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. This week has brought with it a new short story featuring the Black Library debut of a brand new faction, some new editions of existing stories at the weekend, a little bit of events-based news…and a whole RAFT of upcoming releases ready to burn through our wallets in August. Without further ado…
Monday
First of all, last week I suggested that we might see a new audio week this week. Was I right? Nope – WAY OFF. Still, hopefully we’ll see one of those sooner or later. Instead, however, this week’s Digital Monday short story was The Sea Taketh by David Guymer (£1.99 in ebook, unusually), which is the first Black Library story to feature the Idoneth Deepkin for Age of Sigmar. It’s fascinating to see these intriguing new characters for the first time, especially as the protagonist is a Kharadron Overlord, and as usual there’s a load of really cool context for ‘everyday’ life in the Mortal Realms – or, as the author put it on Twitter, “They wants farmers. Let’s give them some bloody farmers.” Quite. Take a look at my review for a bit more information, but suffice to say if you’re an Age of Sigmar fan this is definitely worth reading.
Midweek
Onto the midweek period, during which in previous months I’d got into the habit of expecting the first week of the month to bring with it another month’s worth of new releases. For the second month in a row, however, that didn’t appear on Wednesday, but rather Saturday, so feel free to skip ahead a bit if that’s what you’re here for! Instead, Wednesday saw the usual Black Library-related Warhammer Community post focus on the Iron Hands in BL fiction. It’s quite a cool post, especially for anyone fairly new to reading Black Library fiction, as it explores a range of stories featuring the Iron Tenth, from Jonathan Green’s classic novel Iron Hands through a range of releases, up to David Guymer’s recent tales for both 40k and the Heresy. Definitely worth a look if you fancy some more Iron Hands before getting stuck into The Voice of Mars.
On Friday, the Black Library Facebook page also confirmed a few new authors for June’s Black Library Live event. Joining the original batch of authors are Chris Dows (author of various awesome Elysian Drop Troops stories, amongst others), Guy Haley (author of MANY great stories, including the upcoming Wolfsbane) and David Annandale (whose new Age of Sigmar novel Neferata is due out very soon), who’s making the trip all the way from Canada. That takes us up to nine confirmed authors, although the event page on the BL site hasn’t yet been updated with the new names, and I suspect we’ll see a fair few more confirmed over the coming weeks. No further news on seminar specifics or what else might be available to buy, but hopefully we’ll get some of that information in the run up to the event.
Weekend
Let’s take a look at the weekend’s releases first, and then we’ll move on to August’s upcoming titles. No brand new releases this weekend, but instead we got three paperbacks, including an omnibus, and an audiobook. First up is Salamanders: The Omnibus by Nick Kyme, available in ebook (£14.99) and paperback (£15) editions and containing the novels Salamander, Firedrake and Nocturne along with various short stories – or, as Graeme Lyon put on Twitter, “the three novels and all the Tome of Fire shorts in a paperback big enough to cause you back problems.” Perfect for anyone wanting to check out these characters, then – everything all in one place. It’s worth noting, however, that Nick has (so far) written one further Salamanders novel – Rebirth – and I understand there will be more.
Next up are two paperback editions of books published towards the end of last year – Gav Thorpe’s Rise of the Ynnari: Ghost Warrior and CL Werner’s Age of Sigmar novel Overlords of the Iron Dragon. Both are available for £8.99 each, or if you’d prefer you can still pick up the ebooks for £9.99. I’ve not read either of these yet, but I’ve got Rapid Fire interviews for both of them if you need convincing on whether to pick them up – you can check those interviews out for Ghost Warrior here and for Overlords of the Iron Dragon here.
Last up is something of a pleasant surprise – the audiobook edition of Guy Haley’s fantastic Space Marine Conquests novel The Devastation of Baal, which you can pick up for £29.99. Alternatively, it’s also available on Audible so if you’re already a user you can spend a credit on this, or if you fancy taking the plunge you can set up a trial and get this completely free! Click here to check it out on Audible. For a bit more information, check out my review here and/or another Rapid Fire interview here.
So that’s your lot of weekend releases, but – as I mentioned earlier – Saturday also saw August’s upcoming releases confirmed. And WOW is it an exciting bunch, with three brand new novels, one new audio drama, one audio drama collection (from last year’s Advent Calendar) and three omnibuses. Let’s take a look at what’s coming up in August, then:
Slaves to Darkness by John French
Currently listed on the BL website as just ‘A Horus Heresy novel’, this is presumably number 51 in the series, and John French’s second full novel. Before you read the synopsis online it’s worth noting that there’s a bit of a spoiler if you haven’t yet read Wolfsbane – it’s the sort of spoiler that you’ve probably already worked out, but it’s there nonetheless. I won’t repeat that here, but let’s just say with no fewer than five primarchs on the cover, and what promises to be a fascinating story, I simply CAN’T WAIT to read this one.
The Lords of Silence by Chris Wraight
Chris Wraight has a good track record with the Death Guard – they made great antagonists in his two Space Wolves novels, he’s handled Mortarion with aplomb in the Heresy, and last year’s Advent Calendar short story Endurance was intriguing. All that suggests that The Lords of Silence might just be a bit special, worthy of the disgustingly beautiful limited edition hardback that’s going to be available.
The Tainted Heart by CL Werner
CL Werner’s old-school Warhammer series Matthias Thulmann: Witch Hunter is something of a classic, so it’s great to see him tackling similar characters (and hopefully themes) in a new Age of Sigmar novel. The two main characters are introduced in the short story The Witch Takers, but I’m really looking forward to a full-length exploration of the Order of Azyr and the Realm of Chamon.
Soulbound by George Mann
November 2017 saw the release of George Mann’s The Geld, and with Soulbound he continues his exploration of the Raven Guard in audio. It’s unclear as yet whether the two audio dramas are connected, but it’s nice to see the Raven Guard continue to get some screen time in 40k.
The Lords of Terra by Robbie MacNiven, LJ Goulding and Ian St. Martin
One of my highlights in the 2017 Advent Calendar was the inclusion of three Primarchs short audio dramas, and they’re now being collected together into a single package – especially great for anyone who prefers to buy audio in CD format rather than MP3. The three stories are Stone and Iron by Robbie MacNiven (Perturabo), First Lord of the Imperium by LJ Goulding (Malcador) and A Lesson in Darkness by Ian St. Martin (Curze). These are all very much worth checking out, so if you haven’t yet listened to them – this is a good option!
War for Armageddon: The Omnibus by various authors
One novel, four novellas, nine short stories – this is looking like being a bit of a monster omnibus! Considering that it includes Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s Helsreach and Blood and Fire, not to mention Guy Haley’s various Black Templars stories, I’d say this is going to be a great collection offering an interesting range of perspectives on one of the most interesting conflicts in the 40k background.
Servants of the Machine-God by various authors
At time of writing there’s no contents list available for this one, but it looks like it’s going to include stories about Titans and Imperial Knights as well as the expected Adeptus Mechanicus. When the new AdMech ranges for 40k were released there were loads of different BL stories published to tie in with things, so I’d expect this to include a good number of short stories – probably including the Adeptus Titanicus stories released in March 2017. Sounds promising.
The Realmgate Wars: Volume One by various authors
This collects together the first four Age of Sigmar books – so that’s The Gates of Azyr by Chris Wraight plus War Storm, Ghal Maraz and Hammers of Sigmar. Between those three you’ve got seven novellas, plus Chris’ opening tale, so it’s a solid collection of stories introducing the Mortal Realms and the Stormcast Eternals. Expect lots (and lots) of fighting, but some cool characters as well.
So that’s August – lots to look forward to, eh? If you think back to last week, however, you’ll remember that the Warhammer Community site published five new covers. Three of those are included in August’s new titles – The Lords of Silence, The Tainted Heart and Slaves to Darkness. What about the other two, I hear you cry? I guess we’ll just have to keep our eyes peeled this time next month, to see if Choose Your Enemies and Blood of Iax are going to be included in September’s titles…
Thoughts on the week
Well it turned out to be quite a busy week in the end! Sure, there was only the one brand new release – but that was a pretty damn good story which for me captured a nice snippet of the mystique, fear and confusion surrounding the Idoneth Deepkin. I can’t wait to read more about these aelves, and see what stories the BL authors come up with. The weekend’s releases were then quite cool; again nothing brand new, but I suspect the audiobook of The Devastation of Baal will be very popular (and hopefully suggests the Space Marine Conquests series will eventually get simultaneous audio releases), and as I’ve said many times it’s never a bad thing to see more paperback releases.
The big news, of course, was the HUGE selection of titles confirmed for August. Firstly, I think that now we’ve seen two months in a row where the Coming Soon section is updated on a Saturday, rather than a Wednesday as before, it’s relatively safe to say that this is what we’ll see moving forward. On the one hand I’m a little sad about that, as I liked getting these reveals midweek, but on the other hand it doesn’t really matter – as long as they’re revealed at some point! As for the titles themselves – not only is this the biggest collection of new releases for a single month that I’ve seen for AGES, it’s also the first time that I’ve looked at a month’s worth of titles and thought “yep, I want almost all of those”.
I’m a big advocate of the Warhammer Chronicles re-issues, and generally just going back and plundering the back catalogue to make as many stories available to newer fans as possible. Generally speaking, however, I’ve already got the majority of those books – so for me they don’t tend to get added onto my to-buy list. In August, however, not only do I want to read all three of the brand new novels (including that gorgeous LE)…and listen to the new audio drama…but I’m very tempted indeed to pick up both the Armageddon and AdMech omnibuses. Why? Because they collect together stories which are potentially hard to pin down, and which bring everything together nicely into one place. They’re not ‘just’ two or three novels in one volume – I think they’re both going to be really interesting, and also efficient ways to find stories which might not even be in print elsewhere.
Probably the only one I won’t pick up is the Realmgate Wars omnibus, simply because I’ve got all of those in hardback already. That’s just me, though – if anyone’s been holding off jumping into Age of Sigmar then this is likely to be a really sensible, cost-effective starting point. I would argue that these first stories aren’t quite as good as some of what’s come later, but if you want to get the complete picture then they’re definitely worth reading.
So yeah…it’s been a pretty cool week on the Black Library front. The only problem now is that I really fear for my wallet in August!
As usual, here’s a quick rundown of what I’ve been posting this week. It’s been a little quieter than usual, for various reasons, but I hope there’s something interesting in here for pretty much everyone!
- Hallowed Knights: Plague Garden by Josh Reynolds
- QUICK REVIEW: The Sea Taketh by David Guymer
- Monthly Highlights – April 2018
- QUICK REVIEW: Backcloth for a Crown Additional by Dan Abnett
Coming up…
Next week it looks like there’s going to be LOADS OF STUFF to buy, which is exciting. According to the BL website we’ll have Wolfsbane by Guy Haley, Neferata: Mortarch of Blood by David Annandale (although at the moment only the LE is showing up…) and Blackshields: The Red Fief by Josh Reynolds. Plenty to enjoy there! It’s also Warhammer Fest next weekend, which will hopefully bring some early copies and maybe a few snippets of news. I’ll keep you posted on that.
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.