The Horus Heresy books reading order: Where to start and where to stop with Warhammer 40,000's massive prequel series

There are 64 Horus Heresy books, give or take, depending whether you count the novellas or the graphic novel or the Primarch spin-offs. The point is, there are too many for any normal person to commit to reading. Fortunately, you don't have to. That number includes a lot of extremely skippable short story anthologies, and multiple novels so tangential you won't miss anything if you don't read them.

If it's such a daunting thing you need a guide to get through it, why bother at all? Because at its best the Horus Heresy is an achievement in shared-world history-building unlike anything else, and a gripping saga on a scale you couldn't get if multiple authors weren't working together to build a dementedly labyrinthine backstory for toy soldier games.

The Horus Heresy is a prequel set 10,000 years before the rest of Warhammer 40,000, telling the story that explains why its dystopian future is so bad. The Imperium of the year 30,000 may not be a great place, but unlike the 41st millennium it contains a spark of hope and the possibility things can change. If you'd like to spend years of your life reading books where that hope is snuffed out like a candle by a galaxy of darkness, that's what the Horus Heresy delivers. The times we're living in don't seem so bad by comparison.

But if you haven't read any Warhammer 40,000, don't start here. Go away and read some of the best 40K books like Lord of the Night first. Maybe try Deathwing or Honourbound or give the Gaunt's Ghost series a shot, then come back. The Horus Heresy relies on familiarity with the original to give its events their sense of doomed inevitability.

Things you should know about the year 30,000

Progress, it turns out, is bad. In the future history of Earth between now and the Horus Heresy, interstellar colonization backed by faster-than-light travel leads to a civilization that fragments when warpspace weather takes a bad turn for a few centuries; mental advancement leads to psykers able to dominate worlds; artificial intelligence leads to robot uprising; first contact leads to war with aliens; and it goes on in that vein for a while. At humanity's technological peak, every disaster predicted by pessimistic sci-fi authors happens at once.

This brings on the Age of Strife, or Old Night, a reference to "the reign of Chaos and old Night" from Paradise Lost because it's not all references to Dune, Starship Troopers, Aliens, 2000 AD, and The Lord of the Rings. The dark age of Old Night finally ends when one of the immortal mutants secretly living among humanity since basically forever steps up and declares himself Emperor of Mankind. With an army of genetically modified badasses—first the thunder warriors, then when those prototypes need to be retired in the Blade Runner sense of the word, the space marines—he fights the Unification Wars to rebuild civilization.

The Emperor defeats the warlords, techno-barbarians, and religious demagogues who have divided the Earth, then sets out with his genetically modified large adult sons the Primarchs, each heading a legion of marines, to reunite the scattered human worlds. This involves both bringing rebellious worlds into the fold, which is called "Compliance", and fighting various aliens who get in the way. Primarily the orks, who are finally defeated at Ullanor.

Then, out of the blue, the Emperor buggers off back to Terra, AKA Earth. He leaves his favorite large adult son Horus in charge, declaring him Warmaster, and explains nothing about why he has to go so suddenly, expecting everything will be fine in his absence.

It will not.

And what's the deal with the Imperium?

The Imperium of the 31st millennium is theoretically secular yet religious beliefs persist. There's the machine-cult of Mars, the Promethean Creed of the Salamanders, the rune priests of the Space Wolves, the Word Bearers' belief the Emperor is divine, remnants of Christianity called Catherism—heck, even the Imperial Truth, the doctrine explaining why religion is bad, is discussed in terms of faith. It's right there in the name: Horus's betrayal of the Imperium is heresy. For all the Emperor's attempts to spread enlightened atheism, his people are superstitious and ignorant, talking about their "humors" like it's the Middle Ages.

The Emperor can't prevent this. Not just because it's human nature, but because in a way it's his fault. An immortal who was born somewhere around 8,000 BCE, he still organizes everything like Ancient Rome, from the legions up. Realizing he can't be everywhere, his best idea for delegating is to produce a bunch of sons to be feudal princes. His old world mindset is reflected in the society he creates. The Emperor calls his attempt to spread atheism across the galaxy The Great Crusade, for goodness' sake.

Though built on archaic principles, the Imperium of the year 30,000 is not yet the fascist state it becomes. Still, that's not to say it's a nice place. It's intolerant and incorporates various forms of serfdom and slavery—the Emperor is absolutely a tyrant—but the Imperium is not yet a machine dedicated only to war. There's a possibility of peace, wiggle room for alien sympathizers, and planets where life is pretty OK. The Horus Heresy is a tragedy because there was a chance for a better future, and it was lost. Now you get to see that loss play out.

Which Horus Heresy books to read first

This is the easy part. The first three books are essential: Horus Rising, False Gods, and Galaxy in Flames. They tell a singular story of the downfall of Horus, beloved son of the Emperor, from multiple viewpoints. We see things through the eyes of the Legiones Astartes, superhuman space marines at the tail end of their triumphant crusade to reunite the Imperium. We also see the far more ordinary viewpoint of the Remembrancers, artists and scholars accompanying the Great Crusade to memorialize its triumph. Then there are the Primarchs, the godlike sons of the Emperor, whose exaggerated stature and emotionality—especially compared to the more stoic Astartes—make them seem like figures of Greek myth.

Book four is where things get divisive. After three novels of continuous story, Flight of the Eisenstein leaps back in the timeline to before Horus Rising and introduces a new viewpoint character. While it does eventually return to the place Galaxy in Flames left off, before tying up a single loose end involving a ship called the Eisenstein as you might expect from the title, there's a lot of filler on the way.

If that doesn't sound worthwhile to you, you've got it easy. You should take my Short Trip, AKA "Don't bore us, get to the Horus," an ultra-light journey through the Horus Heresy that boils down to mainly reading books by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Dan Abnett, and maybe Chris Wraight until you reach the point where the series is rebranded as the Siege of Terra and finally gets back to the idea of being a continuous story like the first three books were.

The Short Trip

This briefest journey through the Horus Heresy might mean occasionally turning to Lexicanum wiki when you realize you've missed a plot point, but also means you don't find yourself slogging through a dud just because something important happens in chapter 15. After the initial trilogy you read Legion, The First Heretic, Prospero Burns, Know No Fear, Betrayer, Unremembered Empire, Scars, and The Master of Mankind. Then the Siege of Terra kicks off and you read The Solar War, The Lost and the Damned, The First Wall, Saturnine, Mortis, Warhawk, Echoes of Eternity, and all three volumes of The End and the Death.

You'll have burned through the whole thing in a manageable 21 books, though you'll occasionally find yourself wondering "Whatever happened to that guy?" Thing is, people who read the whole series are in the same boat. I'm still wondering what happened to Ishaq Kadeen, the important-seeming Remembrancer from The First Heretic who was turning the Word Bearers' saga into a comic book, yet was never mentioned again.

Even with an ending that became a trilogy unto itself, some of the Heresy's threads remain untied—which is par for the course when it comes to multi-author book series based on games. Those threads give us something to base our own narrative campaigns and RPG adventures and fanfic on after all.

The Long Road

If you insist on only skipping books where nothing significant happens you've got a harder journey ahead of you. For starters, after the initial trilogy you'll need to read Flight of the Eisenstein to meet bland hero-man Garro, because he'll be important later.

From this point the Horus Heresy becomes more of a setting than a series. Like the Discworld books, whose 41 novels seem intimidating until you break them down into manageable subseries like "the Witches books" and "the Death books" and realize you don't have to read them all if you don't love, say, the Rincewind books, the Horus Heresy contains multitudes.

A lot of those multitudes are aimed at people who collected a specific space marine army and want to know what their favorite guys were up to at the time. Unless you bought and painted a bunch of Emperor's Children or Dark Angels, who star in the books Fulgrim and Descent of Angels, you shouldn't read them. Fulgrim is popular with edgelords because it's one of the darkest books in the Horus Heresy, but it's so inessential a later short story overwrites its central twist, which is then never referred to again. Don't bother with Fulgrim, and don't trust anyone who tells you it's worth reading. They are probably a Redditor.

Skip to Legion after Flight of the Eisenstein, and absolutely skip Battle for the Abyss after that, one of a couple of early entries that reads like a repackaged 40K novel before they'd fully understood the prequels demanded a different style. Thousand Sons and Prospero Burns are necessary to give you both sides of the conflict between the Astartes of the Thousand Sons and the Space Wolves, and while Prospero Burns takes a long time to get to the actual burning of Prospero it's a fun time hanging out with space Vikings along the way. Flight of the Eisenstein should already have prepared you for titles referring to something that's only a small part of the story anyway.

The First Heretic, Know No Fear, and Betrayer form a trilogy that's maybe the high point of the whole thing. While The First Heretic is another book that winds the clock back to before Horus Rising, it's justified in doing so. Horus wasn't the first of the Emperor's loyal soldiers to turn traitor, and the story of how the Word Bearers legion fell to Chaos is a separate tragedy with a fascinating side dish of cosmic horror.

Sandwiched in the middle of this trilogy, Know No Fear is a disaster novel told in present tense to emphasize the immediate shock felt by its Ultramarine protagonists as they realize too late the Word Bearers have betrayed them. It's the best book in the series, and if you want more follow-up then just this once I'll recommend an anthology, Mark of Calth, for the stories Calth That Was and Unmarked, both set in the aftermath of Know No Fear. Like every Horus Heresy anthology it's more miss than hit, but you do also get Athame, an unusual story told from the perspective of a dagger.

Chaos gets to be the focus again in Fear to Tread, though here the greater daemons come off a bit like squabbling cartoon villains—a gang of Starscreams without a Megatron to force them into line. I guess the literal embodiments of Chaos should seem kind of disorganized. Fear to Tread is also a book about the Blood Angels, the sad secret vampires of Warhammer. You know how I said some of the Horus Heresy is aimed at people who collected a specific army when they were young? I collected Blood Angels, and if you didn't then maybe Fear to Tread will feel inessential to you. I'm biased here.

On the subject of books about space marines, Vulkan Lives begins a run of stories about the Salamanders in which they repeat their catchphrase, which is also the title of the book, so often that if you based a drinking game around it you'd die of alcohol poisoning. Actually, that's a fun idea. Let's have a digression.

The Horus Heresy drinking game

Every author has adjectives and phrases they rely on, often unconsciously, and that's particularly true of the Horus Heresy's writers. There's nothing wrong with that, and it does help set a tone for the series that marks it out from the rest of the 40K books. There are also technical words that will inevitably be repeated in descriptions of voidships or boltguns or whatever. Again, there's nothing wrong with that, and I don't point these repetitions out to be critical. It's just fun to notice how often a Space Wolf expresses himself with a "wet leopard growl."

Take a drink every time you encounter the following words or phrases or variations on them:

• slough
• cadre
• dour
• cupola
• eidetic
• patrician
• vitae
• microexpression
• arterial spray
• mass reactive
• void war
• wet leopard growl
• shaking hands in the old way
• grim darkness
• only war
• "Vulkan lives!"

If you find all of them in the same book, finish the bottle, shout "Bingo!" and take your place as a daemon prince at the side of Horus.

Imperium Secundus

Vulkan Lives is a slog to get through, and will be a real test of your dedication. It has two direct sequels called Deathfire and Old Earth that are even harder work, and even if you've committed yourself to The Long Road I don't think you should read them unless you didn't mind Vulkan Lives. In which case fill your boots.

At this point the Horus Heresy enters a phase where Horus has kicked his plan into high gear, using a warpstorm to isolate a bunch of loyal Primarchs and their forces on the wrong side of the galaxy while he and his traitors make for Earth. The separated half of the cast create Imperium Secundus, and there's a whole phase of books about them, occasionally jumping to Terra to check in with the Emperor and his advisors while they wait for Horus to arrive.

The Imperium Secundus phase begins with The Unremembered Empire, then continues on through Scars, Garro, and Vengeful Spirit. If you look at the numbering of the series, you'll have noticed Garro is book 42 and I'm recommending it ahead of Vengeful Spirit, which is book 29. That's because book 42 is not only set before 29, but contains a twist that's spoiled by it, which is a wild state of affairs.

What happened is a series of audio dramas about Garro, who you'll hopefully remember from book four, were only adapted into book form years after their release despite being essential to and referenced by the ongoing plot. Read the books in numerical order and you'll hit a "how did this guy even get here" snag that will eventually be resolved a whole 13 books later. Which is ridiculous. Read them in this order and you'll avoid that shemozzle.

The Imperium Secundus saga continues with frequent glimpses into what's going on elsewhere through Pharos, The Path of Heaven, Praetorian of Dorn, Master of Mankind, The Crimson King, and finally Ruinstorm.

You're in the home stretch now. The final mainline Horus Heresy books to read are Wolfsbane, a knockdown brother-versus-brother brawl in which the Primarch of the Space Wolves tries to take out Horus before he can reach Earth, and The Buried Dagger, in which nothing nearly as exciting happens. Something the series struggles with is making "why this character became evil" stories seem believable and dramatic, and The Buried Dagger is a perfect example. The Primarch Mortarion is set up as a tragic figure, but comes off as petty and resentful instead. Some plot happens in it though, so I guess you're gonna read it.

The Siege of Terra

At this point both our Short Trip and Long Road are reunited as the Horus Heresy is rebranded as the Siege of Terra and gets back to its roots. Ignoring a handful of novellas, the Siege of Terra tells a continuous story just like the first three Horus Heresy books did. They begin with Horus arriving in the solar system, detail the apocalyptic war across Earth, and climax with his final showdown with the Emperor. There may have been stumbles along the way, but the finale pays off in a way that makes the journey feel worthwhile, I promise.

Again, that's The Solar War, The Lost and the Damned, The First Wall, Saturnine, Mortis, Warhawk, Echoes of Eternity, The End and the Death Volume 1, The End and the Death Volume 2, and The End and the Death Volume 3. And then you're done, and can sleep.

If you're struggling at any point I highly recommend the audiobooks, especially those read by Toby Longworth and Jonathan Keeble. They're all on Audible, and some of the better quality audiobooks I've heard. I wouldn't have made it through without them.

The Short Trip summarized

• Horus Rising
• False Gods
• Galaxy in Flames
• Legion
• Prospero Burns
• The First Heretic
• Know No Fear
• Betrayer
• Unremembered Empire
• Scars
• The Master of Mankind
• The Solar War
• The Lost and the Damned
• The First Wall
• Saturnine
• Mortis
• Warhawk
• Echoes of Eternity
• The End and the Death Volume 1
• The End and the Death Volume 2
• The End and the Death Volume 3

The Long Road summarized

• Horus Rising
• False Gods
• Galaxy in Flames
• Flight of the Eisenstein
• Legion
• Thousand Sons
• Prospero Burns
• The First Heretic
• Know No Fear
• Betrayer
• Mark of Calth
• Fear to Tread
• Vulkan Lives
• The Unremembered Empire
• Scars
• Garro
• Vengeful Spirit
• Pharos
• The Path of Heaven
• Praetorian of Dorn
• Master of Mankind
• The Crimson King
• Ruinstorm
• Wolfsbane
• The Buried Dagger
• The Solar War
• The Lost and the Damned
• The First Wall
• Saturnine
• Mortis
• Warhawk
• Echoes of Eternity
• The End and the Death Volume 1
• The End and the Death Volume 2
• The End and the Death Volume 3