Seeking Warhammer recommendation from bundle

[The Joy of Erudition]

I know there are some Warhammer fans in here, from various posts. I know almost nothing of the Warhammer universe, but I bought one of the bundles of ebooks anyway. It seems to be a sampler of various storylines. Which do you think would be a good entry point for a novice to the setting, and why?

These are the books included in the bundle I bought, so it has to be one of these:

Horus Rising (Horus Heresy #1)
Dark Imperium (Dark Imperium #1)
Resurrection (Horusian Wars #1)
Soul Wars (Age of Sigmar)
The Great Betrayal (War of Vengeance #1)

[Tony]

I think The Horus Heresy is probably a good starter point - it will do a better job of setting the scene for the Warhammer 40K universe. There are well over 50 books in the Horus Heresy series, the first 4 are pretty much in order, after that it jumps around a lot following different characters.

As for the Warhammer fantasy universe, I think the War of Vengeance series is the chronologically earliest series written so far, but I'm not sure how relevant it is to the bulk of the Warhammer fantasy novels around, as the Age of Sigmar takes place well after the War of Vengeance, and most of the novels written so far take place well after the Age of Sigmar.

[Carrie]

I've always wanted to get into that world as well at some point but have had zero idea where to start. Will be keeping an eye on this topic.

[The Joy of Erudition]

Thank you. Chronology isn't the deciding factor for me, but rather whether the book expects the reader to already be familiar with names, events, or other elements of the setting. From my outsider's view, the use of "Horus" in the titles makes me think there's some element of ancient Egyptian gods in the series, or elements of ancient Egyptian culture, but it might have nothing to do with that for all I know.

So unless anything I said here changes your recommendation, I'll go with Horus Rising for 40K, and Soul Wars for fantasy, if The Great Betrayal is so far in the past as to be relatively irrelevant to the bulk of them.

[Tony]

As far as Warhammer fantasy goes, the books that are chronologically earlier are the most recently written, which ties in with GW's decision to stop publishing the Warhammer Fantasy miniatures game and replace it with Age of Sigmar. So the older books don't require a lot of knowledge of the world setting - in fact, most of them are written in series and the series fill in the back story that is required.

That is pretty much the case with most of the 40K books as well, they tend to be reasonably self-contained.

[NekroRider]

Definitely a good idea to start with Horus Rising imo. I really love the Horus Heresy series. Once you read Horus Rising I'd definitely recommend jumping into False Gods and Galaxy in Flames afterwards. The rest of the HH series very much revolves around those core events. Especially loved the early days of Horus Rising and False Gods, though, personally.

[The Joy of Erudition]

These endorsements are encouraging. I was split between trying the fantasy or SF ones first, but Horus Rising sounds like it's not only a good entry point, but also a popular story.

[Tony]

The Horus Heresy series is the most popular series that they have produced.

[Book Nerd]

Horus Heresy is good but to me it's kind of like starting with the prequel.
Sorry I haven't read the rest but Dark Imperium looks pretty good.