Forges of Mars

About the Forges of Mars series

The Forges of Mars trilogy sends Archmagos Explorator Lexell Kotov and a vast expedition fleet of the Adeptus Mechanicus -- the tech-priest faction of Warhammer 40,000 -- out across the Halo Scar, a lawless, dangerous fringe of the galaxy, in search of forbidden and forgotten technology. Priests of Mars establishes the fleet, its rival factions of tech-priests, and the mysterious world of Katen Venia at the expedition's heart; Lords of Mars and Gods of Mars escalate into war against a splinter Space Marine legion, ancient AI horrors, and the expedition's own internal betrayals as the true nature of what Kotov is searching for becomes clear.

Where McNeill's Ultramarines books are Space Marine action and the Legend of Sigmar trilogy is myth-scale fantasy, Forges of Mars leans into 40K's stranger, more cosmic-horror-adjacent corners: rogue artificial intelligence, the unsettling theology of the Machine God, and factions willing to sacrifice entire fleets for forbidden knowledge. It was originally planned as a duology before McNeill and Black Library expanded it back out to a full trilogy mid-series.