Black Library Weekly – W/C 04/06/18

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 an interesting week on the BL front – not the busiest in terms of brand new releases (next week looks good for that) but with plenty to talk about nonetheless. Let’s get cracking, from the top (and back to the usual layout)…

Monday
Perfectly timed to coincide with all the cool new Imperial Knights models and rules coming from Games Workshop, this week’s Digital Monday short story was Defiant by Andy Clark (£2.49 in ebook). Fitting into the timeline of his Imperial Knights series somewhere between the two novels, it’s about Lady Jennika (who’s a very cool character) figuring out her place and her role, while handling the innate sexism that’s part of Adrastapolian society. It’s a slightly odd story, and it’s a little bit of a shame that the necron antagonists didn’t have a bit more impact, but it’s well worth checking out – especially if you’ve been enjoying this series so far. You can have a read of my review here.

If you’re interested in checking this out but aren’t a fan of the digital e-short format, don’t worry as you’ll soon be able to pick it up within the Servants of the Machine-God omnibus which is due out in August.

Midweek
Early in the week, the Warhammer Community team unveiled the (frankly beautiful, and very exciting) new Age of Sigmar boxed set, titled Soul Wars – which comes with the first chapter of a new Age of Sigmar novel by Josh Reynolds, also conveniently titled Soul Wars. It wasn’t long before some more details of this novel were revealed, and it was in fact added to the Black Library website – with a release date of the 16th June…perfectly timed to be available to buy at Black Library Live. From what Josh explained in a quick interview on Warhammer Community it looks like the novel will work as a nice accompaniment for the new iteration of the game, without being a slavish tie-in. Which sounds great to me.

To nobody’s surprise, considering it’s released alongside an entire new version of Age of Sigmar, it’s going to be available in a lovely special edition hardback as well as the usual formats.The SE really does look lovely, and I’ve a feeling it’s going to be rather popular at BL Live; although for hardcore collectors and completists, I suspect it’s going to be the same size as the 40k SE hardbacks, which means it’ll dwarf the other Age of Sigmar SEs, which are noticeably smaller. That’s a small price to pay in my opinion, though.

If you’re interested in Soul Wars and/or have questions for Josh, good news – Josh is going to be on Warhammer TV on Friday 15th June from 4pm (UK time), presumably to talk as much as he’s allowed about what you can expect from the new book. If you’ve not watched Warhammer TV before, it’s a Twitch stream which you can watch for free in real time, although if you want to go back and watch later on you’ll need a Twitch subscription. If you’ve got an Amazon Prime subscription already then you can get a free Twitch one as part of it, which is handy. Sticking with Josh, there’s also a post over on the Black Library Facebook page where you can pose questions which he’ll then (try to) answer, about any of his BL work. The deadline for questions is the 15th, and Josh’s answers will go up on the Community site on the 27th. Oh, and you can also try to win a copy of Soul Wars, again on the BL Facebook page – just post a picture of your BL collection.

That wasn’t it for the midweek news, either. The contents of the upcoming Inferno! #1 short story anthology have been revealed, and make for very interesting reading. Here’s what’s included:

• The Unsung War by David Annandale (40k)
• No Hero by Peter McLean (40k)
• The Emperor’s Wrath by Steven Fischer (40k)
• The Enemy of My Enemy by Nate Crowley (40k)
• Mercy by Danie Ware (40k)
• The Path to Glory by Evan Dicken (Age of Sigmar)
• At the Sign of the Brazen Claw by Guy Haley (Age of Sigmar)
• Waking the Dragon by Josh Reynolds (Warhammer Chronicles)
• How Vido Learned the Trick by Josh Reynolds (Warhammer Chronicles)
• A Common Ground by Mike Brooks (Necromunda)

So that’s five 40k stories, two Age of Sigmar stories, two never-before-seen Warhammer Chronicles stories and a single Necromunda story – of which two (Mercy and The Path to Glory) have so far been released as standalone e-shorts, but the rest are brand new! There are even two new names amongst those stories – Steven Fischer and Nate Crowley – so it’s going to be fun to check out what they’ve got to offer. It’s also going to be great to read Guy Haley’s Age of Sigmar short story, as I believe that’s the first instalment in a three-part story featuring Prince Maesa and Shattercap, from The Autumn Prince and The Sands of Grief.

And yes, to be clear – the two Warhammer Chronicles stories from Josh Reynolds are set in the Old World! Josh has confirmed that they were both written before the End Times happened, so don’t get too excited thinking that BL are commissioning new Old World stories at the moment – I guess it’s possible that they might do so in future, but apparently not at the moment. If you’re interested to know what these two are about, it looks like How Vido Learned the Trick is a Zavant story (based on Gordon Rennie’s novel of the same name – Josh also wrote the short story The Riddle of Scorpions) while Waking the Dragon is, in Josh’s own words, “a Heinrich Kemmler/Krell buddy-cop story”.

Weekend
Saturday brought with it two releases, both collections of existing stories rather than brand new releases. For the Horus Heresy, Nick Kyme’s Born of Flame is an anthology of his Salamanders stories, featuring the novellas Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth, the short novel Sons of the Forge, and the short stories Artefacts and Immortal Duty. It’s also something of a landmark for the series, being book fifty! It’s available to order in hardback (£20), ebook (£9.99) and MP3 audio (£29.99) formats as usual.

The second release was The Darkness in the Glass, a collection of three Age of Sigmar short audio dramas set in Shadespire, featuring stories by David Annandale, David Guymer and Guy Haley. As you might expect, this is available to order in CD (£12) or MP3 audio (£9.99) formats. All three of these audio dramas were originally released as part of the 2017 Black Library Advent Calendar series, but if you didn’t pick them up back in December then this works out as a great value alternative to buying them separately. I reviewed each of them as part of the Advent Calendar, but I’ve also put together some thoughts on the collection as a whole, which you can read here.

Thoughts on the week
As I said at the top, there ended up being plenty to talk about this week, which generally means it’s been a good week – certainly so in this case. I was pleased to see the release of Andy Clark’s short story Defiant on Monday, not only because I really enjoy this series of his but also because it’s always cool to get a new female-fronted story. We still don’t see all that many of those from Black Library, although the number is growing. It turned out to be quite an unusual story, not least because of the overt emphasis on Jennika’s gender, but in my opinion at least there’s room for all sorts of stories in Black Library – including explorations of what a woman has to put up with when subordinate men think they can push her around…and how satisfying it is when she puts them in their places. Good work, Andy!

It’s worth mentioning Soul Wars again, even if only to talk about the way Black Library managed to keep things quiet about it and make an impactful reveal – even though the title had been spotted online months ago. In this golden age of GW and BL being more open and communicative than ever before, one of the things which risks being lost is the sense of genuine surprise when something new arrives entirely out of the blue, and while the Coming Soon page on the BL website is a great resource (and very welcome – hopefully it’s here to stay!), it can also impact on that sense of surprise and excitement. Personally I love the occasional surprise, so the (relatively last-minute) announcement of Soul Wars, including the gorgeous SE hardback, with a very close release date and confirmation of availability at BL Live…well in my book that’s really cool.

It’s also really good to see that Soul Wars is going to be more of an accompaniment than a tie-in. It’s hard to deny that Black Library’s Age of Sigmar offering struggled a bit at first because of how closely it was tied in with the main story of the game – there are some great moments in amongst the Realmgate Wars series, for example, but it’s clear that BL’s AoS work has increased in impact with the release of books like City of Secrets, Plague Garden, Overlords of the Iron Dragon and Spear of Shadows which have been able to go their own way instead of cleaving tightly to pre-established stories. I’ve got high hopes for Soul Wars – keep an eye out for a review fairly soon, once I’ve got my hands on a copy.

I’ve talked before about how impressed I am with the ongoing efforts of the Warhammer Community team, and this week’s post about Soul Wars was no different – especially as it also included those details about the new Inferno! short story anthology. I’ve also talked lots about how much I love short stories, and anthologies, and the old Inferno! magazine, so I’ve been looking forward to learning more about this anthology for ages. The lineup of stories turns out to be even more awesome than I was hoping, with two of my favourite recent releases from new BL authors (Danie Ware and Evan Dicken) alongside a collection of brand new stories which promise to be brilliant!

I won’t talk much more about Josh’s Warhammer Chronicles stories other than to say how much I’m looking forward to checking them out! Josh wrote some brilliant short stories back in the Old World, so I’ve got high hopes for these. Likewise with Guy’s new Prince Maesa story – the first two of these have been brilliant, and I love the idea of telling a bigger story across three instalments – I’m not always convinced serialised novels work, but the scale of this should suit the structure, I hope. As for the other stories, I’m really keen to read more by Mike Brooks and Peter McLean, and see what the two brand new BL authors bring to the table, while I pretty much always enjoy a new David Annandale short story. Lots to look forward to – let’s hope we find out soon when this is due for release!

Lastly, I wanted to talk a little bit more about Born of Flame – I’m not going to go into the tired old argument about including older stories in anthologies in the numbered series, but instead I want to look at some of the choices of story in this particular volume. First of all, I’m actually quite happy to have these stories bound up in one place – I really like reading the novellas/short novels in their original formats, but it’s still quite convenient to have one book with everything in one place. Would I have preferred a brand new novel to have filled the slot for the fiftieth in the series? Yeah, probably. Ultimately though, it’s just a number – and with another awesome piece of Neil Roberts artwork I’ll still enjoy having this on the shelf alongside the rest of the series.

I’ve seen the question of how and when Promethean Sun and Scorched Earth would be rolled back into the numbered series for quite some time now, so it had always felt inevitable that they would get included in an anthology at some point. What’s interesting is that Sons of the Forge had previously (and unofficially) been billed – like The Honoured and The Unburdened – as something outside of the main numbered range which wouldn’t be included. If that had been the case, it would probably have made more sense to include Nick’s two Salamanders novellas individually within other anthologies, but then that would have required there to be anthologies which fitted them thematically. I guess Scorched Earth could have gone into Shattered Legions, but where would Promethean Sun have gone? I’m not sure, to be honest.

Instead, binding both of them up alongside Sons of the Forge actually makes WAY more sense, and will make for a great book for any Salamanders fans. As such, I think this was the right decision, as was including the short story Artefacts, which links in perfectly with the opening of Sons of the Forge – that’s a total no-brainer. The inclusion of Immortal Duty, however, is a weird one – not only because it’s nominally about an Iron Hands character and not a Salamander, but also because it’s already been included elsewhere in the numbered series. In fact, it was actually first published in the Warhammer World-exclusive LE hardback of Meduson, and then the non-exclusive edition of the same book, AND THEN in Shattered Legions, which was only released a little over a year ago.

As far as I’m aware, Immortal Duty is the only Heresy short story to be included in two different numbered series anthologies. I do think it’s an odd choice for this book, because however closely linked it might be to the other stories (and while my memory of it is a bit hazy, it doesn’t feel all that closely linked), it’s still been published elsewhere already, and so feels like an odd one out. Nevertheless, as a whole I think this book is a good collection that’s worth including in the numbered series – whatever your thoughts are on the individual stories, there’s a nice sense of completion to have as much as possible included in the main range.

So yeah, plenty to talk about this week, even without a huge selection of new titles or anything like a new month’s worth of upcoming titles. Next week should provide even more to talk about, but here’s hoping for lots more weeks full of interesting discussion points to come!

As usual, here’s what I’ve been posting this week so far:

• Mechanicum by Graham McNeill
• QUICK REVIEW: Defiant by Andy Clark
• Legends of Bilgewater: Tall Tales of the Deep Sea by Anthony Reynolds (League of Legends, not BL)
• The Darkness in the Glass by David Annandale, David Guymer & Guy Haley

Coming up…
After a few weeks without much in the way of brand new books/audios, next week is looking like a bit of a bumper week – with War of Secrets by Phil Kelly, Martyrs of Elysia by Chris Dows, Yarrikc: The Omnibus by David Annandale and the newly-announced Soul Wars by Josh Reynolds. That should keep us all busy! It’s also Black Library Live in Nottingham on Saturday, which means there will probably be all sorts of news filtering out about upcoming titles for the rest of the year!

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.