What Is Your Favorite & Least Favorite Horus Heresy Book?

[Carter Beard]

Favorite - Fulgrim, Thousand Sons, Nemesis. Fulgrim was such a complete book and so well written. Goes to show you how Dan Abnett has influenced the other 40k writers and how far he has pushed them to do better. I am a long time 1k player so how could I not love A Thousand Sons. My only qualm is that not enough was said about the trial of Nikea, like how Magnus left before the Emperor and how that was completely out of character for any of his sons. And I liked Nemesis because it showed the players behind the scenes and how far Malcador is actually willing to go to.
Least Favorite - Prospero Burns. This is the only book in the series that I couldn't read. Flash backs; Dreams; False Memories; not getting to Prospero till the end of the book...yeah no thanks. Very surprising that Abnett dropped the ball on this one so spectacularly.

[Proiteus]

nearly all of the remembrancer/saint storyline is cut out. Keeler/Oliton/Karkasy are never mentioned, and Sinderman only appears as Loken's "mentor".

I thought that was the case when listening to the Flight Of Eisenstein audiobook and suddenly 2 women was with Sinderman and Cruise.

[Takerukau]

(Let me open this by saying how great the first three were) I think that my favorite has to be Fear to Tread, because it focuses on the betrayal between Horus and Sanguinius (they who were the closest friends among the primarchs). It shows how much Horus fears Sanguinius and what lengths he would go to - even deny the will of the gods of chaos - out of envy. Every book in the series points to how Sanguinius is who they all look to as an example and how they feel he will take the reigns, but that is the first time we get to really see him and the Blood Angels in action, and they don't disappoint. A Thousand Sons is my second favorite, and I liked Know no Fear and Unremembered Empire quite a bit too. I never liked Ultramarines until I read those (though they still aren't my favorite). I must agree though that the Dark Angel books were not very good. I don't feel like they added much to the heresy as a whole. I also didn't really like Legion that much. The stuff about John Grammaticus and the Cabal was interesting enough, but it took too long to get there. Fulgrim is good, but a bit messed up (Slaaneshi nonsense is uncomfortable to read, but the subtle fall to chaos was well executed).

[Meph]

Yeah,; the two Dark Angels novels I found very, very boring and they add nothing to the series. Battle of the Abyss, while not badly written seemed to be too 'small scale' compared to the whole series.

My favourite ones by far were Thousand Sons & Prospero Burns. I understand how Prospero Burns seemed a bit odd at first but I really liked the exploration of the nature of the Space Wolves.
Fear to Tread and The Unremembered Empire follow closely in 3rd and 4rth place.

Some novels read a bit easier than others, some have a slightly diffeferent style than others but basically I found most of the series to be good to excellent, with the only one in the mediocre category being Battle of The Abyss, and the bad category being populated by the Dark Angels Novels. Seriously, I got a better flavour of the Dark Angels from their secondary role in Unremembered Empire than the entirety of the two whole DA novels...

[SuperDann]

The Dark Angels novels get no love at all, do they? I enjoyed them, but maybe that's because I'm a DA fanatic. The twist at the end of Fallen Angels is still one of my favourites in the series, even if it isn't the most impactful (i.e. it only affects those characters, not the galaxy as a whole)

In terms of my favourites: A Thousand Sons and Prospero Burns are both joint first for me. I know the latter gets a lot of dislike from some parties, but I'm sure that's mostly because they wanted Space Wolves talking about Space Wolves and more emphasis on the burning of Propsero itself. I actually wrote a university level discourse analysis piece on that book, because it is so rich from a linguistic perspective. The use of point of view and the associated language of the characters. The recurring dream sequences and foreshadowing. Non-linear narrative. And especially the part at the end where Kasper is telling the story to the Vlka Fenryka. Dan Abnett did an amazing job creating a culture for the Space Wolves that wasn't just Power-Armoured-Vikings-in-Space! As to the sister novel, nothing is more tragic, in my opinion, than the fall of Magnus and the Thousand Sons. You know it's going to happen, but the whole way through you are both rooting for them and wanting to say "No! Don't do it Magnus!" I can re-read both of those books again and again and enjoy them both each time. They are so good at blurring the good-guy/bad-guy dichotomy and are prime examples of both Abnett's and McNeill's writing talent.

Least favourites: I just felt that I had to read Nemesis out of loyalty to the series, and for completeness. The idea of sending on of each assassin as some kind of super team felt a bit cheesy, and in the end I don't think the events had a lasting impact on the rest of the series. Mark of Calth was a bit dull, up until the last couple of short stories, but then it was an anthology rather than a novel, so it can be a bit more hit and miss.

[Brother Sutek]

Legion was great and made me even more excited about the Alphas than before, all of the DAs books were horrible and made me think that Gav just wants to make the DAs chaos and this is his not so subtle way of getting that done. There was a huge amount of potential for those books to be great but they were just a huge let down.
@DETHMOKIL: You hit the nail on the head, excellent points all around.

[SuperDann]

...all of the DAs books were horrible and made me think that Gav just wants to make the DAs chaos and this is his not so subtle way of getting that done. There was a huge amount of potential for those books to be great but they were just a huge let down.

You do know it was Mitchel Scanlon and Mike Lee that wrote the first two DA books and not Gav Thorpe, right?