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 been the final week of 2018 (ok, barring a single day sneaking into next week) and I’ve been pleasantly surprised with how much there’s been to talk about – it’s almost all release-related, but that’s never a bad thing! Let’s go have a look…
Monday
As it was Christmas Eve on Monday there was still one more Advent Calendar short story to be released, and Black Library delivered with an absolute cracker – A Rose Watered with Blood by Aaron Dembski-Bowden (£2.49 in ebook). The fourth Horus Heresy story in the collection, it picked up where a previous short (Prince of Blood, from the Sons of the Emperor anthology) had left off and brought the story arc of Lotarra Sarrin – shipmistress of the Conqueror – bang up to date in preparation for the Siege of Terra. It’s really, really nicely done, and makes for an impressive end to the Advent Calendar series. You can read my review here.
Midweek
Advent might be over but Black Library still had a couple of surprises up their sleeves for the early part of the week. As usual, the Advent Calendar was followed by a pair of digital-only releases (which BL refer to as ePremieres) available for £9.99 each, one on Christmas Day and one on Boxing Day, which won’t come out in physical formats for another three months. I’m quite fond of this idea, as it gives fans the opportunity to get hold of something a little bit unexpected over the holiday period, although this year I haven’t been able to afford to pick up either of the new stories just yet. Christmas is an expensive time, right?
First up, on Christmas Day it was a new Age of Sigmar novel – Scourge of Fate by Robbie MacNiven. It’s about time we got a Chaos-focused Age of Sigmar book, so a story about the Varanguard sounds very interesting indeed, and after an impressive short story and novella it’s great to see Robbie’s first full length Age of Sigmar novel released!
Boxing Day’s ePremiere was a 40k novel – Cadian Honour by Justin D. Hill, the sequel to 2017’s Cadia Stands and the continuation of Minka Lesk’s story. It’s always a pleasure to read one of Justin’s stories, and I feel like the overall Cadia arc should still be front and centre in the wider 40k story, so this promises to be a fascinating read.
Let’s just take a moment to really take in those covers – they’re so good! I know plenty of people prefer to read physical books, and that’s totally fine (just imagine how good these covers are going to look on hardback copies!), especially as BL have made it beautifully clear that physical copies are coming in three months’ time. I know I’ll want the hardbacks to go on the shelf, even if I read the ebooks first! It’s great to see cool new books getting a bit of hype and excitement though, and I think the whole Christmas ePremiere idea is great.
That wasn’t even everything in terms of midweek releases, as an ebook bundle of Horus Heresy stories quietly arrived on the Black Library website. Priced at a whopping £410, The Horus Heresy Complete Novel Series collects together ALL of the Heresy novels. Yep, that’s right…every. Single. One. Remember that after The Buried Dagger the main series is essentially over, as the Siege of Terra series kicks off next; interestingly, while The Buried Dagger isn’t yet available to order, it will be added to your account once it’s released if you buy this bundle. That’s a nice touch. It’s certainly an expensive (and daunting) bundle, but if you bought everything separately it would (by my dodgy maths) come to just over £590…so that’s a saving of £180! Not bad at all…although I can’t see too many people going for this.
There wasn’t really anything noteworthy included on the Warhammer Community site for Black Library fans this week, so I’ll just finish this section off by quickly mentioning that I spent the week posting reviews of the Age of Sigmar novellas featured in the Black Library Novella Series 1. I’ll link out to these individually below, so keep an eye out for those, but suffice to say I’ve been hugely impressed by the standard of the novellas – not just the four Age of Sigmar books, but the whole series! If you haven’t bought these yet, at £3 per book they’re a total bargain – so get ordering!
Weekend
After an impressive week of new releases you might think the weekend would have been a quiet one, but no! Saturday brought with it a brand new short story anthology, Print on Demand editions of five classic magazines, the paperback version of a 40k Blood Angels novel, and a reissued 40k omnibus – so a pretty busy day, then! Let’s take a look at each of the releases in a little more detail…
First up, we’ve got Inferno! Volume 2, the second instalment in this new series of short story anthology. It’s available for £8.99 in either paperback or ebook formats, and contains ten short stories – all but one of which have never been released before – from ten different authors, across both 40k and Age of Sigmar. There are even three debut Black Library authors (four if you include Jaine Fenn, whose story had previously been published as an eshort) featured, plus – a personal highlight for me – a new Peter Fehervari story! If you’d like to know more about what you can expect from Inferno! Volume 2 then have a read of this article, in which I ask the authors themselves to talk a bit about their stories.
Continuing the Inferno! theme, when the first volume of this new anthology was released earlier in the year BL also released Print on Demand versions of the first five issues of the original Inferno! Magazine. Now that the second volume is available, BL have released the next batch of POD issues, covering numbers six to ten for £5 each – they’re only available for three weeks (from the 29th December) so if you’re keen to read some of the AWESOME short stories first published in those pages, get your orders in soon. There’s even a one-click bundle to make things nice and easy – it doesn’t give you a discount, but it does make the purchase path a few clicks quicker.
Next up we’ve got the paperback edition of Darius Hinks’ Blood Angels novel Mephiston: Revenant Crusade, which you can order for the usual £8.99 – although as is often the case, the hardback (£18) is still available if you’d prefer that version. I haven’t yet read this one myself, but I did do a Rapid Fire interview with Darius when it was first released in hardback, so you can click here or on the image below to find out more!
Last but by no means least, the first few instalments of Graham McNeill’s classic Ultramarines series are reprinted in omnibus form in The Uriel Ventris Chronicles: Volume 1, which is available in paperback (£15) or ebook (£13.99) formats. This omnibus includes books one to three in the series – Nightbringer, Warriors of Ultramar and Dead Sky, Black Sun – along with three short stories, so it’s a typically good value edition. If you’re a fan of the boys in blue and haven’t yet read this series, then this is absolutely the place to start!
Thoughts on the week
For the final week of 2018 I’d say it’s been a bit of a stormer on the Black Library front. I’ve pretty much said what I want to say about all of the releases this week, so I guess it’s just left to give a big thumbs up to Black Library for putting out so much this week and finishing off 2018 with a bang!
Hopefully everyone reading this has enjoyed the holiday period, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, and fingers crossed you’ve all got some great reading either done or to look forward to. If you’re still looking for something to read, I’m pretty sure there’s going to be something of interest in amongst all of this week’s releases!
Oh, and by the way: keep an eye out soon for my overall thoughts on this year’s Advent Calendar, as well as my usual roundup of my monthly highlights…and maybe even a roundup of 2018 as a whole. All being well I’ll get all of that content written and posted very soon.
As always, here’s what I’ve been posting so far this week:
- QUICK REVIEW: Half-Horn by Josh Reynolds
- QUICK REVIEW: A Rose Watered with Blood by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
- Warqueen by Darius Hinks
- The Red Hours by Evan Dicken
- The Bone Desert by Robbie MacNiven
- Inferno! Volume 2: in the Author’s Words
- Heart of Winter by Nick Horth
Coming up…
To be absolutely honest I’ve no idea. There’s nothing currently listed on the Black Library website as being available to order on the 5th January, but hopefully we’ll get a brand new short story on Monday (sneaking in as the last release of 2018) along with some sort of release at the weekend. Let me know if you’ve got any ideas!
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.