Recommend some Chaosy Novels

[Lord Morgrim]

Greetings all,

I am in the mood to read soem 40K fiction but am looking for suggestions on where to start....I dont want to read the Horus Heresy stuff yet so what other novels are worth reading?

[The Nephilim]

Storm of Iron has to be one of my all-time favorites.

[Cmdr Shepard]

I'm looking to Chaos novels too. I read Storm of Iron sometimes ago but it was a translated version and the translators didn't a good job. Now I read BL book only in English ;)

It was a good story, though. I'll should buy the English version.

 

Anyway can someone suggest BL works for every Chaos God "Cult"?

[Olis]

Greetings all,

I am in the mood to read soem 40K fiction but am looking for suggestions on where to start....I dont want to read the Horus Heresy stuff yet so what other novels are worth reading?

 

A D-B's Night Lords trilogy. They're a seriously good read that focuses mostly upon individual interactions between the protagonist and his... 'compatriots'.

[Dark Bjoern]

I loved the Word Bearer omnibus and the Night Lords novels.

[Brother Nihm]

Execution Hour, by Gordon Rennie.

[Dark Apostle Thirst]

Storm of Iron has to be one of my all-time favorites.

 

A D-B's Night Lords trilogy. They're a seriously good read that focuses mostly upon individual interactions between the protagonist and his... 'compatriots'.

 

I loved the Word Bearer omnibus and the Night Lords novels.

 

I don't remember there being many more Chaos novels than these. There are some older Night Lord novels - one of them being Lord of Night, featuring Zso Saal I believe? - but the above book are basicly the meat of Chaos fiction and are all pretty amazing ;)

[incinerator950]

There's a Space Marine super Novel full of Short stories. I can't remember the name, it has a wonderful story on Khârn.

[Olis]

There's a Space Marine super Novel full of Short stories. I can't remember the name, it has a wonderful story on Khârn.

 

Let the Galaxy Burn? It has the short story Wrath of Khârn somewhere towards the end, I believe. Written by William King, no less.

[incinerator950]

Yeah that

[Circus Nurgling]

Hammer of Daemons. Yeah, it's the third book of the Grey Knights Omnibus, but it's the first one I read, and you don't need the background to enjoy it (or at all, really). It's a chaos book, taking place on a chaos world, where a Grey Knight justicar gets turned out by chaos to fight as a gladiator-type for the enjoyment of the ruinous powers. Great read, which apparently Grey Knights fans hated because 'it's a chaos book', so there you go.

 

The Iron Warriors Omnibus is available, now, but you'll find a lot of bits and pieces left out that you can only get by [deep sigh] reading the Graham McNeill Ultramarines novels... By the end I was like 'what the hell happened to [insert spoiler here]'! Still good reads, regardless, especially the first which is a masterpiece.

 

The first book in the Soul Drinkers Omnibus is a solid read, and gives a solid perspective on how the ruinous powers (and the Mechanicum, for that matter) manipulate and deceive with impunity. The latter half of the book they are fighting on a plague world.

 

I found the Night Lords series to be difficult to get into, but I'm going to give it another shot now that I'm up on my reading. Can't speak for the Word Bearers series.

[Clewz]

daemon world

[Lexington]

I always liked the very, very strange segments of Draco where the characters find themselves on a Slaaneshi daemon world in the Eye. Something fun and different to check out, for sure.

 

Otherwise, as others have said, A D-B's Night Lords trilogy is a stark, brutal look at a set of Night Lords, all of whom are affected by Chaos to some degree. It also happens to be some of the most amazing 40K fiction ever written. B)

[Brother Ambroz]

Although a ton of people didn't like it, I really thought Flesh and Iron by Henry Zou was a good book. Really shows how corrupt much of the Imperium can be and how for some people, chaos was just freedom from the shackles.

[AekoldHelbrass]

Try Blood Gorgons. It made it's way into top3 of my personal chart right away!

[incinerator950]

daemon world

 

Demon World was more like Warhammer Fantasy...IN SPACE.

[The Nephilim]

I liked Daemon World. I liked it enough that I actually bought two copies. One to stay pristine on myself and one as a loaner.

[caboosebe]

Soul hunter - Blood Reaver - Void Stalker: a trilogy by Aaron Dembski-Bowden

A good solid story about the Night Lords 10th company. A real recommend! With a little patience, you can have the omnibus.

 

Dark Apostle - Dark Disciple - Dark Creed: a trilogy by Anthony Reynolds

Story about a Word Bearers Great Host. Solid read, I enjoyed it, fighting scenes were well written. Already available in omnibus.

 

Storm of Iron by Graham McNeill

Story about Iron Warriors. Gives a good insight of how the iron warriors operate. Even though it's one big long battle, it defiantly kept my attention.

I would even go for the Ombinus: Iron Warriors, featuring smaller short stories about one of the main characters of Storm of Iron.

I liked the main story better then the short stories, but still gives nice info and background

 

Battle of the Fang, by Chris Wraight

Story about the fight between Space Wolves, and Thousand Sons. Setting between the Horus Heresy and the 41st millennium.

This features an equal amount of Space Wolves point of view, as it does for the Thousand sons, I don't know if you like that type of book.

It's a slow read for the first few chapters, but gets really good after a time (again, in my opinion)

 

Hunt for Voldorius, by Andy Hoare

Story of White Scars and Raven guard V.S. Alpha Legion.

Not one of my favorites, but at least there were some good fights and of course Chaos.

The focus is more on the view of Loyalists than it is on Chaos, so be prepared for glorious Emperor-Loving fanaticism

 

Architect of Fate (multiple authors)

A bunch of short stories involving Fateweaver. Not a Chaos Space Marine novel, but still a Chaos novel.

Was interesting enough, and the last story gave a nice 'oooooooh, now I understand.'

 

Legion of the Damned by Rob Sanders.

Story about the Excoriators (Loyalists) that fight against all types of Khorne Chaos.

There is almost no point of view from the Chaos side, but atleast the World Eaters were in it.

 

Atlas Infernal by Rob Sanders

A story about an Inquisitor who is on the run for Ahriman of the Thousand sons.

Not your typical Space Marine V.S. Chaos Space Marine book, which surprisingly made it interesting. Also gives some nice background information about Eldar and their secrets, if you are interested in them.

 

The Gildar Rift by Sarah Cawkwell.

Story abou the Silver Skulls V.S. the Red Corsairs

Nice story, with an equal mixture of Loyalist viewpoint and Chaos viewpoints (which we like better of course).

Blackheart himself is featured in the book, which makes it a recommended book.

 

Blood Gorgons by Henry Zou

Book about the, well, Blood Gorgons.

Very nice read, because it is a very small group of Traitor Astartes, and not one of the bigger players. Also a recommended book.

 

 

I would say, take your pick.

 

 

Does it show that I like to read all the Novels where Chaos is a big player, if not the lead character?

[Magnus Thane]

daemon world

 

Demon World was more like Warhammer Fantasy...IN SPACE.

 

It still was great due to the topic at hand. And showed many things underlighted in the setting.

 

Others I'd advise is Gildar's Rift, Storm of Iron (or better Iron Warriors omnibus), Lord of the Night, Night Lords Trilogy, Wordbearers Trilogy.

[Captain Tezdal]

Aside from Storm of Iron, and ADBS Night Lords book, I think one of these best novels is Blood Gorgons, interesting take on a non-legion warband.

[Iron Sage]

Gaunts Ghosts series by Dan Abnett is the best there is of Black Library series (if your not looking for stand alone novels).

The rest of his books are also very good. In particular Titanicus, Double Eagle, Brotherhood of the Snake are nice reads.

Apart from Dan Abnet (which is clearly the best writer of the pack if you care about quality, and feel an urge to vomit, like me, when I tried to read Gav Thorpes horrendously bad last chancers), Storm of Iron is a very nice novel :) Liked that a lot. Further more, it is true as they say... The resident A D B here, is clearly the second best Black library books, and his Nightlords series is extraordinary refreshing compared to the rest of Black Library (if were honest, most of Black Library books sucks very, very badly)

 

Rest is crap in general unless you are on an 8 hour bus trip or something like that, but then again, I can think of other far better non-40k books to read than fighting trough the worst of the worst, like Gav Thorpe (not read his newest books, since Last Chancers was so :cussing awful, but I doubt he is that much better now).

 

But really. Read everything you can get written by Dan Abnet. If you want to read 40 K books, you certainly won`t go wrong choosing Dans books over others writers.

 

But if you want specifically Chaos novels, then ADBs Nightlord series are very nice (and actually written in a very refreshing way compared to everything not Dan Abnet), and as are Storm of Iron (wordbearers books are also okay, though more because of interesting fluff and story instead of being well written).

 

Ps. If you really feel like reading, Space Wolves series by william King is okay as well though compared to Dan Abnet its not really.

 

Edit: I realise that you only asked for Chaos books (you should still read Dan Abnets 40k books even though they dont have chaos as main protagonists, since he is just that much better than the rest, and there are cool chaos forces portayed in his works anyway ;), and if that is the case, then Aron Dembski-Bowden (sorry ADB, if name is spelled incorrectly) Nightlord novels and Graham Mcneils Storm of Iron are the "best ones". Wordbearers novels are also okay though like I said above.

[Magnus Thane]

Be careful about the Dan Abnett comments. He's very good. But the fanboyism is sometimes almost creepy. And you get zapped for criticism towards him.

[Olis]

I agree that Dan Abnett is a good writer (in fact, I devour his books) but bear in mind he's good at some things and not so great at others. He wrote for 2000AD before he began writing 40k, after all, so take any fluff mistakes with a pinch of salt. :lol:

[Jiron]

Soul Hunter (and the rest of Night Lords) and Blood Gorgons.

[Pariah Mk.231]

I'd recommend: Lord of the Night, Iron Warriors omnibus, Word Bearers omnibus, Into the Maelstrom (for the stories Hell in a Bottle, Tenebrae and obviously Into the Maelstrom) and, probably my favourite 40k novel, Fire Warrior (sure, it's a Tau book, but Chaos goes to town in that novel and stuffs up everyone's day ... and don't worry, it's not crap like the game).

While other people love ADB's Night Lords novels, I'm not one of them. Sure, the first one was a decent read, but it didn't do it for me so much that I actually wanted to buy the others when they came out. (though it became apparent to me we had very different tastes when I found out his favourite HH novel was Legion, and I absolutely loathed that one. I have no problem with his writing, I just didn't love it the way I love Sandy Mitchell and Simon Spurrier's books. But hey, once I get my arse back in gear and finish what I'm writing - and providing it's good enough to publish - I won't hold it against him if he feels the same way about my work, or even if considers it to be on par with Twilight.)