The Horus Heresy is basically Warhammer fan fiction. It’s not actually Warhammer 40K either, the book series deals with events that took place earlier that lead to a new galactic dark age. It’s the back story to the tabletop game which I have never played (although I have played some of the video games). I don’t want to spoil too much, but I can recommend this series to anyone – I’m on Book 29 of 64 (!) in the series and I’m loving it more and more as the story progresses.
All of the writers (I think there are 11 of them?) are excellent, the stories are good, the perspectives are unique, and the world-building is first rate. And no, I’m not joking about this. I’ve read pretty much every “must read” sci-fi novel and collection of the last 70 years and can honestly say The Horus Heresy series is up there with Dune, Hyperion, Ender’s Game, Foundation, etc., for the novelty of ideas and quality of writing. The pace is sharp, but there’s definitely some prose and craftsmanship behind every story and short story compilation in this series.
The main drawback is that it’s really hard to get the original paperbacks. I’ve been downloading on my Kindle for about $11 each.
The truly crazy part is that the Horus Heresy is only part of the Warhammer novel collection, I fully plan to start reading one of the other series once I get to Book 64. Apparently the Eisenhorn series is excellent, a lot of people like it better than the Horus Heresy.
Prime has apparently bought the rights to producing a Warhammer series and Henry Cavill has already signed on. There’s going to be a lot of interest in the Warhammer world pretty soon.
by hobbitlover