Hello and welcome to another instalment of Black Library Weekly, my regular look at what’s been happening in the world of Black Library. There’s not been anything huge happening this week, but there’s still plenty to talk about…especially for fans of a certain young and vibrant race in the 40k universe. Let’s take a look…
Monday
Unusually, this week’s Digital Monday release was not a short story, but a novella – Fire and Ice by Peter Fehervari (£4.99). It’s billed as an ‘Inquisition and T’au Empire story’, which is fair I think – if you’d like a bit more information, you can check out my review here, but suffice to say it’s a wonderful, if strange, story. Interestingly, it was previously available in a couple of almost-identical Legends of the Dark Millennium anthologies – Shas’O and The Tau Empire – so this is its standalone debut. If I’m being honest, £4.99 seems a bit steep considering you can get it bundled up with a bunch of other stories for £2 more…
Continuing the T’au (that apostrophe is going to confuse me so much) theme, Monday also saw the release of Tales of the Greater Good (£39.99), a digital collection featuring seventeen different stories involving the T’au Empire. That breaks out into four novels, seven novellas and six short stories, although (slightly confusingly) if you bought these all separately you’d actually end up with six books and a single standalone short story:
- The Arkunasha War by Andy Chambers (short story)
- Blades of Damocles by Phil Kelly (novel)
- Damocles – a collection of four novellas:
- Black Leviathan by Ben Counter
- Blood Oath by Phil Kelly
- Broken Sword by Guy Haley,
- Hunter’s Snare by Josh Reynolds
- Fire Caste by Peter Fehervari (novel)
- Fire Warrior by Simon Spurrier (novel)
- Kill Team by Gav Thorpe (novel)
- Legends of the Dark Millennium: The Tau Empire which includes the stories
- A Sanctuary of Wyrms by Peter Fehervari (short story)
- Aun’Shi by Braden Campbell (short story)
- Commander Shadow by Braden Campbell (short story)
- Farsight by Phil Kelly (novella)
- Fire and Ice by Peter Fehervari (novella)
- Out Caste by Peter Fehervari (short story)
- Shadowsun: The Last of Kiru’s Line by Braden Campbell (novella)
- The Kauyon by Andy Smillie (short story)
- The Patient Hunter by Joe Parrino (short story)
- The Tau’va by Andy Smillie (short story)
Quite a lot of those are definitely more about the Imperium than the T’au, although that’s fine as it’s good to see them as both protagonists and antagonists…but it’s worth being aware that this definitely isn’t a collection of stories all taking a look inside the heads of the T’au. It’s great to see so much of Peter Fehervari’s work in there – if you haven’t read any of his stuff, then this is an excellent opportunity! It’s brilliant.
Midweek
This week, this particular section is very easy to write – as nothing happened! No news during the week. Nada.
Although, on a personal note – I re-read the classic novel Space Marine by Ian Watson. What a bonkers experience that book is! Keep an eye out for a review coming soon…
On to the weekend, then…
Weekend
You know, it’s almost like Black Library planned this week to focus heavily on the T’au – fancy that! Saturday saw the official release (as usual it had been available to pre-order for a while) of the new novel Farsight: Crisis of Faith by Phil Kelly. No audiobook this time around, so just the hardback (£18) and ebook (£9.99) editions. If you’re interested in this one, check out this post on the Warhammer Community site for an interview with the author.
Happily, Saturday also saw three new paperback releases – always a good sign. Here’s what’s available now, each of them priced at £8.99:
- Ravenor Returned by Dan Abnett, the second in this classic series to get a swanky new paperback edition.
- Carcharadons: Red Tithe by Robbie MacNiven.
- Mortarch of Night by Josh Reynolds and David Guymer. Book nine of the Realmgate Wars series for Age of Sigmar, this is a collection of eight audio dramas in prose form.
Interestingly, the Ravenor books are really hard to find when searching on the Black Library website, as they’re all listed with the old covers and not the nice new paperback covers. If you do search, check at the bottom of the listings – they’re all listed in in original series publication order still, and the same applies on Dan’s author page!
Thoughts on the week
Well it’s certainly been a week of T’au goodness, which won’t appeal to everyone…but in my opinion it’s always cool to see stuff from factions other than the Imperium and Chaos. Other than the eldar, the T’au are probably the next easiest for authors to deal with, and I find it nice sometimes to change pace and read something from a different perspective. Is the new Farsight novel top of my to-read list? Probably not. I’m still interested to check it out, though, and as I’ve said many times it’s ALWAYS great to see Peter Fehervari’s work getting wider recognition.
Overall it hasn’t been the busiest week, but there’s still been plenty of interesting stuff at the start and end of the week to talk about. It’s also good to see new paperbacks becoming available, as always.
Coming up…
It looks like the main news next week is going to revolve around the Horus Heresy, in the form of a new audio drama and a new Primarchs novel. By my reckoning, Gav Thorpe’s new novel Lorgar: Bearer of the Word is due to land on Friday in the usual £40 limited edition format, followed closely by John French’s Dark Compliance audio drama on Saturday. Plenty to look forward to, then!
There’s also a good chance of seeing the next month’s worth of new releases announced, I think. It usually happens in the first week or so of the month, so keep your eyes peeled Wednesday or Thursday for that…
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!