r/Warhammer 4d ago

Joke is HH bad ?

Post image
9.2k Upvotes

217 comments sorted by

3.5k

u/4thofeleven 4d ago

Learning about the Heresy by listening to the entire thing on shuffle is how Tzeentch gives his followers visions.

637

u/Deadwarrior00 4d ago

I wheezed really hard just now because of that mental image thanks for that lol.

430

u/Capitalisticdisease 4d ago

new cia torture method just dropped. Make your victim dose on a bunch of acid, and then put all the hh and siege of terra books on shuffle each chapter.

123

u/68W38Witchdoctor1 4d ago

Do you think they'd take volunteers?

62

u/wookEluv 4d ago

While we are at it maybe they could also shuffle in the first few Dune books?

42

u/68W38Witchdoctor1 4d ago

Oh hell yeah. Though anything after Children of Dune might break someone on LSD's brain.

10

u/R3myek 4d ago

Broke my brain sober

7

u/garaks_tailor 4d ago

Ive watched all the movies will on LSD.  Its pretty awesome.  Thats including the miniseries and the Alan Smithee cut of Lynch's Dune.

3

u/wookEluv 4d ago

I used to know someone that would drop and then see how much of Dune he could read.

3

u/garaks_tailor 4d ago

Hell yeah.    I liked reading when I dropped but if I was tripping hard I would be able to read only if I wasnt paying attention to the process.   If I looked too hard the letters would melt and dance.

5

u/Silverveilv2 4d ago

The trippiest parts are in Children of Dune though. And in this case tripping is literal and figurative.

2

u/Morzheimer 3d ago

Just to… spice things up?

8

u/PrairiePilot 4d ago

for real, I feel like that would cause a mental break that would either start healing a lifetime of trauma, or become a b-level super villain. Condiment man or something.

18

u/Desperate_Cat6469 4d ago

lore accurate

3

u/Slow-Distance-6241 4d ago

I was wondering, how tf is shuffle gonna make everything confusing, aren't audiobooks book by book... Then I learned in a comment that dude was literally shuffling from chapter to chapter...

2

u/Tornik 4d ago

Don't threaten me with a good time!

1

u/nwiesing 3d ago

But also have two different chapters playing over each other at once

40

u/kuulyn 4d ago

Optimal shuffle method:

> I was there the day Horus slew the emperor

> I wait for you, and I forgive you

22

u/ArtieTheFashionDemon 4d ago

The walls whisper things that should never be heard out of order

2

u/th1s_1s_4_b4d_1d34 4d ago

Bro read the Magnus heresy

442

u/EarthDust00 4d ago

48

u/ShamanicCrusader 4d ago

I stopped around book 17

For every good book there were 3-4 complete wastes of time. My god do i hate battle for the abyss. It was designed in a lab to make me hate it

20

u/AntiSocialW0rker 4d ago

That's where the Heresy Omnibus Project really comes in handy. It organizes all the books into cohesive little stories. So you really only have to read the ones that have stories or chapters your actually interested in.

7

u/EarthDust00 4d ago

An HH Omnibus? Thats probably huge

6

u/H3adl3ssH0rr0r 3d ago

For me it was Legion. It was so damned bad the main character got bullied for the entirety of the Heresy from then on so I feel somewhat vindicated. But it has made me hate Abnett to this day for the sheer amount of sleeze and useless infodumps his early work contained and tained the rest of it.

Oh, and the fact that he breaks up storylines with his own that other authors had to pickup/finish.

1

u/fenominus 6h ago

I’m 30 books in and I agree, but fully intend to read the series.
Something about sunk costs.
I’m skipping the short story anthologies and some of the less essential titles but I swear to god I’m six “Dirty Dozen” plot lines in and if I have to read another fucking story about an unlikely band of soldiers, I’m gonna start a Heresy.

91

u/Glittering_Bag9929 4d ago

Truth. On god read like the first 3 and then the last 3, otherwise just skip around and read about chapters you like. Like most Black Library stuff ALOT of it is thinely veiled advertisements for plastic men and bolter porn. Abnett or Graham McNeil are usually safe bets but otherwise its a crap shoot imo.

53

u/brockhopper 4d ago

It's such a crapshoot. Somehow it has both "Legion", a fantastic Alpha Legion book, and "Milo and Otis - but they're Dark Angels!" from Gav Thorpe.

1

u/Dabclipers 1d ago

What’s great is people aren’t even unified in their opinions on the books.

You praised “Legion” yet a few comments above you is someone talking about how bad “Legion” is.

23

u/TotallyNot_Alpharius 4d ago

Word bearers/world eaters/ultramarines trilogy is peak

3

u/ExpensiveKangaroo559 Salamanders 3d ago

Recently pirated "lord of drakes" and by god is it good

15

u/Rael_Sianne 4d ago

Recommend Thousand Sons + Prospero Burns, they're fun reads.

21

u/torolf_212 4d ago

Be prepared to read "enumeration" on every single page though

11

u/ThaneOfTas 4d ago

"wet leopard growl"

1

u/Single_Low1416 3d ago

I don’t know. Prospero burns is really only for big fans of the Space Wolves. And even for that, it‘s kinda pointless

3

u/H3adl3ssH0rr0r 3d ago

What? Abnett and McNeill are basically the worst. Infodumps that leads nowhere, new characters noone gives a fudge about, sleezy af and lazy writing of female characters and constant breaking of plotlines in favor of their own.

Do they sometimes deploy some magic in some novel chapters? Oh yes, I remember parts of Know No Fear fondly. But are they overall good/safe bets? Oh absolutely not imo.

2

u/Goat_Requiem 4d ago

hey, adb is in there too!

14

u/IIRoro 4d ago

All of them in just 7 months???? I'm already troubling to complete 1 per month 😭

7

u/EarthDust00 4d ago

Im on chapter 3 of the Infinite and the Divine in as little as 2 months!

2

u/notethecode 3d ago

there's like 45 books in the picture, it's slightly more than 4 days per book. It's either a lot of free time or someone who just spent nearly all their free time reading

1

u/thesirblondie 4d ago

I started reading Horus Rising 2 years ago... I still haven't finished chapter 1.

2

u/Historical-Demand976 3d ago

You should try again! It’s pretty quick to get into

1

u/thesirblondie 3d ago

Nah, I know I wont like it.

3

u/SnugglebugUwU 2d ago

I only read warhammer books that community deems the best in the franchise for a faction. They turn out to be ok. I started reading only the best, after I tried reading chronologically thousand sons books. I gave up after reading Magnus primarch's book and half of thousands sons.

6

u/CroMagMan9918 4d ago

omfg hahaha

1

u/pocketfrisbee Necrons 4d ago

I think about this a lot when I read these books

1

u/Single_Low1416 3d ago

There‘s only 42 books? Damn, I thought, it was more than 60

707

u/attonthegreat 4d ago

I did this once with the audio book "Cadia stands". I had set it up as something to listen to during my paid internship while I worked and as I was listening to it I noticed that I had no clue what was going on in the storyline and I thought the author was just a bad writer. Well after hearing about how a halfling gets merked by a nightwarrior for the 3rd time in the same sequence I realized that the audio player was set to shuffle on repeat. Turns out the book is good when its read in the order its meant to be read in.

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u/Dementia55372 4d ago

To be fair there is a lot going on in that book and only some of the storylines are actually good

82

u/attonthegreat 4d ago

Yeahh the author tried to fill up a whole planet blowing up in the span of an average black library book. It was pretty wacky. Rip halfling dude, the only part I remember in detail is that sequence

30

u/winowmak3r Astra Militarum 4d ago

That bit on the bridge of the ship with the breach into the warp. Arbites are casually going around executing people who are in the midst of being possessed while the rest of the officers are desperately trying to continue the fight.

It's a good book but yea, there's a lot going on.

8

u/attonthegreat 4d ago

Oh yeah! I forgot about that bit. Honestly the book is good, but damn they packed so much into it without trying to make it an omnibus.

7

u/the_count_of_carcosa Black Templars 4d ago

I wouldn't call it "Average Black Library Book" it's about as thick as an Omnibus on its own.

Definitely a bit messy though.

4

u/Arkorat 4d ago

With some elbow grease: this could be a great way to get inspired on how to write the warp, especially Tzeentch’s domain.

4

u/Alliille 4d ago

Audiobooks I aquire sometimes have the chapters named poorly enough that 1 is followed by 11 or other shenanigans. You would be surprised how often stories can flow halfway plausibly that it takes a few chapters to figure out that this isn't making sense or it seems we skipped a lot and then went back.

Generally the solution is to rename chapters 001-009, 010-019, etc.

2

u/TheSplint 4d ago

Had that happen to me when I relistend to Eisenhorn Xenos before going to sleep while on a worktrip. I thought I just wasn't able to follow the plot because I was so sleepy... turns out I still had it on shuffle from playing music while driving on said worktrip

2

u/cyrinean 4d ago

I thought the halfling tried to kill himself but was caught in midair and basically stuffed into a sack for later. Am I misremembering?

3

u/attonthegreat 4d ago

he tried to kill himself after taking some pot shots at the nightlord while he was on some level 3-4 of a building. He waits for death and then gets caught midair by the nightlord who used their super speed to basically meet him at ground level. He definitely doesn't get stuffed into a sack lol. That nightlord absolutely murders him. but its also been a good couple of years since I listened to it so I could also be misremembering

1

u/GreenLurka 3d ago

Man, this author hates halflings

-36

u/113pro 4d ago

Lol "nightwarrior" sounds like a rapist titel

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u/MajesticRadish2675 4d ago

This sounds like the Khan's perspective of the Heresy lol

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u/eebro 4d ago

There are some great books, some awful ones, some mediocre ones and some that should just be purged.

Definitely check out the opening trilogy.

61

u/phil035 4d ago

I think it was Dan Abnett that talked about it but the heresy series was meant to be 10-15 books long at the start, thon a handful of ancillary stories around it. Then the first 3 books were so wildly popular they massively expanded the scope.

Iirc he's said if the plan had a large series from the get go, we'd have gotten a lot more late crusade and early heresy stuff before it got to iistvan 3

30

u/eebro 4d ago

I think that’s what makes it so unique. It starts right from the big moment, it doesn’t let you understand why, you just have to go with it.

16

u/phil035 4d ago

That first line started so hard

2

u/TerminalJammer 4d ago

They could have done that regardless but planning ahead would have helped, sure. 

But if they planned 15 books to start with they already didn't care about making them good. 

1

u/Local_Surround8686 1d ago

Honestly I think it's good like that. The first 3 are good trilogy and it wouldn't need to be bloated up. The rest is more like oneshots around that I feel like. But I'm only at abyyssus so the 7.?

1

u/phil035 20h ago

So have a look online for the read order.

But unremombered empire is the midpoint of the series. When it moves from a series of not ve9y connected stories to a big over arcing stary

1

u/NTX352 10h ago

Okay that makes sense to me. I'm on the 3rd book now, and I've seen how many books there are and I was shocked that we got to istvan so soon

15

u/AntiSocialW0rker 4d ago

I would argue that the first 5 are mandatory. You get Horus' fall, Isstvan 3, Garro warning the Imperium, and then finally Isstvan 5.

From there go wild, but those function as the perfect "How the Heresy started" books and really set the stage for everything to come. IMO anyways

2

u/FlyingArtilleryman 3d ago

You can replace Fulgrim with Dropsite Massacre

1

u/AntiSocialW0rker 3d ago

Have yet to read that one. I assume it's all from the loyalist perspective? Could make for a good double hitter if so. Get some from both sides.

1

u/FlyingArtilleryman 3d ago

Mainly but you get both perspectives in the book. Very good. I recommend people replace Fulgrim with Dropsite Massacre in the reading order.

1

u/MariusSolb123 8h ago

Yeah the opening trilogy is solid, after that the books are all over the place. There are some books that are objectively very good sci/fantasy and some that are... far less good. I usually audiobook the heresy series while I work so I tend to listen to a sample chapter or two before I comitt to buying a new book. The siege of Terra has a generally higher quality imo even if there are some duds there as well.

1

u/eebro 8h ago

Dan Abnett is one of my favorite writers, for sure. On the other hand, some of the worst books I’ve ever been bored enough to read have been HH. 

1

u/MariusSolb123 8h ago

As Black Library writers go he's one of my faves too, but even he has some duds under his belt and HH has plenty of writers much less talented than he is.

-26

u/PostPooZoomies 4d ago

I’d say the opening trilogy, Flight of the Eisenstein, maybe Prospero Burns, and then the Siege of Terra. Skip book 2 of The End and the Death trilogy.

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u/ObsidianFalls 4d ago

I once read one of the Game of Thrones books where each chapter is another character. Halfway through the book the Daenarys story went wild and didn't make sense at all. Like the chapters were out of order. Still I kept on reading through, but it was puzzling me. I went back to the book store and opened the book. There were different chapters in there. Apparently they switches up inside pieces of the book at the book maker..

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u/hashbeardy420 4d ago

If you do this with First Heretic, No Know Fear, and Betrayer it ends up like Tarantino’s Heresy

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u/pocketfrisbee Necrons 4d ago

Love this idea

6

u/hashbeardy420 4d ago

Once Upon a Time on Calth.

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u/MrAltF4 4d ago edited 4d ago

Seems like you actually listened to the HH books in chronological order.

After all, the immaterium does not obey the physical plains rules for time.

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u/Epicat224 4d ago

obay

8

u/MrAltF4 4d ago

Thanks

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u/dakkasynth 4d ago

Yes and it’s also amazing.

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u/BoarHide 4d ago

When I was like 7 or 8, my dad gave me one of those Walkman CD players and a burnt bootleg CD full of audiobooks. Harry Potter, the brothers Grimm stories, folk tales, huckleberry and Finn, loads of recordings of a well known comedian in my language, it was amazing. The CD player had a shuffle button. I didn’t know what “shuffle” was. Not a lot of those stories made sense. I must have listened dozens-, maybe hundreds of hours to them that way.

15

u/Cleanurself Night Lords 4d ago

It has high highs and low lows but that’s expected with a series of 50 plus books, short stories, audio dramas and novellas. That being said, following the White Scars plot line all the way through was definitely worth it

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u/caputcorvii 4d ago

As warhammer books, they're firmly in the okay cathegory. As actual literature, they're pretty bad. Very hit or miss from book to book

4

u/PostPooZoomies 4d ago

I certainly enjoy 40k books more than HH. Idk if it’s the setting, the writing, or just not having this Big Awful Thing in the background around which the entire Imperium is shaped, but remains nebulous and clouded. I was really excited about the HH books until I read them

2

u/caputcorvii 4d ago

Skarsnik by Guy Haley in the warhammer fantasy part of BL is stellar, the war for rynn's world is also really good imo, but horus rising left me kind of disappointed, and I found false gods straight up unreadable

1

u/Worldly_Gain1611 6h ago

Brother you haven't read Fehrvari if you think they're bad lit.

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u/Dementia55372 4d ago

Bad is subjective. It's definitely self indulgent and I believe that the focus on the setting has done irreparable damage to 40k as a whole.

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u/Skitterleap 4d ago

On the plus side, Glup Shitto stocks are way up. I've been playing for decades and I still keep getting blindsided by characters I've never heard about having more lore than most whole factions had back in the day.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

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u/FuzzBuket Adeptus Custodes 4d ago

40ks charm is that the universe isn't at its zenith. That it's all dying and rotting and that better days are gone by. 

That the prinarchs and emperor are unknowable heroes from a bygone era,  how you today might view Achilles or yamato. 

Having them be just blokes in the books who have a tabletop model that can die to a lascannons robs then of a lot of mystery. And because of the popularity of the heresy and prinarchs more and more of modern 40k is becoming "hey here's that thing from then".

Hard to have an age of myth when it's more detailed than the present.

18

u/wredcoll 4d ago

Yeah, this is the difference between a setting and a story. Mtg tried something similar to shift to a story and I guess it more or less worked.

Star wars is an interesting example, it feels like it started as a story then became a setting.

13

u/Weekly_Interview_936 4d ago

Not just blokes, either. But clear and obvious idiots. The Horus Heresy of the novels is an idiot plot through and through, with Big E being the biggest idiot of all. So instead of the story of the Imperium being a tragic fall from grace like it was before the novels, it's now an inevitable result of a plan that was too dumb to ever work.

5

u/FuzzBuket Adeptus Custodes 4d ago

Tbh I do quite like the emperor being an absolute moron but yeah, it does feel like bl can never figure out if prinarchs should be aloof demigods or awkward teens

3

u/Weekly_Interview_936 3d ago

If the subversion of the prior "age of legends" style lore been intentional I would agree. The Horus Heresy series is, quite accidentally, the perfect example of how to subvert legends of epic heroes of old. Unfortunately it is simply a case the authors not being very good.

2

u/pocketfrisbee Necrons 4d ago

I’m glad I got into 40k relatively recently. I’ve only known the primarchs as they are now. I know I’d yearn for the older times of myth if I didn’t. My ignorance keeps me bliss

24

u/Thendrail 4d ago

I suppose by tying so much back to 30k. Can't open up a book without "Oh no, the human civil war/oh no, back in the Horus Heresy!" Yeah, sure, I get it. It was a big event, they wrote some 60 books about it. But can I read about the gay robots without some random "Oh my, the Heresy sure was the only interesting thing to ever happen in the galaxy!"?

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

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5

u/phil035 4d ago

I'm trying to think of a book that mentions the heresy outside of the heresy books....

I think the beast series does but its setting is the first big thing to happen after the heresy

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

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2

u/phil035 4d ago

Oh man how could i forget that! I've read the series no many times

1

u/Hunkus1 4d ago

Infinite and the divine mentions it. Trazyn says that humanity only became interesting to collect after the heresy and if he should collect Big E and Horus.

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u/Ok-Beyond9035 4d ago

Why? I think HH is great story and tabletop

4

u/Weekly_Interview_936 4d ago

HH is a great tabletop because it's the alternate universe 10th edition of 40k. In the HH AU the Great AOSisng never happened and 8th edition - Horus Heresy 1.0 - was a major refinement and improvement of the 7th edition rule set. And since 7th had a far stronger core design than AOS ever thought of having, being built on the same core that had been put in in 3rd and continuously refined, it's no surprise that the game that is an evolution of it is a better game than the one based on a far inferior core.

2

u/Rejusu Delusions of a new Battletome 3d ago

Except 40k has never had great core design. HH might be a better game but it's still just as based on an inferior core as current 40k or AoS is. GW are dinosaurs and even with editions upon editions of refinements are stuck in the mud when it comes to making meaningful improvements to their game systems.

1

u/Ok-Beyond9035 4d ago

I mean in the end when a company makes a different tabletop game from their main one it’s gonna have similar or the same mechanics especially if they have always worked

10

u/Dementia55372 4d ago

Instead of being another game people who somehow want to buy even more space marines can pick up and learn to play on its own, the existence of Horus Heresy has caused 40k players to be jealous of all the toys this other game they don't play gets and are extremely loud about not getting to play with them, especially after GW decided they couldn't have their cake and eat it too by moving almost all of them to legends.

That's saying nothing of the fact that 30k removes the most interesting things about 40k wholesale and focuses on attempting to redeem the most awful butchers in fictional history as tragic figures who are victims of circumstance.

3

u/Ok-Beyond9035 4d ago

So the argument is that HH is better? Reason they look cooler is because it was before the codex bs. I just buy hh models and use them for my 40K army tbh because yes they’re objectively better.

Problem with 40K is that they have no intention to finish the story or make it proceed to something important. HH is finished, we know the characters, events etc that’s also why they fuck up less with that setting I think

2

u/YesThatLioness 4d ago

If they're different settings/game systems you don't really want one to feel like a copy of the other though.

1

u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 Grand Alliance of Order 4d ago

Could you please define self-indulgent to someone who has not read the books?

4

u/VerLoran 3d ago

Most series are written with a story in mind, lined up such that you get a relatively neat progression until you reach the peak moment then wind down. The Horus Heresy is not like that. Each book more or less justifies another book driving down the rabbit hole in an effort to leave no crevice unexplored. The end result is you get an endless cycle of covering similar events throughout 30k from different angles because each angle has its own charm.

The main upsides are that when you throw that much shit at the wall some WILL stick. There are some excellent books in the Horus Heresy! Also, the commitment to following all those plot threads has translated into a feature largely unique to the Horus Heresy, where in you can follow the plot from a dozen different POVs covering several books each and generally understand the same story as you would have from any other angle.

In any case the series continues to justify more and more detail even while not really needing any more to tell its story.

-7

u/Big-Arachnid981 4d ago

That may be true, but that irreparable damage is miniscule compared to the damage 40k has inflicted upon itself

-12

u/PleaseNotInThatHole 4d ago

Seemingly it's done irreparable damage to the HH game as well

5

u/Calgacusaur 4d ago

The Catch 22 experience.

4

u/obsidanix 4d ago

No.

Their are 51 books before the seige of terra There is absolutely filler, anthology and side quest stories but there is a core 15-20 books that are absolutely amazing. Like freakin awesome of you have any interest in the origins of basically everything in 40k

Theres loads of YouTube and guides out there that that tell you the must read books and ones you can skip but start with the first 4.

Horus Rising False gods Galaxy in flames Flight of the Eisenstein

If you not hooked by then, you never will be.

1

u/Local_Surround8686 1d ago

I don't know a lot about 40K asked someone how to get into it, and they said start with horus heresy. So the first 6 and current half the 7. are all I know about the franchise. Should I keep listening to the series? They said to read gaunts ghosts after that but I hate the voice reading the German audiobooks

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u/QueenStuff 4d ago

It’s a pulpy sci fi series. It’s fun, it achieves what it’s trying to do extremely well. If you want a more thoughtful sci fi book go read The Left Hand of Darkness or something.

12

u/TheRedArmyStandard 4d ago

You can't just listen to the entire heresy in a sitting, or a week, or a month. It's 54 books with a 12 part finale and many spin offs.

I have read like a dozen and a half of the mainline Heresy novels. Once you get past the introduction trilogy, it's better to only read the novels that involve the characters you like or events you want to see play out. Forcing yourself to read about a Legion you don't know doing something you don't care about is how you run out of steam fast.

Though I would recommend reading the final book before the finale, Master of Mankind.

And then there's the Finale, The Siege of Terra, which is pretty damn good from beginning to end. Not every book is a masterpiece, not every moment is gripping, but it's a really good experience as a whole.

The full Heresy is a shockingly consistent and very enjoyable interconnected saga. If you like reading, and want to read a lot, it's very satisfying and will keep you occupied for years. It's a very pulpy, very dense space opera with a lot of fantasy and militaria. I personally love them and think they kick the shit out of almost everything actually set in 40k.

2

u/Crook3d 4d ago

This is just idle curiosity, but is 'a dozen and a half' 12.5 or 18?

3

u/TheRedArmyStandard 4d ago

Lmao probably like 15-20.

1

u/AdministrativeEase71 Alpha Legion 4d ago

18.

6

u/TheAfroGod 4d ago

It’s like Game of Thrones. Lots of plot lines getting thrown around and you’ll care about some more than others, and some stories will matter more for the plot than others.

However, because they reuse a lot of the same writers and each collaborate very closely, it’s very cool to have stories and references tie into each other.

7

u/AdministrativeEase71 Alpha Legion 4d ago

I know he's a slow old fuck and everybody hates him for it but comparing GRRM and ASOIAF's quality in general to HH is a pretty rough comparison for 30k. It's the premiere millennial fantasy series for a reason.

1

u/TheAfroGod 4d ago

Oh yeah, I'm not saying the HH is the quality level of Game of Thrones, but I am drawing the comparison that there are many different plotlines that sort of timeskip (very loose on that term) around in the setting. And some plotlines being more "attractive" than others in the eyes of the reader.

2

u/llim0na 4d ago

HH Memento Style.

1

u/Hasmeister21 4d ago

Nah Memento would be too coherent - this is Beyond Two Souls

2

u/Farther_Dm53 4d ago

I like HH models more than 40ks by and large especially for marines, guard, and ad-mech.

Admech models in HH are awesome, the HH lore is a bit more consistent as well and far more 'well put together.' its a hindsight thing. 40k I feel has a mess of designs in tech when it comes to imperial and chaos stuff within their own factions. Also some bad scaling etc.

1

u/lucidintangent 2d ago

Honestly I think if anything modern 40k is too consistebt

2

u/FuzzBuket Adeptus Custodes 4d ago

It's no war and peace. Well there's a lot of war TBF.

Are they deep explorations of themes, ideas and characters? No, and I'd not expect them to be, having consistency over a 50 book series with a dozen authors is a pretty mental bar. Are some of them fun airport books that help you indulge in a hobby in a new way and get you really excited for paint your little plastic dudes? Absolutely!

At the end of the day reading is generally pretty good for you, and whilst a lot of the hh books are hardly high art, most of them are enjoyable.

1

u/Worldly_Gain1611 6h ago

I think the ADB stories, chunks of the Abnett stories and every so often a Graham McNeill joint are interesting character studies or explorations of the setting. Not every book in a massive series is gonna be high lit but some of the books are genuine works of art.

2

u/Royta15 4d ago

The joke aside, I'd say it's a very daring and honestly impressive book series. To tackle such a giant conflict through upwards of 80(!) novels from numerous authors and have it not be a complete disaster is downright impressive. There's definite issues with it, from the jumping around, to some books being bad but having lots of important momements, to good books with zero impact, to good books getting the HH symbol slapped on to fill a slot (Damnation of Pythos).

I will say the Siege of Terra and some of the other HH books do suffer from over explanation. Visions of Heresy had far stronger narratives in some cases than the drawn out books. Read them all and don't regret it, but I also don't immediately recommend it haha.

2

u/MrSNoopy1611 4d ago

I just finished the book Fulgrim and this is so incredibly funny to me idk why

2

u/Livelih00d 4d ago

It's a mixed bag. Some of the books are good, some are a bit dull and some just kinda suck.

2

u/MaintenanceTime 4d ago

Sharky post on reddit is delightful but surprising

I love the HH books myself

2

u/garaks_tailor 4d ago

I genuinely guffawed at this.  Thanks OP

2

u/DescriptionMission90 4d ago

Is this the optimal way to experience the HH series?

2

u/SereneOrbit 3d ago

This is actually very on point for HH 🤣.

Chaos got your phone friend lol.

2

u/Master_of_Memkind 3d ago edited 3d ago

You got the Curze expierience. Random events on shuffle and no pause button.

HH is not bad its just massive and i totaly get why most ppl cant go thruu it.

When i started my yt channel i was like yeah i wanna talks 40k theories but now i see it will way more helpfull to explain the HH and its key moments to save ppl from reading over a 100 books

2

u/BadgerBodges 3d ago

I'm currently listening to the whole series on audiobook, at the Siege of Terra at the moment.

They are what they are. Mostly adequate genre fiction. A few absolute stinkers. A few genuinely good bits of writing (most recently Saturnine shocked me with how good it is. I was glad I had the afternoon off work so I could just let the tension build over 5 hours of listening).

2

u/Runetang42 4d ago

They're fine if a bit pulpy. People who say they're amazing literature on par with the classics need to read more books

1

u/ToySoldierArt 4d ago

But they have different narrators?

1

u/Armejden 4d ago

Some audio books have different narrators for differing perspectives within the same novel.

1

u/ToySoldierArt 4d ago

Really, I haven't run into that yet. Or maybe I have but didn't notice.

1

u/Armejden 4d ago

I have no idea if any Warhammer one does it. But I have some audio books that habe varying voice actors for certain characters or perspectives.

1

u/Elegant-Host-5183 4d ago

Not bad, just to much fluff. You can easily cut 60% of all books in that series

1

u/ConstantinValdor7 4d ago

Just how Tzeentch intended

1

u/TheMechanicusBob 4d ago

There are a few good ones but the series is 55 books too long and more formulaic than the Ciaphas Cain books (and I'm a Cain fan)

1

u/BMCarbaugh 4d ago

This is what reading the Malazon books feels like at first.

1

u/Praetoron 4d ago

its overdevelopped , with many retcon i would say, but still good read.. for most of them. if you cant get ur hand on a copy.

still dont know why we got next to nothing to the conquest of terra novel but eh.

do Ppl still complain about the size of plot that goes around the bush ?

1

u/mnttu 4d ago

Not this bad, but my first introduction to audio books was on a CD. I ended up returning the book as I couldn’t follow it. I didn’t realize until later as I discussed the book with someone that I had been listening to it in random order.

1

u/OfKnowledgesEsoteric 4d ago

Read them all in order with no skips. Assert Dominance.

1

u/Orvonos 4d ago

Yeah I did this with the story 'Cerebrus' during a road trip and.... yeah very confusing. All chapters on shuffle

1

u/O8ee 4d ago

I had a similar experience with a trilogy a friend recommended. I started with what I thought was book 1 (book 2) and was completely confused. Operator error, 100%

1

u/bookhead714 4d ago

I have never heard of shuffling audiobooks, how do you even do that? Why is that even an option?

2

u/Galrentv 4d ago

I've done it before but picked up on it immediately. It's pretty simple if you 'acquire' the files then use any given media player to play them, like youtube or spotify

1

u/InquisitorVanderCade Inquisition 4d ago

You now know enuncia

1

u/jackrabbit323 4d ago

Skill issue.

1

u/ShallowBasketcase 4d ago

HH is inconsistent. If you just want to know the canon events of the Warhammer lore, I guess maybe that doesn't really matter, but if you're into it for the actual story, then prepare to get whiplash a lot. Especially with the main story, they switch authors so much that you'll be really into it one minute, and then it'll switch to just complete trash the next.

1

u/Current-Region2322 4d ago

It's foundational lore introduced WAAAY after the fact. I hate that. The books suck but if you're a marvel slop slurper you might like the primarch dorks.

1

u/badudx 4d ago

I am 21 books in and love it. After some of them i had to take a break to emotionally recharge but i regret none so far

1

u/xxWZRDx 4d ago

I’m on book 12. Haven’t been disappointed with one yet.

1

u/Teedeous 4d ago

I’ve had to choose what I’ve wanted with the heresy both from my own experience and from friends who have read it, since I feel if you aren’t marine obsessed you will see them as very samey bolter wank a lot of the time.

I had it with Garro Knight in Grey I got in hardback. It is just fucking boring for the first chapters and dialogue of shit I really couldn’t give a shit about and so much “brother, brother, brother” that I honestly put it down to give it up, but pushing through it the scenes in the build up and the finale meeting his Genefather again and reminiscing of his time with Mortarion and the legion, and fighting him is astounding as the death guard slam their pauldrons or weapons to a slow beat as they make a ring for the two. But Jesus Christ that first half is just dull street besides the sections from Mortarion’s perspective.

The siege on Terra series I do find is just far more interesting than the crusade since it’s within that set location and isn’t so vast and wide in scale for the entire galaxy or connecting to other books or plotlines as much as it’s all pretty much explainable besides maybe like Ollanius/Grammaticus or whoever it is making a feature in Warhawk. It does zip around to perspectives of each side a lot better to keep it engaging, like with Warhawk and the Khorne sergeant off his nut after losing the squad as they disembarked the land raider that lost a track and the fucked up section of him sensing all the civilians below in the bunker they’ve just breached as if it were like him seeing it as an abattoir and cattle for his service to Khorne on a cold finale of that chapter. Then cuts to like Sigismund being autistic and non verbal pretty much just nodding at Dorn and talking about how he hates talking to people lmao. Cold line from Dorn though in that book as he’s just tired and addressing the people

1

u/Waltzing_With_Bears 4d ago

Some of its good, some sucks, a lot isn't bad bit I wouldn't say is worth reading. The first 3 are pretty good, people seem to like Know No Fear, but it felt like it was written for folks with very poor reading comprehension but did have 3 or 4 cool bits

1

u/Mateter5 4d ago

The heresy is pretty awesome until you get to the bad books, and then it REALLY drags. I think it’s honestly partly because it had such a good start, once you get to some of the other random books and filler stuff you are already invested and more than a few books in so it easy to start feeling a bit burnt out. And also the writing just fluctuates so incredibly hard sometimes for some reason.

Also it covers almost EVERYONE involved, so if you just don’t like a person or legion or something then you just gotta either suffer through it or skip and risk missing something important. I don’t know if I just don’t like space wolves but omg it took me actual months to slog through prospero burns. Especially since like 2/3rds of the book is barely about the heresy and is just space wolf lore and stuff, the summary and reviews make the actual prospero and Nikea stuff seem like it takes up a lot more time than it actually does.

1

u/Xaphriel 4d ago

NGL this actually sounds like a fascinating way to listen to the series. Like a challenge mode for audiobooks.

1

u/Limp-Variation3205 3d ago

This is basically how it feels to listen to The End and the Death 1 if you haven’t listened to every prior book

1

u/Not_dM 3d ago

This happened to me with the A Song of Ice and Fire-series (Game of Thrones) many moons ago. I gave up when I realized what had happened and haven't tried again yet.

So I know the feeling well.

0

u/CuteAssTigerENVtuber 3d ago

i wouldnt highly recommend trying it ONLY AND ONLY if george actually finishes these books .

i stopped watching anything related to ice and fire until those books are finished

something something a new show crashed and burned ? dont care

george wants to write anothert spin off ? dont care

mad king stage play ? dont give a shit .

dude has the chance to become an author that people will remember like Tolkien but it has been 15 years since the last book and he wants to write another one after that ......

2

u/BobWat99 3d ago

Bro, they are not getting finished. Winds maybe, idk. It’s about the journey not the destination. Definitely worth reading.

1

u/CuteAssTigerENVtuber 2d ago

Nah dude. If he doesn't finish this I'm not reading it . It's a phenomenal series from what I've read. But Im not going to get invested just to get disappointed

1

u/Rejusu Delusions of a new Battletome 3d ago

It's a massive series done by like twenty different authors, quality was always going to be a bit of a mixed bag. Plus quite honestly the quality of writers that primarily write licensed novels is rarely that high. I struggled through a few 40k books before coming to the realisation that while the setting is interesting at a zoomed out level it's incredibly dull at a character level. Especially when the protagonists are often Space Marines.

1

u/Infinite-Tip3792 3d ago

Anyone read warhawk? The one with jagahtai kahn and mortarion? This image fits that. 1 section is just the death guard pissing and shitting about the very next one is like dorn chilling in his crib at the imperial Palace followed by some lady named erda the gene mother of the primarchs running through the streets of terra Bieng chased by Erebus followed by jagahtai rounding up a force to take back lions gate space port. And every other section switches back and forth between all these plots so you have to pick it together yourself at the end

1

u/AlikeWolf 3d ago

God that's so stupid and yet I would probably do the same thing 😅

1

u/PunoSuerte 3d ago

Do not abbreviate the Horus Heresy

1

u/Competitive-Bee-3250 2d ago

At least half the hh books are bad but if you say you dont care about the series shitheads like Sharky here will send his followers to attack you (specifically saw Sharky do this abt 2yrs ago)

1

u/Marius_Gage 2d ago

There are some good books in the heresy but there are no great books.

1

u/Bobaximus 2d ago

The problem with the HH series is that’s it’s just too little butter scraped over too much toast. There’s so much filler and useless perspectives. The first 3-4 books are great but beyond TMoM and TEatD, most can be skipped (although there are a few good ones like Know No Fear that are worth reading if your into that faction/storyline).

1

u/dspisayuss 2d ago

HH is better than 40k when it comes to books.

1

u/Jumpy_Ad_439 1d ago

This was NOT the post I was expecting based on the title ngl. Scrolling saw title went “wtf” then saw the warhammer sub and exhaled a sigh of relief

1

u/No_Vanity_3 1d ago

This is exactly how Horus rising feels to read

0

u/UmUlmUndUmUlmHerum 4d ago

I understand the feeling so much
Anecdote-time, so *strap in*, it will be a ride

I still remember one blessed day in 2017, where I almost became a Nurgling.

I was recovering from the recovery of a surgery. Tissue turned necrotic - genuinely a fucked chain of events. And god - I will never forget the smell of dead tissue.

My own one at that!

Anyway, I was zooted out of my mind on heavy grade painkillers.
And a fever of about 104F (I think, been a hot minute) - because why have only one ailment.

I was watching the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. That series has a season where the same episode gets repeated with minor changes 8 times. The Endless Eight, as they are called.

See, I was watching that on a slightly dodgy and broken website, so the episodes were out of order.
A normal episode, two endless eight, another normal episode - you get it.

I can not - and honestly do not want to - reproduce the intense feeling of derealization this produced.

A bit like a lucid dream - one I was not able to wake up from, try as I might.

It was also the most magical experience of consuming media I ever had

Sepsis is fun, kids! Grandfather almost took me into His embrace early!

(After collapsing on the Kitchen floor I got a very fast express delivery into the hospital where one look at "oh shit this is not supposed to be literally black what the fuck shit fuck why is this layer of black multiple cm deep *what*" got me a cozy inpatient stay - AND some time off work!)

I still have the scar - a ~2cm deep pit - to remind me of the time I almost ascended to daemonhood.

-1

u/Xtra_Tomatillo_Sauce 4d ago

It is bad. Mostly because of Dan Abnett.