Warhammer 40k- Where to Begin

[Sapphire Guard]

So I recently discovered a nearby bookshop has quite a good stock of Warhammer40k books. I know the basic gist of the story and factions, but it's one of those ginormous franchises with massive continuity to learn about. So what would be people's recommendations as to where to start, bookwise?

Note: I'm not going to be painting miniatures any time soon, gameplay mechanics mean less to me than story content.

[Lord Raziere]

So I recently discovered a nearby bookshop has quite a good stock of Warhammer40k books. I know the basic gist of the story and factions, but it's one of those ginormous franchises with massive continuity to learn about. So what would be people's recommendations as to where to start, bookwise?

Note: I'm not going to be painting miniatures any time soon, gameplay mechanics mean less to me than story content.

don't worry, I don't own any miniatures either, I'm purely a 40k lore person, and miniatures are very expensive, so highly understandable.

Okay so, the thing about the story of Warhammer 40k is....a vast, vast majority of the books are Imperium perspective, and of THOSE books, a majority/big chunk of those are just Space marine action shlock that doesn't advance anything except personal stories of some space marine being a grimdark action hero.

one can argue that there isn't really a "main story" to read, you kinda just a pick a corner you want to read about, its a setting that because everything is so dark and grim and has no greater narrative to it that you can just pick the stuff you want to read about and ignore pretty much everything else, because there is no way in the Warp that their stories will matter in the wider setting unless they're a Primarch or something. now technically the Primarchs are coming back so there is technically yes, maybe a plot that affects the whole setting? but 40k has been a static setting for decades and its these advances in the plot are slow so....don't hold your breath about any of this amounting to anything any time soon.

instead I will recommend you things that stand out from the crowd and generally provide interesting perspectives of the world of 40k and such:

The Ciaphas Cain series is the one I have the most books about, its probably the most comedic take modern 40k has and good for getting into 40k and what its like on the ground as a human Guardsman fighting in it while still having humor enough that it isn't too dark and someone you can root for in Commissar Ciaphas. in some ways, 40k-lite.

If you want a more serious take on normal guardsmen fighting things, Gaunts Ghosts series I've heard is very good, I haven't read any myself but Commissar Gaunt is a more serious take on a Commissar that isn't a loony shooting people for minor perceived heresies.

if your interested in Primarch stuff in the 40k current day, Roboute's return is covered in Watchers of the Throne 1 and 2, the Dawn of Fire series then Dark Imperium mostly, but your gonna get most of the Roboute focus in like Dawn of Fire and Dark Imperium.

if your interested in the Horus Heresy, start with Horus Rising, the only non-Ciaphas book I have, which details a 30k Imperium and how its different....and perhaps not so different from the current 40k Imperium and just how this all went wrong in the first place, this then continues telling the story with no branching paths for three more books, then it starts branching at Flight of the Eisenstein and it gets complicated from there, look up "Horus Heresy books flow chart" for help. But Horus Rising alone is worth a read in my opinion.

if your interested in Necrons, I'd recommend The Infinite and the Divine.

if you interested in Orks, there are actually books about them! one of them is called Brutal Kunnin, a second called Warboss, another is called Da Big Dakka all by Mike Brooks

A unique short story I'd also recommend is The Last Church, set in 30k on Terra where the Emperor tries to convince the last priest of the last church to give up his faith. not a book, you can find it online, but its worth checking out.

[Rynjin]

Best place to start is IMO books about factions you like the sound of. most 40k novels are, at best, "popcorn reading" so don't go in expecting too much, but some can be entertaining. Also the books actually starring a xenos (alien/non-human) faction are pretty slim, so you're mostly dealing with human-focused sci-fi.

That said, I'll second the Ciaphas Cain novels as a good entry point into what life is like for regular human soldiers in the Imperium; they're also some of the better written novels. They follow an Imperial Comissar (a high-ranking officer essentially) and his (mis)adventures in various conflicts. They're a lot more interesting and fun reads than Gaunt's Ghosts IMO which are more of a straightforward sci-fi war series which is done better by other franchises, including imitators (the Halo novels are a lot better at playing this idea straight than Gaunt's Ghosts IMO and they still aren't great literature).

If you want something with a little bit more of an "out there" perspective, I like the Eisenhorn novels. Eisenhorn is a Psyker (space wizard) Inquisitor (yes, like the Spanish Inquisition) and his books have a much more "epic" scope with him being a powerful space wizard with immense political power to back up his personal might. In term sof tone and content they're kinda like the Elric novels.

If you enjoy the transhumanist Tech-Priest faction of religious zealot cyborgs, then Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work is a good entry point into that subsection. It follows the life of the most famous/powerful Tech-Priest in existence and his rise to power in the Golden Age of 10,000 years before the actual main setting of 40k. Cawl is STILL ALIVE in the 40k setting and an exceptionally important figure in the lore and ongoing story.

I personally don't give a **** about Space Marines so I wouldn't be able to recommend you anything about them. Their stories are mostly pretty one-note "The Space Marines show up after all the interesting stuff has already happened and kill a bunch of aliens and/or demons" stories.

[GloatingSwine]

The Infinite and the Divine is about Statler and Waldorf incarnated as immortal robot skeletons perpetually bickering with and pranking each other.

[Eldan]

The thing to keep in mind, since you ask about continuity, is this: Warhammer 40k is a wargame setting first and a novel setting second. Think of it like for example Forgotten Realms novels for D&D. There isn't really a main story, and there really wasn't a main story early on. There's basically three kinds of novels in 40k: those that build the setting on a large scale (Horus Heresy, anything really new with Guilliman), those that just take a small corner of the setting and tell a self-contained story there, and those that are very shallow action shlock mostly written to sell models.


I would look for anything in the Warhammer Horror and Warhammer Crime imprints:

https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-horror

https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-crime

These are smaller scale stories, which often require less familiarity with the wider setting and feature less of what the fanbase calls "bolter porn", i.e. very long, often quite repetitive action scenes which are mainly written to praise how cool a given faction is to sell models. In Warhammer Crime, you get what are mostly science fiction detective stories, but adapted to the setting of Warhammer 40k, though away from the eternal thousand-year long frontlines of the galactic war. Warhammer Horror are mostly stories about weird alien, magical or daemonic phenomena interacting with imperial citizens.

I also agree on Ciaphas Cain (comedic) and Eisenhorn (serious), both are relatively self-contained and don't feature the hugest conflicts, either. Eisenhorn was my personal introduction beyond the rulebooks, and it sets things up quite well.

All these are generally more readable than what is the cliché of the 40k novel, which is 200 pages of "and then he strode forward and bellowed a warcry and shot his bolter at the heretic".

[Storm_Of_Snow]

The Eisenhorn/ Ravenor/ Bequin series books by Dan Abnett, yes. The Ghosts series also yes, plus Titanicus and Double Eagle - also all by Dan Abnett and all set in the same campaign. There's also three short story anthologies and a couple of coffee table type background books, although I think they're both long OOP.

I'd add the Urdesh duology (The Serpent and The Snake, and The Master and The Magister) by Matt Farrer too. Also in the same campaign as the Ghosts etc and using some of his characters and locations.

Cain I'd also say yes, but further down the line, their style is a lot different to everything else in the universe.

Crossfire, the first Shira Calpurnia one was pretty good IMO and give you some insight into both the Arbites and non-military life - unfortunately the rest of the series, Legacy and Blind, weren't (again IMO, your milage may vary of course ). They're fairly old, but I think they all got collected together into an omnibus version.

And the Horus Heresy series is the 1000lb gorilla of the 40k novels, but quite a lot of the pre-Terra ones seem to be out of physical print right now - I'm missing 4 of them myself .

[Trixie_One]

Thirding Infinite and Divine.

It's just a really excellent book and also works as a good introduction to 40k in that it covers a decent chunk of the setting thanks to the time frame for the events of the novel being so vast.

Sure, you'll miss some really great injoke refferences along the way, but none of them are obnoxious in your face make you feel like you're missing something ones.

[awa]

remember 40k stuff is extremely prone to contradictions they retcon things all the time on top of writers just not always caring about being accurate.

Ciaphas Cain is the best by the way.

[Trixie_One]

remember 40k stuff is extremely prone to contradictions they retcon things all the time on top of writers just not always caring about being accurate

I see this take often but I think it needs exploring as there's a lot that's missleading about it and also naunce.

I started in 2nd and went back to read Rogue Trader, and the setting in broad strokes is really not all that different in that bygone era when the Warp Spiders were the fresh new hotness. Couple of new races in the Tau and Dark Eldar, but there's only really been two big proper retcons since then. The Necrons (who to be fair were significantly improved by the retcon) and the Primaris stuff which sucked but I also at least kind of get the out of universe pressures to which there weren't great solutions where whatever they did it was going to upset people.

There's also that a lot of the lore used to be explicitly written from a biased member of the faction's point of view so there was a lot more wriggle room and allowance for them plain just getting things wrong.

Now though things are way more character focused than it used to be where if something is happening then all the usual named players will be getting involved.

Sure you're going to get silly stuff like a writer not getting the memo about how big titans are but on the whole it really isn't that bad, if you're okay not having everything entirely set in stone. Personally I see it as a feature rather than a bug as it demands more of the reader to engage with how you yourself see the setting.

And yeah you might get silly stuff, but then you also get novels like Ghazghkul where the author manages to take the very inconsistent takes on the Orks from 2nd onwards, including takes like the terribly bland no fun era of 3rd that I hated at the time, and makes it impressively seemless in a decidedly awesome manner. That's another book worth reading by the way. It's just not a total endorsement though as it doesn't have much of an ending.

[awa]

It's not so much the big picture stuff but details
how things works varies from written to writer particularly if you read some of the older books.
I would not be surprised if the modern books are a bit more tightly reined in then the older ones.

For instance one of the novels I own has the 5th chaos god in it, hes certainly not going to show up in a modern book.