Black Library Weekly – W/C 18/06/18

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. This week has been fairly quiet all told, so it’s going to be a slightly shorter post than usual. That being said, let’s start at the beginning as usual and have a look at what did happen…

Monday
The week actually kicked off on a really great note, with an Age of Sigmar Digital Monday short story – Ghosts of Demesnus by Josh Reynolds, which you can pick up as usual for £2.49 in ebook. As short stories go it’s quite a long one, and it’s also really good – you can check out my review here. In brief, it’s a Hallowed Knights story which fits in somewhere after the conclusion of Plague Garden and sees Gardus out on his own, out of armour and paying a visit to the city in which he lived as a mortal. There’s a very different tone here to the rest of the Hallowed Knights series (so far), but if you’ve enjoyed Gardus’ story this far I have a feeling you’ll be interested in this. Even if you haven’t, it’s a fascinating opportunity to see a Stormcast Eternal in a very unusual situation.

Midweek
A few interesting BL-related tidbits popped up during the week, but let’s start with official channels – as usual, Warhammer Community published a Black Library blog post on Wednesday, and this week it took the form of an interview with Phil Kelly. Ostensibly about his new novel War of Secrets, it also features some interesting questions about Phil’s other work for Black Library, and his depiction of the T’au – it’s definitely worth checking out. What I particularly like about this is that it’s a little more in-depth than what we’ve seen before on the Community site, with some well-chosen questions and thoughtful answers. I’m looking forward to seeing more of these interviews in future.

That was the only official BL-related news I spotted during the week, but I did also come across a couple of cool things while trawling the interwebs. Firstly, in case you hadn’t spotted it on Amazon (or another book trade website), a tweet from Ian St. Martin confirmed that he’s working on a Horus Heresy Primarchs novel entitled Angron: Slave of Nuceria. Amazon has it listed as being on sale in April 2019, but I wouldn’t necessarily consider that as gospel – hopefully we’ll hear more about this sometime soon via official BL channels. On a similar note, fans of Steve Parker’s Deathwatch stories featuring Talon Squad will be delighted to hear that another novel is on its way! On his Facebook page Steve confirmed that it “is finally finished and now in the hands of BL proofreaders. And it’s a beast – my biggest novel to date.” Excellent news!

That was it for the midweek period, although I’ll finish this section with a cheeky reminder that if you haven’t already checked it out, here’s my roundup of last weekend’s Black Library Live event. Lots of cool new titles were announced, and there are links in there to the threads from my live tweeting in the seminars.

Weekend
It was an unusually quiet Saturday on the release front for Black Library, with just a single release…although it’s a mighty fine story and well worth checking out. Chris Dows’ audio drama Martyrs of Elysia is available to order in CD (£12) and MP3 (£9.99) formats, and concludes his three-part series – Scions of Elysia, Renegades of Elysia and now also Martyrs of Elysia. I’ve been following Chris’ Elysian Drop Troops stories since The Mouth of Chaos was released in Hammer and Bolter, and all three of the audios have been really cool – but now the whole series is available it’s great to be have the whole story and be able to see the big picture.

If you’re interested in checking these audios out I’ve got reviews of all three, and Rapid Fire interviews for the second and third instalments:

If you really can’t get enough information about this series then also check out this quick interview with Chris over on the Warhammer Community website.

Thoughts on the week
After all the excitement of Black Library Live last weekend, it’s been much more quiet this week. I’ve said this plenty of time before, but while I love weeks which are full of exciting news and loads of brand new releases, it’s not a bad thing to have a few quieter weeks now and then. At least this way my wallet gets a break, which is very welcome after BL Live!

As it happens, while there have only been two new releases this week they’ve both been – in my opinion – excellent stories and well worth reading and listening to. I’ve followed the story of Gardus and the Hallowed Knights right from the beginning in War Storm, and I feel like these characters have really developed and come into their own over the course of several stories. In Ghosts of Demesnus, however, Josh has shown a different side to the Stormcast Eternals, demonstrating what can be done when there’s more to a story than grinding battles against the forces of Chaos. If you’re at all interested in Age of Sigmar then I’d urge you to check this out – I’m comfortable saying that it’s already one of my favourite AoS stories.

I’ve talked plenty about Chris Dows’ Elysians audios, so don’t want to go into too much more detail here. Suffice to say I was grinning ear to ear by the time Martyrs of Elysia finished, while right from the beginning of this one I was reminded how much I love listening to Jonathan Keeble speak. He’s got such a great voice, and was the perfect casting for Commissar Mastroval. Overall I think Chris has done a phenomenal job with these stories, and my only criticism of the series as a whole is that Black Library haven’t done a great job of signposting the fact that this is a series, as opposed to three standalone audios. It’s just a shame that this hasn’t been advertised very well, and I hope that it hasn’t put anyone off, because having listened to all three parts it’s clear how much thought and work has gone into making them work both individually and as a series. Seriously, if you’re still on the fence about these just give one of them a try – I don’t think you’ll regret it.

As always, here’s a quick roundup of what I’ve been posting this week:

Coming up…
Next weekend it looks like we’re going to see a couple of releases – the next Primarchs novel, David Annandale’s Vulkan: Lord of Drakes, along with another Warhammer Chronicles omnibus, this time Ulrika the Vampire: The Omnibus by Nathan Long. Keep an eye out closer to the weekend for some more information about both of those!

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.

2 comments

  1. I think April 2019 is right for Angron: Slave of Nuceria, for the standard hardback release that is. They’ve been on a three month rolling schedule and with Vulkan (July), Corax (October) & Angron (January 2019) for the special editions, the standard should follow in April.

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