Some of my favorite Warhammer books.

A few dramanauts asked me to put together a list of some of my favorite Warhammer books. Full disclosure - I have never once played this tabletop game. I exclusively listen to the books, and infrequently I’ll play the video games.

40k is a children’s tabletop game wherein toys are sold and massive amounts of dice are thrown. The maker of this game, GW, also has an exceptionally strong ability to persuade very smart, very well-educated people to write for them. I cannot figure out why people who have an actual Oxford background want to write about muh spess murines and shit, but they do. The books are chock full of wonderful references to some of the most obscure events in the humanities, and the universe is so well-developed that there are not only textbooks for Inquisitors (which you can read), but there are multiple editions thereof and in-universe debate regarding the quality thereof.

My list is likely to show a bias towards Chaos Space Marines. I think that iconoclasts are more fascinating than the orthodoxy. I also don’t read a huge amount of 30k novels, also known as Horus Heresy. These really don’t need to be read in order. Some of them are best read in some particular order, but for the most part, each novel can stand alone. My bias towards what I hope represents good writing will also show - many of these books are pretty dry on combat.

There’s a couple of really important periods in 40k history. These are roughly in order and I tried to select at least some books from each time period.

War in Heaven

Dark Age of Technology

Age of Strife

Unification wars

Scattering of the primarchs, creation of the Astartes, the eradication of the Thunder Warriors

Great Crusade

Hrud and Rangdan Xenocices, the genocide of the Interex

Initial corruption

Initial events of the heresy

Monarchia and Calth Atrocity, Istvaan Massacre

Magnus and the Edict of Nikea, Wolves attack Prospero

War in the Webway

The Siege of Terra

The Scouring

The Long War

If you know about one story from each time, you’ll have a good handle on basically everything around the same time.

Here’s a few of my favorites:

The Fabius Bile series - this is exemplary of good 40k writing, insofar as it has you invested in the story and labors of Space Mengele. Fabius is utterly repellent (to everyone, and even by by chaos standards). The exploration of his world and life in the Eye turned Chaos from “the other faction” into a faction that I consider the most fascinating. You become the transgressor along with Fabius in this series. You can probably tell it’s my favorite. This is set in 40k times.

Night Lords trilogy - hilarious and grimdark, will make you love incompetent space terrorists.

First Heretic, Know No Fear, Betrayer: Some of my favorite books and primarchs. Lorgar is arguably the architect of the heresy, and as one of the weakest primarchs, he is not a popular tabletop figure. He is, however, one of the most compelling characters in the series, and the view he takes on religion and faith is some of the best written I’ve seen in fiction. This series explores the fall of Lorgar’s legion, the Word Bearers and the conflict it brings them into with the Ultramarines. An important plot point here is the friendship between Argel Tal and Kharn, as well as the first serious run-ins with daemons. Nobody even knew what daemons were at the time.

One theme you’re going to see here is that the Emperor was a pretty shitty father. It’s hard to blame the Word Bearers for worshipping the emperor as a God when the Emperor just straight up acts like a God. This series also introduces us to the most reasonable primarch, Guilliman. Guilliman is often derided by chaos fans because he’s a bit of a bore, but that’s his charm. He’s a really fascinating bore. He’s sort of the “protagonist” of the setting in later series, insofar as there could be any such thing. His reaction to realizing how badly he’d been lied to by dear old dad is interesting.

Fulgrim had basically no particularly compelling reason to rebel. He was just extremely fabulous and couldn’t be contained in the structure of the Imperium. He’s an extremely hot coomer and his legion is full of perverts. Fabius is one of his kids. You should read The Reflection Crack’d for a literal BDSM session involving Fulgrim. He also shows up in Angel Exterminatus, where you can see his relationship with his r-slur-strength ultra genius brother, Perturabo. Perturabo is having none of that gay shit, except when Fulgrim asks him to build a fabulous theatre. These books also explore the character of Angron, my favorite character in the setting, and are legitimately tragic and sympathetic portrayals of an awful person.

At some point, the Kakophonoi or Noise Marines come onto the scene, in what is very clearly a reference to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring premier. Classical music riots used to be a thing. The entire point of the setting is reduction to the absurd.

You may wonder what’s become of our splendid world around this time. For insight into that, we have to turn to The Outcast Dead, a story of what happens to some heretics imprisoned on Terra. This actually is a somewhat emotional book - the sheer destruction of the world, the absolute extinction of not only every animal, but every ocean, is most terrible. Along with this, Him on Terra needs to be addressed. For this, we come to Master of Mankind, which also brings us to the War in the Webway, instigated (with debatable culpability) by Magnus. This book also helps show us that E is really kind of a heartless dipshit.

We may also wonder what Terra was like before this time. This refers to the Unification Wars, and there are two stories worth noting here. One is a short story called The Last Church, where the edgelord emperor has a debate with the last priest about the merits and dangers of religion. It is incredibly basic, very early-reddit euphoria type shit. The priest is also a drunken idiot and cannot best a teenage atheist in a basic theological debate. Originally, I found this disappointing, but now, I realize that this is the point. The Emperor’s mission wasn’t ever really all that well thought out and religion wasn’t really a huge threat anyway. The other relevant story is called Valdor: Birth of the Imperium, and it details the events leading up to the conquest of Terra.

A few other books are notable. Most people didn’t like The Buried Dagger, but I did - Mortarion is a hypocrite, but it’s important to understand why he is a hypocrite. Not all hypocrites have made a moral choice to be that way. You should read the Lords of Silence after this, set during the 40k era, for some context on what became of the Death Guard.

Legion is great if you’re an illiterate r-slur with no understanding of narrative structure or exposition. If you’ve outgrown spy novels, or would be bored by a book whose entire plot is literally “or did they?”, then just read Alpharius: Head of the Hydra. Legion is Dan Abnett’s worst book.

Eisenhorn, then Ravenor should be your entry point into non-Space Marine characters. Beguine is unfinished but superb. These are still some of my favorite books in the entire setting. The Magos is a shorter story about a magos biologis who is responsible for cataloguing the species on a given planet. Also all of Eisenhorn’s short stories, like the case of the number of ruin, or of inquisitor Hapshant.

Brothers Of The Snake is a good 40k bolter type novel.

Finally, one of the best books in the setting, a comedy about two necrons, The Infinite and the Divine. It’s still fairly grimdark, and you can see that for all their power, the Necrons really were victims of the C’tan. But it’s hilariously funny and it’s impossible not to like both of the main characters.

I hope you have enjoyed this list of books I suggest pirating.

Entire Fabius Bile series

Night Lords trilogy

Master of Mankind

First Heretic

Angel Exterminatus

Eisenhorn trilogy

Ravenor trilogy

The Magos

The Outcast Dead

Legion was bad, read Alpharius’ primarch book instead

Betrayer

Brothers of the Snake

The Reflection Crack’d

Hammer of Olympia

The Buried Dagger, and maybe for a 40k perspective, Lords of Silence and Dark Imperium in general

The Infinite and the Divine

The Twice Dead King

It feels weird effortposting on @kaamrev’s turf but there you go. Enjoy.