27Mar23 – Warhammer books and videos for your deep diving pleasure

Evening all, I hope everyone is doing well, I am currently on vacation 189 miles south of BC Dicks bowling alley in Manson WA.  Heading to Walla Walla on Friday.  Since I am on vacation and doing A LOT of reading – 6 books since last Friday I thought I would share some of my favorite Warhammer books – audio and print, and my favorite youtube channels for all things Warhammer.  Remember folks, Games Workshop owns the rights to all things Warhammer – miniatures, stories, books, movies, your random thoughts that may tagentially be related to Warhammer, and idle speculation about Warhammer.

As I have mentioned before the lore of Warhammer is deep, it is basically a black hole disguised as a rabbit hole.  There are a ton of books, short stories, and novellas that have been published, at first by Dwarf Magazine and now by The Black Library which is Games Workshop’s publishing arm.  When I said they own everything, I mean EVERYTHING including their own publishing company.  Stalin would be jealous of the level of control they exercise.

Well on to the books:

Of course you have your books about the history of the War40k ‘verse but you also now have murder mysteries, thrillers, and even some slight comedy.  Going to start with what is considered on the best series ever written about the Imperial Guard – Gaunt’s Ghosts.

It covers an Imperial Guard regiment that was being created and shipping off world when their world was attacked and destroyed, but not before Commisar Gaunt and his unit escape.  As the Tanith one and only they fight the enemies of the Empire while trying to keep themseleves alive and also try to keep the memory of their lost world alive.  Lots of action, some political maneuvering, but mainly a really good story with some great characters.

Next, I remember my post about the assassins of War40k was well received, so the next book is:

Three assasins, each from a different temple, have to work together to derail an attempt by a system to secede from the Empire, the issue is, the system trying to secede is very important to the defense of that part of the galaxy due to their use of Knights which are large mecha, not Titan sized, but more like Gundum sized.  So you have a thriller with assassins, political intrigue, and giant fighting robots.  Kinda up Senor Weaselo’s alley.

Want to know about the Inqusitions greatest member and enemy, got you covered:

Gives insight into how the Inqusition works, been a long time since I read it, but was, as I remember, a really good read.

Next up is a War40k murder mystery, which for some reason makes me think of Hercule Poirot as a Mechanicus priest with lots of augments, especially a laser firing mustache.

I have not gotten deep into this one yet, but really like how it portrays the life of more average people, not the heroes or villains of the War40k ‘verse, but more of the day to day life of the drudges and mid-level administrators.  I have it as an audiobook so I have less time to get into unlike a book.

Now for my absolute favorite of all the War40k books, the Commisar Cain:

I am not sure how many of you are aquainted with the Flashman novels of George McDonald Fraser, but Sandy Mitchell has done these Commissar Cain books as an homage to Fraser.  Cain is a self-professed coward who always tries to stay safe, but the Emperor seems to be twisting fate to throw him into dangerous situations, one after another, where he come out on top and earns an Imperium wide repuatation as a hero and extremely brave man.  He does work hard for his cowardlyness, becoming extremely handy with las pistol and chainsword, and working hard to make his subordinates as effective as possible, so he at least has a competent meat shield around him.  The stories are annotaited by his Inquisitorial lover who brings the outside worlds view of Cain to life and explains a lot of what is going on the wider theatre of war.  He fights every single foe the Empire has – Tau, Orks, Eldar, Dark Eldar, Necrons, Tyranids, Chaos warriors, Chaos cults, Chaos Demons, the body odor of his adjunct, you know everything offensive to the Empire.  Lots of fun, there are 10 books, a lot of novellas and short stories as well.

This post has gotten a lot longer than I expected, BTW, I am not shilling for Amazon, but they had the book covers and the easiest way to get the books.  And this as I said this was a very small sample of what is out there, want to know the full story of the Horus Heresey?  There is a series for that.  Want to know about all the major campaigns?  There is a series for that.  There are series based on the Tau, on the Orks, on the Necrons.  It is amazing, I think Amazon alone has over 400 books based on War40k.

I will cover the youtube channels next week as I am still on vacation.  Happy reading, and do thing about reading some of the ones I have mentioned, particularly the Cain books, I found them so much fun.