Where to Start Reading Warhammer Fantasy

The novels of the Old World are a vast and inviting graveyard to get lost in. Decades of Warhammer Fantasy fiction have piled up into hundreds of books across dozens of series, and choosing a first one can feel as daunting as facing a Waaagh! alone. The good news is that you need not read everything, and you certainly need not read it in order. This guide lays out a sensible path into the setting, whether you are drawn to the doomed heroism of the Empire of Man or the aristocratic menace of the Vampire Counts.

How Warhammer Fantasy Fiction Works

Almost all licensed Old World fiction is published under the Black Library imprint, and it accumulated organically over many years rather than to any master plan. There is no single canonical reading order and no mandatory first book. Series overlap, authors vary in style and quality, and the setting is broad enough that a novel about scheming Empire nobles and one about marauding northern tribes can feel like different genres entirely. The trick for a newcomer is not to assemble a complete list before reading a page, but to pick one entry that suits your taste, finish it, and let curiosity choose the next.

The Best Starting Point

For most readers, the ideal on-ramp is the long-running series following Gotrek and Felix — a doom-seeking dwarf Slayer and the human poet sworn to record his death — which begins with the collection often titled Trollslayer. Its early books are episodic, accessible adventures that tour the setting one monster at a time, showing you the Old World from the road: its taverns, its haunted forests, its greenskin ambushes and vampire-shadowed towns. You need bring no prior knowledge, and after a volume or two you will have a feel for the whole world and a sense of which corners of it you most want to explore.

Heroes of the Empire

If it is the Empire of Man that draws you — its gunpowder, its politics, its embattled faith — there is a rich shelf waiting. Novels of the Empire range from grim tales of witch hunters stalking heresy through fog-bound towns to sweeping accounts of its greatest wars and the founding deeds of Sigmar himself. These stories capture the setting's defining flavour: ordinary, frightened people holding a fragile candle against the dark. For the historical bedrock beneath the fiction, our article on Sigmar and the founding of the Empire makes a fine companion read.

The Undead and the Dark

Readers with a taste for the gothic are especially well served. The wars of the Vampire Counts against the living are chronicled in a celebrated sequence that follows the Von Carstein bloodline through its long campaigns against the Empire, blending battlefield epic with the seductive menace of the undead aristocracy. These books are among the setting's best-loved, and they pair naturally with our lore overview of the undead of the Old World if you want the wider context of Nagash and the two great powers of the dead.

Knights, Elves, and Other Realms

The wider world has its champions too. The chivalric romance and grim underside of the Kingdom of Bretonnia have furnished tales of questing knights and doomed honour, while the ancient, waning grandeur of the High Elf Realms anchors stories of Ulthuan, its civil wars, and its long defence against the dark. There are novels of dwarfs, of greenskins, of the frozen north, and of the far-off deserts, so that almost any faction which has caught your eye has a book or two written from its side of the battle line. Follow whichever thread pulls hardest.

The End Times Series

Eventually every reader of the Old World arrives at its ending. The End Times was chronicled across a climactic series of novels that dramatise the death of the world in full — the great invasions, the return of Nagash, the fall of the elves, and the last stands of the doomed. These books are best saved for when you already care about the setting, because their power lies in watching a world you have come to love be taken apart piece by piece. Our lore account of the End Times offers a spoiler-aware overview if you would rather know the shape of the ending before you read it.

Building Your Own Path

The healthiest way to approach this fiction is as a buffet, not a syllabus. Start with one accessible book — Gotrek and Felix serve most newcomers perfectly — follow the factions and authors that excite you, and abandon anything that does not hold you. The Old World was designed to be entered from a hundred doors, and there is no wrong one. Pick a starting point above, open the cover, and let the grim, glorious setting do the rest. If you would like a map of the world before you dive in, our tour of the Old World is a fine place to begin.