Xenos

Xenos introduces Gregor Eisenhorn, an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, as he tracks a conspiracy involving alien artefacts through some of the Imperium's most distant and ungoverned corners. The story moves from the gilded halls of high-society celebrations to plague-ridden frontier worlds, and Dan Abnett uses that range to show the Imperium as a genuinely vast and contradictory place — not a single fortress, but a civilisation under constant pressure from within and without.

Eisenhorn himself is the reason readers stay. He is neither a fanatic nor an antihero; he is a professional operating at the edge of what the Inquisition permits, making judgements with imperfect information and real moral stakes. Abnett writes him with the same economy and precision that makes Gaunt's Ghosts work: no wasted words, no hollow heroics.

The investigation has the structure of a detective thriller, complete with informants, dead ends, and a conspiracy that grows larger with each layer removed. The alien element ties directly into Ordo Xenos lore, and Abnett uses it to raise questions about how the Imperium defines threat — and whether everything it fears is actually dangerous.

Xenos is the natural first novel for any reader who wants to experience the Inquisition from the inside. It requires no prior knowledge of the setting, moves quickly, and ends having established a character worth following across several more books.