Hello and welcome back to another instalment of Black Library Weekly, where I’m taking a look through this week’s Black Library activity. It’s been a remarkably quiet week on the Black Library front, with nothing really in the way of news and hardly anything released at the weekend. As usual though, let’s start at the beginning…
Monday
For the second week running the Digital Monday short story was an ebook premiere of something that had been available in print (in a limited edition anthology) for quite some time. This time it was Fatespinner by Chris Wraight, a story of Space Wolves and Thousand Sons that first saw the light of day back in the event-only anthology Honour of the Space Marines. As far as I can tell (and indeed according to Chris himself) it’s a standalone story, and in my opinion it’s something of a gem. Definitely worth the £2.49 price tag!
Midweek
Last week I commented on how the middle of the week was pretty quiet for Black Library news…well this week it was even quieter! Literally nothing new came out of Black Library between Tuesday and Friday, just a couple of reminders about books which came out last week, which is unusual as there’s normally at least something of interest…but hey, they’re allowed quiet weeks I guess.
The only thing I’d like to mention for the midweek section is the introduction of a new weekly series here on Track of Words. If you didn’t catch the announcement earlier in the week, Forgotten Texts is a new series where each week I’m going to be reading and reviewing a classic short story from the Black Library archives, looking at how it stands up today and how it fits in with the current state of play. I kicked things off with Salvation by Jonathan Green, who kindly provided a quick interview looking back at his recollections of writing the story. If that sounds interesting, keep an eye out for a new post each week!
Weekend
The week’s gentle pace continued into the weekend, with just a single main release – Andy Smillie’s Virtues of the Sons/Sins of the Father collection. Available in MP3 (£9.99) and CD (£12) versions, this collects together two previously released audio dramas into a single release…which makes sense given that they’re very closely linked. I must admit I’m struggling to remember when each Heresy story was originally released, what with all the different versions, but as far as I can recall these were both released in prose first…which is interesting. It’s normally the other way around, I’d say. That certainly suggests that it should be interesting to listen to these, and see how they feel as audios!
In terms of brand new Black Library content, that’s it for the week! If you’re a fan of art prints then you might want to check out the latest ones to show up – an extra posh (£95) version of Neil Roberts’ Corax cover, and standard editions (£30) of the covers for Asurmen: The Hand of Asuryan and Angels of Caliban. Interestingly, all books written by Gav Thorpe!
The final thing to show up at the weekend was the third short story in the Caligari Archivum, tying in with the Inquisitor – Martyr computer game. Once again by Aron Nemeth, Above and Beyond (Episode 3) is, unsurprisingly, the third part of four that will make up a novella. It’s currently available to download for free on the Black Library website (follow this link) but remember that this isn’t actually produced by Black Library…
Thoughts on the week
It’s been a quiet week, that’s for sure. To be honest there’s not much more to say – as usual it started off with a good short story (seriously, check it out)…then nothing happened in the middle of the week…then one audio CD came out at the weekend. It certainly puts last week into perspective – I suggested last week that it felt quite quiet, but looking back it seems full of excitement in comparison!
I don’t want to be too grumbly though, as having the odd quiet week here and there is probably quite a good thing. It’s certainly a relief for my wallet! Hopefully things will pick up in the next week or two, and we’ll see some more cool stuff showing up. Speaking of which…
Coming up…
As I mentioned last week, even though it’s still January next week it looks like the weekend should see the official release of Kingsblade by Andy Clark. Or at least, we should be able to download it from the 28th – hardbacks are due to be despatched from the 30th. I’m really excited about this one, especially as the prequel short story Becoming was pretty impressive! I mean, who doesn’t want to read about Imperial Knights? They’re awesome!
As always, if you’ve got any thoughts on the week’s news and releases please do give me a shout to let me know!