Draco (and to a lesser extent the rest of the Inquisition War trilogy). Ian Watson is like, a real writer. Twisted, but good.
Eisenhorn trilogy (and to a lesser extent the Ravenor trilogy). By far the best BL have ever produced.

If you like books about war, the gaunts ghosts aren't bad, but I find them a little monotinous (but I don't like books about war anyway).

Other than that, we're into "good compared with normal BL rubbish" territory.

Personally I would start with Xenos (if you can get the Eisenhorn compendium that's better as it includes two short linker stories). In my mind these are really worth reading in and of themselves and they blow the rest of the BL out of the water.

I've always enjoyed stuff by Abnett, especially the later Ghost books and his inquisitor stuff. Legion is probably my favorite though.

Spurrier's stuff is good too, I really enjoyed Lord of the Knight.

McNeill is hit or miss with me.  Storm of Iron, Black Sun Dead Sky... awesome.  The Killing Ground, disappointing.  I think they made him shorten it, which is too bad.

Goto, it's been awhile but I remember liking them. Eldar Prophecy is probably his best in my opinion though.

Angels of Darkness should be mandatory for any DA players.

The Heresy stuff is all pretty good with the exception of Descent of Angels.

I recently read Relentless and had a hard time putting it down, I really liked it. There was a short story with the same characters in Planetkill which was good too.

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 Dave you are the first person i know about who likes what Goto writes.
On allother forums i frequent every user wants to see  him to burn on a stake.

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Ick!

Maybe they are interesting books but they are horrible 40K books.

Storm of Iron is a darned good read. Abnett's stuff is good. The Ravenor series is good but I think that the Horus Heresy books he wrote are some of his best

Aside from that they are mostly bad. Good 40K reads but not good novels

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From the reviews I've read about Eldar Prophecy, a lot of people didn't like it because it portrayed the Eldar as being decadent and overly emotional. I could never really understand where they were coming from though as that's how Goto developed Kaelor to be. It wasn't a book about Biel-tan, get over it .

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Eh, everyone seems to like Storm of Iron. It was okay, it was a good bit of background, but it wasn't a great SF book, nor was it well written. Blah blah blah, salient angle, blah blah salient angle, blah cannons, blah trenches. Nightbringer was better in terms of a good SF novel.

I still like Draco although I'm not so keen on Harlequin or Chaos Child. Bits are out-of-date, but it still captures the schizophrenic nature of the Inquisition pretty well. Plus genestealer cults are cool. And, unlike most BL writers, Ian Watson can really write well.

The Gaunt's Ghosts series, and the Double Eagle spin off. I've really enjoyed them. They also read well from an Epic perspective, in the main, with battles that really feel large, even if we are focussing on a small part of it.

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I can only recommend the Horus Heresy Series.
Gaunt's Ghosts is just a soap opera on the battlefield.

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I like a couple of the 'odd' books. Stuff like '15 minutes' is fun. Sadly as with any franchise writing can be tricky!

For instance the two BFG novels are okay, but then pail in comparison to stuff from the likes of Patrick O'Brian.

Hey ho.

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The first four Horus Heresy books are good, and 'Fulgrim' is as well. However, 'Descent of Angels' is just awful. I did however like 'Legion', but am not getting on with the last one 'Battle for the Abyss' if I remember the title right.

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Battle for the Abyss isn't bad but suffers from the same aggravating problem that screwed over Descent of Angels. It doesn't actually describe any of the climatic and interesting portions of the story you want. Descent of Angles stops the story before the actual revolt of Luthor and the Dark Angels on Caliban. Battle for the Abyss builds up to but doesn't describe the Word Bearers attack on Macragge.

Both frustrating books.

Battle for the Abyss is also one of Counters least well written works

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