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, for me, been dominated by the return of Inferno! to Black Library, but there’s plenty more to talk about as well as that. Let’s take a look…
Monday
As with last time, there was no Digital Monday release this week, so rather than wallow in despair at the absence of new Black Library content I decided once again to delve into the backlog of short stories I hadn’t got round to reading. Cue another story from the Servants of the Machine God anthology, this time The Zheng Cipher by Josh Reynolds – available in that anthology or as a £1.99 e-short. It’s a grim tale of a Vanguard skitarii maniple taking the fight to the tyranids, and while it’s only short I really rather enjoyed it. There’s a strange sort of nihilistic enjoyment to be had from reading about radiation-soaked skitarii, and I enjoyed the contrast between the Adeptus Mechanicus and the tyranids. Have a read of my review here.
Midweek
To start things off I just want to refer back to something which I spotted last Sunday, just too late to include in last week’s Black Library Weekly article. In the run up to Guy Haley’s new novel Dark Imperium: Plague War, Black Library have temporarily discounted the ebook of the first in the series – just entitled Dark Imperium – down to £5, which at half price is a total bargain. If you haven’t yet read Dark Imperium then now’s your chance! It’s a smart move from BL, as it’s bound to entice at least a few readers, who will then inevitably be tempted by the second book in the series when that’s released.
The first piece of interesting news to drop actually this week was was an email that went out on Tuesday to everyone who’s signed up to the Warhammer Adventures mailing list, with details of a load of updates now available on warhammeradventures.com. In case you’re not aware, this is a new range of Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000 stories aimed at younger readers, and due out sometime in early 2019. It was announced a few months ago, with a little bit of information, but the latest updates include further details about the characters and the settings, some fun little games to play, and a handful of downloads – including the first chapter of each of the first two novels – Attack of the Necron by Cavan Scott and City of Lifestone by Tom Huddlestone.
This is all very much aimed at the younger generation, from the language used on the website to the types of games and activities available to have a go at. That being said, it’s still quite good fun to find out which character you would be or have a go with a couple of picture puzzles. Not only that, but if you download the sample chapters you’ll see that while yes, it looks like these books are definitely being written with younger readers in mind, not only do they absolutely feel like they fit into the 40k and Age of Sigmar settings, but they’re really quite good fun. Ultimately they’re not for me, or other adults – they’re for children, and they’re being written accordingly. Like all great children’s fiction, though, they’re fun for adults to read as well. I’m feeling good about these, and I know I’ll be picking up at least the first books in each series once they’re available!
The other relevant bit of news is more of a reminder, really. Last week Black Library launched a competition to win all of the currently-in-print books and CDs in their range (a prize worth £3,600), and this week they’ve started making a bit more noise about it with a Warhammer Community post, Facebook post, and banners on both BL and GW websites (complete with cute Ahriman artwork). I also spotted a visitor post on the BL Facebook page which clarified something I’d seen lots of people asking about – it’s possible to enter once per week with a paid order of £40 or more, but only a single free (email) entry is allowed. So if you haven’t yet sent in an email, get straight to it! You can read more about the competition by reading the terms and conditions here.
Weekend
Onto the weekend, which was dominated by the release of the brand new Inferno! Volume 1 anthology – available for £8.99 in either paperback or ebook (no audiobook). If you haven’t come across Inferno! before and are wondering what all the fuss is about, you might be interested to know that the first thing Black Library ever published was a bi-monthly magazine of short stories, comics and artwork called – you guessed it – Inferno! That’s right, the novels actually came after the magazine. It ran for about seven years before being cancelled, but now the name has been revived for a new series of short story anthologies.
This first instalment contains eleven short stories, from ten authors, of which two have previously been available as e-shorts but the remaining nine are being published for the first time ever. There are six 40k stories, two Age of Sigmar stories, one Necromunda story and even two Warhammer Chronicles stories – i.e. tales set in the Old World. Don’t get too excited, though – they were both written before the End Times happened, and just hadn’t been released until now. Nevertheless, it’s an exciting mixture of stories, from a combination of well known authors (Annandale, Haley and Reynolds), newer authors (including Peter McLean, Danie Ware and Mike Brooks) and authors making their BL debut.
As Inferno! is an anthology, it wasn’t really possible for me to put together a Rapid Fire interview – tricky to do that when there are ten authors involved! Instead, I got in touch with all of the authors and asked them to talk a little about their stories and about what Inferno! means to them, and wrapped that all up in a single article – The Return of Inferno! to Black Library. You can have a read of that here, or by clicking on the image below. I hope it gives you a good idea of what to expect from these stories, and also a bit of an insight into some authors you might not be as familiar with.
That’s not all on the Inferno! front, either. In a clever move, Black Library have made the first five issues of the original magazine available to order as ‘print on demand’ titles – you can order them for £5 each if you want to pick up just one or two, or go for the Classic Inferno! Collection for £25 if you want all five of them. To be honest, unless you already have some, you DEFINITELY do want all five of them! As usual with print on demand titles, they’re available to order for a month – in this case up until 27th October – and BL say that orders will be dispatched within 35 days.
Moving on to the weekend’s other releases, it’s been all about the paperbacks this week – the latest Horus Heresy trade paperback, plus two 40k novels coming out in the usual paperback editions. Let’s start off with the Horus Heresy, and Guy Haley’s novel Wolfsbane – book 49 in the numbered series. This is now available to order in the larger of the two paperback formats, for the usual £12.99, alongside the three existing formats – hardback (£20), ebook (£9.99) and MP3 audio (£29.99). If you haven’t read Wolfsbane then now’s a good time to pick it up, as it contains some big plot points in the run up to the Siege of Terra. You can check out my review here, or have a read of a Rapid Fire interview with Guy by clicking here or on the image below.
Next up there’s Legacy of Dorn by Mike Lee, which is available for the usual £8.99 in paperback (although once again the hardback and ebook versions are still available). This one acts as an interesting companion piece to Steve Parker’s Space Marine Battles novel Rynn’s World, dealing with the same overall event just seen from a different perspective. I recently read this and have a review coming very soon (spoiler – it’s great!), but you can find out more about it by reading this Rapid Fire interview with Mike.
Last but not least we’ve got the paperback of Imperator: Wrath of the Omnissiah by Gav Thorpe, available once again for £8.99. As with the other paperback available this weekend you can still pick up the other editions of this one, which as well as the usual hardback (£18), ebook (£9.99) and MP3 audio (£29.99) formats also includes a lovely special edition hardback (£40), which contains the short story By Your Command. I don’t have a review of this yet, but once again you can read a Rapid Fire interview with Gav by clicking here or on the banner below.
Thoughts on the week
Any week which brings with it a new short story anthology – especially one under the title of Inferno! – is going to be a great week in my book, but I’m trying hard not to get too carried away with all the excitement! Overall I’d say this has been a week which has gradually picked up in terms of Black Library content, starting off once again quite slowly with no Digital Monday release but seeing interesting news appear during the week and culminating in a weekend crammed full of great books.
I don’t mind sounding like a broken record – I’m always happy to see new paperback editions arrive, if nothing else because I’m sure there are plenty of people who either can’t afford to or simply don’t want to spend £18-£20 on hardback books. After all, with BL’s crazy schedule there are A LOT of hardbacks coming out these days. Personally I don’t mind that, as it matches what happens in the wider marketplace, but it’s always good to see a paperback arrive and open up the book to a bigger group of fans.
In terms of this week’s paperbacks specifically, I’d say that Wolfsbane is an absolute must-read if you’re keeping up with the Heresy (especially as it’s likely to be another six months or so before the mass market paperback arrives), and it’s also a damn fine story. I’ve accidentally timed my review of Legacy of Dorn pretty much to perfection, so keep an eye out for that next week, while I’m looking forward to giving Imperator a read and enjoying what Gav described to me as “The Hunt for Red October but with an Imperator Titan”. What’s not to like about that?!
Which brings me back to Inferno!, once again. I’m a massive fan of the original Inferno! magazines, and have carefully looked after my copies of the first couple of years’ worth of them, so I’m hugely excited about the new incarnation…as you can probably tell. I was really pleased to be able to get in touch with all of the authors included in this first volume, and I very much hope the article is an interesting read for anyone keen to learn more about this. In my opinion it’s just brilliant to see Inferno! back, and not just as a one-off but as a regular anthology which I really, really hope is going to keep going for a long time.
From what I can tell online it looks as though we’re going to see the next volume of Inferno! in something like three months’ time (I think it’s available at the Weekender, actually), so if that’s the case moving forward – i.e. a new anthology every three months or so – it’s going to be amazing! I can’t help thinking it’s a huge amount of work for the BL editorial team, but from a reader’s perspective it’s brilliant. Let’s hope that some of the new names we’re seeing for the first time in these early volumes go on to have similar careers to many of the authors who appeared for the first time in the original magazines!
As usual, to finish off this section here’s a full list of what I’ve been posting about this week.
- Ciaphas Cain: Choose Your Enemies by Sandy Mitchell
- QUICK REVIEW: The Zheng Cipher by Josh Reynolds
- Assault on Black Reach by Nick Kyme
- The Geld by George Mann
- QUICK REVIEW: The Mutant Master by William King
- The Return of Inferno! to Black Library
Coming up…
Next week looks like being another cracker, with three new releases – Dark Imperium: Plague War by Guy Haley, Gotrek & Felix: The First Omnibus by William King, and The Beast Arises: Volume 1 featuring short novels from Dan Abnett, Rob Sanders, Gav Thorpe and David Annandale
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.