most prior to the 40K 'present', not in an unfathomably distant past. And authors being too keen on filling in all the interesting gaps has led to things like the Emperor looking like a moron with a stupid plan that could never have worked; and the Primarchs feeling like ridiculous man-babies (and being literal physical giants rather than that being a result of ten millennia of ignorance and myth-making).

I like the horus heresy novels in general. I tend to orient myself the other way round though, seeing the heresy as the anchor and 40k as being off kilter, even though i got into 40k as a kid, being introduced to the heresy as an adult, I just found the setting much cooler, and the models better.

I'm halfway through Titandeath right now. Its been ok so far, but I find the relentless 'machine spirit' guff very tiring. the novel strays very close to political issues too which I find strange for black library, with the story touching on issues like feminism and abortion. I'm not trying to get into those here, It just took me by surprise a little bit.

phillv85 wrote:
Again with Bastion Wars, I've only read Blood Gorgons, which while it wasn't great, I didn't think it was terrible.

It's been a while since I read them, but from memory they played fast & loose with existing fluff (Guard power fists are a glove with a battery pack in it, self-severing Sisters of Battle) and the whole "the Imperium is evil and Chaos are the good guys" plot was badly done.

 Duskweaver wrote:
Re. the HH series, I think Rick Priestley best articulated why a lot of it is so bad:

"The trouble with the Heresy as envisaged by GW is it just feels like 40K - it doesn't have the feel of a genuinely different society that ten thousand years separation would give you. Whenever I wrote anything that referenced back to those times I always wrote in a legendary, non-literal style. It's as if you were dealing with something like the Iliad rather than literal history - and there you're only talking three thousand years - ten thousand years - that takes us back to the end of the last ice-age... and I don't get any sense of understanding about 'deep time' when I look at anything GW have set in the 40K 'past'."

Even the best HH books feel like they're set a few centuries at most prior to the 40K 'present', not in an unfathomably distant past. And authors being too keen on filling in all the interesting gaps has led to things like the Emperor looking like a moron with a stupid plan that could never have worked; and the Primarchs feeling like ridiculous man-babies (and being literal physical giants rather than that being a result of ten millennia of ignorance and myth-making).

I take back my previous comment. Priestley is correct. The HH books should not exist.

They should have never been written. But apparently one of the godfather’s of GW is wrong too.

I think Flesh and Iron, A Thousand Sons, and Fist Heretic are the worst BL books I’ve read. Even Farseer was better, even Deady Sky Black Sun, even soul drinkers book II. And those are pretty neutral books.

I could be wrong but I think GW put out a detailed explanation of why they did the HH books which I think answers Rick Priestly's objections.

pelicaniforce wrote:
I think Flesh and Iron, A Thousand Sons, and Fist Heretic are the worst BL books I’ve read. Even Farseer was better, even Deady Sky Black Sun, even soul drinkers book II. And those are pretty neutral books.

Interesting, I've not read The First Heretic yet, but I've heard lots of good things about it. What was it you didn't like?

I don't think I've ever heard someone say they don't like Thousand Sons either.

I'm seconding the Salamanders novels being bad. A Librarian soloing a Chaos Fleet and also being an ancient weapon is most of what I remember. Hopefully I'm misrembering...

first heretic was decent. offered a lot of depth to the word bearers and how they became the way they are. it shows their conflicted nature. I guess its a matter of opinion though, if youre more interested in big fights and action scenes its probably not for you.

on that note though, one novel that didnt have enough action in it was tallarn. I had high hopes for it, a meagre force of humans putting paid to the iron warriors with tank warfare. it started off pretty well, but then it seemed to get mired down in unnecessary intricacies and sneaky alpha legion assassin stuff, and lost focus on the tank warfare that it seemed to promise.

I absolutely loved First Heretic. Aaron Dembski-Bowden is so good at what I'll call transhumanizing - not quite humanizing these post/transhuman super warriors, but exploring how they experience the conflicts between their stillborn emotions and sense of self, and the rigorous training and demands of eternal war that are expected of them. I think that is well on display in the First Heretic, and exceptionally so in the Night Lords series.

That said, I think he's not super strong at large combat scenes - that was one of my problems with Betrayer, where the second half of the book is basically one long combat. For that I'll just read Gaunt's Ghosts.

I really enjoyed A Thousand Sons, because again we get a sense of what the needs and desires of these fundamentally emotionally-stunted warriors are, and what kind of society they could build if given the chance, and explore how they conflict with what the Emperor's vision for the Astartes actually is. I did think they spent way too long on the first planet - but that sets up a lot of lore and character stuff that comes back to play later. I thought the Council of Nikea was really well done. It justified by distaste for Space Wolves. I do wish they had more clearly established why the Space Wolves (and the Emperor, no less) don't consider Rune Priests to by psykers. That's one thing I wanted from Prospero Burns, which ended up being another civilian-driven book (and a really interesting one, at that).

It's kind of why I like the Green Arrow - a lot of bad writing decisions accidentally produced a really interesting, flawed character. I think the inconsistencies between books helps produce a tapestry of flawed posthumans trying to be human and transhuman at the same time. That said, when there are straight up contradictions or radical lore changes (the Rune Priest thing, Ollanius Pius, etc.) I do get frustrated.

I think Priestly's on point, there. The first three Horus Heresy novels feel really consistent, and the world they create is quite distinct from 40k. Same with all of the books that focus mostly on civilians (Legion, Prospero Burns, Outcast Dead). But as the series goes on, I agree that it feels more and more like 40k. The way that people casually mention Machine Spirits as if they all believed in them despite the age of rationality and skepticism.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
first heretic was decent. offered a lot of depth to the word bearers and how they became the way they are. it shows their conflicted nature. I guess its a matter of opinion though, if youre more interested in big fights and action scenes its probably not for you.

on that note though, one novel that didnt have enough action in it was tallarn. I had high hopes for it, a meagre force of humans putting paid to the iron warriors with tank warfare. it started off pretty well, but then it seemed to get mired down in unnecessary intricacies and sneaky alpha legion assassin stuff, and lost focus on the tank warfare that it seemed to promise.

Yep. Takes down a whole bloody fleet, as well as a Lord of Change by himself. It was absolutely, eye-rollingly Deus-Ex Machina.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
I could be wrong but I think GW put out a detailed explanation of why they did the HH books which I think answers Rick Priestly's objections.

Spoiler:

We like money. Fanboys will pay us money for Horus Heresy Books. Therefore we will make them.

PS We're bringing back the Primachs too.

To me, the first time I noticed the "30k = 40k" feels, and I remember being quite annoyed by it, was with "Fulgrim".

You had alien civilizations with ancient temples dedicated to Slaanesh, when the dude had basically been born like yesterday in galactic time.

An Eldar army that looked like it directly came over from a M40 battlefield, with Wraithguards and an Avatar, when the Eldar too should still have been in the process of getting their act together directly after the Fall.

And finally, Emperor's Children directly turning into Noise Marines complete with sonic weaponry upon their corruption. Here too, you'd think this would have been a longer process.

I think I’ve been the most disappointed with the whole horror line. There have been some decent stories in the anthologies, but mostly everything has been super predictable and not at all scary. Having said that, I keep reading them.

Shadowsword by Guy Haley.

It's a book that tells you that baneblades and shadowswords are great. The Characters are boring, the Story is boring, the ending is boring. Nothing really happens throughout the book except that the main Character gets promoted from shooting up stuff in a baneblade to shooting bigger stuff up in a shadowsword. The Story is incredibly bland. Never before has a book felt so much like a model Advertisement like this one did.