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 I’ve been CRAZY busy both in terms of Track of Words and everything else that’s going on at the moment (sadly I do have a full-time job as well as running ToW, plus as a feeble attempt at an actual life) but I’ve somehow managed to still post something every day this week. It’s actually been a pretty darn exciting week in Black Library terms, with a lot of releases or news of upcoming releases, so let’s have a look at what’s been going on.
Monday
For the second week running the Digital Monday release was a short story plundered from the excellent Sabbat Crusade anthology, this time Son of Sek by John French. Where last week’s The Blood Bound was a relatively straightforward action romp, this week’s story is a very different beast – a dark, complex, unsettling story that gets right into the head of a Son of Sek, one of the main enemies in the Gaunt’s Ghosts series. As with last week I’d recommend picking up the anthology in ebook rather than buying the individual e-short, as it’s great value compared to picking up all of the individual stories. You can have a read of my review here.
Midweek
Just the one piece of midweek news again, with the usual Black Library post on the Warhammer Community site on Wednesday. This week it was looking ahead to next year and the Warhammer Adventures series of books for younger readers, with a whopping four new titles confirmed, two for each of the series (by Tom Huddleston and Cavan Scott). The first books for each of the two series – Warped Galaxies for 40k and Realm Quest for Age of Sigmar – aren’t due out until February so there’s a bit of a wait until books 2 and 3 in the series arrive, but it’s great to see more information about what’s coming.
Both of the new covers look pretty cool, even if the levitating genestealer on the front of Claws of the Genestealer looks a little strange. Skaven improve pretty much any book cover (and, arguably, any book) so I’m particularly looking forward to Lair of the Skaven! I particularly like the individual pieces of character art that are being produced for these series – I mean, what’s not to love about a servo skull wearing a tricorn hat?! I can see these really firing the imaginations of young readers.
If you’re interested in finding out more about what’s coming for the Warhammer Adventures books then do have a read of the Community article and check out the blurbs for each of the book 2s. I appreciate that they’re not going to be aimed at me as a reader, but I’m still really looking forward to reading some great adventure stories!
Weekend
It’s been one of the busiest Black Library release weekends I can remember for a while, with a new version of Visions of Heresy, a Horus Heresy audio drama collection, book 50 in the Heresy series in trade paperback, and a paperback Blood Bowl anthology…PLUS the first two Advent Calendar stories AND confirmation of March’s upcoming releases. Take a deep breath, and let’s look at all of that in a little more detail…
I’ll start with the Horus Heresy, and specifically Visions of Heresy, which is available to pre-order (shipping from the 8th) in hardback for a whopping £50. As the second edition of this impressive reference book (third if you include Collected Visions) it’s been updated by none other than Horus Heresy author Guy Haley, and as far as I’m aware includes new body text and all of the cover artwork that’s been released since the previous edition was published back in 2013. If you’re a hardcore Horus Heresy fan then this is likely to be something you’ll want to pick up, although I’d be VERY surprised if BL don’t release another updated edition in a couple of years’ time once the Siege of Terra is over.
Next up is The Horus Heresy Audio Drama Collection: Vol. 1, which as you can probably guess from the title is a set of Heresy audio dramas and which will set you back £34.99 for the MP3 version or £35 for the CD boxed set. It’s a slightly odd mix of stories with no immediately discernible theme, but if you haven’t yet listened to most or all of them then it’s a pretty good price compared to getting them individually. Have a look here for details of what’s included.
The final Horus Heresy (physical) release for the weekend is the trade paperback of Nick Kyme’s Salamanders anthology Born of Flame, which is available for £12.99 as well as the existing hardback (£20), ebook (£9.99) and MP3 (£29.99) editions. It’ll be some time before this lands in mass market paperback (the smallest edition) so if you’ve avoided the hardbacks but are keen to read these stories then now’s a good time to pick this anthology up. There’s one further Heresy story to come, but I’ll get back to that in a moment.
Before that, there’s one further physical release – the Death on the Pitch Blood Bowl anthology, which is available in both ebook and paperback editions for £8.99. If you cast your mind back to November 2016, around the time that the new boxed game was released, BL started publishing what turned into a range of great Blood Bowl short stories by a load of different authors, and they’re now finally available in print and collected together for the first time. You can find my reviews of all of these individual stories here, and if you fancy digging into them then this anthology is a total bargain – it saves you over £20 compared to buying the separate e-shorts! They’re also a total blast, and I’d thoroughly recommend them.
That’s it for the physical releases, but given that Saturday was the 1st December it’s no surprise to find the first two of 24 Advent Calendar stories released this weekend. I’ve put together a post where I’m gathering all of the info, review links and Amazon links for all of the Advent stories, so have a quick look over there for more information on the Advent Calendar. Suffice to say if you’re like me and you enjoy reading widely across all of the different BL settings, you might want to go for the subscription offer. By my (admittedly dodgy) maths, 18 e-shorts and 6 short audio dramas would set you back almost £70 if bought individually, so the £46 price tag for the subscription isn’t bad.
I should mention that in previous years I’ve had quite a lot of difficulties with BL’s digital subscriptions, in terms of files not showing up to download in my account on time, but so far (ok, I know we’re only 2 days in) things have been pretty smooth. The first two stories – Old Wounds, New Scars by Graham McNeill and Blood Gold by Gav Thorpe – have been enjoyable (even if they haven’t blown my mind) and I’ve got high hopes for quite a few of the upcoming titles based on what I know about them. I’ll do my best to get a review published the day after each story is released, although I’ve already read some of them in event-only anthologies so you can already find a couple of reviews for these on Track of Words.
The FINAL few things to talk about in the Weekend section are, of course, March’s upcoming titles – the first Siege of Terra novel, the first two Warhammer Horror releases, and a couple of paperback omnibuses. It’s not the largest selection of new titles I’ve seen, but there are some GREAT looking stories in here. Let’s take a quick look.
The Solar War by John French
This is the big one, for a lot of fans – book one in the Siege of Terra, and very much the beginning of the end for the Horus Heresy series. It’s coming out in super-swanky limited edition hardback a couple of months in advance of the standard hardback, and is going to cost an expensive – but not entirely unexpected – £50. That’s going to get you a seriously good-looking edition complete with a fold-out map and a selection of internal artwork – I’ve a feeling this one’s going to be popular.
The Wicked and the Damned by David Annandale, Phil Kelly and Josh Reynolds
The much-anticipated Warhammer Horror range kicks off with a 40k ‘portmanteau’ story (i.e. three interlinked novellas) from David, Phil and Josh, in a rather lovely looking paperback edition. I’m fascinating to see what this is going to be like, and I’m very pleased that it’s coming out in paperback straight away. I’ll be buying this immediately – can’t wait!
Perdition’s Flame by Alec Worley
More Warhammer Horror, this time in the form of a 40k audio drama about a Vostroyan deserter from the impressive Alec Worley. If you haven’t yet checked out his Sisters of Battle short stories – Whispers and Repentia – then I’d really urge you to do so, and off the back of those (plus some brilliant Judge Anderson novellas – Dredd/2000AD fans check them out!) I’ve a feeling this is going to be really good.
Iron Warriors: The Complete Honsou Omnibus by Graham McNeill
The latest in a growing range of 40k omnibuses, this one collects together all of the Honsou stories from Graham McNeill – so that’s Storm of Iron, the novella Iron Warrior and a range (I’m not sure how many, actually) of short stories. It’ll be good to have them all in one place, although I suspect a few Iron Warriors fans might be disappointed this is focusing so closely on Honsou and isn’t going to include CL Werner’s The Siege of Castellax.
Knights of the Empire by Dan Abnett, Josh Reynolds, Nik Vincent, James Wallis and Richard Williams
The final release for March (so far) is another Warhammer Chronicles omnibus, this time featuring Hammers of Ulric, Reiksguard and Knight of the Blazing Sun, along with a bunch of Josh Reynolds’ Knights of Manaan short stories.
Thoughts on the week
For me, the two big topics that came up this week were the Advent Calendar and March’s upcoming releases. I’ve talked a reasonable amount about both of these already so I’ll keep this section quite brief this week, but I will just reiterate how MASSIVELY BLOOMIN’ EXCITED I am about John French’s The Solar War! I mean, it’s the start of the Siege of Terra – this is crazy! Personally I rather wish BL had taken a bit more time with the Heresy series – just a bit – and gone into a bit more detail of things like Beta-Garmon, and whatever’s going on with the Dark Angels…but they haven’t, so hey. I’m still massively looking forward to the Siege, and I’m still slightly gobsmacked to think that we’re going to start reading about it next year! That LE hardback looks seriously lovely, as well.
One quick note about the Advent Calendar, in terms of the stories which have already been published elsewhere. I’ve gone through the Warhammer Community post about Advent with a fine tooth comb and I reckon there are going to be five stories which I’ve already read, all included in the Black Library Events Anthology 2017/18. Obviously it’s a touch disappointing that I’ll already have read those, but I figure it’s probably safe to say that relatively few people will have got hold of that anthology, so I do understand the logic. However, if – as I expect – Josh Reynolds’ Age of Sigmar story A Dirge of Dust and Steel is one of those five stories, I do actually think that’s genuinely bad form…because it’s included in Sacrosanct & Other Stories which is widely available. I think that’s a properly bad move from BL, as in my opinion that story has already had a full release. I’m fine with the other four, but I think it’s going to be really poor if that one’s included in Advent.
Lastly in this section, just a very quick note to point out that I’ve been reading and reviewing a couple more of the Black Library Novella Series 1 books this week – I’ve now posted reviews of the first five in the series, up to and including Spear of Ultramar and Dreadwing. I’ve also read Mike Brooks’ Necromunda novella Wanted: Dead, which was great fun, but I might struggle to find a slot for a review of that until the next year – I just wanted to give it a bit of a shout out in advance as it’s great fun! Likewise with the stories featured in Inferno! Volume 2, as I’ve managed to publish reviews of the first three (by Guy Haley, Peter Fehervari, and debut BL author Thomas Parrott) but with all the Advent stories I might not have time to cover the rest of them until the new year. It’s another brilliant anthology, however, so keep an eye out for the rest of the reviews and it should be available to order in a few weeks.
I’ve even posted an extra time this week, what with the start of the Advent Calendar, so here’s a list of what I’ve been talking about:
- Spear of the Emperor by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
- QUICK REVIEW: Son of Sek by John French
- QUICK REVIEW: Spiritus in Machina by Thomas Parrott
- Spear of Ultramar by David Annandale
- Dreadwing by David Guymer
- Black Library Advent Calendar – 2018
- QUICK REVIEW: Old Wounds, New Scars by Graham McNeill
Coming up…
Lots of cool stuff coming up next week, with another seven Advent Calendar stories as well as two new Horus Heresy titles – Titandeath by Guy Haley (have a read of my review here – it’s brilliant!) and the audio drama Hubris of Monarchia by Andy Smillie.
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.
Let’s see, War and Peace with skaven, Pride and Prejudice with skaven, Kant’ Critique of Pure Reason with skaven–I think you’re right! Skaven would improve any book!