Got into 40K last month and jumped right into Horus Heresy series using that handy reading order chart, wanted to get to Thousand Sons as fast as possible so I could learn about my army and read about the nothing Magnus allegedly did wrong.
Loken’s books were all a solid good time. A bit rushed feeling, book 2 stood out as a drop in quality. Horus felt less like a centuries old wizened war god amongst men and more like big dingus to make the plot happen, as if it couldn’t happen with a character who uses his brain. Book 3 and Eisenstein came back to the fun time.
Thousand Sons though is painfully bad. I’ve powered 60% through, normally I put down a book at 25% if I’m not feeling it and I reeeeaaaally wasn’t feeling it. Have to get through it for the dudes though. I don’t know the nothing he did wrong yet, but I’ll say he and his sons are definitely guilty of being the dumbest and most annoying self proclaimed “geniuses” in the galaxy. Not expecting Hugo Award level quality from this series, but a little effort would be nice.
So the question: which series among the heresy are the best and which are to avoid? Should I bother continuing 1K sons in hopes it improves, or switch to some other dudes?
I started the horus heresy pretty late and really wanted to get to the siege of Terra books. I found going through the flowcharts and googling “horus heresy minimum reading list” gave me a list of the major arcs of stuff that happens, that is fairly important by the time seige of terra happens. Reading through the responses, I’d say Scars and path of heaven are really good, and also really flesh out the white Scars Legion in a fun way. So far I’ve really enjoyed the siege though. I’m part way through echoes of eternity and found all the books so far to be a worthwhile read (mortis is very long though). If you do want to skip past it to 40k thousands sons stuff though, the Ahriman Series is a really fun read with some great characters!