Black Library Weekly – W/C 16/04/18

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. It’s been another relatively quiet week – a few things to talk about, but this week’s post is a little shorter than usual. Let’s start at the beginning as always…

Monday
Six months or so after Robbie MacNiven’s Heartwood received the e-short treatment, the second short story from the Legends of the Age of Sigmar: Sylvaneth anthology got a standalone release for this week’s Digital Monday. Gav Thorpe’s Wrathspring (£2.49 in ebook as always) takes a slightly different approach and offers a bigger picture than Heartwood, but is another great depiction of this fascinating Age of Sigmar faction. It also features Alarielle kicking ass and taking names, which is fun. You can check out my review here.

Midweek
Just a couple of points of interest during the week, the first of which being a Warhammer Community post in which Mike Lee talks a little about the Crimson Fists and what the attraction is from his perspective. That nicely ties in with the recent release of Legacy of Dorn, so if you’re interested in the Fists and fancy a little bit more info, check it out. For me personally I think I’d have liked it to also include a few references to other Black Library stories featuring the same Chapter – I think it could have nicely combined Mike’s comments with a little more information to provide a sort of Crimson Fists primer. That would have been not just cool, but a useful resource for newer fans – but maybe that’s just me.

The other snippet came via the Warhammer World Facebook page, and was a list of authors who are going to be attending Warhammer Fest in May, across the two days. You can check out the image below to see who’s going to be there – suffice to say there’s a nice mixture of authors over the weekend, although as each one is only attending one day there is always the risk that you’ll have bought a ticket for one day and your favourite author will be there on the other day! If that’s the case, I can wholeheartedly recommend heading to Black Library Live in June, as I suspect there’s going to be a much bigger selection of authors there – or hold off until this year’s Weekender is announced!

Weekend
Onto the weekend, and while there was only the one release…it’s at least a big one! And by big I mean in relation to its subject matter – Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah by Gav Thorpe features, as the title suggests, about the biggest machine you’re likely to find in 40k outside of a starship! This one is available in hardback (£18), ebook (£9.99) and MP3 audiobook (£29.99) formats, as well as a decidedly lovely looking limited edition hardback (£40, limited to 1,000 copies) – from what I can see the hardback editions are due to be dispatched as of next weekend, but it looks like both the ebook and audiobook are available to download right now.

If you’re a regular reader you’ll know that I’m quite a big audio fan, although I tend to focus more on audio dramas than audiobooks. This is one book, however, where I’m genuinely curious to hear how the audiobook is going to work. If you’d like to know why that’s the case, have a read of my latest Rapid Fire interview in which Gav talks a bit about what we can expect here. You can find that interview by clicking this link or the banner image below. Check out Gav’s elevator pitch for the book as well – I think that’s my favourite one yet!

Thoughts on the week
As you can see it’s been another relatively quiet week on the Black Library front, with the two releases – both from Gav, and both talking about wrath – being the main points of interest. Personally I’m a fan of both tree spirits and Titans, although I suppose neither of those are what you’d called mainstream factions for BL stories. I think that’s great though, because while I love a good Space Marine story, and I’m sure they sell really well, it’s always nice to read about something a little different. Likewise Stormcasts in Age of Sigmar. I can certainly attest to Wrathspring offering a really nice, fresh perspective on the Mortal Realms compared to the more common Stormcast-centric stories.

As for Imperator, well as usual I’ve succumbed and gone for the LE hardback edition, which means I’ll get my copy in a week or two. If you’ve read Gav’s comments in the latest Rapid Fire interview then hopefully you’ll be just as intrigued as I am – the gender-neutral personal pronouns, the noospheric communications, the whole thing being set inside the Titan, the basic premise…it all sounds pretty awesome to me. I can’t wait to check it out, so keep an eye out for a review of that coming in the next couple of weeks!

I don’t think there’s a huge amount more to talk about, as I’ve covered the midweek news already. I’ll be at Warhammer Fest on the Saturday, so I’m looking forward to chatting to Guy, Nick, Phil and Robbie – Guy’s new Heresy novel Wolfsbane will be out that very day, so it should be interesting to see what peoples’ initial thoughts are. I loved it, and I hope everyone else does too! With Nick and Phil both being there I’m assuming War of Secrets and Born of Flame will both be available to buy a few weeks early, so I suspect I’ll be heading home with a heavier bag…

The last thing to mention, actually, is that you might have noticed I’ve been on something of a Peter Fehervari kick this week, with no fewer than four reviews – for two novels and two short stories. If you haven’t yet checked out Peter’s writing, I really can’t recommend it enough. It’s probably not going to be for everyone, but (in my opinion) if you’re a 40k fan then you owe it to yourself to at least give some of these stories a go. Here’s the usual list of what I’ve been posting this week, dominated by Fehervari reviews!

• Fire Caste by Peter Fehervari
• QUICK REVIEW: Wrathspring by Gav Thorpe
• QUICK REVIEW: Vanguard by Peter Fehervari
• Cult of the Spiral Dawn by Peter Fehervari
• QUICK REVIEW: Nightfall by Peter Fehervari
• RAPID FIRE: Gav Thorpe Talks Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah

Coming up…
Next weekend’s main release looks like being David Guymer’s second Iron Hands novel, The Voice of Mars. If you’re interested in that but haven’t yet read The Eye of Medusa, you can have a read of my review of that here.

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.