When I was young, I read an unreasonable amount of media tie-in fiction. Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, the odd Planescape paperback—those slim mass-market volumes with wonderfully lurid covers. They were inexpensive, plentiful, and set in worlds I already loved through games and daydreaming. At the time, I wasn’t especially concerned with literary merit; a tolerable plot and a few interesting characters were quite enough.
And then, sometime in my late teens, the habit simply evaporated. Other genres crowded in. I drifted toward more “serious” literature, then non-fiction, then whatever happened to cross my path. Somehow, decades slipped by without my picking up anything resembling the shared-universe fiction of my childhood.
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Yet for years, I’ve heard people—smart people, readers whose taste I trust—speak highly of
Dan Abnett. One friend in particular has been quietly insistent, nudging me
toward his work with the confidence of someone recommending a book they know will land.
So earlier this year, I finally gave in and picked up Xenos, the first of the Eisenhorn novels. Technically the series is no longer a trilogy, not with The Magos bolted on, but the original three still form a clean arc. |
It’s strange to think that for all my childhood fascination with tabletop games, I never actually played Warhammer 40,000. I tried my hand at everything from ASL to Warhammer Fantasy Battles, painstakingly painting a regiment or two before my attention wandered, but 40k always remained a kind of distant planet I orbited without landing on. My only real contact with the universe came later, through the RTS games in the early 2000s—Dawn of War particularly—where bolters and chainswords felt more like atmospheric decoration than lore.
Perhaps I was nudged toward the books by the persistent background hum of news about Henry Cavill’s upcoming 40k adaptation. Having now finished the original trilogy, I find myself genuinely curious to see what becomes of that project. Cavill’s dedication to The Witcher (and to staying faithful to source material in general) gives me more confidence than I expected to have in a Warhammer screen adaptation.
As for the books themselves: I was surprised by how much I enjoyed them. Eisenhorn is far better written than I anticipated—tense, atmospheric, occasionally introspective, and full of characters who feel more layered than tie-in fiction has any obligation to provide. Gregor Eisenhorn in particular is a fascinating study in erosion: a principled man steadily worn down by the weight of necessity, secrecy, and compromise.
If the series has a weakness, it’s one shared by much action-oriented fiction: the hero’s improbable survival in the face of overwhelming odds. There were a few moments where my suspension of disbelief wobbled, and I wondered if the Emperor Himself had quietly added Eisenhorn to the psychic equivalent of a protected species list. But these moments didn’t ruin my enjoyment—at worst, they briefly pulled me out of the moment before the narrative swept me back in.
And so, with my first sip from the vast well that is the Black Library, I find myself considering another taste. Not immediately, perhaps, but soon—on a weekend when I’m in the mood for baroque Gothic futurism and fast-paced action. It’s been unexpectedly rewarding to revisit a form of fiction I abandoned decades ago, and to find that, sometimes, returning to an old genre feels less like nostalgia and more like rediscovery.
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