Hello and welcome to another instalment of Black Library Weekly, my regular look at what’s been happening in the world of Black Library. While last week ended up surprisingly busy and full of interesting goings-on, this week has been somewhat quieter. As usual, though, there’s still been enough to talk about here. Let’s get to it…
Monday
The second brand new Digital Monday short story to be released in July (after John French’s The Absolution of Swords), Soulfuel by Rob Sanders (£2.49 in ebook) was of interest right away by virtue of being subtitled A Black Ships Story. You can read my review here, but suffice to say while it started well, and had some strong elements, overall it was (in my opinion, at least) a touch disappointing overall. That notwithstanding, though, I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s excited about there being more stories about the Sisters of Battle and the Black Ships.
Midweek
If anyone spotted some Black Library-related news during the week then do let me know, because as far as I was able to see, nothing showed up whatsoever. That’s hardly surprising, as it’s not going to be possible for Black Library to have something interesting to show every single week – and chances are next week we’ll get the next set of upcoming releases showing up online.
Roll on next week…!
Weekend
Thankfully, after a quiet midweek the weekend then saw a few new titles pop up for sale. Let’s start with the big one, book 45 in the Horus Heresy series – Tallarn by John French. As usual it’s available in hardback (£20), ebook (£9.99) and MP3 (£29.99) formats, with the large trade paperback version likely to follow in about three months, and the mass market paperback another few months later. I say ‘the big one’, because new Horus Heresy books are always popular, but as with quite a few recently this isn’t a brand new novel but rather a collection of previously-released stories.
While you might expect this to contain every story related to the Battle for Tallarn, in fact that’s not the case – it contains the novella Tallarn: Executioner, the short novel Tallarn: Ironclad and the short stories Tallarn: Siren and Tallarn: Witness. It doesn’t include any of the other stories, presumably because Black Oculus, The Eagle’s Talon and Iron Corpses have all been included in previous numbered anthologies. If you fancy a look at reviews for any of the Tallarn stories, or indeed an interview with John about this mini-series, check this article out.
Should you be excited about this book? Well yeah, I reckon – even if you’ve already read all of the included stories, it’s an opportunity to add the Tallarn arc to the numbered series, in the way that Black Library always said…’every story in every format’. I know I’m looking forward to reading John’s author afterword (or possibly foreword) and then hopefully getting the chance to re-read these stories all in one go. If you haven’t yet read the Tallarn stories, of course…you’re in for a treat.
That was the one ‘new’ release this weekend, but we also saw no less than three new paperback editions of existing books, each at a slightly different price point. I say ‘existing’ books – let’s start with Scythes of the Emperor by LJ Goulding (£9.99), which is a rare beast in that it’s a new Space Marine Battles title which hasn’t seen a hardback release. Perhaps because the novel Slaughter at Giant’s Coffin was a pretty short one, or perhaps because there are so many interesting Scythes of the Emperor short stories, instead of directly releasing Slaughter… in paperback, Black Library have chosen to re-release it as part of this collection along with the prose version of the audio drama Daedalus, and four other short stories.
You’ll note that the Black Library website claims this ‘collects together all of L J Goulding’s Scythes of the Emperor stories’, but that’s not actually true. It collects together some of these stories, but there are several more – such as The Shadow of the Beast and The Blood of Sotha – which aren’t included. Pedantry aside, it’s a good collection of stories even if it’s not quite the complete collection.
Next up is Garro by James Swallow, book 42 in the Horus Heresy series (£12.99). This is the trade paperback edition, i.e. the large paperback size like the books you see in airports. It’ll be a few months yet before the smaller, mass market paperback comes out. Last of all is Lord of Undeath by CL Werner (£8.99), the tenth and final book in the Age of Sigmar Realmgate Wars series.
Thoughts on the week
Arguably, if you’re a completist who tends to get things as they’re released then after the brand new story at the start of the week you might have been disappointed to see that the rest of the releases were all new formats of existing books that you may already have. If that’s you, then fair enough. An alternative viewpoint would be that more stories are now available to more readers, and in more affordable ways as well. I know that I’m looking forward to picking up Scythes of the Emperor despite having read all of the individual stories, for example.
In terms of Tallarn specifically, all I’ll say on the matter here is that – as mentioned before – Black Library have for a long time been very clear on their plans to release every story in every format. It’s up to each person to decide whether they want to buy limited edition novels/novellas, and standalone short stories, when they’re first released…in the knowledge that they’ll eventually be bound up in a single volume. I’ll definitely be getting a copy of Tallarn in hardback, but if you don’t fancy forking out £20 for it…that’s cool. Give it a miss.
Coming up…
Looking ahead, next weekend is going to be a REALLY big one with the release of Black Legion by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. As expected there’s a lovely limited edition hardback for anyone who fancies that, and it looks like all the different editions are going to be available to order on the 5th August. Get in there early if you want the limited edition!
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!