Black Library Weekly – W/C 27/08/18

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. After last week’s Summer of Reading campaign things have returned to normal with a handful of releases and just a snifter of news during the week, although with tickets going on sale for the 2018 Weekender there’s lots to look forward to!

Monday
The week started with the usual Digital Monday short story, in this case the latest Hallowed Knights story for Age of Sigmar – The Lords of Helstone by Josh Reynolds (£2.49 in ebook). This was originally released as an audio drama, and then collected together in prose form along with various other stories into Mortarch of Night, so you’ve got lots of options for getting hold of it. Presumably the five remaining instalments will also be released individually at some point, much like the previous instalments – The Prisoner of the Black Sun and Sands of Blood – so you’re probably better off picking up the ebook of Mortarch of Night for £6.99 than buying these individually. You can have a read of my review of Mortarch of Night by clicking here.

Midweek
Just the one newsworthy item popped up in the midweek period, and that was a Warhammer Community post showcasing the latest ‘Ask the Author’ interview, and Chris Wraight’s answers to the questions posed by fans last month. I quite like these little Q&As, as they sometimes throw up some interesting answers. This time around there are questions about the expected White Scars and Space Wolves, plus Death Guard, Inquisitors and Adeptus Custodes. There’s nothing massively new or insightful, except a welcome confirmation that there will indeed be a sequel to Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne as Chris is writing it at the moment!

That was the only thing I spotted during the week, although I’d just like to quickly mention a blog post that I wrote and published on Thursday entitled I Miss the Days When Special Editions Were Special. I’ve been doing lots of thinking recently about the special editions that Black Library publish, and I thought it was about time I condensed some of that down into a blog post. So far it’s proved quite the talking point, and I’ve had loads of replies to my tweets, and comments on Facebook and on here. My hope is that it comes across that I really, really love the special editions BL release, and that I want to keep buying them, but with so many coming out it’s really hard to justify the cost. I know I’m not the only person who feels a bit like this, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that over time we’ll see a move away from such high volumes of these special editions. Please do join in the conversation, though – drop me a line in the comments below, or on social media!

Weekend
I’ve been looking forward to this weekend and its releases for some time, because not only was there the release of a great little 40k audio drama collection, but there was also the BRAND NEW CIAPHAS CAIN NOVEL – which as you can probably tell I’m *a little bit* excited about – as well as tickets for the 2018 Black Library Weekender. Yep, it’s been quite an expensive weekend for me, but I suspect the 3rd and 4th November will be even more expensive!

Let’s start off with the Cain novel, Choose Your Enemies by Sandy Mitchell, which is available in hardback (£18) and ebook (£9.99) formats. Sadly there’s no audiobook, which is a shame as I’d love to hear it read by some of the great voice actors BL work with. It’s been five years since the last Ciaphas Cain novel (2013’s The Greater Good) and to be honest I didn’t think we’d ever see another, so it’s just great to see this finally available. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get hold of him, but in the end I was able to speak to Sandy for one of the usual Rapid Fire interviews, which gives you a good idea of what to expect if you’ve not read a Cain book before. Click here to read that, or click on the banner below.

Next up is Key of Infinity and Other Stories, an audio drama anthology featuring stories by Ben Counter, CZ Dunn, John French and Andy Smillie. This one’s available as usual in CD (£15) or MP3 (£9.99) formats, and is great value compared to buying all four audios individually – it would cost you £15.96 for all of the individual MP3s, so even the CD is (slightly) cheaper. The four audios contained herein were originally released as part of the 2017 Advent Calendar, so while I don’t have a review of the whole thing, I do have reviews of each individual story. Click on the titles for reviews of Ahriman: Key of Infinity by John French, The Assassination of Gabriel Seth by Andy Smillie, Heart of Decay by Ben Counter and The Rage of Asmodai by CZ Dunn. There’s loads of great content here, so if you’re after some new audios this would be a great place to start.Last, but very much not least, tickets are now on sale for the Black Library Weekender, which is taking place at the Nottingham Belfry Hotel on the 3rd and 4th November 2018. Tickets are £75 each, which sounds a lot but does include an awful lot of activities over the whole weekend. I’ve been looking forward to getting my tickets booked for this ever since the dates were confirmed at Black Library Live in June, and now that the tickets are available, alongside a load of information about the event, I’m more excited than ever. If you’re not really sure what the Weekender is, or fancy some info on what you can expect, have a read of my roundup of last year’s event to see what I thought – suffice to say I loved it!

I’m really impressed that BL have provided so much information right from the outset, as that’s not tended to happen in the past with either BL events or other GW-run events. There’s obviously a lot to organise for something like a Weekender, so it’s great to see the schedule (complete with start and end timings AND signing times) and list of guests available up front, not to mention information on what to expect from the event and a bunch of the pre-order titles shown. On top of that, to have information on where to stay (although the Belfry is really the place to stay, if you can) and where to eat, and how to get to the Belfry – that’s spot on. Great work BL.

It will come as no surprise to learn that I’ve already got my ticket! Last year’s event was so much fun, and I met loads of great people there, so I’m really looking forward to doing the same. I’ve been digging into the schedule to have a think about which seminars I want to go to, and I’ve still got lots of thinking to do, but here are just a few of the highlights that really jumped out at me.

• Novellas: the Weekender page talks about “all ten volumes of the first-ever collectible Black Library novella series” and the schedule has several seminars dedicated to novellas and “this new era of short fiction for Black Library”. I really enjoy a good novella so I’m intrigued by this, not least the mentions of two Horus Heresy “Siege of Terra prequel novellas” – Spear of Ultramar and Dreadwing.
• Siege of Terra: The Solar War – any new John French book is going to be exciting, but “the first novel in the highly anticipated Siege of Terra series”? HELL YES! Can’t wait to find out about that…
• Space Marine Heroes: a seminar featuring Phil Kelly and Graham McNeill, and “the return of a fan favourite to the Dark Imperium”? Sounds juicy. I wonder who the fan favourite could be…?!
• Warrior Queens in the Age of Sigmar: I’m always happy to see awesome female characters in BL stories, and this promises to be a really interesting panel with some authors I’m looking forward to hearing from. I suspect at least one of them will be working on a story (or stories) we’ve not yet seen, either.
• Gotrek and Brian Blessed: obviously! When it was announced that there would be a special guest at the Weekender a lot of people speculated that it would be Brian Blessed, but I still can’t quite believe it! I really can’t wait to listen to Realmslayer, and it should be fascinating to hear the voice of Gotrek talk about his experience working on this!

Those are really just the first few that caught my eye – it’s going to be really tough deciding what to go and see. There are so many great names on the list of guests this year, and I’m particularly pleased that the list includes artists (and not just Neil Roberts – who is awesome, to be fair) and actors. I love an audio drama, so I’m keen to hear from David Seddon, Penelope Rawlins and Steve Conlin. Also I can’t mention the Weekender without a quick reference to the goodies that we’ll be able to buy – my wallet is already weeping at the thought of SO MANY new titles I’m desperate to get hold of. Anarch, Realmslayer, the second volume of Inferno, Titandeath, Black Pyramid…not to mention Spear of the Emperor! Although, while that special edition looks lovely, I’m not convinced about buying books in boxes full of other gubbins. Ah well.

Still, I have a feeling it’s going to be an expensive weekend, so I think I’d better start saving up now! If anyone has any questions about what to expect from a Weekender I’m very happy to try and help where I can, so do get in touch if that’s the case. Likewise if you’ve got your ticket and you’re as excited as I am, give me a shout and join in with the conversation as we ramp up the hype over the next two months! I can’t wait for it, and hopefully I’ll see lots of you there…

Thoughts on the week
Right up until the weekend it had been looking like a pretty quiet week, but in my opinion at least it’s been a pretty darn exciting weekend! To be honest I was actually expecting to see December’s new releases confirmed as well, which didn’t happen, but at least we’ve still got that to come (I imagine quite a lot of the pre-releases at the Weekender will be coming out in December).

In terms of the weekend’s two new releases, in my opinion at least Choose Your Enemies is one of the most exciting new books to have come out for a long time. The Cain stories are a bit like AC/DC really; you know exactly what you’re going to get – more of the same, essentially – but when they’re as good as this that’s really not a bad thing. In fact it’s a great thing! I’m itching to get hold of a copy, but also very tempted to go back and re-read at least one of the earlier stories, so do keep an eye out for a review or two over the next couple of weeks.

As for the Weekender, I’ve already talked quite a lot about that and I’m sure you’ve gathered by now that I’m SUPER excited about it. I’ve been to all of the Black Library Weekenders so far, and over the years have met some really lovely people who have turned into great friends. I strongly suspect that enjoying the first couple of Weekenders so much was actually a contributing factor in my decision to start Track of Words, so to me they’re pretty important events. Last year’s was – in my opinion – comfortably the best one yet, so I’ve got really high expectations for this November. It’s always been £75 (and the rest) well spent, and I’m expecting the same thing this year.

As always, here’s a list of what else I’ve been posting about this week.

• QUICK REVIEW: The Learning by David Guymer
• QUICK REVIEW: Lightning Run by Peter McLean
• QUICK REVIEW: Prologue to Nikaea by David Annandale
• Black Library Summer of Reading 2018 – Roundup
• I Miss the Days When Special Editions Were Special
• RAPID FIRE: Sandy Mitchell Talks Choose Your Enemies

Coming up…
There’s more Ciaphas Cain coming next week, in the form of Ciaphas Cain: Saviour of the Imperium, which is the third omnibus (the first two have been available for years), containing three novels, a novella and bunch of short stories. There’s also a new Warhammer Chronicles omnibus – Masters of Stone and Steel by Nick Kyme and Gav Thorpe.

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.