EVERY HORUS HERESY NOVEL REVIEWED in about 20 minutes!

[Music] hi gang so since we started the book club videos i've got a lot of comments about the best entry points into 40k novels and yeah there's a lot of places to start so i'll probably end up making some videos for good entry points but one of the biggest and most complex series is the horus heresy it's 54 books in total and that's just the main ones and like any novel series that long they vary in quality for me the best taurus heresy novels have a few things in common they have human point of view characters or find a way to really humanize the space marine characters i think the series often fails when the novels have to write primarks as point of view characters it's hard to make them feel like demigods they take concepts from 40k that might be a bit silly or barely fleshed out and they make them into convincing believable cultures and finally they expand the world of the great crusade and present a world that feels well obviously different to the one of 40k so in this video i'm gonna quickly go through all of them and rate them out of five hopefully in about 20 minutes i'll very briefly say what each book covers which means there might be a few spoilers but hopefully nothing worse than you get on the back of the book anyway okay let's get going wonder why this series has lasted so long well it starts out really well horus rising by dan abner gives us a glimpse into the closing days of the great crusade and has everything i want from this series we get some really interesting human characters with a variety of positions and opinions about the crusade and the sons of horus themselves are actually really likable they get a solid believable culture that doesn't rely on pulling from some historical period we see a few primarks but only from a distance and the plot contains enough interesting hooks and easter eggs to really get you involved it's not the best book in the series but horus rising is a great start and it gets four and a half hairy horses book two is false gods by graham mcneill and it's a direct sequel in fact the first four books in this series follow directly on from each other with most of the same characters this gets us from horus being wounded at davin to the first stages of the rebellion and we start to see the cracks in the imperial system the suppression of descent the way that the estates treat humans in a crisis it's good but it's not quite as interesting to me as horus rising three large priests book three is galaxy and flames by ben counter and by this point the heresies in full swing and we see the events of isfan 3 where the four traitor legions purge their own ranks despite having some good moments it's probably the weakest of the first four books necessary reading though and it's pretty good i give it three angry runs and the final in sequence book is flight of the eisenstein by james swallow which switches point of view to the death guard as captain garrow assembles a band of renegades and escapes isfan3 to warn the imperium of horus's betrayal i think this book suffers a bit from having quite a lot of starters in the cast and they're just not as interesting as the remembrance as they're protecting but it's good three and a half scary viruses lastly closing out this initial arc is fulgrim it's not a direct sequel to the others in that it's mostly about the emperor's children and it starts earlier in the crusade but it does cover the next big event the dropsite massacre on ist fan five fulgrim is really good it gets through loads of plot and the fantastic human characters work as a really good foil for the horrible estates ones four doom sirens right this is where it all gets contentious book six is descent of angels by mitchell scanlon this shows us pre-imperial caliban and the origins of the dark angels legion from the point of view of two aspirants to a knightly order loads of people dislike this one as it's almost entirely set before the heresy but i quite like it it's exactly the sort of world building i enjoy it's also the best dark angels novel in the series i'm giving it three generic warp monsters that's a big contrast to book seven which is probably one of the best black library books ever written legion by dan abner which introduces us to the alpha legion the cabal and the perpetuals and some absolutely brilliant imperial army regiments i really like this book it does what the good heresy novels do best takes a legion that didn't really have much to them and makes them a totally believable part of the world it also expands on the imperial army through regiments like the geno52 or the lucifer blacks in fact the majority of the book is written from the point of view of regular army soldiers it's absolutely one of the best of the series five hydra heads and then black library dropped the ball with book eight battle for the abyss uh where to start this book is uh bad it's kind of a side plot about an ensemble cast trying to stop the world bearers mega space fortress but it reads like a bad action movie and it commits one of my cardinal sins for horus heritage books all the characters feel exactly like their 40k versions there's a comedy drunken viking spacewolf a by the book ultramarine and a mustache twirling word bearer villain because all the work that would be done to make those legions believable in future novels just wasn't there yet thankfully it doesn't add much to the overall plot so you can skip it one destroyed death star next up is mechanicum by gray mcneil again another book some people dislike but i thought was good it introduces us to all the bonkers craziness of the mechanic on mars shows us how the knights work has some really good human characters and because it predates this kit we even get proper old-fashioned terrifying scottari i like it four space robots and closing out the first ten is the first short story anthology there's going to be a lot of these coming up this one is tales of heresy there are some dodgy ones in this the dark angels and space wolves shorts are amazing but it's redeemed by some brilliant world building like blood games about terror and the custodes or the last church set at the very end of the unification wars for migu with book 11 fallen angels by mike lee we returned to the dark angels same two aspirants as before but now there are starters and therefore just way less interesting one of them gets the sort of plot that becomes really common around now capture some sort of super weapon to win the war and the other gets involved with the whole fallen angels are cause that starts to kick off yeah i mean it's not as interesting as the last one two generic super weapons book 12 is a thousand suns by graeme mcneil and it's the intro story for well the thousand suns light legion this fleshes out their culture has brilliant point of view characters and paints a picture of a complex interesting force it generally does a really good job of setting up that the whole thousand suns arc is a tragedy four space wizards nemesis by james swallow is next and this is a bit of an odd one there's two story lines here one follows a group of imperial assassins sent to kill horus but apart from a few interesting new assassin types it's a bit of a clunky story that feels more at home in 40k and the second storyline is a murder mystery about a demon assassin on the other side honestly the second one with its look at civilian life in the heresy is the more interesting one but neither really fit two raging evers aaron dempsky bowden's first novel in the series is the first heretic book 14 and this is one of the best ones a proper introduction to the word bearers and just why exactly they're so pissed off it does a really good job of rationalizing them and pulling them away from the cartoon villain stereotype of their earlier appearances four priests are praying next dan abnett returns with prospero burns and the grand reimagining of the space wolves to something just less silly than they were before this book is great it's the counterpart to a thousand suns and it's told from the point of view of a human historian so we get loads of interesting stuff from the unification wars too the space wolves come out of this really well they become one of the more relatable legions five wet leopards a short pause again for another anthology there's a few boring ones in age of darkness but overall it's a pretty good collection of shorts that show the effect this war is having on the wider galaxy highlights are probably the i am within and forgotten sons by nick kyme and that's the last good review he's getting this video three irons within book 17 is the outcast dead by gray mcneil and it's another contentious one because it contains a pretty big timeline error but that aside i really like it we get to learn about the astra telepathica a bit more about terror outside the palace and there are thunder warriors in it for space japan's next up we've got deliverance lost by gav thorpe concentrating on the most emo of the legions the raven guard the raven guard are one of those legions that are a bit overlooked by this series their characters aren't great they don't really have a very well developed backstory or culture even their human bodies are a bit boring this book concentrates on point of view character corex the primark trying to play scientists hot housing or starters regiments and then giving them terrible terrible names not my favorite one one sad mutant and we're back to dan abnet next with no no fear where he pulls off actually making the ultramarines interesting seriously they come out of it less as poster boys and more of a really sensible well-rounded force plus the narrative structure of this with the constantly ticking mark of calth is great oh it's about the battle of calf where the word bearers ambush the ultramarines five roman tax returns and then we're at book 20 which is another anthology the primarks is a series of four novellas and this would be later developed into a proper series but this book isn't great turns out fulgrim's arrogant ferrous manus was a dick the dark angels don't know what side they're on and the alpha legion seem to have lost their plot yeah skip it one dorian grey book 21 is fear to tread by james swallow and it's the blood angels big intro novel but it suffers a bit from being written by the same person who writes the blood angels in 40k as such they're kind of exactly the same as their 40k counterparts and i just don't find them very interesting as a 30k legion also for my money there are no good human characters and sanguinius is in it way too much two paradises lost right we're almost halfway through now and it starts to feel like black library are padding it out because we get a lot of anthologies shadows of treachery though is one of the good ones it's all previously released material but of the seven stories in this six of them are amazing we get the classic limited edition dark king and the lightning tower the kaban machine from the old collective visions book and prince of crows about savitar it's just marred by another raven guard short story in there four killer robots okay it feels a bit late to be doing legion introduction novels but grey mcneil's angel exterminatus is actually pretty good the plot is a bit silly and there are some very silly set pieces but the iron warriors as a legion are really interesting they're one of those legions that actually benefits from being similar to its 40k counterpart and this is one of those books that ties in really well three olympic rings speaking of late legion intros book 24 is aaron dempsky bowden's betrayer dealing with the world eaters and the word bearers rampaging through ultramark but really this is the world eaters book and they are beautifully written they're one of the most human and misunderstood legions out there it's even got some really good human characters five red hands book 25 is another anthology but mark of calth is exclusively concerned with the fallout from the battle of calth so ultramarines and word bearers yeah it's fine nothing amazing though i do like the one that's told entirely from the point of view of an anathane dagger three cranky servators okay it's the lizard in the room here we go book 26 is vulcan lives by nick kim every salamanders novel in this series is getting together one star and it's a sleepy one they're just written identically to their 40k counterparts all the characters are exactly the same the plots are really similar and there's just too much vulcan all the salamanders novels together are just a bit boring for me one collective star and we're going to gloss over the rest the unremembered empire is book 27 and this is the only dan abner book in here i have any complaints about we're meant to be halfway through a colossal galaxy spanning civil war and yet gilman johnson sanguinius kurz and vulcan all end up on the same planet doing essentially a superhero movie it seems silly it's got primark point of view all over it and it's just not what i want at this point in the series two avengers thankfully book 28 is the brilliant scars by chris wraith and it's just really good at this point to hear about one of the nice legions for a bit this jumps back in time and covers the white scars entry into the war and though it feels again a bit late it's really really good also the one human character in it is awesome five space bikes vengeful spirit tells the story of the battle of molex something that didn't really come up before this series but is actually really important the main plot line just rounds up hello to spare characters and sends them off to infiltrate horus's battle barge and it's fine but other plot lines in this like the fall of house divine are brilliant and there's some really interesting plot revelations three vengeful spirits the damnation of pythos is number 30. remember this one nah cause it's pointless some iron hands and salamanders do a horror movie away from the main plot it feels like a random 40k novel stuffed in here or the sort of thing that maybe should have been a short i don't know why this is a major novel in the series skip it one dinosaur legacies of betrayal is 31 and it's another anthology only this time uh it's almost all filler brotherhood of the storm is the standout one here that's the prequel to scars but the rest are a bit middling it's also got kryptos in it one of the major plot points in the sisypheam arc a sort of collection of shorts about a mary sue ninja his grumpy mate and their crew of stereotypes i really dislike this whole arc of short stories i'd say give him a miss and just because of that i'm giving the book two boredoms book 32 is an easy one salamander's novel been there read it before gave it a score war without end is another anthology mostly of really short stories it's actually got some interesting backstory for some of the molech characters from vengeful spirit yeah it's it's fine three dragged out youtube videos pharos is book 34 and it's about a space lighthouse and it follows directly on from unremembered end game superhero punch-up it also suffers from the same primark point of view problems as that book did though in this the focus shifts more towards the regular estates so it isn't quite as pronounced remember when humans were in this series three south westers things aren't really great in the mid 30s because eye of terror is another collection of basically filler short stories it's slightly better than the last one i guess iron corpses brotherhood of the moon and aaron db's aurelian novella are probably the standouts here but otherwise two fillers things are looking up at 36 though with chris wraith's path of heaven the sequel to scars and we finally get a glimpse of the end of this series as the story starts to turn towards terror path of heaven has some great moments with the emperor's children and weaves the scars nicely into the wider plot four dragon helmets and then another anthology it's getting a bit silly at this point they're almost every other book but the silent war is actually a really nice little collection looking at some of the easy to miss details of the war i think the sigilite is probably my favorite in here three fosfex clouds angels of caliban by gav thorpe catches up with the dark angels after that whole awkward avengers arc and now they're over at sotha and fighting the nightlords it's okay but for me it's still got too many primarks in it and it feels like filler at this point it kind of feels like black library are just checking off the plot points three hearts of darkness so after a disappointing 30s praetorian of dawn is actually a breath of fresh air the alpha legion are the first to attack the solar system itself and the imperial fists have to defend it it's the first good alfa legion story since legion it really pulls the focus back towards terror there are some big revelations and jon french even manages to write alfarius and dorner's point of view characters and it works yeah four chainsaws another anthology sort of at book 40 core rax is a collection of all of gath thorpe's raven guard shorts and novellas the raven guards still don't really feel as well developed as the other legions though two big birds and then book 41 is master of mankind by aaron dempsky bowden and it's another one of those standout novels dealing with the disastrous collapse of the emperor's webway project which kind of hasn't been mentioned until this point there's some really nice characters in this including the brilliantly written narcan land and the book digs into some juicy background about the emperor without going as far as making him a main character it's one of the best novels in the series five robo monkeys onto 42 garrow which is another collection of previous novellas and shorts by james swallow but this time it's been edited and expanded to run like a full novel it's up to you if by this point you find nathaniel garrow an interesting character or not i tend to find him a bit redundant but it's fine three shouting bald guys and 43 is another anthology chat legions is a collection of shorts about the guerrilla campaign waged in the wake of the drop site massacre all the way back in book five mostly it's about iron hands again one of those legions that don't really get the development some other legions do some of the elements in this are really interesting but we can't get through a book like this without including the bloody sisyphem and it's saturday morning cartoon of a cast three bionic bits the crimson king by graham mcneil follows on from the events of a thousand sons as ahriman his space wizard buddies and a few short story characters picked up along the way try to find all the bits of madness personally i'm not a huge fan of the sort of vision quest plotline when someone goes into a psychic trance in 40k and a thousand suns managed to be pretty light on those but this book is full of them again i'm not sure it's that necessary three shards of magnus book 45 is talon this is another collection of novellas this time by john french but this collection is really good i think the talon story should have been the iron warriors big intro but instead this follows the human imperial army forces on the recently irradiated planet of tylan come to terms with the loss of their world and figure out how to fight sealed inside armored vehicles it's claustrophobic and intense and really really good four and a half evil black obelisks okay nine books left and to be honest none of them are that great so let's just get through them 46 is ruinstorm gilman sanguinius and the lion finally quit ultramar and try and get to terror but it suffers from the same problem as their previous novels plus added vision quests two warp storms 47 is old earth another salamander's novel yeah there's some interesting pre-imperial stuff in there but not interesting enough to redeem it no stars 48 is burden of loyalty another anthology this time with a heavy focus on mechanicum and a few of the weirder forces involved in the war it's okay three side titans and next up is wolf spain following on from vengeful's spirit le mans russ decides he's got to go and attack horus himself because well otherwise he'll be on terror and we know he's not meant to be at this point it's fine and it's nice to see some old characters but it's a bit unnecessary and it feels like it's only really there to move people around three more wet leopards and what way to celebrate 50 novels than by skipping straight through born of flames sorry salamanders no stars 51 is slaves to darkness because games workshop just don't seem to have enough names this is like the flip side of ruinstorm limarus poke taurus with a spear in wolf spain and now the rest of the traitor primarks have to hold it all together before they go and attack terror by this point you're just urging them to get to the siege already three more deployment phases and 52 is the last anthology heralds of the siege which is more moving people around and sort of just rolling in all the stuff that hasn't found its way to an anthology yet three ticking clocks and we're on to guy haley's titan death probably the best of the latter books titan death deals with the giant titan battle on beta garmon the last defense before horus reaches the solar system i think it's hard to get stories about titans right in 40k there have been some really good examples and some bad ones this is one of the better ones plus it's one of the few later novels to have interesting human cultures and characters i liked it four stompy robots and finally the last book of the series is the buried dagger by james swallow it's kind of a strange choice an origin story for the death guard mixed in with how they turn to nurgle in the warp it's fine but it's a strange plotline to end the series with i would have thought the events of titan death or even praetorian of dawn would have made more sense anyway people have been waiting ages for this bit to be covered and this book does a decent job of covering it three and a half friendly beasts and that's it 54 books the horus heresy series started amazingly well and there are some brilliant books throughout even at the latter end but by about halfway through it really gets bogged down in side characters reprints and underwhelming stories by the last third there's a lot of filler with some gems shining through however almost every book in the series adds something to the overall plot and there's a nice sense of achievement from getting through it all it's followed by the siege of terror series which i haven't covered here because at time of recording it's still happening and i also haven't done the primarks novellas those are maybe for another video if you want to get into the horus heresy i'd still say the first four books are a great introduction to the universe and after that it's up to you how far you dig in who knows maybe you'll even like battle for the abyss thanks for watching we'll see you next [Music] time [Music] you

Channel: Arbitor Ian

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Length: 21min 8sec (1268 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 09 2021