[zenMichael]

From the WH fantasy universe, I'd STRONGLY suggest Nathan Long. There are some skimmable parts in his Blackhearts series, but overall REALLY fun read. It's the dirty dozen but done in WH fantasy world. And the third book in the series has a Weekend @ Bernie's moment. That kicks the climax into gear. Brilliant. (available as an omnibus)

Graham MacNeill writes about the Ultramarines, and the first book there, Nightbringer, is pretty fun, though MacNeill LOVES his adjectives. (available in an omnibus) Also the first in the Horus Heresy line, Horus Rising, by Abnett is a REALLY good space marines story, tho the world is VERY different from the 40k stuff. Still, tho, big clompy guys desperately trying to retain a sliver of humanity, so it's all there.

[King Bear]

zenMichael, on 01 May 2011 - 10:07 PM, said:

From the WH fantasy universe, I'd STRONGLY suggest Nathan Long. There are some skimmable parts in his Blackhearts series, but overall REALLY fun read. It's the dirty dozen but done in WH fantasy world. And the third book in the series has a Weekend @ Bernie's moment. That kicks the climax into gear. Brilliant. (available as an omnibus)

Graham MacNeill writes about the Ultramarines, and the first book there, Nightbringer, is pretty fun, though MacNeill LOVES his adjectives. (available in an omnibus) Also the first in the Horus Heresy line, Horus Rising, by Abnett is a REALLY good space marines story, tho the world is VERY different from the 40k stuff. Still, tho, big clompy guys desperately trying to retain a sliver of humanity, so it's all there.

Thanks for the recommendations. I still haven't picked up any more WH yet, though fully intend to.

This post has been edited by Quickie Ben: 02 May 2011 - 12:22 AM

[zenMichael]

Quickie Ben, on 02 May 2011 - 12:22 AM, said:

Thanks for the recommendations. I still haven't picked up any more WH yet, though fully intend to.

Also, for pure fun, I'd recommend the omnibus Ambassador Chronicles by McNeill (there's no A; my bad--also this is OOP I think). It's from the fantasy line and ridiculously straightforward (like he writes the first novel as a kind of Jack the Ripper mystery set in Siberia, and one of the possible suspects is a blood-crazed madman who's really good with surgical implements -- can you guess who the killer turns out to be????), but it read really fast and I had a blast with it. Oddly, I could not make it through his elf books set in the fantasy universe. Oy. And as much as I love Abnett's 40K stuff, his fantasy stuff falls pretty short for me, though the prologue to his & Mike Lee's Malus Darkblade series is really worth buying the whole omnibus (though I stopped pretty quickly thereafter).

Also Jack Yeovil's first Geneveive book (Drachenfels, available in an OOP omnibus) is well worth it. The prologue is the end to a typical fantasy book quest; the main story takes place about 100 years later when a playwright attempts to tell the story of this quest in a play, and Genevieve, a member of the original party & a vampire, shows up as a technical adviser. The later Genevieve books got a bit enh for my tastes, but that first one is REALLY strong.

The Slayer novels get pretty horrid after maybe the third one (it gets damn difficult to write them in escalating battles after a while, and Felix's kind of one-note social ennui, which was pretty sad in the first book or two, becomes a bit annoying; thankfully King realizes this and starts to introduce a wider cast before long ... and I'm really curious to get to the newer stuff, where Nathan Long took over writing them), but definitely at least check out the first. The first is actually a collection of short stories originally published in Inferno! (like with the Gaunt's Ghosts stuff -- I in fact recommend reading book 2 of Gaunt's Ghosts first, then going back to book 1) and I honestly think the characters work better in more bite-sized chunks, but /shrug/ that's just me. Oh, and the second is Skavenslayer, which is awesome. Gotta love the skaven.


Trying to stay focused on the fantasy here, though I'm WAY more of a 40K fan, so my knowledge is a bit limited. Anyway, enjoy!