Book Bunker

The Beard Bunker is all about narrative wargaming.  But the games we play ourselves are not the only source of 40k narrative, GW has been making major bank from our collective narrative thirst for decades in the from of Black Library publishing.  That said, and don’t tell my teenage self this, but a lot of what they publish isn’t actually that good.  I think my teenage self and people like me are pretty much their core audience, nerds with more enthusiasm than taste.  A lot of what BL publish can be summed up as “Bolter Porn”, i.e. exciting descriptions of battles and gunfire and big damn heroes gurning and killing aliens.  Unfortunately it is, in my opinion, not actually all that interesting.  Once you’ve read a few you’ve read them all.

Contrawise, BL do have some extremely good authors working for them, as well as some decently mediocre, and have published some really excellent books.  The problem of course is always sorting the wheat from the chaff.  With that in mind, I’d like to talk about some of the gems of the Black Library catalogue.

The Infinite and the Divine, Robert Rath

Tom: “In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.”  Sure, fine, but what if, set against that background of cosmic conflict, we have a charming story about two ancient bickering academics, whose goals have nothing to do with conquest and destruction, and who treat unleashing their legions of undying soldiers as a tiresome chore or, occasionally, a hilarious prank?

The Infinite and the Divine is a story about Trazyn the Infinite, collector of antiquities, and his frenemy Orikan The Diviner, astromancer extraordinaire, and is hands down my favourite 40k book ever.  I created an entire Necron army because of this book.  A strongly character-focussed book, it gives you a taste into their immortal lives and the process (and horrors) of biotransferrance, as well as their ongoing struggles with the bureaucracy of the Necron empire, whilst being generally upbeat and painfully funny.  What it doesn't do is give you a good view of a standard Necron Overlord.  For a look at a more typical Necron stuff, I can also recommend the less-good-but-still-good Twice Dead King duology.

Image Credit: Black Library, used without permission for illustrative purposes only.

Warboss, Mike Brooks

Charlie: Brutal Kunnin was the first book I read by Mike Brooks, and reading it resulted in my reading more books by him. He gets Orks on a fundamental level, and so the humour and ultraviolence both flow very naturally. Brooks’ prose is solid without drawing attention to itself, which sounds workmanlike but is actually one of the twin zeniths of writerly accomplishment. Prose is a lot like special effects in films: if it’s extremely good, you either don’t notice it, or are blown away by it. Brooks is strong in the former camp, and I mean this as high praise, particularly given that the creative direction of the Black Library is not one that leaves a lot of room for, shall we say, serious literature.

The execution here isn’t flawless (what is?). The main niggle I had was the vehicle names. Whether it was the editors or Brooks himself, there’s a fastidious tendency to use full product names in a way that’s quite jarring (I can’t imagine Orks saying all of ‘Boomdakka Snazzwagon’ every time). I also suspect this is not a good entry point into 40K fiction, and honestly I’m unsure what is, but I think this book is an excellent entry point into Orks as a faction. The central premise is simple: the Orks are invading a planet, and the Warboss dies in a freak accident, causing an immediate and hilarious power vacuum. It’s a simple and iconic Ork problem to have, and honestly I don’t know if I’ll ever tire of reading about the way Brooks describes the pragmatic, cunning, and casually violent ways Orks go about solving problems. If you find Orks amusing on a conceptual level, I’m confident you’ll have fun here. 

Of all Brooks’ books about the Orks, and they’re all worth a read, I’ve suggested this one because I think it’s the most klassik setup. If you prefer the idea of a peek at an extra faction while reading about ultraviolent space mushrooms, then Brutal Kunnin gives you a view of the internecine nonsense of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and Da Big Dakka offers an enjoyably presented glimpse at the lives of the Drukhari.

Image Credit: Black Library, used without permission for illustrative purposes only.

Gaunt’s Ghosts, Dan Abnett

Jeff: If you like the fact that 40k has more texture to it than just the various weapons the characters hold, you can mostly thank Dan Abnett for that and it’s the main reason I love his books. Way back when in early Black Library days he was the only one really writing details of relatively normal life in the 41st millenium and it’s bled out into the entire canon now. Gaunt’s Ghosts was what started that whole trend, a lovely deep immersion into the daily life of a fairly atypical Guard regiment and a very unusual commissar. There’s a ton of these and while the quality varies and Dan - like all black library authors - has his whoopsies as a writer, I would recommend the series in a heartbeat to anyone who likes 40k at all. If I had to describe it to a non-40k reader it’d be Sharpe meets Band of Brothers with demons. 

Opinion differs on where to start the series. I’m in the camp that it is worth reading the first two, but they are compilations of stories from an old magazine, where I first read them, called Inferno (that was kind of what started Black Library in the first place). As a result they have that problem of either a short story collection where you don’t feel you can get your teeth into it properly or the Dickensian weirdness of sort of seeing where the stitches are binding the stories together into a novel. That all changes in Necropolis. The first full length Ghosts book and probably what I’d throw at new readers. But that’s not what I’m going to write about here, Necropolis was when I realised something good was happening here, but Guns of Tanith was where I fell in love. 

Guns of Tanith is where he’s really hit his stride with the Ghosts. You’ve got everything: tense horrible zip-line deployments in the dark; storming an enemy held city in the clouds; the first up close look at the Blood Pact (Chaos Guard); air combat action; and a small unit infiltration through enemy territory. It’s the first book that really looked at what society would look like once Chaos took over, how would it work, and I love it for that too. This is a recurring theme in the later books and really adds texture to the normal view of Chaos as “oops all thoughtless fanatics”. Guns of Tanith is savage, (there’s not a lot of plot armour in the Ghosts), bleak in places, and genuinely inspires me to wargame the themes, which is kind of how I rate a 40k book anyway!

Image Credit: Black Library, used without permission for illustrative purposes only.

Fifteen Hours, Mitchel Scanlon

Drew: Having tried (and bounced off) a number of black library titles, 15 Hours was recommended to me on the sole premise that it would do me serious emotional damage. 

It did. And I was thrilled. 

15 Hours tells the story of 17 year-old Arvin Larn and his fellow recruits, as they are conscripted from their agriworld into the Astra Militarum. It follows their journey from home, through basic training, and into their first theatre of war. The novel is named for the length of time a new recruit is expected to survive, a bit that started in this book and has permeated into common Ham’ parlance, which tells you everything you need to know about the outlook of this novella. It is a heartbreaking, character focused look at the Imperial war machine, and all those who are crushed beneath it: All Quiet on the Western Front walked so 15 Hours could trot gamely alongside it, like a nerdy younger brother. 

Our tentative (but devout) farm boy is absolutely the main character, but the book is packed with beautifully written side characters. Some kind, some cruel, but all of them just trying to make it through the day. I typically struggle to stay attentive with action scenes in written form, but here it never posed a problem as I was so invested in the journey of our terrified ‘new fish’. The Orks prove to be an excellent foe, and I think Scanlon creates one of the more genuinely frightening presentations of greenskins within 40k. 

It’s a gritty, realistic take on what the life of a soldier in the grim dark future might entail. The book touches on the mundanely callous use of life within the Imperial regime, and on the immense bravery, and often cowardice, of those it affects. It is packed with humanity, black humour, and (crucially) is relatively short, making it an excellent entry point to the setting. 

Gaunt’s Ghost is about the heroes, but 15 Hours is about everyone else, and by the Emperor: it is good.

Image Credit: Black Library, used without permission for illustrative purposes only.

Ciaphas Cain, Alex Stewart

Tom: If Gaunts Ghosts is Band of Brothers for 40k, Ciaphas Cain is perhaps 40k’s closest equivalent to Black Adder, with Gunner First Class Ferik Jurgen as his grubby but loyal Baldrick-like assistant.  The series is largely light hearted and social, with moments of action and adventure.  Whilst Cain is part of the Imperial Guard, his role as Commissar often has him engaging in more interesting missions than simply fighting on the front lines, and you get a real tour of the various institutions and enemies of the Imperium. 

Ciaphas Cain is a commissar and decorated hero of the Imperium.  The novels are presented as his secret personal journals, wherein he reveals the truth that he was in fact a self-centred and cowardly man.  As an added layer, these journals have been gathered by Inquisitor Vail, his sometime employer and occasional lover, and prepared for dissemination amongst her fellow Inquisitors, with added footnotes and additions, who presents a more balanced view of Cain as a sensible but genuinely brave and sometimes heroic man. It’s a charming mix.  Also worth noting the covers are considered Imperial propaganda, Cain himself points out that the artwork of him generally depicts him with a bolt pistol despite the fact he always uses his trusty laspistol.

Curiously, despite the first book being written as recently as 2003, a lot of the early books have quite a lot of archaic Warhammer lore that has been retconned updated, such as Orks using boltguns and Adeptus Mechanicus wearing white robes.  Also for anyone remotely familiar with the setting, Cain is charmingly and appropriately ignorant.  He refers to T’au battlesuits as “some kind of flying dreadnought” and stereotypes all Eldar (Aeldari) as pirates.  As a point against, they can get a little samey in places.  

As there are 11 novels and 10 short stories, but the book order is not chronological, Vail picks stories from all over his career.  I would recommend starting with the “Shadowlight trilogy” of ‘Death or Glory’, ‘Duty Calls’ and ‘Cain’s Last Stand’ (books 4, 5 and 6).   

Image Credit: Black Library, used without permission for illustrative purposes only.

Scars, Chris Wraight

Andrew:  Because of course one of us has to be a little different, my recommendation is more for a specific author rather than a single book, as I’ve found Chris Wraight to be a seemingly unsung hero of the Black Library stable and wanted to try and raise his profile.  I find it a little difficult to pin down exactly what it is that makes me enjoy the books written by Wraight, but he manages to combine the character development, dialogue, world building, and required bolter porn (in thankfully relatively minimal helpings) to find a balance that keeps you engaged, drives a story forward, and makes you actually care about the characters involved.

Of the books he’s penned I’ve picked Scars as my exemplar.  It was the first full novel to involve the White Scars (to my knowledge) who before that were a relatively anonymous chapter - biker mongols from space, if there was anything to describe them.  It's not that they were re-invented with a different story, but they were given a character of their own, a reason to think they are something more than just an anachronism, and I certainly ended the book with a new respect for a chapter that I’d previously never really thought of.  He also takes a different look at the intrusion of the warrior lodges on a chapter and how even the loyalist chapters weren’t immune to their corrupting influence.  I thought it was brave to suggest that it wasn’t just the chapters that turned that saw division in the early stages of the Heresy.

It's not a perfect book, it bears the scars (pun intended) of being serialised - it was released chapter by chapter over the course of a year which dictates the pacing and structure with each chapter needing to end in a cliffhanger to ensure the readers return for the next.  Despite this it's a great read and having finished it I immediately set out to read the other novels and short stories with the Scars to see how they developed and wasn’t disappointed.  

Abnett is properly held up as the top author in the Black Library stable, and I know ADB has his fans but for me Wraight is right up there for me and is probably my favoured BL author.  I’ve sought out his books even in series I’ve otherwise not read and would encourage you to give them a go yourself.

Image Credit: Black Library, used without permission for illustrative purposes only.

Hopefully this will be helpful to some people.  Maybe at some point we'll do some more.  We’re not farming for engagement here at the Bunker, so unlike YouTube and all that stuff, I am being 100% genuine when I say we’d love to hear what books you lot have enjoyed and why, particularly if it’s not listed here.