There are pros and cons to both sides of that particular debate, but for the purpose of this article let’s not worry about it too much. Of course it’s a balancing act for Black Library as to how much to reveal and how much to keep hidden, and it’s also up to each person to decide how important the mystique is to them as a reader. Clearly the Heresy series has told a lot of fantastic stories, but in the process of doing so it has definitely stripped back a little of the mystery, and in many respects it’s the mystery – that sense of only catching glimpses of events and names – that makes a setting like 40k so intriguing. Lastly, before I get onto the good bits, let’s touch briefly on something that always comes up in discussions of the Heresy – the question of how much to reveal, and how to avoid ‘losing the mystique’ of the setting. I’m also not going to talk about things like what format books might get released in – you know, whether BL will do ‘premium editions’ like the Heresy hardbacks, or paperbacks like Dawn of Fire. This isn’t really going to be a ‘pros and cons of each option’ sort of article, because I don’t want to spend too long talking about each option, and in order to try and keep things reasonably focused I’m going to stick purely to the 40k setting, Let’s face it, Age of Sigmar has not had a lot of love recently, and while I’d be very happy to see a step up in BL’s AoS output, it seems unlikely. With that in mind, I wanted to look at some of the most commonly-talked about suggestions for what might come after the Heresy, and talk a bit about what I would personally like to see. With the Siege of Terra mini-series drawing to a close – at the time of writing there are just two books remaining of the planned eight – and heralding the long-awaited end of the Heresy, that question of what might come next seems more pertinent than ever. For all that it started small and exploded into something utterly massive, as readers we’ve always known that it has a definitive end point, and for almost as long as there’s been the Heresy range there’s been speculation over what Black Library will do once the series has finished – what ‘the next Heresy’ will be.

Black Library’s epic, ridiculously huge Horus Heresy series has proven incredibly popular, and for a lot of fans it’s the ‘premium’ BL range, the series that takes top billing and gets readers most excited.

Horus heresy books in order