Doesnt he write Warhammer novels ? Those kind of books are like Star Wars ones you dont know who writes them no matter often you see the books on the shelfs. They sell themselves.
Not quite true. Dan Abnett outsells almost all of the other Black Library authors combined, and many of his readers won't touch other
Warhammer books on the somewhat dubious grounds that they are not written by Abnett (although Sandy Mitchell and Graham McNeill are supposed to be very good as well). He has his own legions of fans separate to
Warhammer ones, which creates interesting and somewhat tedious arguments (some old-school
WH fans also don't like him as the populariser of
Warhammer and put down Abnett's work) online.
The analogy in this case would be with RA Salvatore, who has his own rabid fanbase, many of whom have zero interest in other
Forgotten Realms fiction. The difference is that Abnett's writing doesn't give the impression that he's lost the will to live and his new books remain fresh and exciting, a description that no Salvatore book has lived up to for about 16 years
I've had his work recommended from multiple people - but every time I look I think "eww warhammer tie-in" and have flashbacks to terrible, terrible D&D novels from TSR/WoTC.
There is a big difference. The D&D novels are truly shared settings, with multiple books by multiple authors happening in the same cities, same countries and same regions, sometimes with authors borrowing other writers' characters.
Warhammer 40,000 is different, in that it spans the whole galaxy and many thousands of years (the
Horus Heresy sub-series takes place about 10,000 years before the
Gaunt's Ghosts series, for example, and both exist independently of the other). The
Gaunt's Ghosts series, which IIRC takes place several centuries prior to the 'present' of the WH40K game setting, take place in a self-contained corner of the greater setting, the 'Abnettverse', consisting of a vast sector of space called the Sabbat Worlds. The Imperium of Man has launched a massive crusade to liberate these worlds from various alien and Chaos-touched forces holding them, and this crusade is a self-sufficient fleet consisting of thousands of gigantic ships and billions of soldiers. There is little to no contact, or even reference, with the wider
WH40K universe beyond the Sabbat Worlds. The characters, ships, armed forces and planets used in Abnett's fiction are fully of his devising.
Or to put it another way, Abnett's characters say their prayers to the Emperor and use Imperium standard-issue weapons and vehicles, but beyond that have little to no contact with the rest of the
40K universe, and can be read in total independence.
