When you're the type of person who commits. (xpost, because the Factorio joke inspired me)

I got lost in the 40k wiki for a bit. I've tried reading the books a few times. They weren't bad , just not great. Awesome world building, mediocre story telling. Thus far...

I played a small bit in the late 90s, it was fun chilling with my roommate and painting miniatures. Think I spent more time painting than playing though. They never lookrd great but was space marines in red with yellow accents, the odd things you still remember a 1/4 decade later.

I know a lot of the lore but I honestly couldn't tell you anything about the twin Primarchs Alpharius and Omegon nor their Alpha Legion.

Just as planned.

Flight of the Eisenstein is pretty good too. But... none of the HH books have ever really grabbed me. 40k has some truly good pieces of science fiction (The Infinite and The Divine (probably the best warhammer book, I don't even think that's a contentious claim), Ruin/Reign, Flesh & Steel, Assassinorum: Kingmaker), but I was always kinda underwhelmed by the 30k stuff... idk what it was. Maybe the inevitability of the setting?

Not Horus Heresy, but I've also been having fun with the Fabius Bile Omnibus by Josh Reynolds and The Night Lords Omnibus by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. In general, heretic novels, at least the ones I've read, have a higher quality on average than the loyalist ones. Xenos ones can be fun too, Infinite and Divine, Twice Dead King, Ghazghkull Thraka, and Brutal Kunnin' were all fun. The best loyalist one I've found so far was The Fall of Cadia, but even that's mostly just big good guy shoots big gun at big bad guy. Might as well read Ork books at that point, they're at least having fun. Actually, that's not quite right, The Great Work is also a good loyalist one, although I'd have preferred more Cawl and less Primaris Marines.

Yeah, I don't remember the specific books but there is a specific thing that I thought was brilliant. One book follows an Astartes that starts to suspect heresy in their ship and he escapes it, he approaches another ship and recognizes the Astartes on the other end of the radio and confides in him about his suspicion and he lets him onboard. Then in another book you follow the story of that other Astartes, who starts to suspect heresy in the fleet and when the radio call comes it confirms his suspicions.

Not the greatest thing ever, but it was a cool thing that I don't think I've seen any other book series do something similar.

This is just the Horus Heresy, there are WAY more books

60+? 70? I don't even remember

42 in the image, 65 in the series. I think the whole of the 30k/40k universe is up to more than 300 books now though, it's insane.

It's pretty silly but that is exactly what makes Warhammer 40K entertaining.

I'm the opposite. Life is too short for bad books. If I'm not into a book within the first few chapters, I drop it.

I was getting into Warhammer 40k lore on YouTube and tried the first Horus Heresy book. I noped right out of there. I read the Sun Eater series instead, and I'm so glad I did.

I too have always been a slow reader, so i cheat. I throw epubs into a reader that uses Google tts as a form of audio book. I typically go through about a book aday now. Definitely a learning curve since i have to teach it to pronounce certain words differently. But after a few years it has me having read over 1500 books. And that does not include rereads.

The first five or six books of The Horus Heresy are fantastic IMO. After that it's a lot of hit and miss titles, and a load of short stories which also vary in quality.

I may be skewed because I've been into warhammer for more two thirds of my life though.

Just like in the practice cages

Ravenor is so much fun!

Granted, covid was a big part, but there are more than 30 seasons of NCIS across all the series and I’ve seen every damn one of them. Are they good? No