TL;DR: A nice and easy fantasy read – the plot is straightforward, and almost predictable which makes it a good choice for a short and healthy form of escape to disconnect from noises of daily life to recharge

WARNING – Massive spoilers ahead.

What is this whole thing about?

My first exposure to Warhammer 40k was through a computer game , I didn’t quite follow the plot back then, but I enjoyed the game enough to look more into the lore later.

Warhammer 40k has everything you need to know about it in the title: it happens in 40th millennium, and it’s about war – lots of it.

The whole premise is around humanity’s quest to conquer the galaxy for itself, and it does so by sending massive armies of genetically enhanced 7 foot marines to any world to bring them to compliance, or erase them out of existence – and that’s only if you’re of the human race, if you’re a xenos life form – good luck. All you’ll see is some random giant armored dudes with massive guns and chainswords land on your planet one day, yell “For the emperor!” which you have no idea who he is, and start slaughtering your family in front of your eyes before killing you too while yelling “Die you xenos filth!”.
And these are the (mostly) good guys compared to what lurks out there.
There are sometimes some conversations between leaders of humans and xenos, but it rarely leads to anything but aliens getting slaughtered lol.

Now these armies (legions) of genetically enhanced space racists are led by bigger dudes called Primarchs who are gene-sons of an even bigger dude called The Emperor (of mankind).

Now remember I said it’s kind of (enjoyably) predictable?

There’s one Primarch called Horus (he’s also the the Warmaster), who as the name of series suggest, falls to corruption. His flaw? Pride and big ego.

Another one is called Angron – he is always … angry and falls to the god of anger, rage and war (Khorne)

Another one is Mortario, who was raised by a necromancer, and falls to the god of … decay and plague (essentially death – mort, mors in latin)

Fulgrim, another primarch, is obsessed with perfection and wants to be more and more perfect and flawless, he falls to the god of more and excessiveness as in execesive music, excessive art, and excessive debauthery of any kind you can and can not imagine.

You can tell who’s a loyalist too with only three or four lines of dialouge.

Overall, it’s an easy read, enjoyably predictable to the exactly right extent, gets a bit boring on some short chapters, and has some good emotional depth in certain parts.

Do I recommend it? Depends, but yes.

Yes, if you are looking for something to read on an airplane, in your commutes, before bed, or generally any time you’re out of mental bandwidth and need a short and healthy form of escape to disconnect from noises of daily life to recharge; at least that’s what I used it for.