Black Library Weekly – W/C 19/11/18

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 seen the first bits of information about 2018’s Advent Calendar series, and the long-awaited release of Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s latest novel, among other things. There’s lots to look at, so I’m going to jump straight in.

Monday
With Dan Abnett’s Anarch due for release fairly soon, Black Library are getting into the Gaunt’s Ghosts spirit by dipping back into the pages of the Sabbat Crusade anthology, with The Blood Bound by Rob Sanders (£2.49 in ebook) released as this week’s Digital Monday short story. While not actually a Gaunt’s Ghosts short story, it does follow on from one of the tales in Ghostmaker, and features the Iron Snakes within the wider Sabbat Worlds campaign. Personally, I wouldn’t say it was one of my favourites in the anthology, but it’s something of a slow burn story and the ending is super dark, so it’s certainly worth checking out. You can have a read of my review here.

Midweek
I only came across one piece of Black Library news during the week, in the usual Warhammer Community post on Wednesday. I’d wondered if it was going to be something to do with Spear of the Emperor, perhaps an interview with Aaron, but it was in fact a bit of a trailer for the upcoming Black Library Advent Calendar. Have a read of the article for the full details, but here are few interesting highlights:

• 24 stories in total, made up of 18 short stories and 6 short audio dramas.
• Featuring 40k, Age of Sigmar, Horus Heresy, Necromunda and Blackstone Fortress as settings.
• You’ll be able to buy the stories individually, or as a subscription which offers ‘a few of the stories free’. Last year it worked out as 24 for the price of 15, which is damn good value!
• All three Necromunda stories are going to be audios.
• The other three audios are for Age of Sigmar.
• There are going to be lots of existing characters featured, including Neferata, Hamilcar, Prince Maesa, Gotrek, Commissar Raine, Gor Half-Horn, Alivia Sureka, and various Primarchs.
• On top of the 24 stories there will be two ePremieres, on the 25th and 26th December, featuring digital versions of books in advance of their physical releases. Last year it was Nagash: The Undying King and Sons of the Hydra…I wonder what it’ll be this year? Looking forward to finding out!

The other thing to point out is that it sounds as though at least a couple of the Advent stories have already been published in event-only anthologies – certainly from the descriptions in the article it would appear we’re going to see The Battle of Blackthunder Mesa by Phil Kelly, A Lesson in Iron by David Guymer and The Atonement of Fire by David Annandale.

I’ve seen a few people on Twitter talking about being unhappy that the Advent Calendar might contain stories which aren’t technically brand new, and I can empathise with that. For hardcore fans (like me, to be fair) who can make it to events or somehow get their hands on these anthologies, it’s going to be a shame to see existing stories, and the overall value of the collection will feel a little worse. That being said, I imagine those fans are in the minority, and most people won’t have read these stories – so for most people it’s still going to feel like 24 brand new tales.

Would I personally have preferred to see all-new stories? For sure. I want to be as objective as possible, though, and I think it’s important to recognise how much work must go into putting the Advent Calendar together, from the authors, editors, proofreaders, and all the other people who have a hand in turning a manuscript into something us fans can buy. 24 new stories on top of all the rest of the year’s releases sounds like a lot of work to me, so if a few are ‘recycled’ in a small way (like these)…I don’t think it’s the end of the world.

Weekend
It’s been a while coming, and for some reason Black Library didn’t publicise it in advance, but Saturday turned out to be the release date for Spear of the Emperor by Aaron Dembski-Bowden – or at least the limited edition version, which costs a whopping £85. As a limited edition, rather than a special edition, this is available in advance of the main release, although (disappointingly) as usual BL haven’t confirmed when the standard hardback and ebook (and hopefully audiobook) will be coming out.

I’ll talk more on that note a bit later, but for now let’s just glory in how genuinely beautiful this LE is! £85 is a lot of money, so it’s going to have to be a judgement call as to whether you’re willing to pay that much, but I can confirm that this is a spectacular book (keep an eye out for a review coming soon) that I suspect most BL fans are going to love. Don’t just take my word for it, though – as usual I’ve got a quick Rapid Fire interview with Aaron to give you a bit more information, so if you fancy reading that you can just click here or on the image below.

That’s not the end of the goodies for this weekend, as there’s also a reprint of Aaron’s 2012 Grey Knights novel The Emperor’s Gift, which you can now order once again in paperback for £8.99. It’s been a long time since this was last in print! It’s also been a long time since I read it, but I remember thoroughly enjoying it – not least the cool little link between this and Dan Abnett’s Ravenor stories.

The final release of the weekend is the audiobook version of Slayer by David Guymer (£29.99 in MP3), which follows on from last weekend’s release of Kinslayer in the same format. If you fancy picking this up, don’t forget that you can get it on Audible as well as the BL site, and that if you’re not yet an Audible subscriber you can actually take out a free one-month trial and pick up Slayer for nothing!

Thoughts on the week
I mostly want to talk about Spear of the Emperor in this section, as I’ve already written a fair bit about the Advent Calendar. Before I do that, however, just a quick note for anyone who’s thinking of picking up The Blood Bound. At £2.49 it’s the usual BL short story price, but if you’re at all interested in the rest of the stories in Sabbat Crusade then I would hold off and buy the whole anthology. With 11 short stories and a novella, it would set you back over £30 to buy everything individually, so £14.99 for the anthology in ebook looks like a MUCH better price. To be honest, if you’re interested in one of these stories then I imagine you’ll enjoy all of them – so go buy the anthology! We’ve seen a couple of the individual stories released already, and I’ve a feeling we’ll see more reasonably soon.

As for Spears of the Emperor, I feel like I should say straight off that I succumbed to it at the Weekender earlier in the month – I went in telling myself that I wasn’t interested in the LE, but I took one look at it and was sold. Even though £85 is a preposterous amount for a book, the quality of what’s included – from the concept and design to the production values – is superb. The additional little Index Astartes book is almost worth the price on its own! It’s also a GORGEOUS hardback inside all of that, which makes a massive difference compared to the slightly disappointing munitorum-style hardback of The Warmaster, which also came in at £85.

As you may know, I’ve talked quite a lot about Black Library’s approach to LEs and SEs in the past, and even wrote a pretty critical article about them, but hand on heart I am genuinely impressed by the standard of this one. It ABSOLUTELY feels special, and BL have clearly put a lot of thought put into how they could make it stand out as something a little bit different even to what we’re used to with other special and limited editions. It’s still going to be a tough value judgement for a lot of people, but if you can face the price tag then it’s a genuinely beautiful set.

There is a catch, though. Price tag aside, I think it’s really disappointing that BL don’t seem willing to be clear with customers about the release schedule for this. First of all, there was no information about when the LE was going to be available, which is a bit naughty really. £85 is a lot of money to ask fans to spend, and a bit of notice so that people can save up or put the money aside wouldn’t go amiss. Now it’s on sale, though, there’s no indication of when the standard edition will be released, which just feels a bit cynical. At Black Library Live earlier in the year the suggestion was that there would be a six month gap between editions, but nothing’s been confirmed officially.

[Actually, it’s been pointed out to me that the product page on the BL website does mention that the LE is available six months before the standard hardback. I’ll leave the rest of this (somewhat ranty) section in place, but fair play to BL for telling us up front that it’s a six month gap – hopefully they’ll do the same for Celestine, and for future LEs.]

I don’t really understand why BL are being like this with LEs. Is it maybe a case that they’re not sure what their strategy should be? After the Neferata: Mortarch of Blood LE was released, the standard hardback came out three months later, much like the Primarchs LEs do, but while the standard edition Primarchs novels show up in the ‘Coming Soon’ section of the BL site (and the release schedule was clearly stated when the series started), the standard Neferata hardback just dropped out of the blue. When the LE was released, there was no mention of a standard edition whatsoever! I’ve a feeling that’s going to happen with Spear of the Emperor and also Andy Clark’s Celestine, annoyingly – certainly I’ve not seen anything on the BL site, Facebook or Warhammer Community letting customers know that standard editions are even coming, never mind giving a time frame.

I just wish BL would make it clear – up front – when the different versions of these books are going to arrive. Give customers all the information, and let us make informed decisions – that shouldn’t be complicated, right? If you’re going to release books as LE first (which is dodgy enough as it is, but that’s another story) then it seems like a basic courtesy to make it explicitly clear what’s going to happen. Surely that’s not hard to do. Maybe I’m overthinking things (it’s entirely possible), but that just feels like a more respectful way of treating customers, rather than a surprise release for a fiendishly expensive book that only a small proportion of the fanbase will be able to afford, with no indication of when everyone else is going to be able to get it.

I don’t know. Obviously the main thing is whether a book is a great story or not – and in that respect Spear of the Emperor is (in my opinion) a total success. I just feel like it would better serve the fans, the authors, and – in the end – Black Library if there was a bit more clarity around this sort of release.

Anyway. All being well I’ll have a review of Spear ready for early next week, so keep your eyes out for that!

Here’s the usual list of what I’ve been posting about this week:

• Titandeath by Guy Haley
• QUICK REVIEW: The Blood Bound by Rob Sanders
• Auric Gods by Nick Kyme
• QUICK REVIEW: At the Sign of the Brazen Claw Part Two: The Merchant’s Story by Guy Haley
• QUICK REVIEW: The Thirteenth Psalm by Peter Fehervari
• RAPID FIRE: Aaron Dembski-Bowden Talks Spear of the Emperor

Coming up…
Next week promises to be a busy one! For the Horus Heresy we’ve got the new and updated version of Visions of Heresy plus The Horus Heresy Audio Drama Collection: Vol 1, while for Blood Bowl fans there’s Death on the Pitch, a paperback anthology collecting together all of the recent-ish short stories. There’s also the small matter of the Advent Calendar starting on Saturday. Get those wallets ready…

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.