“The Horus Heresy book series is truly epic, but its massive number of stories can be overwhelming to traverse.” This is the opening sentence on a fascinating new website called ‘The Horus Heresy Omnibus Project’, and rarely have truer words been written. I read most of the 60+ Heresy books as and when each one was published, but for readers new to the series I can only imagine how daunting it must feel to try and understand what to read and in which order. That’s where unofficial, fan-driven resources come in though, and in my opinion they don’t come any better than the Horus Heresy Omnibus Project, written by Tim van Lipzig, who’s kindly agreed to tell us more about this great new site.
If you haven’t come across it yet, this is a thoughtfully curated resource offering a reading order for the Heresy like you’ve never seen before. It groups “every novel, novella and short story of the Horus Heresy into a comprehensive reading order of twenty-one story packages called omnibuses”, complete with thorough explanations of the logic behind each omnibus. It isn’t just ‘another’ Heresy reading order, though. What Tim has done is look for thematic connections that tie stories together in interesting, often unexpected ways, so that rather than just grouping stories by legion or character arc this offers you a range of narratively interesting options to choose from. It’s a clever approach, providing a carefully curated set of routes which help you navigate the series without feeling overly prescriptive.
On top of that it also offers additional recommended reading and a handy visual guide showing how the omnibuses interconnect, all topped off with glorious 8-bit artwork (some of which you can see in images throughout this interview) from talented artist Eric Alloway. I admit I’m a little biased, as Tim – the driving force behind the project – is a friend of mine. I wouldn’t recommend this site if I didn’t believe in it, though. If you’re interested in the Horus Heresy and the way its various arcs fit together, whether you’re new to the series or you’re an old hand like me, this site is an incredibly valuable resource. Without further ado then, let’s get into the interview.
Track of Words: To start off, tell us a bit about yourself.
Tim van Lipzig: First of all, thanks for having me!
I’m a psychologist from Germany in his early 30s who has been a fan of Warhammer 40,000 since his early teens. For most of my time as a fan, I was only a reader and lore enthusiast and never touched the models, let alone the tabletop game. My first Warhammer novels were the Gotrek and Felix novels of Warhammer Fantasy fame, while my first 40k novel must have been Space Wolf by William King (or Wolfskrieger, as the German translation was titled) and a few of its sequels. But the real gateway drug for me was the Gaunt’s Ghosts novels by Dan Abnett – I remember always being slightly embarrassed to ask my local bookstore to order one of these due to their martial titles and book covers. But oh boy, did they hook me in.
When Horus Rising came out I was already familiar with the rough outline of its lore due to browsing various Warhammer wikis, so it was really exciting to actually get to read full novels about it. That I would be married, a father and past my 30th birthday before Horus finally faces off against the Emperor would never have crossed my mind back then, though! I have been reading Black Library fiction ever since and started painting minis a few years ago, which has been a lot of fun in its own right. I have only played the tabletop game once, so that’s a side of ‘the Hobby’ that I’m still unfamiliar with (and probably will remain to be, if I don’t at some point yet manage to infect some local friend with a burning passion for Kill Team!).
ToW: Great, thanks! Let’s get straight onto the Horus Heresy Omnibus Project though – can you tell us a bit about the background to this project?
TvL: I started reading the Heresy when the series originally kicked off in 2006, so a reading order wasn’t an issue back then – you just read the books as they came out. It was wild and epic and wonderful, to read about the slowly unwinding tragedy that I had so far only experienced through lore snippets and Lexicanum articles.
But as the series continued to grow, the question of whether chugging through by publication number was the most enjoyable way to read the series became ever more pertinent. This has basically become its own genre of online discussion by now. Do I really need to read all of this? Which books can I skip? Which are must-reads? Wouldn’t it be more sensible to jump straight from A to E instead of working through B, C and D in between? I’m most interested in X right now, which stories focus on that?
BL made a half-hearted attempt at a reading order in White Dwarf a few years back, but it wasn’t great – ToW
I definitely suffered from ‘Heresy burn-out’ at some point and basically stopped reading the series – it just wasn’t much fun anymore. After something like two years I started to slowly get back into it, but I made sure to pick and choose which books I’d take the time to read and in which order I’d approach them. This was made possible by the fact that, due to taking a break, I now had several new books to choose from instead of just the newest one.
It was at this point that I started to really look into the question of what’s best read after what for myself, and I started to give advice online to would-be-readers and newcomers. I also started throwing together little reading orders for fun, which became the seed for what’s now become this fully-grown website.
ToW: Tell us more about what specifically inspired you to put together this website, and what you wanted to get out of it?
TvL: Nowadays, I can only imagine how daunting it must be to face the Heresy as a whole as a new reader. 54 (!) books until the Siege, then 9 more, not to mention the various spin-offs like the Primarchs and Horus Heresy Characters books? That’s one hell of a road to commit to. On the plus side, you now have the full scope of the series to pick and choose from and are free to approach the series in any order you like.
I might sound lofty, but it’s something of a generational thought that’s inspiring this. The kids should have it better than we did, you know? I chugged through, I took wrong turns and exhausted myself along the way, but I did reach the peak, so the least I can do is chart the territory for those that come afterwards. Simply put, I love the Heresy, and I want people to share in the fun and the glory of all of its highs and lows. Making this mountain more accessible, more easily traversable and ultimately more enjoyable to climb is what I want to offer with this project.
ToW: Most Heresy reading orders focus on individual novels but you’ve grouped things together – why have you chosen this approach?
TvL: Starting in 2016, ten years into publishing the series, Black Library released three Heresy omnibuses themselves – Crusade’s End, The Razing of Prospero and The Last Phoenix. I thought these were very elegant, as they solved one of the series’ problems: the scattered nature of its storylines.
As it was, novels, novellas and short stories (and sometimes audio dramas) all intersected and mingled, introduced new characters and evolved existing ones, sometimes to a significant degree (looking at you, The Reflection Crack’d). Which is fine in theory, but became almost impossible to keep track of due to the humongous size of the cast and the numerous storylines. The omnibuses solved this by binding together the scattered fragments of story-threads into approachable, comprehensive storylines.
To give an example: The Last Phoenix starts out with the novel Fulgrim, then presents the relevant short stories and the novella that are the next chapters for the surviving Emperor’s Children and their primarch, but also includes the introduction of the Iron Warriors and their primarch in their introductory shorts and novella and only then faces the reader with Angel Exterminatus. I had originally read this with the idea of it being a straight sequel to Fulgrim and had neglected many of the stories in between, so I had a lot of head-scratching and “Wait, who are you? And when did that happen?” going on while reading it, to the detriment of my enjoyment of a very fun book.
The reading order of the Horus Heresy Omnibus Project applies this format to the whole series. I only construct theoretical omnibuses here, of course – the site is a reading order, not an online shop or download hub.
As I see it, there are several advantages to structuring the Heresy like this. First of all, it’s a neat way to present and bundle together stories that connect to and build upon each other. It therefore limits the amount of choices a reader has to make between stories. Want to stick with the White Scars? Read through the stories of Ordu of the Khan. Interested in the Battle of Calth? Look towards everything in Shadow Crusade II: Underworld War. Want to get the most out of Dorn versus Alpharius in the novel Praetorian of Dorn? The omnibus Scale and Stone collects all the stories that lead up to it.
On the flip-side, there are also enough points of decision that allow a reader to follow their preferences and interests at the moment of finishing a certain omnibus, so there’s plenty of opportunity to either go along with the drive of a storyline that one is enjoying or to switch and try something else for a change.
The omnibus format is also a good opportunity to account for the diversity of the series, as it allows for the grouping of stories not just by following certain characters or Legions, but also to look into the thematic connections that bind together the Heresy. Old Earth and The Crimson King might seem disparate on the surface, but are thematically connected and build upon each other’s ideas in interesting ways. Sometimes, these connections between novels even culminate into unforeseen payoffs down the line. The team of authors and editors behind the Heresy know what they’re doing!
ToW: How did you settle on each reading order?
TvL: Good question! First of all it was a question of getting an overview of the whole series, identifying the major events and major storylines. What narrative currents flow parallel to each other, which influence each other, which converge eventually, etc. I took advantage of the fact that the whole series is now laid out before us and can be traced along its paths accordingly. Added to that were of course my own experiences with navigating the series: “If I had known where this was going, then…”. The actual assembly then really depended on the omnibus in question, and I did a lot of back-and-forth while assembling the reading order.
A very simple example was Ordu of the Khan. The stories about the White Scars are all written by the same author, and follow a clear narrative and thematic throughline about a specific set of characters in a linear fashion across basically the whole series. Just make sure to read about the events on Prospero beforehand and you’re good to go until they reach Terra.
Then there are omnibuses about a specific event, like the Battle of Calth or the Burning of Prospero, where a novel or two tell the core of the story and then have additional stories grouped around that which embellish the event and those involved in it.
But it’s seldom so clear-cut, and it’s usually not really feasible to simply follow a single Legion all the way from Isstvan to Terra. The Heresy is too interconnected and there’s too much stuff happening left and right that you’d be missing out on, as few Legion-storylines run as isolated or cohesive as the White Scars’ one.
Often, it was also a question of size and interconnection whether a storyline was told through one or across several omnibuses. I had, for example, imagined an omnibus with the Word Bearers vs Ultramarines ‘trilogy’ The First Heretic, Know No Fear and Betrayer from the very start of the project. TFH introduces the Word Bearers, their motives and the origins of their hatred for the Ultramarines in particular, then KNF shows their heresy unveiled with the surprise attack on their despised arch-enemy, and Betrayer culminates with another bloody stand-off amidst the ravaged worlds of Ultramar. A neat three-act-structure, not to mention the fact that all three are written by Aaron Dembski-Bowden and Dan Abnett, two of my favorite authors, which further sweetens the deal!
But going through everything else that had to fit into the reading order, not to mention that I also had to keep in mind which stories would yet be building on others (like the whole Imperium Secundus arc) and what these stories would require structurally as prequels in preceding omnibuses…well, I realized that too much was going on in between and around those novels to make them fit into a single story-package, as much as I liked the idea. So I had to re-evaluate and in the end decided to compromise and space those stories out across several omnibuses, which still show their close connection with a shared prefix (Shadow Crusade I, II and III).
Sometimes, I also made a call based on thematic connections, like with Fear to Tread (more on this shortly).
ToW: This can’t have been an easy process. What were some of the other challenges you came up against while putting the omnibuses together?
TvL: As I said above, the sheer size and interconnectedness of the Heresy and all the moving parts made it quite hard to think of a specific reading order that strings larger chunks of it onto linear threads. Also, it was just a vast amount of material to account for, and finding a good place for each of the 100+ short stories, 20+ novellas and 30+ novels was just, well…a lot.
There were stories that seemed to fit into several places at once and others that didn’t really seem to fit anywhere at all. To give just one example, take Fear to Tread: it’s a major story point for the Blood Angels that informs everything that happens to Sanguinius and his Legion all the way to their involvement at the Siege of Terra, so it’s obviously quite important. But the war at Signus Prime is also a very isolated event which doesn’t have an obvious prequel outside of the mandatory opening trilogy. There’s also not really anything happening left and right that significantly affects it, and vice versa, until the Blood Angels re-emerge from Signus and enter the Imperium Secundus, so…with what to group it together until then?
The good thing in that case was that I also couldn’t really make a wrong choice, as long as it would somehow feed into Imperium Secundus afterwards, so I was free to juggle it around. In the end, I made a decision on a thematic basis and paired it with Betrayer and other more Chaos-centric stories, which I think works quite well – Sanguinius and Angron were targeted by the same god, after all.
ToW: While you’re the driving force behind the project, there are two other key figures who have also contributed – artist Eric Alloway, and website designer Philipp Pfeil. Could you tell us a bit about their involvement?
TvL: A large part of Warhammer’s appeal has always been its visuals, in my opinion. It’s what gets you to pick up and take a peek at the content of your first Codex or novel, isn’t it? It was definitely what got me interested in the first place, just marveling at these horrible, wonderful renditions of the World That Was and the 41st millennium by the likes of John Blanche, Adrian Smith or, more recently, Neil Roberts.
I discovered Eric posting pixel renditions of Heresy characters on his Twitter account while I was working on this project, and I loved the way that his artworks were at once kind of cute, yet instantly recognizable and full of character and detail. It was almost like a magic trick: how could he, with only 300×300 pixels, summon up and convey this character that I so far had only read about?
After following him for a while I summoned up the courage to ask him whether it would be alright if I used some of his artworks for a project of my own. Eric instead suggested that we straight up collaborate, and that I should just tell him which characters I needed and that he’d paint them for me. And boy, did he deliver on that promise! To be honest, it was one of the major joys of working on this project: writing Eric a prompt for a character like Durun Atticus, and then checking my phone the next day to discover a lovingly rendered pixel version of them in our Twitter chat, was like getting to open a tiny birthday present each time.
Likewise, I got super lucky with getting Philipp on board. We were already friends when I started working on the project and I mentioned to him in passing that I was looking into ways of building a website, which I had never done before. His answer was “You do know I do that for a living, right?” He offered to build the website together and was from then on invaluable in creating, tweaking and maintaining it from scratch. He didn’t know anything about 40k before I brought it up, but actually started reading the Horus Heresy afterwards and therefore did double duty not just as our venerated tech-priest, but also as our first beta-tester.
It was a lot of fun and very rewarding to work with him, and to get a peek behind the curtain of how this stuff works. It turns out everything is possible with the right code and the time and determination to go over it again and again! Bless the Omnissiah. And bless Philipp; he really was my steadfast man in the trenches on this one.
To be honest, I’m not sure if I would have kept going through with the project if not for the collaborations with these two guys. I’m really grateful to both of them for the opportunity to share in the process of this project.
ToW: Finally, it’s worth mentioning that the Heresy isn’t actually the only thing that this site covers. What can you tell us about the other content you’ve included, and who it’s aimed at?
TvL: I have always liked writing about stuff that I enjoy, and there are few things that I’m more enthusiastic about than my chosen field of profession, psychology, and the grim darkness of the far future. So it was probably only a matter of time until I threw both together. As it is, I wrote two long-form pieces of writing that are currently available to read on the website, both being psychological analyses of Warhammer 40,000 novels and characters.
The first is titled Stories told by Monsters: What the Clonelord and the Jackalwolf can teach about Narrative Therapy. It’s an analysis of Josh Reynolds’ novels about Fabius Bile and Lukas the Trickster through the lens of Narrative Therapy. This is a therapeutic school of thought and way of practice that views people as homo narrativus, beings that define themselves and the world around them by the way they tell stories about themselves and everything around them. Consequently, the therapeutic approach uses ‘self-narratives’ as potential sources of suffering and healing.
I saw many parallels to Josh’s writing and started applying it as a framework to look at his novels Primogenitor and Clonelord as well as Lukas the Trickster (Manflayer had yet to be written at the time). It was a very rewarding process and I’m proud to be finally able to present it in an accessible way to more readers.
The other is a more recent piece that I’d love to hear people’s thoughts and feelings about: The Dark Coil in contact with Gestalt therapy. It is, as the title says, a deep dive into maybe my favorite corner of 40k’s literary landscape, the intricate and mysterious stories of Peter Fehervari. ‘The Dark Coil’, as his stories are collectively known by fans, has been an obsession of mine ever since I read Fire Caste for the first time in 2017.
I had the idea of writing something about it for a long time, but never found an angle or the courage to tackle it. Last year I felt that the stars were finally aligned and I decided to have a go at it, this time through the lens of Gestalt therapy, the therapeutic school of thought that I have been training in for the last five years. I actually got the opportunity to talk to Peter himself and discuss some of my thoughts and theories with him, which was an absolute highlight moment for me as a fan (thanks again for setting us up, Michael!). The result is something between an interview with the author, a psychological analysis of themes and characters, an attempt to explain Gestalt therapy, a reflection on my own fascination with 40k in general and the Dark Coil in particular, as well as a love-letter to a host of stories that are an enduring fascination of mine.
About who’s the target audience for these…hard to say, to be honest! It’s a very specific combination of fields, and the Coil piece especially is quite idiosyncratic. I do really hope, though, that readers can find something (maybe even a lot?) to enjoy in both texts, be it by learning something new about aspects of psychological thought or by looking at certain 40k stories from an unfamiliar and fresh perspective. Again, I’d love to hear people’s thoughts on these, so if you took the time to read either, please let me know!
I will continue to post new content in the Article-section of the site, so if you are interested in that, stay tuned.
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So there you go – I’m sure you’ll join me in saying a huge thank you to Tim for chatting to me for this interview, and for putting this brilliant resource together. And if you haven’t already visited it by now, make sure you head straight over to the Horus Heresy Omnibus Project and take a good look around!
If, having done that, you’re still on the lookout for more Heresy content then you can also check out the Horus Heresy reviews page here on Track of Words.
If you enjoyed this interview and would like to support Track of Words, you can leave a tip over on my Ko-Fi page.
