Warhammer book Humble Bundle

www.humblebundle.com/books/tales-from-th..._threes_tile_index_2

Most of my Warhammer reading has been Horus Heresy or Gaunt's Ghosts. Can anyone comment on the quality of the offerings in this bundle? I'm particularly intrigued by the Necromunda omnibus.

Of the base pack that I have read and rated on the Black Library scale:

Nightbringer: good, but it's McNeill's first novel outing so a bit rough in places
Gates of Azyr: awful, want to read a novelized version of the AoS starter scenarios? this is it!
Trollslayer: good, fun sword and sorcery type stuff in the old world

Second pack:
War Storm: not good.
Priests of Mars: good.
Astra Militarum: okay, it's short story collection so quality varies by writer.

Third pack:
I am Slaughter: okay, the whole series is decent but has a few volumes that are purely for padding out to 12 months.

I can tell you from very recent experience that Trollslayer is well worth $1. I know, because I bought it for $12 2 days ago on Kindle and I was reading it as recently as two hours ago. It's REALLY fun, and it has the Old World Warhammer that you want in it. It reminds me simultaneously of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and The Witcher...once of which influenced it, the other it probably influenced. The writing is definitely a cut above what you might expect from game novels, it's immensely readable and enjoyably written. It is NOT stuffy, high fantasy stuff...it is total hack and slash with a Trollslayer (duh) and a human that goes around with him under oath to record all of his exploits on his way to fulfill his doom-quest. This is the first one and it is a series of short stories/novellas that sort of set up the rest of the series. It is also very useful if you want to know where the Citadel range of paints gets its names since they don't use any of that stuff anymore. I saw that they had this one and wished that they had some of the later volumes because I would get them all. I think this one is excellent so far- it really captures the things that make the Warhammer setting in general so appealing- grim but funny, over the top baroqueness, and mohawks.

The Age of Sigmar books are, sadly, crap. These are all pretty early ones, I hear some of the newer ones see the writers hitting their stride but from what I have read of these...they are terrible. After a kind of interesting start, Gates of Azyr becomes like a novel-length description of the Age of Sigmar box set cover. I hear the Nagash book is good, but that's Old World/End Times and it's...book 1. So a sort of loss leader there.

The thing about Warhammer books is that there tends to be two levels of quality- the Eisenhorn/Gaunt's Ghosts/Gotrek and Felix/Night Lords/first few Horus Heresy books level and then all of the others. Note that the upper level has a high concentration of Dan Abnett books.

Some of the titles on offer in the bundle are shorts (like Bear Eater) and not full books. I would say that many of these aren't really what you REALLY want to read when you read a Warhammer book, more like B or C shelf...other than Trollslayer.

I am tempted to pick it up because I do want to check out Baneblade, Kal Jerico (does it include "Lasgun Wedding"?) , and the Roboute Guilliman book. The audio dramas might be fun too. But the problem I have is that I find the B or C shelf stuff unreadable and a waste of time.

Dan Abnett is great. Not great literature for all time, but damn entertaining.

He always treats the subject matter with dignity and respect, which is what I like. He also understands that the really interesting world-building stuff isn’t the mass battle recaps. This is why the Eisenhorn books are so good- the characters are great and it gives you so much more of a picture of the setting beyond 2000 points of armies going at it. He also knows how to express the vastness, scale, and terror of all of the 40k stuff...I love the bit in Eisenhorn where ONE Chaos marine shows up. Just one. And it’s scary as fuck...I love how he describes him as “gaudy” and decadently over-decorated.

The Night Lords books are in the same vein.

Apropros of nothing, I've only read two early Warhammer books: Drachenfels and Ignorant Armies. I recall them being surprisingly good.

I read the first 7 Gotten and Felix books and thought 3, 4 and 5 were really good but the rest were only average and Trollslayer was the worst one so I am surprised that you think that it is worth getting. It is quite a frustrating series as it is building to a big war in 3,4 and 5 and then it just randomly wanders off into other random parts of the Old World in 6 and 7 and ignores the long running plot.

All the GW/Black Library books by Jack Yeovil/Kim Newman are _very_ good. Drachnefels, Beasts in Velvet, the Dark Future line, etc.

The three most consistent good writers are Abnett, McNeill and Dembski-Bowden. Most other writers are all over the board with the occasional good book mixed in with a lot of average. Ben Counter is also incredibly consistent in that everything he writes is terrible with Battle for the Abyss being the apotheosis of tie-in garbage.

I liked Trollslayer because it was just a collection of gritty fantasy with only the barest hints of meta-narrative tying it together.

From what I gather on the boards, Josh Reynolds is the AoS hotness that's rising the level of material and creating a lot of cool lore for AoS. I don't think he was in on the earlier books, but he seems to be the go to man now.

Josh Reynolds was in the first two collections of AoS stuff. I've read the first three Realmgate Wars books and Reynolds's stuff was the worst of the lot. I'm happy to hear he might be doing better with his material.