Warhammer 40,000 Novels: A Dark Escape for Bedtime Readers
If the AO3 outage leaves you desperate for something to read late into the night, you might be searching for that same heartbreaking angst written by overworked college students whose English is a second language. A surprising suggestion: the Warhammer 40,000 novels.
I’m being very serious. While the setting may look like a teenage fantasy of giant warriors in power armor, the stories actually explore deep loyalty, love and duty that can split a person in two.
I understand the skepticism. Warhammer looks like a teenage fantasy of giant warriors in power armor, but the novels dive into deep loyalty, love and duty that can split a person.
If you like to see the tension between loyalty, love and duty, it almost splits a man in half. If you want to see when A man slides the knife of betrayal between the ribs of his beloved brother.. If the last battle of doomed men, once divided by factions but now united in death, makes your blood boil. Or if you just like it Two malicious robot bitches thwarting each other’s plans.but occasionally putting rivalry aside to help the other in a time of need because it would be boring without them for millennia… That’s all Warhammer, baby.
I’m four and a half books into The Horus Heresy, set 10,000 years before the games. Horus, a primarch leading the Emperor’s 16th Space Marine Legion, turns against his master after demonic influence, gathers allies to rebel, and must purge his own ranks of those who might resist.
The Primarchs are the Emperor’s genetic children, and the Space Marines are each Primarch’s offspring, so the whole universe feels like a massive, tangled family. Their bonds — brotherly, paternal, filial — are beautifully and brutally shattered when Horus rebels.
My favorite fanfics thrive on maximum angst and suffering. The Warhammer books deliver intense brother‑against‑brother conflict without explicit content, except for occasional references to Fulgrim but the tension when brother turns on brother and the consequences thereof are equally rewarding.
There is a moment in the midst of Horus’ purge when a man dies in the arms of a robot powered by the barely living corpse of his legion brother and says, “Then we’ll go together, okay?”
You’d think it’d be a line you’d hear in an angsty dark SasuNaru fic, but no, that’s Warhammer, baby! And there are many moments like this throughout the series. So run to your nearest Audible or Libby or wherever else you get your books and let Warhammer tide you over until AO3 returns.