Hello and welcome back to another instalment of Black Library Weekly, where I’m taking a look through this week’s Black Library news and releases. After a very quiet week last time round, things have picked up a little this week with an exciting novel release, two short stories on Monday, a few cool paperbacks and the next hardback boxed set. As we always do, let’s start at the beginning of the week…
Monday
They showed up briefly a couple of weeks ago, presumably as a result of a technical glitch, but I doubt many people expected two digital short stories to appear at once on Monday – John French’s Ahriman: King of Ashes and Graham McNeill’s The Corpse Road (both £1.99). Both of these were previously published in limited run anthologies, and while King of Ashes was also available in Ahriman: Exodus, this is the first time The Corpse Road has been available for general sale. They’re both quite short and sweet, but while each one is a very different type of story I’d absolutely suggest checking them out.
The Corpse Road is especially interesting as it’s the second short story released recently that ties in with Graham’s Uriel Ventris series. There’s been no word on when we might expect the next book, but they’ve certainly got me interested in reading more about Ventris and Honsou…
Midweek
It’s been a while since the last time we had one of these, so it was something of a surprise on Wednesday to see the release of John French’s fantastic Ahriman books in a beautiful new hardback boxed set. To be fair, this actually ties in quite well with what Games Workshop are calling Tzaanuary, so in hindsight it’s not really that surprising. Anyway, the set was priced at £50 and was a limited run of 500 copies…which had sold out by Friday afternoon! Looks like Ahriman is still pretty popular. And yep, I picked up a copy…no surprise there.
Not much else happened during the week, except for a notification showing up on Black Library’s Facebook page which linked out to TWO editorial jobs currently available. It looks like these are open until the end of January, so if you fancy working for Black Library I’d suggest you get a move on! One role is presumably to replace Laurie Goulding, who’s moved to the USA, but it’s interesting to see another role come up as well.
Weekend
The first brand new 40k book of 2017, Andy Clark’s Kingsblade saw its official release on Saturday, for anyone who hadn’t pre-ordered it already. As usual it’s available to order in hardback (£18) and ebook (£9.99) formats, but no audiobook (at least not as yet) for this one. If you haven’t already, I’d suggest checking out Andy’s short story Becoming which acts as a nice prequel for the main novel. I’m certainly looking forward to reading the first full novel about Imperial Knights…should be lots of fun!
Kingsblade – nice cover.
That was the only brand new book to come out at the weekend, but there were also three new paperback releases. First up was William King’s The Macharian Crusade omnibus (£15), also available in ebook (£14.99), then there was also Legends of the Dark Millennium: Space Wolves (£8.99) and Paul Kearney’s Calgar’s Siege (£9.99). Paul Kearney’s book is of especial interest given that we’ve still not heard anything about whether his first Black Library novel – Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus is ever going to see the light of day. While you’re waiting, Calgar’s Siege is well worth a read!
Perhaps my favourite thing to come out of the weekend was an email on Saturday that was nominally about Kingsblade, but also included a section featuring all of these paperbacks, as well as a couple more from recent weeks! Combined with the little New in Paperback section of the website, it’s like Black Library are doing everything I hoped they would to start actually promoting these new editions! Good work, Black Library.
Thoughts on the week
Last week was unusually quiet on the Black Library front, perhaps because there was a sense that a lot of people would be on tight budgets after Christmas, but it’s great to see a slightly busier week this time round! There was a good mixture as well, with two e-shorts, one new hardback, a limited edition boxed set and three paperbacks…that’s pretty impressive!
Speaking of boxed sets, I was really pleased to see the Ahriman trilogy get the hardback treatment. For me it was an obvious choice, I just wasn’t sure when it was going to happen – we can argue about the price until the cows come home, but seeing as all 500 copies sold within two days I think it’s clear that £50 is a price people are willing to pay! I’ve also done a bit of speculation in terms of what trilogies/series might get the hardback treatment next, so if you fancy taking a look you can find that here.
Coming up…
It looks like next week’s big release is the hardback of the Horus Heresy Book 42 – Garro by James Swallow. I imagine a good number of people will have picked it up in ebook already after its Christmas Day early release, but if (like me) you’ve been waiting for the hardback, the wait is nearly over! It’s going to be interesting to see what comes next on Monday in terms of short stories, and whether we’ll get more of the re-published stories like recently, or something 100% brand new…
Thinking ahead, it can’t be too long before May’s upcoming releases show up in the Coming Soon section of the Black Library website. Eagle-eyed readers may have spotted Gav Thorpe’s Jain Zar: The Storm of Silence pop up briefly earlier in the week, which rather suggests that it might be one of May’s releases. Let’s hope there’s plenty more good stuff to come along with it!
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!