Warhammer 40,000 Legends – Overview

On the off chance that you haven’t heard (perhaps your head’s been in the sand for the last few months), Hachette and Black Library have teamed up to create a partwork series of Black Library 40k novels called the Warhammer 40,000 Legends Collection. Every fortnight a new book is released, and over time you can build up an awesome collection of 40k novels in lovely hardback format, complete with spine artwork that fits together to create (eventually) an original piece of art featuring all manner of famous 40k characters.

We're going to need a bigger bookshelf!

We’re going to need a bigger bookshelf!

On this very blog I’ve posted a few times (so far) about the collection, looking at the standard of production and the choice of titles – I’ve even run a competition which gave one lucky fan the chance to win a full subscription to the collection. I’ll keep posting about the new titles as much as I can, but I also wanted to have a single place where I can link out to individual posts and also keep track of which books have been released as part of the series.

That’s what this post is for. There’s a list below of which book corresponds to which issue of the collection, along with that book’s spine number – strangely enough the spines don’t use the same order, so for instance while issue 1 has 01 on the spine, issue 2 actually has 69. Go figure.

If there’s anything else to add, I’ll either add it here or provide links out. So without further ado, here’s the list…it’s going to be long!

Issue 1: The First Heretic by Aaron Dembski-Bowden (01)
Issue 2: Xenos by Dan Abnett (69)
Issue 3: Warriors of Ultramar by Graham McNeill (10)
Issue 4: Fifteen Hours by Mitchel Scanlon (49)
Issue 5: Horus Rising by Dan Abnett (13)
Issue 6: Crossfire by Matthew Farrer (78)
Issue 7: Blood of Asaheim by Chris Wraight (24)
Issue 8: First and Only by Dan Abnett (45)
Issue 9: Angels of Darkness by Gav Thorpe (30)
Issue 10: Ultramarines anthology (05)
Issue 11: Mechanicum by Graham McNeill (53)
Issue 12: Architect of Fate – Sarah Cawkwell, Darius Hinks, Ben Counter & John French (61)
Issue 13: Storm of Iron by Graham McNeill (64)
Issue 14: Helsreach by Aaron Dembski-Bowden (41)
Issue 15: Know No Fear by Dan Abnett (2)
Issue 16: Faith & Fire by James Swallow (76)
Issue 17: Malleus by Dan Abnett (70)
Issue 18: Heroes of the Space Marines anthology (34)
Issue 19: False Gods by Graham McNeill
(14)
Issue 20: Cadian Blood by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
(44)
Issue 21: Dark Apostle by Anthony Reynolds (6)
Issue 22: Daemon World by Ben Counter (59)
Issue 23: A Thousand Sons by Graham McNeill (18)
Issue 24: Ravenwing by Gav Thorpe (31)
Issue 25: Pandorax by CZ Dunn (17)
Issue 26: Battle of the Fang by Chris Wraight (20)
Issue 27: Soul Hunter by Aaron Dembski-Bowden (65)
Issue 28: Priests of Mars by Graham McNeill (55)
Issue 29: Atlas Infernal by Rob Sanders (75)
Issue 30: Ghostmaker by Dan Abnett (46)
Issue 31: Khârn: Eater of Worlds by Anthony Reynolds (12)
Issue 32: Deliverance Lost by Gav Thorpe (35)
Issue 33: Ahriman: Exile by John French (21)
Issue 34: Astra Militarum anthology (43)

I thought it might also be fun to run a tally of which authors have been included in the collection, and how many books of theirs have been featured. So far, Dan Abnett is tied in the lead with Graham McNeill, with Aaron Dembski-Bowden not far behind…

Dan Abnett: 6
Graham NcNeill: 6

Aaron Dembski-Bowden : 4
Sarah Cawkwell: 1

Ben Counter: 2
CZ Dunn: 1

Matthew Farrer: 1
John French: 2
Darius Hinks: 1
Anthony Reynolds: 2
Rob Sanders: 1

Mitchel Scanlon: 1
James Swallow: 1

Gav Thorpe: 3
Chris Wraight: 2

If you’ve got any thoughts or comments about the series so far, feel free to drop me a line and let me know!

8 comments

  1. I’m toying with the idea of jumping on this bandwagon, though not keen on repeat copies of The Horus Heresy volumes; I wish it was made known what titles will be included. Any plans to add to this page moving forwards still? Thanks 🙂

    1. Yeah, it would be great if there was a list of titles to come. I’ve been really enjoying it so far though, and yes absolutely – I’ll be adding to the page! I’ve fallen behind a little, but should be able to catch up soon. There have been a couple recently that I either never read back in the day or haven’t read for AGES so I’m looking forward to getting stuck into those 🙂

  2. Looks like the big names missing (so far) are Kyme, Counter (except for the AoF contribution), King, French, Sanders, Parker and Mitchell. Also be interesting to see if any of the Ian Watson stuff is included, although I bet not.

    1. Yep, that sounds about right. I’m sure most of those names will crop up in due course, although I’d have to agree about Ian Watson. It would be brilliant if some of his books were included, but they’re so far off being canon these days, I’m not sure it’ll happen. If they do go that far back though, we might get things like Gordon Rennie’s Execution Hour/Shadow Point, which would be awesome!

  3. Hi, I know this is an old post, but did you ever update this list? Since this was written they upped it to a 100book collection. How far is your collection? I am still missing a loooot…

    1. For some time I had been looking for a complete list myself to help me collect them as all the listings on ebay use issue numbers only. However, I got very lucky and recently acquired the entire collection. So I made an excel file with a list of the 100 books with spine and issue numbers. I’m a bit sad like that for keeping records of things. If you’d like a copy emailing to you I will happily send it.

      1. Wow nice! I saw that one complete collection and was very tempted to buy it myself, but could not trust the packages to come over thos side all in tact… inwould not say no to the exel sheet, it would only be for the issue numbers then, i hand wrote the spines on a piece of paper last year. I am still looking for only the Ravenor Rogue book, but that one is scarce… Thank you for reaching out man.

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