Ive been collecting and painting Warhammer 40,000 for about 3 years, its something to do when i want to relax and kick back with an awsome sound track, half a tonne of plastic and about 4 gallons of paint, you know how it is.
But recently, well more like a year ago, a good friend introduced me to the wonders of the writen 40K Universe. Since then Ive read 33 full lenght novels and 40 short stories from various authors including Sandy Mithcell, Dan Abnett and Gav Thorpe.
There have been stories from Penal Legions to the Eldar and Space Marines to the Tau, and everything inbetween. And i can tell you, reading a novel writen in the purspective of an Ork was definately an experience...
I have to say that my favouriate reading material has been on the Imperial Gaurd, Ive got most of this from Sandy Mitchell's novels on Commisar Ciaphas Cain and his amazing exploites around the Galaxy and from Dan Abnett's Gaunts Ghosts. These books give 2 very different acounts of life from Cains mix of high life and warfare and Gaunts constant hard and gruelling warfare. Yet both get into great detail about hteir characters and how they deal with decisions in everyday of their lives and the consiquences these prove to have. As an avid fan, i MUST recomend these series to anyone with even the slightest of interests in the 40K Universe.
To people who have never read a 40K novel, dont go jumping in at the deep end, these things can get a bit deep, and unprepared readers might find this a real shock. So because of this, I give you a few titles that give you a great platform to build on.
I suggest short stories, now some are much shorter than others so dont go page counting and decide somethings too long:
Rebel Winter - Steve Parker, about the Vostroyan Firstborn
Fifteen Hours - Mitchel Scanlon, cant remember the unit but it is DEEP man real deep
Death World - Steve Lyons, about the Catachan these guys are actually mental!
Let The Galaxt Burn - various authors, about many different units, dont be put off by the amount of pages, its full of short stories and is really good.
Thats just a small selections of some epic stuff, but if you want a series to ease you in, i would suggest the "The Tome of Fire Trilogy" by Nick Kyme about the Salamander Space Marines, it has an amazing plot but only book 1 and 2 have been published so far (this is early 2011 atm).
Then if you feel like you want to progress onto the epicness of longer stories, move on to novels such as the Ultramarine omnidus, The Last Chancers, The Space Wolf Omnibus, The Ciaphas Cain books and last but by no means least, the Guants Ghosts books.
Im just finishing book 2 in the Tome Of Fire Trilogy, Fire Drake and then shall move onto the Eisenhorn omnibus then the Ravenor omnibus. If you have any comments questions or any suggestions about books I should read, feel free to message me.
thanks
Glowstick
