Black Library Weekly – W/C 30/07/18

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. This week we’ve had new audio dramas and novels, a bunch of author interviews, and even a new month’s worth of upcoming titles, so there’s been lots for Black Library fans to enjoy. Let’s have a look in a bit more detail…

Monday
The week kicked off with a new audio drama (for the second week running) in the shape of End of Daze by Guy Haley (£3.99 in MP3 audio), which is the first of three short audios making up Prophets of Waaagh! – an audio collection which, in case you’re not aware, is due for release in October. I must confess I haven’t really followed Guy’s stories about the Red Sunz orks until now, but this seemed like a good time to change that, so while I haven’t yet listened to this particular audio I have gone back and started reading the earlier stories. More on that later.

I’m definitely looking forward to listening to this one, and the next two when they’re released, although I’m finding it hard not to look at the £3.99 price tag and think that it might be worth waiting until the collection is available to get them at a better price. With Haley’s reputation for writing greenskins stories, however, there’s no doubt that these new audios promise to be great fun!

Midweek
There’s been a clutch of author interviews this week, from both the Warhammer Community site and the Black Library Facebook page. Rather than me talking too much about each of them, I’ll just provide a quick precis and let you get on with the interesting bit – reading or watching each interview.

The Lord of Death: Darius Hinks Talks Mephiston – a fun little interview on the Community site where Darius talks about his latest novel, his approach to writing about the Blood Angels’ Chief Librarian, and a little bit of his writing background.

Guy Haley talking about the Horus Heresy, Blood Angels, orks, Prince Maesa, Guilliman and more, in a 30+ minute video. Well worth checking out, as there’s tons of interesting stuff in here.

David Annandale talking about writing characters such as Guilliman, Vulkan, Yarrick and Neferata, plus a little bit of his take on horror in Black Library. Slightly shorter than Guy’s interview but still interesting.

John French talking mostly about his new novel Slaves to Darkness – again it’s a bit shorter than Guy’s interview, but as always it’s packed full of John’s insightful thoughts.

Dan Abnett discussing Gaunt’s Ghosts, Eisenhorn, Bequin (!) and the Horus Heresy, in another 30+ minute interview. You might have seen Dan talk about some of this stuff before, but it’s always fun to listen to him talk. Beware, though – a few spoilers if you’re not up to speed with the Ghosts.

Weekend
There’s been plenty of stuff to talk about already this weekend, including the usual bunch of upcoming titles revealed for another month, although it was a surprisingly small number announced for November…which feels weird. I’ll come to that in a moment, but to begin with let’s take a look at the weekend’s pre-orders – the latest Heresy novel, a new Age of Sigmar novel, and the three Primarchs audios from last year’s Advent Calendar bundled up into a single release. Lots and lots to enjoy therein…

Beginning with Age of Sigmar, The Tainted Heart – available in hardback (£18) and ebook (£9.99) – is CL Werner’s fourth novel set in the Mortal Realms, and sees him return to a subject for which he was rather well known back in the heady days of the Old World. Clint’s Matthias Thulmann trilogy is an absolute classic, so it’s intriguing to see him writing about witch hunters in the Mortal Realms. If you can pry your eyes away from the frankly gorgeous cover (courtesy of the phenomenally talented Johan Grenier) you might be interested in reading my Rapid Fire interview with Clint about this book, to find out a bit more about it. Check that out here, or by clicking on the banner below.

Moving on to the Horus Heresy, we reach book 51 (!) with Slaves to Darkness by John French, which you can pick up in ebook (£9.99), hardback (£20) or MP3 audio (£29.99) formats. Can you believe we’re past the fiftieth book in the series now? I picked this one up at BL Live and I’m happy to say that it’s as brilliant as I was hoping for, but if you’d like to know more you can check out my review by clicking here, and/or have a read of a Rapid Fire interview with John by clicking here or on the banner below. Ideally I’d say make sure you’ve read Wolfsbane before getting into this, but otherwise sit back and enjoy the final stages before the Siege of Terra!

Lastly, and sort of sticking with the Heresy, we’ve got a collection of Primarchs audio dramas called The Lords of Terra, featuring stories by Robbie MacNiven, Laurie Goulding and Ian St. Martin. It’s available in CD (£12) or MP3 (£9.99) formats, and collects together the three audios from the 2017 Advent Calendar – Stone and Iron, First Lord of the Imperium, and A Lesson in Darkness, featuring Perturabo, Malcador (I know, he’s not actually a Primarch) and Konrad Kurze. I’ve linked out to my reviews of each of those above, but if you fancy reading the thoughts of the three authors then take a look at this interview I managed to get with all three of the chaps by clicking here, or on the banner below.

So that’s the weekend’s releases, but as I mentioned earlier we also saw November’s upcoming releases announced. In previous months we’ve tended to see somewhere in the region of six or seven tiles (sometimes up to as many as ten) confirmed per month, but this time around there’s only three. Not only that, but two of those are omnibuses and the other is an audio drama, which means that as it stands there are no brand new books currently scheduled to be released in November. Which is the month of the Black Library Weekender. Now, perhaps that’s just the way the schedule has fallen…or, more likely (in my opinion) Black Library aren’t telling us anything. We’ll see, eh? Until then, here’s a quick rundown of what we do know is coming:

Eight Lamentations: War-Claw by Josh Reynolds
The only brand new title currently listed for November, this continues Josh’s Eight Lamentations series and features two of the characters from Spear of Shadows – Owain Volker and Zana Mathos. It sounds like a fun story, and I’ll be interested to see (well, hear) how it comes across in audio. It’s also interesting to note that it’s going to include some bonus materials, specifically interviews with Josh and some of the cast. I’m really pleased to see that, although the icing on the cake would be if it comes with a digital copy of the script as well!

The Beast Arises: Volume 2 by Guy Haley, David Guymer, David Annandale & Gav Thorpe
The second omnibus edition for The Beast Arises, this contains books 5 to 8 in the series – Throneworld by Guy Haley, Echoes of the Long War by David Guymer, The Hunt for Vulkan by David Annandale and The Beast Must Die by Gav Thorpe. If you didn’t pick these up when they were first released, it’s an efficient and cost-effective option now! The first volume is due out in October, so there’s a good chance the third and final one will land in December, meaning that by the end of the year you could have all twelve books in omnibus form for a mere £45 – that’s £3.75 per books! Not bad.

Gaunt’s Ghosts: The Victory – Part 1 by Dan Abnett
This is an interesting one – an omnibus collecting together the first two books in this fourth arc of the Gaunt’s Ghosts series, so that’s Blood Pact and Salvation’s Reach. It’s also going to include four short stories, previously available in the Sabbat Crusade anthology or – in the case of Killbox – as a digital e-short. I’m slightly surprised to see this, seeing as The Warmaster isn’t yet out in paperback and Anarch (the fourth and final book in the arc) isn’t yet out at all. On the one hand it smacks a bit of trying to squeeze a bit more money out of the fans, as it’s hard not to think there will be a complete omnibus of The Victory arc at some point, but on the other hand it looks from the GW site like this is going to be a couple of pounds cheaper than the usual omnibus editions, which makes me a bit less suspicious of it. It’s cool…but I’d be tempted to hold off and see what comes out in a year or two…

Plus, I should also point out that another omnibus has been snuck into August’s releases, which is unexpected but cool to see:

The Realmgate Wars: Volume 2
The first volume, which collects together the first four novels in the series plus a further novel, novella and short story, is due for release next weekend – the 11th August. This second volume is now listed as being available two weeks later, on the 25th, which is great news for anyone keen to get into these early Age of Sigmar books. It’s another amazing value omnibus – here’s the contents:

• Warbeast by Gav Thorpe
• Call of Archaon by David Annandale, David Guymer, Guy Haley and Rob Sanders
• Fury of Gork by Josh Reynolds
• Bladestorm by Matt Westbrook
• Mortarch of Night by David Guymer and Josh Reynolds
• Lord of Undeath by CL Werner

It’s a bit weird that Call of Archaon, which is book 4 in the series, should be in this omnibus and not the first one, but between the two you get all ten numbered books in the series, plus the novella The Gates of Azyr by Chris Wraight, the novel Black Rift by Josh Reynolds, and the short story Pantheon by Guy Haley. That’s A LOT of stories for £30.

Thoughts on the week
It’s been a pretty good week on the Black Library front, with three brand new releases, one audio collection, a bunch of author interviews and even the announcement of a few upcoming titles, so overall I reckon this counts as an impressive one. I’m particularly impressed by those interviews, actually, especially the videos. I know Graeme Lyon was the person asking the questions, as they were all recorded at BL Live, so good work Graeme with some great questions and thanks to all of the authors for lots of excellent answers. If you haven’t watched them, I’d really recommend you take a look – stick them on while you’re painting, they make for excellent listening material!

Release-wise I suspect most of the attention this week will have been on Slaves to Darkness, and I can’t really argue with that as it’s a genuinely great book – and I think a lot of fans will enjoy it once they get their hands on it! So much is going on in that book, it made writing my review particularly tricky (seeing as I try hard to avoid spoilers), but let’s just say it’s a great story and WELL worth checking out. I’ve not yet read The Tainted Heart, but I’m always happy to see more Age of Sigmar books coming out, especially if they’re focusing on mortal characters rather than Stormcast Eternals. It looks like we’ve got more Age of Sigmar coming up in the next few months, so now’s a really great time to make a start on these books if you’ve been holding off so far!

The only other thing I want to mention is a quick note about what I’ve been reading this week, as it’s been a bit bonkers reading Wolf Riders followed by Evil Sun Rising. The first was an old-school (and I mean really old-school) Warhammer anthology, and the second was a novella written from the perspective of an ork Big Mek, so neither of those are really what I tend to read the most often…but it’s been great fun branching out a bit. I’d love to go back and read some more pre-Black Library Warhammer stories, so I might dig into Red Thirst sometime soon, while I’m definitely going to be checking out the rest of Guy’s Red Sunz stories – I don’t always want humorous 40k stories, but once in a while they’re just really satisfying!

As usual, here’s what else I’ve been posting this week in case you missed anything:

• Hunger by Andy Smillie
• Wolf Riders edited by David Pringle
• Evil Sun Rising by Guy Haley
• RAPID FIRE: John French on Slaves to Darkness
• RAPID FIRE: CL Werner on The Tainted Heart

Coming up…
I’ll be interested to see if Monday brings the second part of Prophets of Waaagh! or a new short story, so keep an eye out for that. At the weekend it looks like we’ll be seeing two new omnibuses – the Servants of the Machine-God anthology and The Realmgate Wars: Volume 1.

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.