# Quick Black Library questions



## Shandathe (May 2, 2010)

Okay, as far as I can see Black Library books can be roughly divided into three categories:


Books made of mostly Bolterporn with few uplifting factors.
Books with too much going on. Too many characters, too many plotlines, and/or just too many things obviously decided in committee that the writer was told to include.
Actually good books that follow a handful of characters at most and manage a consistent story.

Which makes my questions for you all:

Did I miss any categories?
Is it just me or is the 2nd category getting way bigger since 8th started moving the story along?


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## Paceyjg (May 12, 2011)

How many have you read?

I do wonder why I spend my very limited free time wading through some of the mediocre books I do?

It took me around three months to finish The Silent War recently, not a bad book but only a couple of the short stories were engaging. 

I currently have four HH books on my shelf still to be read (Angels of Caliban to Master of Mankind). First time since I started collecting them that they've built up that high....


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## Brother Emund (Apr 17, 2009)

I have dozens of 'unread' books on my shelf as I am collecting the series that has come out. I think there are 70+ of them!

I find the vast majority of the books as very 'same, same' with SM's verses bad SM's and then fighting Orks, blah, blah.
There is nothing that makes me want to sit and read it all the way through and say Wow after it.

My pennies worth...

.


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## chromedog (Oct 31, 2007)

Maybe 15 or 16.

A handful of the older short story collections, one or two "space wolf" (William King?), the Dan Abnett stuff and a couple of the Heresy ones. 
Stopped after going too far down the rabbithole.

It was much like trying to wade through the old Star Wars EU. Sure, there'll be some gems in it, but it's mostly like sifting through a cesspit for diamonds using only your hands. You'll get some shiny, but a whole lot of s*** too.


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## bobss (May 18, 2008)

I read every BL book I buy pretty much instantly, but that's more down to only buying stuff I'm confident _and_ have an interest in. I've also been through my phase of buying and reading as much as possible, and have had my fair share of buyers remorse/time wasted too. As someone who likes to learn from these sorts of things, and doesn't have a huge amount of money to throw at the hobby, I've trimmed down my pickings to less than 5 books per year (not including getting up-to-date with stuff). So right now I've just finished Master of Mankind, I'm about to reread Black Legion because #paperbackmasterrace , and will be finally digging into John French's Ahriman trilogy at some point this summer. That's it. I might get Spear of the Emperor, because I think BaeDB has found a pretty interesting window from which to view and write about 8th edition 40k, but I'm pretty lukewarm towards the whole thing

Otherwise, I might check out the Fabius books, because despite not being a fan of this dude, I've read (and I mean _properly looked into_ - not just scanning the first Amazon/Goodreads review I stumble across) some really good things about it. So surprises and gems are still certainly possible

Then you've got the Heresy, which I feel has picked itself up somewhat since the Dark Age of, say, 2014-2016 when every-other-book was a fucking anthology; and more importantly despite being repeatedly hyped/disappointed since 2009, I've come to enjoy the book series for what it _is_, not what it _could've been_. I've also like to reason some of the bollocks with a ''real-life history is just as messy, occasionally bizarre, occasionally epic - and vastly varying in the quality of how it's relayed as 30k'' attitude so I think, at long last, I'm ready for



the Vulkan books


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## Mike (Aug 18, 2018)

Dan Abnett stuff is always good. Cant't wait for the last Gaunt's Ghosts book.

Regarding HH what I hate the most are the Antology books, these are published only to make money. Other than that the series is interesting (with a few exceptions).

I am curious to see what they will be doing with dark imperium. The first book was quite good but to many things happened.

I read a few books outside of HH, Gaunt, Heisenhors / Ravenor series and I was quite disappointed.


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