Graham McNeill

A writer for the Black Library.

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

Wrote the Ultramarines novels and some Iron Warriors shit. When he's writing them, the Ultramarines are not just tolerable but actually okay.

He's also written several Horus Heresy books, including A Thousand Sons, the first Black Library book to hit the New York Times Bestseller list (because of the subject matter, not the author), and the infamous short story The Last Church.

On the other hand, he's been responsible for some Matt Ward-level atrocities, such as claiming in his novel Vengeful Spirit that the Emperor got his powers by making a pact with the Chaos Gods. He also wrote The Reflection Crack'd, which had Fabius Bile and friends rape Fulgrim with a pear of anguish. So fail there. 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.

Examples of some of lacking descriptions excerpted from a single page (p. 471) of "Fulgrim," describing the Battle of Istvaan V:
"The pain was unimaginable..."
"The battlefield of Istvaan V was a slaughterhouse of epic proportions."
"...a conflict unparalleled in its bitterness."

He also has a habit of repeating awful phrases, such as "His choler rose". Yeah.

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).

Priest of Mars also makes rape camps canon, just thought you would like to know (although they're heretical).

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.

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 any Smurf. Like many, many other things, this is up for debate.