Looking for advice on Indomitus series and recent books

[welshrat]

Looking for advice on the recent Dark imperium/ Guilliman era. Ive read devastation of Baal and the two Dark Imperium novels but i know things have recently changed. Just wondering how all the newer novels fit in,are they the same series or set during the same time frame. Specifically im thinking of buying.Hope someone can help

 

The Hollow Mountain

Watchers of the Throne ( i read the previous one)

 

Indomitus by Gav Thorpe

Knights of Maccarge

Dawn of fire Avenging son

Epharael sturn

Fist of the Imperium

 

Mephiston Revenant Crusade

Darkness in blood

City of Light

 

 

Also considering

The infinite and the Devine (as i like Trazyn as a character)

Brutal Kunin (just because its a like the above a differing point of view)

[aa.logan]

Short version- swerve Indomitus. Hard.

 

Hollow Mountain and Watchers? Absolutely read.

 

Avenging Son? If you’re wanting to keep up to date, absolutely read.

 

The Infinite and the Divine is also a must-read, and Brutal Kunning is fun so should be in your queue but maybe not as high as those above.

 

The Darkness in the Blood is the weakest of Hayley’s BA works, but worth your time, but like the ork book, less pressingly.

 

I’ve not read the rest, I’m afraid.

Edited January 28, 2021 by aa.logan

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

I have to second aa.logan on this. Indomitus is superfluous - the one impact it would have had on the overall metaplot (the discovery of the "stilling" in the Nexus area) has already been overwritten by at least one subsequent GW publication and may be doubly irrelevant if a plot thread from Avenging Son is followed up on.

 

One thing I would add is that if you haven't read the Carrion Throne, I'd definitely go ahead and do that before you read Hollow Mountain. Maybe you already have and that's why you didn't mention it, but it's really important if you want to be able to follow the Hollow Mountain story. In between you may want to check the Interrogation of Salvor Lermentov audio drama as it follows on directly from The Carrion Throne, but it's not essential (you can get the jist of what happened from the early chapters of The Hollow Mountain).

 

Avenging Son is about as essential as it gets in the new revised chronology. I'd read that one just before The Regent's Shadow.

[welshrat]

Thanks for the replies. I know there was a slight change made to the timeline but have been out of the loop for a bit. I think ill read some and skip others as per the advice. Are there any essential must reads from the last year that ive missed. What i mean by this are there any really well written stories i havent covered and that are worth a punt. thanks

[aa.logan]

40k and published in 2020?

 

The only glaring omission from your list is the Warhammer Crime imprint; some folk weren’t fully enamoured with the anthology, but I loved it and the two novels were even better.

 

The 3rd Fabius Bile book was also published, but if you read that out of sequence you’ll be doing it an injustice, so there’s those to consider also.

 

If you’re inclined to expand it a bit further, the Necromunda novel Road to Redemption is well worth your time too.

[R_F_D]

Looking for advice on the recent Dark imperium/ Guilliman era. Ive read devastation of Baal and the two Dark Imperium novels but i know things have recently changed. Just wondering how all the newer novels fit in,are they the same series or set during the same time frame. Specifically im thinking of buying.Hope someone can help

 

The Hollow Mountain

Watchers of the Throne ( i read the previous one)

 

Indomitus by Gav Thorpe

Knights of Maccarge

Dawn of fire Avenging son

Epharael sturn

Fist of the Imperium

 

Mephiston Revenant Crusade

Darkness in blood

City of Light

 

 

Also considering

The infinite and the Devine (as i like Trazyn as a character)

Brutal Kunin (just because its a like the above a differing point of view)

 

The Track of Words review site has done a "current 40k" timeline here: https://www.trackofwords.com/2021/01/10/black-library-new-40k-reading-list/

They've also written reviews for a fair number of the books above.

[Plasmablasts]

Can add:

Spear of the Emperor (which is set in Imperium Nihilus)

Bellisarius Cawl: The Great Work (fills in some of the back story for one of the prime actors in the new era)

 

The Warhammer Crime novels are good for a feel of day-to-day life in the Era Indomitus and very good in themselves.

 

Otherwise, I can support the recommendations for the Vaults of Terra and Watchers of the Throne series and for The Avenging Son.

 

P.S. With the exception of Spear of the Emperor, by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, all the novels/series I’ve mentioned are by either Guy Haley or Chris Wraight. Verily, they are the two-headed Aquila of new era 40k fiction.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Plasmablasts

[welshrat]

Thanks very muvh apreciate thre replies. Love track of words read all the reviews and interviews/ Not sure how i missed this update though. Thanks everyone

[Karhedron]

I will second Belesarius Cawl: The Great Work as being a generally fun read. Cawl was something of a McGuffin in the fluff but Haley has taken him and turned him into a genuinely interesting character. He is brilliant, eccentric and massively egotistical but this book shows he has reasons for being all 3 of those things.

 

The book stands alone works better if you have read Haley's HH novels "Dying of the Light" (which establishes the existence of the Pharos on Sotha) and Wolfsbane (which introduces Cawl in his early days in the Mechanicum).

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

Both Spear and The Great Work are excellent reads, but I'm wondering if they'll still fit in with the timeline after the readjustment. Spear is set over a century post-Rift and really needs to be quite a ways into the future to allow time for the situation in the Veil to deteriorate so far after a protracted period of isolation from Imperium Sanctus. And The Great Work also denotes a century going by since the Scythes had to flee Sotha, but is also set in between Plague War and Godblight, the latter of which now presumably will also happen around 12 years post-Rift rather than 112. There again, twelve years would be a very short time for the Scythes chapter to be ground down to the handful of Firstborn that were left when that novel started. Even twenty years or so post-Sotha, they should have had a much larger standing force of Firstborn and they'd also have gotten an infusion of Primaris much larger than the small batch left in The Great Work who had presumably been ground down by fighting for over a century in the Indomitus Crusade.

 

Granted, a lot of stories published since 2017 are going to require some mental editing to work with the new timeline. Spear will be fine IF GW decides to maintain the narrative that the Indomitus Crusade went on for a century and that stories set over a hundred years after the Dark Imperium trilogy are still valid. But if they enact a new policy of constricting the timeline to just a couple of decades post-Rift and not confirming or denying anything much after that, then Spear could be in danger canonically, which would be a shame. Then again, given how successful the first novel was, maybe they'd consider doing a "Legends" release of the followup books as originally envisioned by ADB with an explanation that they may or may not actually fit with the new canon.

 

Either way, The Great Work is going to need some work to fit into the new timeline no matter where they decide it takes place.

[RedFurioso]

then Spear could be in danger canonically

Why? Time passes regardless of the Indomitus Crusade timeline. People will exist 100 years after the birth of the Great Rift, events will happen anyway, it's inevitable.

Besides, the Crusade was mentioned in the novel only briefly.

[DarkChaplain]

Considering that Baal was besieged for a relatively short time in terms of the actual war, yet the Great Rift was super recent to them despite Guilliman having gone through the Indomitus Crusade for many decades already, and breached the Rift to reach Imperium Nihilus at last... I don't think Spear is in any trouble whatsoever. Subjective time in Imperium Nihilus is screwed enough out of the box.

[SkimaskMohawk]

Stern is terrible in the sense of what it does as a book continuing an arc, and what it does as a for the meta-plot

[Lord Nord in Gravis Armour]

 

then Spear could be in danger canonically

Why? Time passes regardless of the Indomitus Crusade timeline. People will exist 100 years after the birth of the Great Rift, events will happen anyway, it's inevitable.

Besides, the Crusade was mentioned in the novel only briefly.

 

 

I answered that in the first part of the sentence which you snipped from your quote.

 

Maybe next time slow down and actually read what you're in such a hurry to disagree with.

Edited February 3, 2021 by Lord Nord

[DarkChaplain]

Honestly, all they need to do is print up to date timelines in Dark Imperium's reprints and Godblight, and possibly Space Marine Conquests. Sorta like what Star Wars used to do way back when.

 

They can even do this retroactively for ebook versions (and also adjust the numbers, though they haven't done that even for the Heresy), and the print copies are either out of print (hardbacks) or soon to be (paperbacks), if available at all at this point.

 

I feel like the clarification is more relevant on the meta-level looking at their releases, rather than in-universe, where various explanations already exist for this kind of thing (i.e. The Warp did it!)

 

....of course, none of this will happen, because it'd require them to continuously support the timeline with future releases. They could easily roll this into the backlist section for 40k books - something they occasionally update - but they won't. And we all know how quick BL is to abandon timelines and lists even on their own website, where they want to directly sell you their products.....

Edited February 3, 2021 by DarkChaplain

[RedFurioso]

 

 

then Spear could be in danger canonically

Why? Time passes regardless of the Indomitus Crusade timeline. People will exist 100 years after the birth of the Great Rift, events will happen anyway, it's inevitable.

Besides, the Crusade was mentioned in the novel only briefly.

 

 

I answered that in the first part of the sentence which you snipped from your quote.

 

Maybe next time slow down and actually read what you're in such a hurry to disagree with.

 

You missed my point.

 

Even if GW will "enact a new policy of constricting the timeline to just a couple of decades post-Rift", it doesn't mean that everything that happens after will be non-canon. Obviously something will occur in M45, M90 an so on, unless the Milky Way Galaxy will disappear suddenly.

[DarkChaplain]

On top of that, isn't the only thing the timeline retcon really did the moving of the Plague Wars to 12 years in, without actually ending the Indomitus Crusade itself?

 

We'll simply have to wait and see what they actually change beyond the numbers, come the revised editions of Dark Imperium and Plague War. Instead of celebrating an end to the Indomitus Crusade in Dark Imperium, we might just have Roboute celebrate its success during the hottest phase of it all, re-establishing communication with Imperium Nihilus etc, culminating in his departure for Ultramar to set things right there.

 

Considering that the timeline itself has been wonky for years, with all those campaign supplements being unclear in when they're even set, we're probably just going to see a reshuffling of events. Psychic Awakening as a whole has been very badly conveyed narratively in this regard. This way, Calgar won't be sitting on Ultramar for a CENTURY without crossing the Rubicon, same with Uriel Ventris (who also wasn't Primaris in Dark Imperium). Calgar gets the upgrade after Vigilus(?), Ventris gets it in a short story in preparation for the upcoming novel - which will undoubtedly have some information on the timeline as well, seeing as it deals with the Ultramarines' long-time novel hero.

[cheywood]

While the retcon might make small aspects of various past works problematic, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about on the whole for future works. ADB’s dealt with this kind of change before, when the amount of time that Talos’ and co. had experienced since the Siege went from, I believe, 100 years to a few hundred years. I can’t recall much in the way of complaint about that. I don’t see why this should be any different. Edited February 3, 2021 by cheywood