Black Library Weekly – W/C 02/07/18

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. After a couple of relatively quiet weeks, this time around it’s been all go with cool new releases, some intriguing news and another month’s worth of newly-announced titles. Let’s get straight into it…

Monday
The week kicked off with a brand new Age of Sigmar short story for this week’s Digital Monday release, from a new Black Library author – From the Deep by Jaine Fenn (£2.49 in ebook). Jaine is an established sci-fi and fantasy author (check out her website here), and it’s cool to see her added to BL’s roster of authors. It’s an interesting first BL story, tackling an existing bit of Age of Sigmar lore – the War of Life in the Realm of Ghyran – and showing it from not just a different perspective, but a totally new one. The story focuses on a water-dwelling race called Naereids, who find their underwater realm invaded by Rotbringers and are forced to decide whether to get involved in the wider war or not.

That sounds cool, right? It definitely is, and I really enjoyed getting a glimpse of something completely different to what I’ve seen before in Age of Sigmar, but I’m not quite sure what I think about introducing what is essentially a brand new race in a short story. It’s quite hard to really get a handle on exactly what the Naereids are – are they a sort of sylvaneth? Something totally different? In Greek mythology there’s such a thing as a nereid – a type of water nymph – which I assume is what these characters are based on, but it’s not fully clear. It’s not often that we see factions or races which aren’t represented in the game, and I just question whether it’s a good idea to introduce these within the short word count of a short story. I’d love to hear what other people think, on this subject – let me know!

You can read my review of From the Deep by clicking this link or the image above. Overall I enjoyed it, and I’d say it’s worth checking out if you’re interested in seeing a different aspect to Age of Sigmar, but do bear in mind about the characters. It’s also worth brushing up on what happened in CL Werner’s Wardens of the Everqueen as this runs alongside the events of the novel and does rather rely on an awareness of wider events.

Midweek
A few cool bits of news surfaced during the week, regarding the Horus Heresy, the upcoming Warhammer Horror range of stories, and the latest opportunity to pose questions to a Black Library author via the Warhammer Community team. Let’s start off by taking a quick look at the Heresy-related news – you might already be aware that in recent(ish) months there have been a couple of big meetings at Black Library where groups of the Horus Heresy authors have been getting together to plan out the final stages of the series. The third of those meetings took place this week, with no fewer than seven of the authors in attendance. It’s fascinating that the planning for the Siege of Terra has (so far) taken three meetings to cover, and we don’t know if that was the final session or not! I’d say this all bodes well for the standard of the stories due to come out over the next year or two…

Next up let’s take a quick look at Warhammer Horror, the new range of Black Library stories aimed at exploring “the darker side of the Warhammer universe”, according to this Warhammer Community post. There’s loads of interesting stuff to go through in that post, and I won’t try to replicate it all here, but it’s worth taking a look at the first few releases that have been announced for this new line:

• Maledictions: a short story anthology featuring Graham McNeill, David Annandale, Alec Worley and Cassandra Khaw among the contributors, with both 40k and AoS stories.
• The Wicked and the Damned: three interlinked 40k stories from Phil Kelly, Josh Reynolds and Ian St. Martin. It’s not clear what length these stories will be.
• Perdition’s Flame by Alec Worley, a 40k Vostroyan (Imperial Guard) audio drama.
• Reprints of all four Genevieve novels, with author introductions from and credited to Kim Newman (they were originally published under Jack Yeovil).

I’m very pleased that we’re getting information about this new range in advance – there’s no date yet for when we’re likely to see any of these releases, other than that we’ll hear more (and see the covers) “later in the year”, but just getting advance information is very cool. I don’t know about you, but while I wouldn’t call myself a horror fan as such, I’m intrigued by what these stories are going to be like, and I’m looking forward to checking them out. With a range of releases in varying styles (audio should be a PERFECT medium for horror!), and a mix of both established and new (to BL) authors, it looks like there’s a lot of effort being put into this. I can’t wait to find out more, and ultimately to check these new stories out!

Lastly, if you’ve got any burning questions for (awesome) author John French, now’s your chance to ask them. Head over to the Black Library Facebook page where you can add your questions to the relevant post, and hopefully we’ll get John’s answers to as many of them as possible in the near future. The deadline is the 13th July, so get thinking of those questions!

Weekend
After all the excitement of the middle of the week, the weekend brought with it even more cool stuff in the shape of two brand new books available to order, and another month’s worth of upcoming titles announced. I’ll take a look at October’s titles shortly, but let’s start off by looking at the weekend’s releases – a new Age of Sigmar novel from Nick Horth and a new 40k novel from Darius Hinks.

Nick Horth’s Callis & Toll: The Silver Shard is the sequel to his short but great fun novel City of Secrets, and is available in all of the usual formats – hardback (£18), ebook (£9.99) and MP3 audio (£29.99) – it’s even available on Audible already, if that’s how you prefer to consume your audiobooks. I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of this at Black Library Live last month, and I was really pleased to see that it carries on from City of Secrets both in terms of the overarching plot and the level of enjoyment! There have been some really great Age of Sigmar books recently, which have nicely explored the locations and people of the Mortal Realms, and this does a great job of that – have a read of my review here for more information.

Following on from last year’s Blood of Sanguinius, Darius Hinks’ novel Mephiston: Revenant Crusade features everyone’s favourite scary psyker, and is available to order in hardback (£18) and ebook (£9.99) formats – no audiobook for this, sadly. I’ve got a Rapid Fire interview with Darius if you’d like to know more about this (click here, or the banner below), and based on his answers this sounds like being a really interesting read that gets inside Mephiston’s head and shows a little of what he’s going through in the post-Dark Imperium 40k universe. Should be fun.

October’s upcoming releases took a little while to show up on the BL website, but show up they did – seven titles, including three Horus Heresy books (if you count the Primarchs series), a new audio drama, the second Dark Imperium novel and a couple of omnibuses. Looking at the authors for these titles, October is going to be the month of Guy Haley – no bad thing, in my opinion! Let’s take a quick look at each of these.

Corax: Lord of Shadows by Guy Haley
The tenth Primarchs novel, and the second contribution from Guy Haley, this one comes out – as usual – in limited edition first. It’s another example of a Primarch being written about by an author we don’t usually associate with him, so it’s going to be interesting to see how Haley tackles Corax here.

Heralds of the Siege, edited by Nick Kyme and Laurie Goulding
Book 52 of the Horus Heresy, this is an anthology featuring sixteen short stories from a range of authors, some of which were originally audio dramas. It’s an interesting mixture of stories, some which definitely feel like they fit in a pre-Siege anthology while others…I’m not quite so sure about.Here’s the contents:

• Dark Compliance & Now Peals Midnight by John French
• The Painted Count & Duty Waits by Guy Haley
• Dreams of Unity by Nick Kyme
• Children of Sicarius by Anthony Reynolds
• Myriad & The Ember Wolves by Rob Sanders
• Exocytosis by James Swallow
• The Grey Raven, Valerius & The Board is Set by Gav Thorpe
• Blackshield, The Last Son of Prospero, The Soul, Severed & Magisterium by Chris Wraight

Dark Imperium: Plague War by Guy Haley
This promises to be really cool – the sequel to last year’s Dark Imperium, and the next steps in the story of Guilliman’s war against the Death Guard. No posh special edition for this one – it’s a shame in terms of matching books up on the shelf, but my wallet is quite relieved…Prophets of Waaagh! by Guy Haley
Billed as ‘an Orks audio drama’, this should be tons of fun – Haley tends to write orks really well, and I’m intrigued to hear how that comes across in audio. Sadly Guy isn’t doing any of the voices, apparently. According to the BL website this actually contains three stories, rather than being a single tale:

• The End of Daze
• Bozgat’s Big Adventure
• The Waaagh! Faker

Vulkan: Lord of Drakes by David Annandale
This one is due out in limited edition very soon (i.e. next weekend), while the standard edition is due for October. The tenth in the Primarchs series and Annandale’s second, I’m looking forward to this for the opportunity to learn a little about the early days of the Salamanders, and how Vulkan integrated with his Legion. Keep an eye out next weekend for a Rapid Fire interview with David about this…

Gotrek and Felix: The First Omnibus by William King
An absolute stone-cold classic, if any series deserves to ALWAYS be in print it’s the Gotrek and Felix series. This omnibus includes the first three novels – Trollslayer, Skavenslayer and Daemonslayer, as well as short stories from William King, Josh Reynolds, CL Werner, Jordan Ellinger and John Brunner. If you don’t have these books on your shelves already, this is a must-have.

The Beast Arises: Volume 1 by Abnett, Sanders, Thorpe and Annandale

The twelve-volume The Beast Arises series was a fascinating experiment from Black Library, but the individual books haven’t ever had paperback releases. Instead, it looks like we’ll get three omnibuses collecting them all together, of which this is the first – featuring I Am Slaughter by Dan Abnett; Predator, Prey by Rob Sanders; The Emperor Expects by Gav Thorpe and The Last Wall by David Annandale. Well worth checking out, I’d say.

If you were expecting to see a little section about the Tyrion and Teclis omnibus in the Warhammer Chronicles series, I’m afraid that appears to be French-language only. Not quite sure why it’s displaying in the October Coming Soon section, as the French and German versions don’t usually show up there, but hopefully we’ll get an English-language edition sometime soon (although the three novels are still available as ebooks)!

Thoughts on the week
As you can see, there’s been plenty to talk about this week. As usual, a new month’s worth of upcoming releases brings with it lots of excitement, and while October isn’t going to be quite as jam-packed as September (7 titles to September’s 10) I’d say there’s still lots to look forward to. There’s actually quite a nice balance, with only Age of Sigmar not covered – there are Heresy and Primarchs books, both a novel and audio drama for 40k, and two omnibuses which I suspect will be rather popular, so we’re not going to lack things to read in October. I think I’m most looking forward to Dark Imperium: Plague War, to find out what happens next in that series, as well as Prophets of Waaagh! simply to enjoy an ork audio drama!

As for this week’s new releases, it’s cool to see three titles which are all completely brand new, with not a reissue or re-release in sight! I’ve talked plenty already about From the Deep, although I’m now looking forward to see what else Jaine Fenn gets up to in the Warhammer universes, and it’s worth pointing out once again how cool it is that BL are reaching out to established authors and broadening the range of authors writing for them. That can only be a good thing, I reckon. In terms of the new books at the weekend, I’ve read one – Callis & Toll: The Silver Shard – and it was excellent, just the sort of Age of Sigmar book that I’m really enjoying at the moment.

If I’m honest I didn’t love the previous Mephiston novel, but from speaking to Darius I’m intrigued by this new one, and looking forward to reading it. Blood Angels fans have really been spoiled recently, with two Mephiston novels as well as Guy Haley’s Dante and The Devastation of Baal, which only feel appropriate considering how popular the Chapter is. Let’s hope the standard continues to be high with this one!

As usual, here’s what else I’ve been posting about this week:

• Monthly Highlights – June 2018
• QUICK REVIEW: From the Deep by Jaine Fenn
• Callis & Toll: The Silver Shard by Nick Horth
• RAPID FIRE: Darius Hinks Talks Mephiston: Revenant Crusade

Coming up…
Next weekend looks like being a busy one, as the Black Library website has no fewer than three books scheduled for release – the limited edition of Vulkan: Lord of Drakes by David Annandale, the standard edition of Jaghatai Khan: Warhawk of Chogoris by Chris Wraight, and Enforcer: The Shira Calpurnia Omnibus by Matthew Farrer. Lots to enjoy there!

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.