I have been curious about Warhammer 40K books. Have watched lore videos on Youtube and played Dawn of War II. I am not interested about the miniature wargame all this is based on. I find lore interesting for most parts. Science fiction parts and aesthetics to be specific. Feel like fantasy part and over the top nature of the world makes it worse. Guess miniature wargame needs those. Someone said in Dune group Dan Abnett’s Warhammer 40K books are good ones if you want something Dune-like. I have understood Eisenrhorn series is good place to start on Warhammer 40K books. They are considered better Warhammer 40K books. I don’t want epic space battles with ridiculously powerful character. I look for smaller scale stories in that world.
Xenos starts Eisenhorn series. There are eight other books in series and more to come. All written by same person which is positive. Some other series seem to be written by various writers and have more entries. It is easy to see what makes this Dune-ish. World is really heavily inspired by Dune. First half is bit like Blade Runner in Dune world with some Star Wars flavor. Later half is goes more into Starship Troopers and H.P. Lovecraft territory. I don’t think every Dune fan will like this. It goes quite far from Dune. Familiarity is bonus if you are into other movies and writers I mentioned. You shouldn’t expect masterpiece. This is after all based on miniature wargame.
I liked Xenos for most parts. Maybe because I like its influences. There has to be action because this is based on miniature wargame but sometimes it feels so forced. Especially when it cuts more interesting parts. I found this promising rather than great. It almost gave me what I wanted. It was almost there. Maybe next one or ones after that gets there.