Black Library does have some geniunely good sci-fi hidden under all the crap. The trick is to completely avoid anything involving the Space Marines or anything that might affect the setting’s status quo. Eisenhorn/Ravenor Trilogies is pretty good. Last Chancers is one of my favourites though, It was written when 40k authors were still allowed some freedom with the setting, its about a penal legion being sent on a bunch of increasingly more clandestine suicide missions. Peter Fehavari’s books are an interesting attempt to carve out his little niché. Basically every book he writes, from the full novels to the short stories they write just to promote new models are all interconnected in a very cosmic horror web of connections. Warhammer Crime has some pretty good sci fi in it too, its essentially a series of short story omnibuses and full novels all written by different authors themed around sci-fi detective stories.
To me the Horus Heresy’s popularity makes zero sense. I get how someone can sit through and enjoy a marvel movie alright. But how in the hell can someone sit down for hours to read the book equivalent? Its so much more excrutiating to do.
I wish I had the Last Chancers models. Their rules were hilarious. Basically, if you took Last Chancers, that was your entire army: 12 guardsmen (each an independent character) and a Chimera. It didn’t matter if you were playing a 1,000 point game or 4,000 point game. The Last Chancers themselves were like 500 points total, with 120ish for the Chimera for 600ish total.
And because 3rd. and 4th. have a lot of missions where you get victory points based on models killed, your opponent was limited to 650 points. Once you killed 800 points worth of stuff and maybe nabbed an objective or two, you won the game. The only downside is if the objective is something like table corners, which are a proportion of the point limit in victory points. So if it’s a 1,750 point game, a table corner is worth 437.5 points and your opponent’s deployment zone is worth 875. You won’t have anyone left to contest any corners, which is a serious problem.
Fehavari has quickly become my favorite BL author. He absolutely nails unreliable narrator Chaos fuckery.
15 hours is another 40k classic.
Mike Brooks’ Brutal Kunnin was a lot of fun. The balance between funny ork shit and serious Adeptus Mechanicus was well done.
But yeah. Horus Heresy has never been interesting to me and I don’t know how it garnered so many fans.
The Infinite and The Divine, which is about necron Statler and Waldorf, is also pretty good.
I get how someone can sit through and enjoy a marvel movie alright. But how in the hell can someone sit down for hours to read the book equivalent? Its so much more excrutiating to do.
Audiobooks my dude, they are fantastic for burning through literary slop. It’s nice to have stuff like the hourus heresy for stuff like yard work or chores, something where it doesn’t really matter if you’re paying attention or if you hear everything. So if you miss something you don’t really feel the need to rewind it or feel lost in the overall story.
I typically use communist theory for that. I’m gonna have to reread it a few times anyway, after all.
Eh, for me that would be too information dense. I’d drift off and have to back play it for context.
For really anything like geopolitics, economics, or philosophy I usually have to have a book in my hands.
Yeah, I hear ya, I do like to have a book in my hands (or at least text on a handheld screen) if I’m trying to internalise all the information in my first read through.
But I do tend to use listening to theory when I want to drift off from it and just want the effects of having to listen to something that dense, with the understanding that doing that as a sleep aid or for other emotional or physical effect is not a replacement for listening attentively or actually reading it.
I get how someone can sit through and enjoy a marvel movie alright. But how in the hell can someone sit down for hours to read the book equivalent? Its so much more excrutiating to do.
Books are easier for me than movies.
To me the Horus Heresy’s popularity makes zero sense.
Space marines are the most popular faction by a long-shot, and as the player-base has no taste (this is proven by them playing space marines), they will buy any slop released for them.
Expanding on the Horus Heresy was a mistake tbh. 40k was better when GW didn’t explain every little detail. It really takes away from the feeling that the imperium is crumbling and has forgotten most of what it once knew. There’s no room for mystery
That would mean leaving money on the table or God forbid, allowing fans to create on their own.
40K was peak when the guiding light for the series was “what would look really cool on a heavy metal album cover?”
A hundred books about stern warrior men being stern and fighting wars is bound to get old no matter who you are.
It was all downhill after they got rid of the cocaine budget
A hundred books about stern warrior men being stern and fighting wars is bound to get old no matter who you are.
Tell that to the guy who wrote Master and Commander
I want to agree with you, but I just can’t call Captain Aubrey “stern”. The guy is camp as fuck, the very first time we meet him he’s annoying everyone around him by being too exuberant in his enjoyment of classical music. Those books are, first and foremost, a rollicking good time. Sure, they’re about war, but Aubrey is just such a silly billy, there’s a ton of humor in them, “stern” just isn’t the descriptor I’d use
I agree 100%, I was just goofing, because on the surface many characters seem the stern, silent type. And even if they are, the writing shows they have a rich inner world.
It’s good stuff, really! I should read more of those books, I’ve only read a couple
That’s not really fair; the only bad books are the ones with battles in them.
Honestly story development in these books are like 30%, and then it’s just battles and battles.
It’s just spectacular how the genius minds of the primarchs only seem to know how to charge into machine gun fire with little to no support.
I know their wouldn’t be a story otherwise if they didn’t just wipe out horus from orbit at the start but how dumb can they be to charge into every obvious trap
I recall a video explaining an astartes faction (can’t recall which) who are renowned for their ‘brilliant tactics’ of focusing on taking out enemy leadership and getting behind enemy lines.
This is a faction renowned for engaging in what should be a basic tactic, which as you can imagine doesn’t bode well for how dumb astartes would be in that case.
They spent all their gene seeds on getting a jacked body, when they could have spent them on developing a brain with more than two cells
Eh, they did that to a few. Then one of the smartest ones used them to accidentally break all protection big daddy emperor set up in the palace and lead to him being the undead guy on throne
Probably the Raven Guard or the Raptors, which are the sneaky chapter and the “what if space marines used modern tactics?” chapter, respectively.
the primarchs only seem to know how to charge into machine gun fire with little to no support
I mean hey if you have magically strong plot armor why not, it works
I know I know. Just funny that is their tactics when constantly called tactical minds of the generation which I guess is true with how dumb the rest are
My favourite bit was when the emperor went “it’s heresy time” and then turned into a skeleton kept alive by sacrifices
Me playing The Isle for 3000+ hours and giving it a “not recommended” review
I read the first and started on the second, it’s tough reading when you are new to WH40K so many new terms you have to digest and hope that they get explained.
so many new terms you have to digest and hope that they get explained.
Oh, so it’s a lot like reading communist theory for the first time without a lot of ideological background and historical context. Or wandering into your average tankie space where someone’ll bite your head off for not knowing what some very specific ML theory or Soviet governance term or abbreviation means.
This seems needlessly bitter. In most places not knowing a term and asking is received neutrally or even enthusiastically.
Perhaps. Unless you ask the wrong way and it’s presumed to be asking in bad faith. Or ask in the wrong space. Or think you know and then say something really silly because of your misunderstanding.
It’s not difficult to ask a question. If it’s a shitty group, it’s a shitty group. If you’re presumptuous, then maybe you shouldn’t be.
Asking questions is hard, asking questions to groups you’re not a part of and don’t have a good handle on the norms for, is very hard
Neurodivergent people exist ya know
“What does ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ mean?” is not a difficult sentence to form unless you have trouble forming sentences generally, and while we should certainly try to make every appropriate accommodation for people who have trouble forming sentences generally, I don’t think it makes sense to treat that as the baseline. This isn’t especially dependent on the particular social norms of a group within liberal society, the only point of conflict is if you come from some place so reactionary that asking a question during an informal meeting is regarded as speaking out of turn, and those institutions do exist (I was once part of one), but again I don’t think it’s reasonable to treat this as the baseline.
I think I definitely spent time around shitty groups that discouraged good faith questions when I was learning the basics of what an ML is, that’s likely.
I have seen several cases where groups of people are correct but are unable to explain why because they don’t have perfect recollection of what they read, or where they read it. They just absorbed the correct position without the ability to fully and totally explain that position.
This often leads to situations where people will dogpile someone who takes the wrong position but not be capable of explaining why that position is wrong and why they should change it.
In some cases, people know the correct information and are just particularly poor at conveying it. Teaching is a skill and every single communist needs to hone that skill. Many are failing in this regard.
Depending on how long it has been since I engaged with a topic it can also be extremely difficult sometimes to recall exact details without spending significant time doing a memory refresher. For example Afghanistan and Xinjiang, I know the correct positions on this and I’ve thoroughly explained them well to people in the past but my ability to fully explain it weakens with time. I now rely simply on linking to resources because my own explanations get hazier and hazier with lack of time between engaging in the content myself.
Good post
This explains a lot, tbh. I also have noticed I have a lot of trouble explaining things I haven’t engaged with basic principles of in a while.
There’s a few gems in there
The whole series is highly hit and miss, as is to be expected with multiple authors
Definitely wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who isn’t already highly saturated in 40k lore
I “only” read about half of them, but I feel this in my bones
I’ll let other people run defense for them. I enjoy pulp military sci-fi, but I’m not going to pretend like they’re good, or a worthwhile use of time.
i don’t even need to read* to know that
I wonder why
i don’t understand what i’m looking at
I read the first one, all I needed to nope out of the series lmao
The only good 40k books are the Ciaphas Cain ones.
