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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   16976 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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Despite being a huge fan of the 40K universe (and an enthusiastic modeler/painter), I've never actually read any Black Library books, just some old Warhammer fantasy stuff from the 1990s. I take it you'd recommend the Ciaphias Cain books then?

Start with Gaunt's Ghosts series. Abnett is a functional and reasonably entertaining writer when given good enough schlock; the plots are nothing special but it's a very vivid and clear-eyed picture of the crapsack universe and the daily life of combat as experienced through elite Guardsmen.

Then you can dabble around a bit more. The Horus Heresy books are a very mixed bag, there are some gems and some lumps of coal all mixed together, but it's still worth it as a whole because that era of the 40k universe is foundational and epoch-making for the entire setting.

Truth be told they’re the only ones I’ve read properly. But they’re good adventures that take themselves seriously enough to be high-stakes but not so seriously that they stray into grimdarkness.

They’re human, in a good way, and they don’t have that ‘licensed fiction’ feeling you can sometimes get. They’re published in 3-book omnibuses and the first is “Hero of the Imperium”.

BTW I’m just getting back into painting myself. Would be happy to swap pics by DM :)

Fire Warrior by Peter Fehervari is an excellent novel, and not just by Warhammer novel standards. Would highly recommend, it's top-shelf psychological horror and military SF.

As opposed to Fire Warrior, the video game, which should not be anyone's first introduction to the franchise.

The whole Horus Heresy series is also pretty decent.

Ciaphas Cain is a good introductory series as well, as long as you recognize it's not the norm. It's very much on the lighter grey side of the grim dark black on black setting, though with enough elements to understand parts of its disfunction. It avoids some of the worst habits of the franchise's tendency towards purple prose or overly in-depth combat sequences, but has its own familiar tropes it can fall into.

If you need a frame of reference, Cain is a more comedic take on the Harry Flashman premise- someone who is a self-described coward and scoundrel who ends up looking the hero. The series is presented as Cain's unpublished memoirs, collected and edited by a close acquaintance, so there's a general contrast between how Cain presents himself, how others in the moment perceive him, and how the audience of the memoirs sees him.

The series isn't a linear narrative, but rather a series of self-contained adventurers, so there's no real issue in picking and choosing. You'll get basically teasers alluding to other adventures, nothing that spoils things.

If you'd like recommendations of where to start-

For the Emperor - First novel, key characters and premise introduced, makes everything else make more sense. Probably the best all-in-one for whether you'd like the series as a whole, especially since this is the starting point for Cain's adventurers with his most-reoccurring supporting cast. If you don't like this book, you probably won't like the series.

Death or Glory - Chronologically this takes place before For the Emperor, but it was written after, so many of the characters introduced there aren't present here, even as this campaign is the basis of various allusions and future plot threads. Because of its more limited scope as 'the thing that really got Cain famous,' it also makes a good starting point. Generally commits the hardest to the question of 'how does a self-described coward become a famous hero?'

Amazing! Thank you.

Drop your thoughts in a Friday Fun thread when you finish, and drop an @ when you're finished. I'd be interested.

Honestly, one of the fun things of being anywhere adjacent to the franchise as a hobby is watching new people get involved.

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