EDITED 24th June 2017 with the inclusion of 40k 8th Edition
Someone asked me on Twitter recently if I’d written anything about where to get started with reading Black Library books, for someone just getting into Warhammer 40,000. That’s actually a really interesting question which I thought deserved more of an answer than I could give on Twitter, so here I’m going to have a go at answering it in a bit more detail.
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A couple of weeks ago I announced that I was running a competition to win a full subscription to the new Warhammer 40,000 Legends partwork collection, courtesy of the kind folks over at Hachette. The competition was pretty easy to enter – just get in touch with me on the blog, Facebook or Twitter and, using the hashtag #my40klegend, let me know who your favourite 40k character is from the Black Library catalogue.
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The weekend of the 17th and 18th September saw science fiction and fantasy publisher Gollancz put on its annual Gollancz Fest event, a two-day affair giving fans and writers the opportunity to mingle, network and discuss their shared love for the genres. Taking place at the beautiful Foyles bookshop on Charing Cross Road and the slightly less beautiful Phoenix Artist Club just across the road, it was split up into a range of sessions including workshops, panels and even a party, meaning fans could pick and choose what they wanted to attend over the two days.
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Mike Mason’s Potentia is a new short story from a new name, at least as a Black Library author. Billed as ‘an Inquisition short story’ it’s essentially a micro short focusing on an unequal exchange between two men in a jail cell. A murderer and an Inquisitorial interrogator, the power is nominally in the hands of the interrogator, except that the murderer – who turned himself in of his own volition – appears to know more than he’s letting on. The question is, what prompted him to hand himself over?
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Welcome back to Black Library Weekly, a look at the Black Library-related news that filters through to us each week – announcements, pre-orders and new releases.
It’s been an interesting week, with a pretty massive announcement mid-week and quite a lot of releases, but not a lot in terms of genuinely brand new material available to read right here, right now. Read on for more details…
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A bona fide dystopian classic, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was published 63 years ago but remains worryingly relevant to this day. In a world where ignorance is aspirational, the role of the ‘fireman’ is to seek out and burn books – considered to be the source of unhappiness, they’ve long been banned and only a few remain, hidden away in attics and back rooms. When fireman Guy Montag starts to question the views and values of his world, he begins to see everything he knows in a different light – his neighbours and colleagues, his blissed-out wife, and even his job.
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Geopolitics – it’s one of those words that just sounds complicated. In Prisoners of Geography, Tim Marshall proves that it’s nothing of the sort by taking ten maps and clearly, simply showing how each of those countries or regions has been fundamentally affected by their geography. From Russia’s eternal search for a warm water port to the growing sovereignty disputes over the thawing Arctic’s natural resources, we’re introduced to the myriad ways that mountains, rivers, borders and oceans have shaped the development of the world as we see it today.
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The Warhammer 40,000 Legends collection from Hachette and Black Library has officially launched, and I’ve got my hands on Issue One to take a close look at, featuring fan favourite The First Heretic by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. Before we take a look at the book itself though, let’s take a step back and talk about the collection as a whole…
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After a handful of excellent short stories, Justin D. Hill gets his first Black Library novel with Storm of Damocles, in the Space Marine Battles series. Tying in nicely with recent Deathwatch releases as well as the ongoing story of the Damocles Crusade, this follows Nergui of the White Scars, now Captain of the Deathwatch, as he investigates the loss of two full squads of his brothers. What he learns suggests that the war in the Damocles Gulf might be about to take a turn for the worse, unless he can find a way to neutralise the latest weapon in the tau’s arsenal.
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Q3 2016 has been all about the Deathwatch, and in his debut novel Ian St. Martin takes us back to where it all started with Legends of the Dark Millennium: Deathwatch featuring Captain Artemis, who was first introduced back in the 2001 Inquisitor game. Now tying in with the latest iteration of the Deathwatch, this sees Artemis and his squad pulled into a huge conflict as a previous mission proves to have had horrifying unforeseen consequences. Facing both an ork Waaagh! and a tyranid hive fleet, the Deathwatch must resort to desperate measures in order to find victory.
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