Hello and welcome to the latest instalment of Black Library Weekly, my regular look at what’s been happening in the world of Black Library. There have been a few interesting things to talk about this week, with an interesting mix of releases along with some exciting news that popped up midweek. From the top, as usual…
Monday
Not one but two short stories this week for Digital Monday, with a pair of T’au Empire short stories by Andy Smillie – The Kauyon and The Tau’va, both available as eshorts for £2.49 each. If the names sound familiar, that’s because they’ve both been available elsewhere before, just not as standalone ebooks. The Kauyon was originally an audio drama, the physical version of which came with The Tau’va as a bonus short story (although I forget whether it was prose or audio…), and then they were both included as prose stories in the Legends of the Dark Millennium: Shas’O anthology. Confusingly, while that’s still available there’s actually a newer version with ever so slightly different stories (including these two) included, called The Tau Empire rather than Shas’O.
Either way, those anthologies are the best value way of picking up these stories, especially as The Tau’va is a very short story…the sort of thing that previously might have been released for 99p rather than the full £2.49. They’re both good stories, and definitely worth reading if you like the T’au as a faction…but I’d go for the anthology rather than picking them up individually. You can read my reviews here – The Kauyon and The Tau’va.
Midweek
If you’ve been keeping up with Black Library news, or just been reading these weekly posts, you’ll know that not only is there an open submissions window currently running, but successful submissions will contribute towards a reimagining of the classic Inferno! magazine. This week, courtesy of Warhammer Community, we got a bit more information about what to actually expect on that front, with the news that it won’t be a bi-monthly magazine but rather “an ongoing series of short fiction anthologies”. Personally I’ve always been a massive fan of short story anthologies, so this is music to my ears!
I’d suggest you read the article to get the full details, but there are a few points worth flagging, I think. Firstly, the fact that Inferno! is billed as “a celebration of new Black Library writers”, which straight away sounds like a very positive move from Black Library. There will apparently be stories from “more than half a dozen new talents, many of them appearing in print for the very first time.” To me that suggests it could include authors whose work we’ve already seen once or twice in digital form – people like Mike Brooks, Miles A. Drake and Evan Dicken. Hopefully it will also include brand new authors too.
There aren’t too many specifics about the included stories as yet, but three things are mentioned. Firstly, the ‘lead’ story in volume one will be The Unsung War by David Annandale, about Ultramarines Primaris Marines. That one’s definitely new! There will also be the first instalment in a new, serialised Age of Sigmar story from Guy Haley, featuring Prince Maesa who showed up in last year’s Shadespire short audio The Autumn Prince, in the Advent Calendar. On the one hand I’ve very pleased to see more from Guy, and about Prince Maesa in particular, but on the other hand I’m a bit nervous about another serialised story. I’ve not really got on very well with the last few of those that Black Library have released, although the fact that Guy is involved does give me a little more confidence.
The last point, and one that I think will resonate with a lot of fans, is that there will be two Warhammer Chronicles short stories from Josh Reynolds. Yep, that’s right – stories set in the old-school Warhammer setting, and which have been confirmed (by Nick Kyme, no less) to be “new, never released before stories”. Before you get too giddy with happiness, it’s worth remembering that the End Times happened quite suddenly, so there’s a good chance authors will have been working on Warhammer stories that weren’t quite ready in time, or for some other reason didn’t get published. Whether these stories were written back then, or more recently…doesn’t really matter to me. The fact that there’s an appetite from Black Library to release these sorts of stories is a very positive sign, I think. Personally, I’m really enjoying reading Age of Sigmar stories…but I can’t deny the appeal of the Old World.
So that’s what’s confirmed so far, although we don’t yet have a release date beyond “later in 2018”. My guess would be September or thereabouts, once the usual Summer campaign has wound down. Something that I think is interesting is what we can infer in terms of the number of stories – with two from Josh, one each from Guy and David and “more than half a dozen” from newer authors, that means there will be a minimum of eleven short stories in there. It’s already sounding like a jam-packed book, and I know I’m really looking forward to learning more about what to expect!
That was the main news for the midweek period, although the trend continued for Black Library publishing details of upcoming book signings, which is cool. If you live in or near Kent, in England, then you might be interested in going to a signing with Dan Abnett on the 24th March, while across the other side of the Atlantic if you’re going to be at Adepticon then you’ll have the chance to meet David Annandale, Graham McNeill and CL Werner across a few days of the event. I’d recommend checking out Black Library’s Facebook page for more details.
Weekend
Two brand new releases this weekend, one of which is a limited edition, plus a surprise audiobook edition of an existing title! I’ll start with the brand new titles, beginning with the latest Primarchs novel – the eighth book in the series, Jaghatai Khan: Warhawk of Chogoris by Chris Wraight. As always this is a lavish LE hardback, which looks beautiful as usual, and is available for £40 – you can order it now, and it will be dispatched from next weekend. Once again it’s a really, really interesting sounding story from this series, and if you’d like to know a little bit more about it you can check out my Rapid Fire interview with Chris by clicking this link or the banner below.
Next up is an audio drama that I picked up as a pre-release at a BL event earlier in the year, and which I’m really, really excited about. Titans’ Bane by Chris Dows is available as usual in CD (£12) or MP3 (£9.99) formats, and is a story that I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who’s a fan of audios…in fact to anyone who likes Black Library stories at all. You can read more of my thoughts in my review here, but I would also recommend having a read of Chris’ comments about it in another Rapid Fire interview by clicking here or the image below. It’s hard to get across just how good this is – it’s just an incredibly powerful story, and a testament to the ever-increasing quality of BL’s audio output. Go out and buy it!
Speaking of audios…we quite often get new paperback editions at weekends, but it’s not often that an existing title gets the audiobook treatment after its main release. That’s exactly what’s happened with Josh Reynolds’ Age of Sigmar novel Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden, however. Apparently there had been some considerable interest from fans in getting this released as an audio, and what do you know? Black Library have listened, and here it is – available in MP3 for £29.99, giving you nearly fourteen hours of narration by the excellent John Banks. As with most of the newer audios, it’s also available on Audible – and don’t forget that if you haven’t yet taken the plunge, you can sign up for a free trial and get this audiobook for nothing! If you fancy that, just click here to check it out.
Thoughts on the week
Sometimes when I come to write these posts I’m already excited to talk about all the cool stuff that’s been going on, but this wasn’t one of those weeks. It was, however, a week that upon reflection was actually really quite cool. I guess for me at least there wasn’t a new novel to get stuck into (I’m holding out for the standard edition of Jaghatai Khan), but even so I still get excited about a new Primarchs novel even if I have to wait to read it. I feel like I’ve rabbited on LOADS about Titans’ Bane recently, so I don’t want to say too much more, but honestly – it really is that good. Seriously…it’s worth checking out.
So two new releases that are both worth getting excited about…although the cynical part of me suggests that they’re going to be of limited appeal because a) lots of people (like me) won’t want to fork out £40 for Jaghatai Khan and b) for some reason lots of people still don’t seem to want to get on board with audios. I hope that at least a few people will check out Titans’ Bane as their first introduction to audio – it’s a PERFECT story for the medium, set entirely within a tank and reliant almost exclusively on dialogue, and without any Space Marines, boltguns, chainswords and so on I think that it’s maybe going to be less contentious for anyone who simply can’t get over things not sounding like they ‘should’. Who knows…but I loved it!
I think the Inferno! news on Wednesday was probably what got me most excited, however. I absolutely can’t wait to start seeing new stories from authors who have come through the open submissions window, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Inferno! volume one will have plenty of great new content. To be fair, I’ll be happy whatever happens just because it’s a brand new short story anthology. Back in the day there used to be all sorts of great anthologies, before the days of Digital Monday and so on – books like Words of Blood and Into the Maelstrom that collected together great short stories from the old Inferno! magazine. I used to absolutely love those, and I hope the new incarnation of Inferno! will get a whole new generation of fans hooked just like I was. Fingers crossed!
Lastly, in this section, here’s the usual roundup of what I’ve been posting this week:
- Storm of Iron by Graham McNeill
- QUICK REVIEW: The Kauyon by Andy Smillie
- QUICK REVIEW: The Tau’va by Andy Smillie
- The Thunder of Madness by David Annandale (not BL, but really cool)
- RAPID FIRE: Chris Dows Talks Titans’ Bane
- RAPID FIRE: Chris Wraight Talks Jaghatai Khan: Warhawk of Chogoris
Coming up…
Next week’s main release looks to be a cracker – Carcharadons: Outer Dark by Robbie MacNiven, the sequel to the excellent Red Tithe. Keep an eye out over the weekend for another quick author interview about that one!
As always, if you’ve got any thoughts or comments on the week’s news and releases please do get in touch via the comments section below or on Facebook or Twitter.