/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.22311460]

Why is the 40k setting so kino?

[Anonymous No.22311469]

appeals to the things that man inherently aspires to, but has none of in typical modern western life: honour, sacrifice, strength, glory, piety etc.

[Anonymous No.22311860]

>>22311460
it's not next question

[Anonymous No.22311894]

40k is so on its face absurd and silly, that the mainstream has adopted it without a shred of irony or introspection speaks volumes to our lack of education

It's not kino, you have the literacy of a 5th grader

You'd be one of the serfs eating corpse paste

[Anonymous No.22311896]

40k sucks ass and I'm tired of everyone pretending like it doesn't, it's goyslop.

[Anonymous No.22311936]

>>22311894
>40k is so on its face absurd and silly
That's like half the reason why it's good.

>>22311896
Everything ever is goyslop.

[Anonymous No.22311972]

Reddit garbage on the same level as Sandersoi and Kevin Anderson Dune books

[Anonymous No.22312124]

I'm reading the first novel and i actually like it so far.

[Anonymous No.22312200]

>>22311460
It's cringe as fuck. It's literally the lowest-tier trash out there.

[Anonymous No.22312217]

>>22311896
>it's goyslop.

Opinion discarded

[Anonymous No.22312221]

>>22311460
Every 4 books I read I read a a 40k book and love it,

Mindless easy read with nice lore, can't beat it.

[Anonymousn No.22312223]

I always thought it was weird that there were so many novels set in the universe. To me the appeal of Warhammer is that everything is a nightmarish war-machine indifferent to individuals. Everything's hordes and hive-cities and misery on an inhuman scale. So it doesn't seem suited to individual characters with their little desires and grudges and arcs. Codex books and lore wikis seem way better suited as forms for exploring that universe.

[Anonymous No.22312229]

I WILL read a 40k book and you WILL recommend me the best one.

>>22312223
Touhou doesn't seem like a suitable medium for 100,000 musical arranges, this stuff happens unexpectedly like nucleation.

[Anonymous No.22312280]

>>22311460
They're romance novels for dudes. They provide catharsis that dudes crave, like character-driven dungeon diver stories where the goal is to explore maze-like environments to collect treasure and return alive, except it's through epic, crazy stories in an insane universe of war where there's nothing to look forward to except to keep survive but you're gonna die anyways in some really epic way like getting a giant thing dropped on you, and if there is a heaven, then you'll be trapped there too fighting demons every day and when you die you get resurrected so you can continue fighting.
https://youtu.be/Ws8JocOpkvY

[Anonymous No.22312300]

>>22312217
There are much better examples of goyslop. 40k is heading in the direction of goyslop

[Anonymous No.22312460]

>>22311460
Let's see
>grimdark sci-fi with a dose of fantasy and schlock
>everything tailored specifically to appeal to your (male) power fantasies
>actually has a historical depth of its own
>boats (in space)
You'd probably get sick of it fast if Warhammer is the only thing you consume, but otherwise no wonder why so many people keep coming back to it at regular intervals. What other actively maintained setting offers this many books, tabletop games, movies, and video games?

Also - that these faggots insist on not reprinting some of the earlier Horus Heresy titles forced me to buy a fucking e-reader. I basically bought a 150$ W40K reading device. I understand women now

[Anonymous No.22312484]

>>22311460
Because all of its kino ideas are directly ripped off from other settings written by people with actual talent.

[Anonymous No.22312518]

Because basically this but in space

[Anonymous No.22312538]

It's a caricature of every horrible thing happening in the world while at the same time being a power fantasy.

[Anonymous No.22312607]

>>22311896
Agreed, it's the Star Wars of literature.

[Anonymous No.22312719]

they look like those russian popadantsy pulp fiction books

[Anonymous No.22312726]

Anyone know of any good Blood Angel stories? I’ve been painting my first army and got the “BA omnibus” (which is only like 2 novels) but it’s not really drawing me in.
>inb4 marinefag
Yea I kind of wish I had gone Nids, but I’m committed to finishing this group for now

[Anonymous No.22312741]

>>22311469
Read a real man's fantasy book.

[Anonymous No.22313951]

Closet homosexuality

[Anonymous No.22313989]

>>22312229
Eisenhorn books.

[Anonymous No.22314086]

>>22312223
>Everything's hordes and hive-cities and misery on an inhuman scale. So it doesn't seem suited to individual characters with their little desires and grudges and arcs.
The contrast is a major part of the appeal.

[Anonymous No.22314092]

>>22314086
Who is the safest person in 40k?

[Anonymous No.22314119]

40k is the coolest universe written by the most awful writers

[Anonymous No.22314138]

>>22311460
As kino as it gets

[Anonymous No.22314286]

>>22312484
Without WH nbody would ever imagine elves from LotR, WWI german army cosplayers and bugs from Starship Troopers fighting in one battle.

[Anonymous No.22314294]

>>22314092
Clergy people are probably the least likely to die. No contact with criminals, rare inquisition visits, can evacuate from their temple-planets whenever they are in any danger, guarded well enough so no warp or raiders can get through.

[Anonymous No.22314321]

>>22312229
The problem is that the novels of warhammer are official. They have monkeys typewriting all day to release 10 novels a year.

[Anonymous No.22314355]

>>22312741
What's manly about it?

[Anonymous No.22314358]

>More than half of the women were fixed to the strange organic walls of the chamber by a mix of dark chitin plates and thick strands of a sticky substance like some kind of tough mucus. The others were half enclosed in equally disgusting organic mounds dotted about the cavern floor. Pools of pungent yellow-brown liquid bubbled and steamed near them. Ropes of semi-translucent flesh fed or withdrew fluids from their bodies, snaking into their noses and mouths. Gratefully, Karras saw that the women’s lower bodies were fully encased, though their grossly distended bellies were exposed to the hot, humid air. He had no doubt there were similar organic catheters beneath the chitin, responsible for Throne-knew-what. Those bellies were so stretched by the xenos organisms growing within that the skin had become as translucent as the looping coils of strange umbilici. In some, the Death Spectre could see jostling clusters of embryonic aliens vying with each other for the most comfortable positions. The women playing host to these slithering forms wept and whimpered in an agony that pierced their mindless stupor.

[Anonymous No.22314682]

>>22311860
What's a better setting than 40k?

[Anonymous No.22314780]

>>22311460
Battletech is better

[Anonymous No.22314822]

I wanna give it a shot. What's a good first book?

[Anonymous No.22314834]

>>22314822
Ciaphis Cain and Gaunt's Ghosts

[Anonymous No.22314872]

>In the grimdark future enbies are valid, and Negroes have the souls of Men....

[Anonymous No.22314906]

>>22314822
I thought the first HH book was pretty decent

[Anonymous No.22314938]

>>22314286
Star Trek already did elves in space with the Vulcan and Starship troopers was already world war 1 soldiers vs space bugs

[Anonymous No.22314940]

>>22314321
This.

t. read 38 Horus Heresy novels

[Anonymous No.22314950]

>>22314358
Isn't this mostly just from the movie Alien?

[Anonymous No.22314968]

>>22314872
In the grimdark future of Warcraft3015 our braindead Turkish emperors biggest priority is fighting against his sons that got sissy hypnoed by tranny demons. No wonder normal people roll their eyes at this fag shit.

[Anonymous No.22314985]

>>22312726
>I wish I had gone Nids
read Devastation of Baal and be thankful you chose the Blood Angels

[Anonymous No.22315117]

>>22311460
The Siege of Terra books, for all their various flaws, are genuinely the most harrowing books I've ever read. They grate upon the soul and bit by bit wear you raw.
When it first starts it's just more of the usual cool war stuff and epic fighting you're used to. Then it keeps going. And going. And going. And by the end of book 4 you're beginning to feel the exhaustion of so much war heaped upon you, especially after the masterfully written last stand that doesn't end the way you thought or wanted it to. Book 5 has terrible Titan POVs but it keeps piling the horrors on, a constant barrage of death on every scale from single men to armies to God-engines, kilometric wall sections the length of mountain chains come down, and it starts to feel like you can sense the ceaseless earth-shaking bombardment which has been unremitting for books on end at this point.
By the end of book 6 you've read about so much destruction and death that the despair of the defenders has seeped into your mind, and demonic horrors spawned from the quasi-ritualistic planetary slaughter have begun spawning everywhere and at first it's cool to read about in a detached way you're used to with other books and universes.
By the end of 7 you're questioning how a silly over-the-top sci-fi universe about genetically enhanced warriors could weigh your soul down this much. It's impossible. There is no way, no equation of "the right words" that can achieve this effect. And yet, after 7 books, you find yourself moved beyond reason, invested beyond comprehension and completely and undeniably miserable. The real world seems like the fictional one.
And finally comes the first volume of the last book aptly named "The End and the Death". It's sublime. There are no chapter names (picrel) and none are needed. You are drowned in the fragments of the final hours of the most monumental war you've ever read about. It's violence without reason, without order, without end. Time ceases. You are suspended in this moment of total collapse, and you feel anger and hopelessness and MISERY you didn't think a fictional world could ever elicit, not in a million years. But here you are, confronted with the heroism, nobility and sacrifice you've desperately needed in your life and with the most life-affirming depiction of struggle against darkness you've ever come upon, and you're wondering at the tears in the corners of your eyes.
tl;dr - the Siege of Terra series, due to its sheer scale and its simple message of perseverance and strength in the face of the most incomprehensible evil the universe can throw at you, elevates 40k to something I don't understand but am glad I experienced
read the bolter porn novels and the other heresy novels for fun and let them accumulate characters and notions and action energy inside you and achieve catharsis by reading the Siege, you will not regret it
it might even change you for the better

[Anonymous No.22315122]

>>22315117
forgot picrel

[Anonymous No.22315171]

>>22312726

Its a Blood Angel successor chapter, but Reverie by Fehervari is a really good horror novel that delves into how sinister their rages can really be. Casts Sanguinus as essentially this mythic figure who has entire mystery cults throughout the galaxy praying and searching for spirituality waiting for his glorious return.

[Anonymous No.22315233]

>>22315171
Yea that sounds like exactly what I’m looking for. The black rage being resisted is the defining trait and only interesting thing about the chapter.. I tried reading the omnibus and the villains were the bitch ass word bearers. Idk why they wouldn’t make it about angron and WE since Khorne originally wanted to get the BA to flip. Could be a cool juxtaposition between feeding anger and not giving in for the sake of higher ideals.
>black rage is a horror
Is also the only interesting direction to take it. They need to be actually unhinged killing machines who will eat their friends face off if they get to him. It’s the only way there’s actual stakes and it’s not just some lame power-up.

[Anonymous No.22315368]

>>22315117
sounds kino as fuck

[Anonymous No.22315946]

Incel escapism

[Anonymous No.22316850]

>>22315117
Wow, sounds pretty good.

[Anonymous No.22316879]

>>22315368
>>22316850
I'm always happy to get more anons on board and it truly is kino as fuck

[Anonymous No.22317582]

>>22316879

is there a good recommendation on what Horus Heresy stuff in general to read? there's like sixty books out

[Anonymous No.22317598]

>>22314355
Even the faggot character is manly.

[Anonymous No.22317651]

>>22316879
I have a copy of the Solar War, but haven’t got further than the first chapter. I just don’t see how there’s gonna be much to get intrigued in when I already know the broad strokes of the Heresy. Was that an issue for you?

[Anonymous No.22317729]

It's absurd
>"I hecking LOVE science"
>"Son, lead my secular crusade as you wish"
>Half his sons becoming satanic LARPers
>Become God over zealous rubes

[Anonymous No.22317888]

>>22317582
The absolute core Heresy is
Horus Rising
False Gods
Galaxy in Flames
The Flight of the Eisenstein
which are the first four books
after that I would recommend based on what I read and some I heard were really good
Legion (so you are introduced into one of the hardest to write and to understand legions - The Alpha Legion)
A Thousand Sons/Prospero Burns (two books depicting the POV of two legions fighting against each other for the first time and includes the fuckup that defines the Heresy namely Magnus' folly)
The First Heretic (shows us who first started the cult of the Emperor and why they ended up worshipping Chaos gods)
Know no Fear
Unremembered Empire
Scars and The Path of Heaven
Praetorian of Dorn
The Master of Mankind (features the Emperor heavily and shows us the aftermath of Magnus' folly)
Betrayer
Mechanicum
Wolfsbane
The Buried Dagger
I'm sure there are others that are good and I haven't read but basically if you see the name Dan Abnett it is guaranteed to be good
after these you start the Siege of Terra and read all 8 books in order (there are 3 novellas you can read as well)
>I have a copy of the Solar War, but haven’t got further than the first chapter.
it's not so much that we don't know what's going to happen, it's how it happens and the totality of war that they managed to convey
each book in the Siege has it's weaknesses but on the whole they are all at least a level above the Heresy books with some (Saturnine, Echoes of Eternity and The End and the Death, Warhawk possibly as well) completely changing the game.

[Anonymous No.22317909]

>>22317888
and I forgot to mention, the 8th book "The End and the Death" is in two volumes and only the first one is out, second one's coming in November
you can skip to the Siege after Flight of the Eisenstein but you'll have to deal with being introduced to dozens of characters who are following threads that started in other books but it's still surmountable if you find the setting interesting and then you can go back and read the source books
as for the Siege, there are maps for each book that depict where the action is taking place so you can orient yourself
this is from the first one, The Solar War when the traitors are first entering the system
each book's action takes place in a concentric circle smaller than the previous one, it ends up feeling really claustrophobic

[Anonymous No.22317961]

>>22317888

Good list, I'll be on the lookout for more, I'd heard that there was some wild quality swings with some of the primarchs. Glad to see that the Alpha Legion got some actual lore.

[Anonymous No.22317981]

>>22317888
>The absolute core Heresy is
Books, which have score higher than 4.

https://www.goodreads.com/series/40983-the-horus-heresy

[Anonymous No.22318007]

>>22317981
I think literally all the ones I listed have 4 or higher with the exception of Mechanicum

[Anonymous No.22318040]

>>22314358
>>22314950
reminds me a bit of Heretics of Dune too

>He remembered emerging time after time: bright lights and padded mechanical hands. The hands rotated him and, in the unfocused blurs of the newborn, he saw a great mound of female flesh—monstrous in her almost immobile grossness . . . a maze of dark tubes linked her body to giant metal containers.

[Anonymous No.22318060]

>>22311460
Honestly, I don't know, I stopped liking it/caring about it a while back. For me personally, it's too big. People keep complaining that it's too small, but for me it's too much of a
>everything and the kitchen sink thrown in
type of thing. I might be autistic, but I want a sort of unformal look. I can't have the Imperium being Space Byzantium, and then have 18 other Chapters ranging from Mongolia to whatever Mortarion represents, and then each of them having successor Chapters, and then the Astra Militatum having Commissars next to Generic Space Soldier Guys. Then you add the plethora of books and interwoven, contradictory lore, and the fact that it all exists just to sell you more plastic models, and it all stops meaning anything. I can't maintain an emotional connection with anything, because none of it feels real. It's a case where I just liked the aesthetics of
>Real World Culture... IN SPACE
but even that got too bogged down by all the bloat. And while you have all these clashing cultures, they're still too similar to be visually interesting and distinct, while also having too few Xenos. Just what, 5 races, with nowhere near the variety of the Imperium forces. I don't play xenos, but I'd have rathered more threats than the Imperium bloat. It loses identity and makes me not care for it. Traitor Legions are entirely boring. Nurgle and his ilk are disgusting, the Emperor's Children look faggy by being all-purple, instead of having gold/silver as a base and purple as an accent to make them look distinguished, and all the rest are just
>wot if we took the Loyalist models... AND ADDED 100 SKULLS ON EM, MENTAL INNIT?!
One or two Legions like that would've been fine, but as it stands I find it utterly boring.

I don't know, I just don't feel as if it's a real setting with real characters. The mess of a lore just isn't worth it to slog through all those books written by mediocre writers. Their best guy is Abnett, and he's literally "good capeshit" tier.

[Anonymous No.22318067]

Any Mega link or something for Warhammer books? Been thinking of reading this crap between serious artsy fartsy books.

[Anonymous No.22318073]

>>22318067
/tg/ autists maintain a huge repository, check that out

[Anonymous No.22318080]

>>22318067
just get them off zlib

[Anonymous No.22318087]

>>22311460
I've been watching the internet shill this series for 10 years now. What's so great about it anyway? It doesn't exist in my country.

[Anonymous No.22318145]

>>22318087
It's a weaving of the Bible together with stories from different mythologies into a new mythos to remind us what strength and nobility are

[Anonymous No.22318354]

>>22318067
>reading this crap
Judging books before you read them is pretty dumb

[Anonymous No.22318941]

>>22318354
based

[Anonymous No.22319576]

How do they come up with so many stories for a setting where everyone is evil?

[Anonymous No.22319662]

>>22314321
>10 a year
lmao if only, they release like 2 dozen a year

[Anonymous No.22319666]

>>22315117
this has to be a copypasted reddit post, fucking kek

[Anonymous No.22319725]

>>22319662
How do fans decide which to read, I doubt anybody reads them all right?

[Anonymous No.22319754]

>>22319725
You'd be surprised.

[Anonymous No.22319782]

I read Storm of Iron by Graham McNeil and it was meh, not bad just okay, I feel like if you don't already like the setting maybe some of the books are not that well written. Are the other books/authors better?

[Anonymous No.22319830]

>>22312223
they should do a couple novels in the same format as herodotus's histories, the backstory to a large battle or campaign with somewhat unreliable descriptions of different planets, cultures, units, xenos and anything else someone who travels a lot would see and hear about. add the narrator's personal biases and the need to avoid writing anything too bad about the imperium (at least on the surface). explore different narrators and include some lore about them in the beginning.

[Anonymous No.22319876]

Those parts where Mersidae thirsts over Loken

[Anonymous No.22320351]

Any good books with a female protagonist?

[Anonymous No.22320583]

>>22319666
checked
no, genuine

[Anonymous No.22320629]

>>22320351
The outcast dead has one

[Anonymous No.22320644]

>>22314968
>he thinks Turks are native to Anatolia
found the American

[Anonymous No.22321139]

>>22320629
we don't talk about that book

[Anonymous No.22321824]

>>22312741
Dan Simmons regularly writes 40k stuff

[Anonymous No.22321943]

>>22321824
that's Dan Abnett

[Anonymous No.22322019]

>>22311460
>why is it so good?
>I can point to at least 5 books in your image alone that are just GW engaging in IP theft
Probably because everything that’s popular in their setting is just stolen. I’ve loved 40k since I was like 7 but GW is fucking shameless. It’s even worse considering they’ll steal shit then threaten to sue the creator for having the audacity to get stolen from.

[Anonymous No.22322028]

>>22319830
Please for the love of god stop giving them good ideas on how steal more shit. I can already see the rubes jerking themselves off how “creative and original” the writers are if they wrote a book with your concept.

[Anonymous No.22322355]

>>22311460
I've heard lots of people say they're good. But I got filtered by the dumb board game (and all the consoomer culture around it).

[Anonymous No.22322556]

>>22320351

Abnett-wise you have the Bequin series, but that involves you investing time in reading Ravenor and Eisenhorn (not an unpleasant task at all mind you), and Double Eagle has a good amount of female major characters, as does the Gaunt's Ghost series after a few books.

Otherwise my three big directions would diverge based on what facet of the universe you're interested in. If you want investigation/police focused stuff look for the Shira Calpurnia series, the titular character is a female Arbites. On the other hand James Swallow has written some very decent Sisters of Battle focused works, those are all women of course. Finally if you want a female commissar then you want to look into Severina Raine. IMO of the three Severina Raine is the highest because its Imperial Guard fiction which automatically bumps up a letter grade any rating I could give.

[Anonymous No.22322683]

>>22322355
There’s only like 2 or 3 truly good series. The rest are just pulp drivel consoomers convince themselves isn’t trash

[Anonymous No.22323003]

>>22322028
i dont care, i just want a readable book by gw and they certainly arent gonna come out with any good prose so everything else better be good. they have cool concepts but their books are less readable than fan articles by random wikipedos

[Anonymous No.22323190]

>>22320351
The first Horus Heresy book.

[Anonymous No.22323600]

>>22312223
You have to remember the scale, people never do for some reason. The empire of man is much of the Milky Way galaxy. Most of the plebs in the setting have never even seen a space marine and some think they’re just a myth. We don’t hear about stories of some hive dweller just surviving a bureaucratic hellhole because those stories aren’t interesting to the nerds buying their shit.

[Anonymous No.22323611]

>>22320351
The fleet commander of the world eaters is a bad bitch and the only female I’ve ever seen in the story that isn’t some retard diversity hire. I can’t remember if she actually has her own books or just shows up in all of world eater books

[Anonymous No.22324385]

>>22323611
checked
you forgot Tona Criid, Bequin, Mersadie Olinton, Euphrati Keeler and Cyrene Valantion

[Anonymous No.22325454]

>>22324385

I did forget about Tona Criid! Great catch.

[Anonymous No.22326456]

>>22312280
>They're romance novels for dudes.
>an insane universe of war where there's nothing to look forward to except to keep survive but you're gonna die anyways in some really epic way
I got into the hobby recently and 40K only feels like that when I look at art form old editions of the game. I love how Warhammer is kitsch but with lots of drama to weigh it down while still being a fun backdrop for a war game.
Although, I'm looking to play Orks/Chaos Daemons so I don't think I look at 40K the same as most of /tg/.
It's not 40K, but I'm reading Gotrek and Felix and enjoying their miss-adventures.