2024 was a year in which I read fewer Black Library books than ever before (well, since I started Track of Words at least), and Games Workshop continued to make it tricky to be a BL fan (that’s a whole other conversation)…but even so there are still plenty of great BL books for me to look back on and talk about. ‘Best of the year’ roundups are something of a blogger/reviewer tradition, and far be it from me to buck that trend, so here I’ve picked out the three BL books that I particularly enjoyed in 2024. Because I always have a hard time limiting myself to just a few choices (or just a few words), I’ve also come up with a few honourable mentions that are worth talking about too.
Two caveats, before we go any further: firstly, while as usual I’m restricting myself to solely 2024 releases for my top picks, I’ve delved into older titles for my honourable mentions; and secondly, please remember that these are just my personal preferences, based on books I chose to read in 2024. With that done though, let’s crack on – here are my choices for the best of Black Library in 2024, in the order in which I read them.
Deathworlder by Victoria Hayward
There’s something about BL’s current ‘Astra Militarum’ series: both 2022’s Witchbringer (Steven B. Fischer) and 2023’s Longshot (Rob Young) were brilliant, and Victoria Hayward’s 2024 contribution Deathworlder is, yet again, absolutely fantastic. Where the previous two instalments focused on the Cadian Shock Troops, however, Deathworlder puts the Catachan Jungle Fighters front and centre, to spectacular effect (although it does feature Cadians too, just with second billing). Set during the end stages of a Tyranid invasion, it’s the story of a small squad of elite Catachans sent on what is essentially a suicide mission – one last chance to strike a blow against the xenos invaders before the end. Cue a thrilling, action-packed adventure…
…and yet, while there’s fighting aplenty, surely enough to please any action-hound, the focus is always on what the characters are going through, and how the (many) horrors they’re facing are affecting them. That helps provide the time and space to really dig into what sets these characters apart from the cast of every other Imperial Guard novel, allowing Hayward to balance the 80s action hero-ness of the stereotypical Catachan with a rich, thoughtful worldview of the sort that only a few BL novels ever pull off successfully. These are Catachans like you’ve never seen before, allowed to be much more than just soldiers, with the end result being a story that’s tender, touching, and absolutely brutal all at once.
In some respects you know what you’re going to get when you pick up a book like this, but Hayward delivers so much more on top of that. Poignant moments of beauty (a saintly visage painted in blood) and horror (the shudder-inducing realisation of what’s lurking in the depths of a flooded cathedral), a dawning understanding of exactly why Catachans have so little truck with Commissars, a burgeoning respect between exemplars of two very different martial creeds, a genuine sense of fear engendered by the horrifying tyranids (massively helped by the wise choice to keep them as nameless beasties)…there’s so much depth here. There’s even, gloriously, a Chuck Norris joke.
I’d go as far as to say that the Astra Militarum series is, at present, BL’s most consistently successful, entertaining range, and Deathworlder is a must-read for any Imperial Guard fan.
Check out my interview with Victoria discussing Deathworlder.
Broken Crusade by Steven B. Fischer
After introducing himself with his excellent debut BL novel, Witchbringer, Fischer has upped the intensity with Broken Crusade, a powerful slab of Space Marine action as the Black Templars face off against the World Eaters. On the surface it’s a pretty straightforward story: a ship full of Templars find themselves stranded on a contested shrine world and have to seek out a way to do their duty, defeat the Chaos invaders and get back to their original crusade. Beneath the surface though, there’s a lot going on as Fischer digs into questions of faith, doubt, dark bargains and impossible choices – and not just from an Imperial perspective.
Other than Helsreach, there aren’t actually that many dedicated Black Templars books out there, so it’s very welcome to see this intriguing Chapter get a bit more of the spotlight, and in such a compelling book too. Fischer does a great job of bringing his characters to life, from the overall knightly vibes of the Templars to the unusually melancholic nature of the protagonist, Castellan Emeric, whose tendency to always question himself consistently results in engaging, interesting moments of introversion. There’s plenty to contrast that too, with a human viewpoint which takes great advantage of Fischer’s own medical knowledge (he’s a physician as well as an author) along with a look inside the fractured mind of the antagonist, a World Eater named Dravek who…well, let’s just say he’s not quite what you’d expect.
The best Space Marine novels give you all the brutal action you could want while also posing interesting questions – about what it means to be a transhuman warrior, what it means to be a part of the Imperium, how it’s possible to survive and thrive in this most harrowing of universes, and so on. Broken Crusade asks plenty of those questions, succeeding ably on both fronts. For me personally, it also ticks an often-neglected box by giving a nuanced look at how Space Marines view ‘regular’ humans – Emeric is perfectly happy to use anyone and anything to achieve his goals, but at the same time he can see the value and strengths of the humans around him, something he tries to impart to one of his rather more belligerent brothers.
So yeah, this one is well worth a look, especially if you’re a Black Templars fan.
Keep an eye out for an upcoming interview with Steven discussing Broken Crusade.
Above and Beyond by Denny Flowers
Released back in 2022, Flowers’ Outgunned was a real standout for me – a tale of propaganda, soft power and harsh realities, which offered a sharp-eyed look at the realities of the Imperium from an unusual perspective. Returning to the stories of Propagandist Kile Simlex and Flight Commander Lucille von Shard, it picks up a few years after the end of Outgunned and sees the two of them forced – begrudgingly – back into each other’s orbits. Once again the war in which Shard is fighting is not going exactly as planned (despite her much-publicised heroics), but the harsh deserts of Deighton are plagued by a different enemy to the bestial Orks of Bacchus, and Simlex is no longer quite so naive as he was when they first met.
It’s sometimes daunting picking up a sequel to a book you absolutely loved, but happily Above and Beyond provides a fantastic, deeply satisfying follow-up to Outgunned. If anything, it arguably goes even deeper and darker than its predecessor, with both main characters badly affected (albeit in different ways) by the aftermath of the war on Bacchus, and their reunion proving unexpectedly painful. Flowers digs deeper into both characters, while also introducing a little more of Shard’s extensive family, managing to find an ideal balance between adding in new elements and giving us more of what made the first book so good.
I wish Black Library would focus more on stories like this with non-military POVs, regular human protagonists and smaller-scale narratives. Not everyone loves ‘domestic 40k’ and this sort of story, but there are more than enough action-heavy 40k books out there already. There’s definitely space in the catalogue for stories which explore the stranger, quieter, less obvious corners of the setting, and I’m always delighted when a book like Above and Beyond does exactly that. Simlex and Shard are fascinating characters who I’m always happy to read more about, and I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that there will be plenty more where this came from! Oh, and how come propaganda hasn’t played a bigger part in 40k fiction up to now, given the nature of the Imperium and the joint requirements of sheltering the mass populace from the harsh truths of the galaxy, and encouraging as many people as possible to join up as soldiers? I’d love to see propagandists pop up in other stories too…
Check out my interview with Denny discussing Above and Beyond.
Honourable Mentions
The three books I’ve picked out for this year’s top picks were pretty clear choices, but once I started looking beyond a) novels and b) 2024 releases it wasn’t long before a few other talking points came to mind. So I’m going to use this Honourable Mentions section to talk about a few other books and short stories that I’ve been enjoying lately.
Inquisitor by Ian Watson
One of the first Warhammer books I ever read (it was either this or Konrad by David Ferring), Inquisitor is unquestionably a seminal component in my personal image of the 40k universe. It was the first ever 40k novel. It’s packed full of stuff that’s still recognisable now – the Inquisition, Genestealers, Imperial Assassins, and more. It’s also really, really bloody weird. It had been years since I last read it, but when I was approached to contribute something to the first issue of Secret Passages – a new quarterly magazine all about old-school RPGs and wargames – I jumped at the chance to revisit this bizarre book, and maybe fight its corner a little bit.
You can read my full (in-depth) review by pre-ordering Secret Passages issue 1, but if I was to summarise my experience of rereading this much-maligned book…I’d say it’s worth a read for any 40k fan simply to see where everything started. It’s not like anything you’ll see released by Black Library these days (it actually predates BL by quite a few years, to be fair), and there are moments which feel somewhat uncomfortable, but if what you love about 40k is its darkness, its strangeness, its bleak nihilism, then this might just feel more familiar than you’d expect.
The Dawn of Fire series
I read the first two Dawn of Fire novels – Guy Haley’s Avenging Son and Andy Clark’s Gate of Bones – fairly soon after they were released, enjoying both of them, but for whatever reason I never really got properly into this series. After a while I revisited both books, but yet again didn’t get any further into the series (except for jumping ahead to Chris Wraight’s Sea of Souls, which felt like a fantastic standalone novel in its own right). At the very end of 2024 though, I suddenly found myself in the mood for these sorts of books again, and decided I’d give The Wolftime (Gav Thorpe) a go in audio. I quickly blasted through that one, thoroughly enjoying it, and over the next couple of weeks I went on to speed through Throne of Light (Guy Haley), The Iron Kingdom (Nick Kyme) and The Martyr’s Tomb (Marc Collins).
With those four books read in December, I’ve now (finally) read seven of the eight Dawn of Fire novels currently published, with just Nick Kyme’s Hand of Abaddon and Guy Haley’s upcoming finale The Silent King to go. I very nearly went straight into Hand of Abaddon, but in the end decided to hold off a few weeks and read it a bit closer to the release date for The Silent King, to make sure I go into the final book full of momentum. And you know what? Despite struggling to get into this series to begin with, I have to say I’m pretty much converted now, after very much enjoying the four books I read in close succession. They naturally have their differences in tone and approach, the inevitable result of a multi-author series, and I’ve enjoyed some more than others (Avenging Son, The Wolftime and Throne of Light are probably the standouts for me), but I’d there’s lots to enjoy in all of them.
I do think that Dawn of Fire is a bit of an odd beast: it’s not quite like any other series I’ve read before, and at times doesn’t even really feel like a series at all. Maybe it’s down to reading so many of the books in close succession though, but I’ve definitely started to get a feel for how things do actually connect (I don’t want to say more, for risk of spoilers), and I’m enjoying the combination of gradually recognising the connections while getting a broad overview of the early stages of the Indomitus Crusade. I do wish BL had done a better job of explaining what this series actually is and how it’s going to fit together, and I definitely feel like it suffers for lack of a clear marketing/communications strategy…
But overall I actually think it’s decent, and doesn’t deserve a lot of the criticism it seems to be coming in for online. Personally, I’ve enjoyed the seven books I’ve read and I’m now genuinely intrigued to see two things: how the series ends and what comes next!
New Peter Fehervari short stories
Now, sadly there wasn’t a new Peter Fehervari novel in 2024 (fingers crossed for 2025), but what we did get was a pair of brand new short stories: Blindsight, published in White Dwarf issue 505, and Nightshift Nineteen, released as an e-short as part of Black Library’s Advent Calendar series. The latter story is also going to be available in the upcoming omnibus The Dark Coil: Damnation (the first of two – swoon!), for those who prefer physical formats.
So two short stories and news of two upcoming omnibuses – that’s not too bad for a year’s worth of Dark Coil news and releases, although I do think it’s a bit weird for one of the stories to only be available in White Dwarf. I don’t generally buy Games Workshop’s famous magazine any more, but I made an exception for that issue, and I’m very glad I did! It’s a strange little story, even by Fehervari standards, but with a direct connection to The Thirteenth Psalm (thanks to my friend Tim for pointing that out – I must have been feeling particularly dense reading Blindsight the first time around) and a phenomenal sense of imagery, it’s stellar little story. Hopefully it will get a broader release eventually too, for those who can’t get hold of White Dwarf.
Interestingly, Blindsight is billed as a Warhammer Horror story, while Nightshift Nineteen isn’t – instead it’s under the regular 40k banner and labelled as “A Dark Coil short story”. I think that’s probably the right approach, as even though every Fehervari story is arguably a horror story, his writing is quite different to the sort of thing usually published under the Warhammer Horror label. It’s also just wonderful to see the Dark Coil starting to be properly recognised by BL – for so long they seemed unsure about what to do with these stories, but finally it feels like they’re recognising that they have something special on their hands.
I’ve actually written most of a quick review of Nightshift Nineteen, I just haven’t managed to finish it off yet. I’ll get that finished and posted as soon as I can, but for now let’s just say that I can’t think of many authors who would have thought to tell a story about essentially a cult of janitors, never mind telling it so well. Blindsight is perhaps the more powerful story, but Nightshift Nineteen is fascinating in its own right, and sees Fehervari shedding yet more light (so to speak) on the world of Sarastus, which can only be a good thing! Here’s hoping there will be an opportunity to dig even deeper into Sarastus in due course.
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So there you have it: my three favourite new Black Library books of 2024, along with a few honourable mentions delving into some of the other BL stories I’ve been enjoying reading of late. I’d love to know what you thought of any of these books/stories if you’ve read them, and likewise what your personal favourites were in 2024 – so let me know in the comments below!
If you’re interested in ‘Best of Black Library’ articles from previous years
With that done, all that’s left is for me to wish you an excellent 2025 – let’s hope there will be loads of great new Black Library stories coming along the pipeline this year!
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Throne of Lies? Heresy detected.