Black Library Weekly – W/C 13/08/18

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 ended up being quite a busy week this time around, with some really exciting new releases alongside some fascinating news including some tantalising hints about the end of the Horus Heresy series. Let’s jump right in…

Monday
For the third week running, this week’s Digital Monday release was a 40k audio drama from Guy Haley – The Waaagh! Faker completes the set of audios making up Prophets of Waaagh!, and is another short audio that’s packed full of orky entertainment. Available for the expected £3.99 in MP3 format, it brings the total cost of the collection when bought individually to £11.97, compared to the £9.99 (in MP3) or £12 (in CD) that the single Prophets of Waaagh! release is likely to cost. As such, if cost is a deciding factor then you might want to hold off until October and the single release, but if you’re not worried about that then I’d say you should get yourself over to the BL website and buy all three of these RIGHT NOW.

I’ve reviewed the first two instalments already (see Thoughts on the week section below) and will hopefully get a review of this final part ready for early next week, but suffice to say these are fantastic examples of how to write a) great stories in audio, and b) powerful, entertaining stories with greenskin protagonists. I’ve been having an absolute blast listening to these (including trying not to laugh out loud whilst sat in the ‘quiet zone’ on a train back to London) and I have a strong suspicion I’ll be regularly returning to them to keep me occupied on further train journeys and during painting sessions.

News
In this section I’m going to quickly take a look at a couple of bits of news that filtered through this week – the usual Warhammer Community post on Wednesday, and a little bit of BL-related news from Warhammer Fest Europe on Saturday.

First up, this week’s Community post was another ‘Staff Picks’ post, in which various members of the Community team talk about the BL books they’ve been reading recently. It’s the second time we’ve seen a post like this, which suggests that it’s going to be a regular feature – and I think that’s great. Just like how bookshops have shelf-talkers (little labels on the edges of shelves) with staff recommendations so that customers just browsing can seek inspiration from real people – as opposed to book blurbs and marketing spiel – I think it’s nice to see recommendations from the Community team so that casual readers can take a look and see if anything catches their eye.

Be careful reading this article if you’ve not read Slaves to Darkness, as there are (heavily signposted) spoilers at the beginning of the article, but otherwise take a look and see what’s being talked about. I particularly like how Maddy has stuck with Age of Sigmar and recommended the excellent Overlords of the Iron Dragon!

Next up, in case you haven’t been following on social media, the Community site or various hobby forums, this weekend it’s been Warhammer Fest Europe over in Düsseldorf. As with the UK-based Warhammer Fest, it’s a two-day event and part of the attraction is the chance to find out about loads of new and exciting models, games etc. that are due to be released in the next few months. Oh yeah, and Black Library were there too…specifically James Swallow on Saturday, who was there to talk about his next Horus Heresy novel – The Buried Dagger. Details are still few and far between of exactly what the story’s going to be, but in the (frankly excellent) Warhammer Community coverage there are mentions of a couple of VERY interesting points.

Firstly, this is going to be the long-awaited tale of the doom of the Death Guard, i.e. the point at which they lose themselves forever and turn to Nurgle. There’s some lovely symmetry there as it should link nicely back to Jim’s first Heresy novel, The Flights of the Eisenstein, and it looks as though Garro is going to be included in this story – which can only be a good thing! If that’s not exciting enough on its own, this is going to be the FINAL Horus Heresy book! Yep, you read that right – the last Heresy novel. Don’t fear, however, because what that means is that it’s the last book before the Siege of Terra starts, and that the Siege will be covered in its own series…

I’m looking forward to getting more information on exactly what that all means, but my guess (and it’s very much a guess at the moment) is that we’ll see the Siege as a sub-series within the wider Horus Heresy range, so it’ll be billed as something along the lines of The Horus Heresy: The Siege of Terra. There are some questions still around things like what the books are going to look like (are they going to match the 50+ main-range Heresy titles?) and whether the same formats are going to be available (specifically for anyone collecting the Heresy in MMPB), so hopefully we’ll find out more sometime soon.

Weekend releases
There have been three new releases this weekend, including two brand new titles as well as the standard edition of a book previously only available in limited edition format. Between them there’s an interesting mix of topics and formats, covering both 40k and Age of Sigmar and available in special edition hardback, standard hardback, ebook, audiobook and audio drama. Between all those options I reckon there’s probably something for pretty much any BL fan…

First up is The Lords of Silence by Chris Wraight, available in special edition hardback (£40), standard hardback (£18), ebook (£9.99) and MP3 audio (£29.99) formats, with the SE hardback including a bonus short story as usual. It’s also got slightly odd-looking rough-cut page edges, which I have a feeling might divide opinion. There are 1,250 copies available, and it’s going to be interesting to see how quickly it sells out; Chris is comfortably one of BL’s top authors and I can see a lot of people wanting to read this, but it definitely feels like we’ve reached special edition saturation. Putting expensive special editions to one side, this sounds like a fantastic book, and I can’t wait to read it! If you fancy a bit more info about what to expect then have a read of my Rapid Fire interview with Chris – click here, or on the image below.

Next up is Neferata: Mortarch of Blood by David Annandale, which is now available in standard hardback (£12.99) and ebook (£9.99) three months after the limited edition hardback was released. If the hardback sounds a little cheap it’s because it’s a fairly small format hardback, comparable to Josh Reynolds’ Nagash: The Undying King and comfortably smaller than what BL refer to as the ‘royal’ hardback format that most new titles come in. I’m still not very happy with how BL handled the communication around the original LE release for this, but I risk sounding like a broken record if I waffle on too much about it so let’s just say that it’s good to see the standard formats now available. You can take a look at my review of Neferata by clicking here, or alternatively have a read of a Rapid Fire interview with David about it by clicking here or on the banner below.

Lastly we’ve got Soulbound by George Mann, a 40k Raven Guard audio drama available for the standard £12 in CD and £9.99 in MP3. George has written plenty about the Raven Guard before, not least 2017’s audio drama The Geld, although as far as I can tell this is his first story to be set in the new Dark Imperium timeline. It certainly sounds interesting, and if a 40k story with Shadowmasters infiltrating a moving train sounds up your street then this is probably worth checking out.

Thoughts on the week
I strongly suspect that the news of the Heresy coming to an end, and questions around exactly what the Siege of Terra series is going to be like, is going to dominate BL-related discussions for the next few days. Fair enough, really, as it’s certainly quite exciting to think that the epic Heresy series is approaching its final instalments at long last. Barring any surprises between now and February, when The Buried Dagger is released, I think it’s going to be book 54 in the series (Heralds of the Siege should be 52 and Titandeath 53), so I think it’s safe to say we’re going to end up somewhere around the 60-65 mark. I heard a suggestion that there will end up being 63 books, to correspond with the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet under the command of Horus… and I think I’d be happy with that. Time will tell!

It’s actually a bit of a shame that the Heresy is going to dominate conversations, as under other circumstances I suspect The Lords of Silence would gather a lot of interest from fans. I’m sure it still will, though, as there’s something really exciting about the thought of Chris tackling the Death Guard. I mean, how often have you read a Chris Wraight story with bad guys as protagonists? Not often, that’s for sure! From reading Chris’ answers in his Rapid Fire interview I’m looking forward to this even more than when I first found out about it, and while a combination of money and SE-fatigue have caused me to go for the standard edition rather than the SE, I can happily confirm that I put my order in as soon as it went up for sale!

Looking back past the weekend’s releases, I’ve been particularly enjoying two series for the last week or so – Dan Abnett’s Inquisition stories, and Guy Haley’s Red Sunz tales. I’ve talked already about how much fun the Prophets of Waaagh! audio dramas are, but it’s worth reiterating – there’s something undeniably satisfying about listening to great voice actors deliver powerful, believable (if very silly) performances as greenskins, and Guy has proven once again just how well he understands how to tell a story about orks and grots. If you’re on the fence about these audios, I’d urge you to check out the free extracts on the BL site – start with The End of Daze and enjoy Steve Conlin (I think) as Uggrim, berating a pair of grots for having provoked him into using his ‘correcting hammer’ on them. You can thank me later!

As for Abnett’s Inquisition tales, I’ve been slowly working through the Eisenhorn stories over the last few months, and I’ve just this week moved onto the early Ravenor stories with the aim of eventually getting back up to date chronologically and making a start on The Magos. These are obviously a very different type of story to Guy’s ork audios, but I’m enjoying them equally (albeit for different reasons) and having a great time revisiting these familiar characters. If you’ve got the time, whether you’ve read them before or not, I can wholeheartedly recommend checking out the reading order at the front of The Magos & The Definitive Casebook of Gregor Eisenhorn and going through everything in order. For links to all of my reviews so far, have a look at this post.

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

• Hereticus by Dan Abnett
• QUICK REVIEW: End of Daze by Guy Haley
• QUICK REVIEW: The Curiosity by Dan Abnett
• QUICK REVIEW: Bozgat’s Big Adventure by Guy Haley
• QUICK REVIEW: Playing Patience by Dan Abnett
• RAPID FIRE: Chris Wraight Talks The Lords of Silence

Coming up…
It looks like we’ll be seeing two releases next weekend – the latest Space Marine Conquests novel, Of Honour and Iron by Ian St. Martin, and The Realmgate Wars: Volume 2 omnibus. I’m also looking forward to finding out what Digital Monday brings next week!

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.