Graham McNeill

A writer for the Black Library.

Not as awesome as Dan Abnett or as bad as Aaron Dembski-Bowden, but nonetheless a competent (if inconsistent) writer and a sick fuck.

Wrote the Ultramarines novels and some Iron Warriors. When he's writing them, the Ultramarines are actually okay.

He's also written several Horus Heresy books, including Fulgrim, which details the Isstvaan V Dropsite Massacre, Mechanicum, A Thousand Sons, the first Black Library book to hit the New York Times Bestseller list, Angel Exterminatus, a book that makes “famously derided petulant man-child” Pertuabo come across as not only a good character but somewhat likeable, Vengeful Spirit, which is one of the only Horus Heresy novels to feature Horus and his Legion as central characters (go figure), and the famous short story The Last Church.

On the other hand, he's been responsible for some Ian Watson-level atrocities, such as The Reflection Crack'd, which had Fabius Bile and friends rape Fulgrim with a pear of anguish (His Captains all ambush him unarmored and beat him unconscious to torture a daemon out of him). So fail there. Also his female characters have a propensity for random hook-ups. Oh, and Codex: Black Templars.

McNeill's writing style is very "tell, don't show." His books tend to have characters deliver their lines in uninterrupted chunks with minimal indication of what's going on around them, and very flat emotional inflection in dialogue. His descriptions are usually pretty plain and often descend into cliche; as an example, here's some excerpts of the description of the Battle of Istvaan V on p. 466-467 of "Fulgrim”:

• “Thousands were dying every minute, the slaughter terrible to behold.”
• “Such destruction had never yet been concentrated in such a horrifically confined space...”
• “the slaughter continued unabated, on a scale never before seen...”
• “the bloodletting was a truly horrific sight...”

And on to p.471:

• "The pain was unimaginable..."
• "The battlefield of Istvaan V was a slaughterhouse of epic proportions."
  
• "...a conflict unparalleled in its bitterness."
• “hundreds were dying with each passing second”

He also has a bad habit of endlessly repeating awful phrases (such as "His choler rose". Yeah.) and occasionally pulling obscure ones out for use. Keeping a dictionary to hand when reading may be advisable.

On the other hand, his stories have a wealth of background information and detail, and his few character driven stories are very good as well (read Priests of Mars). And he knows how to write Mortarion - proud, clever, and ridiculously tough. He even takes down a Baneblade in Vengeful Spirit, as well as catching a Fire Raptor in midair with his chain-and-scythe Silence, allowing Horus to throw Worldbreaker to destroy one, then vaulting up and taking up the other before finally landing facing away (of course) from the explosion. Mortarion was also shredded to ground beef by the Avenger Gatling Cannons, causing Horus to take him in his arms in a rare moment of brotherly camaraderie (he later got better). His writing of Perturabo can very obviously be seen influencing his later appearances in the Heresy (think Aaaron Dembski-Bowden with Angron or Lorgar). John French’s, Guy Haley’s and Dan Abnett’s Pertuabo feel very similar. (Gav Thorpe, of course, reverts him back to an colossal idiot.)

Priest of Mars also makes rape camps canon, just thought you would like to know (although they're heretical). Yeah, rape camps coming from the dude who wrote the Daemonculaba and a pear of anguish used on Fulgrim. Who would've thought. Unrelated, he is also very good at writing Slaaneshi forces, with his description of Fulgrim’s grand entrance in Angel Exterminatus being particularly good

He recently announced that he had been hired as a "senior narrative writer" for League of Legends, and subsequently would not be writing as actively for Black Library as he has in the past. The response to this news on /tg/ was predictable. It's also slightly amusing, when one considers that LoL has a few shoutouts to 40k (and is very very easily amused); one character, Garen, is loosely based on an Astartes and has a Blood Angels skin. The list of his League work can be found here--he's generally considered by Reddit to have done some rather good writing for League, with his best-regarded work being the grimdark Where Icathia Once Stood (featuring the closest thing League has to the Warp).

That said he's far from being universally liked. Some Ultramarines fans view him as going too far in the other way. Making them total failures and a vibe of "Cool Smurfs don't follow the Codex" and that the lead character Uriel Ventris, becomes the biggest Mary Sue of all the Smurfs. Horus Heresy readers might criticize him for copy-pasting characters across books. Like many, many other things, this is up for debate.

He also did some writing for Warhammer fantasy, to include the trilogy on Sigmar’s backstory. The books are good overall, with some great scenes, like Sigmar’s battle with Nagash at the end of the third book.