Category Archives: Black Library

RAPID FIRE: David Guymer Talks Verminslayer

Hello and welcome to this Rapid Fire author interview, where today I’m joined by Black Library author and Track of Words regular David Guymer to talk about his latest Age of Sigmar novel – Verminslayer. It’s been a while since David’s last novel-length contribution to the fan-favourite Gotrek Gurnisson series (or as I like to call it, the Nounslayer series), with the previous four novels coming from the pens of the excellent Darius Hinks and Richard Strachan. With the release of Verminslayer though, I had the chance to ask the really important questions: what can we expect to see in this latest instalment, from the author of Kinslayer, Slayer and Realmslayer? What was it like returning to such a beloved character? Who’s Gotrek’s new companion? And of course, what makes the skaven such great antagonists in this series?

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RAPID FIRE: Steven B. Fischer Talks Broken Crusade

Hello and welcome to this Rapid Fire interview here on Track of Words, where I’m delighted to be welcoming author Steven B. Fischer back to the site – this time to chat about his latest Black Library novel, Broken Crusade! Steve and I have chatted before about his excellent BL debut Witchbringer, and after reading and loving Broken Crusade I was keen to pick his brains again, and get a little insight into another fantastic 40k novel. One of my personal favourite BL novels of 2024, Broken Crusade was a fascinating read, and it was great fun digging into it with Steve, discussing Black Templars, second novels, melancholic Space Marines, unusual World Eaters, and loads more.

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QUICK REVIEW: Nightshift Nineteen – Peter Fehervari

Released as part of Black Library’s 2024 Advent Calendar series of short stories, Nightshift Nineteen (appropriately, the 19th story in the Dark Coil) sees Peter Fehervari return to bleak, shadowed Sarastus and introduce us to the strange culture of the Canopic Congregation. Down in the bowels of Hive Carceri, young Izaq Sneddon is poised to take up his long-awaited position as a Lightkeeper, guiltily pleased to have escaped from the intimidating, overbearing presence of his mother and awestruck by the honour he’s receiving. In the darkness of his mind though, something old and sinister is lurking, stirring up painful memories and putting his ascension at risk. Meanwhile, higher up in the Hive, shift chief Bryn Bosch awaits the arrival of his new crewmate, painfully aware of his predecessor’s fate.

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RAPID FIRE: Denny Flowers Talks Above and Beyond

Hello and welcome to this Rapid Fire author interview, where I’m delighted to be joined once again by the excellent Denny Flowers, to talk about his latest Black Library novel – Above and Beyond. Denny’s previous novel, Outgunned, was one of my favourite BL books of the last few years – you can read my review of it and my interview with Denny about it if you’d like to know more – so I was thrilled when the sequel, Above and Beyond, was announced. I love this sort of 40k story, which steps away from the big names and the big battlefields to explore lesser-seen perspectives on the setting, so it was great to chat to Denny again about what we can expect from the new book, what it was like revisiting these characters, and how Denny found working on a sequel to such a well-received novel.

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The Last Eight Years with John French – Part One

Hello and welcome to the first instalment of an extra-special author interview, where I’m delighted to welcome the fabulous John French back to the site to mark the 2,000th post on Track of Words! Author of the Ahriman series, the Horusian Wars, the Cado Ezechiar series, a host of Horus Heresy and Siege of Terra novels, and so much more, John has been a friend of the site for a long time. In fact, if you go way back to July 2016 John was the very first author I ever interviewed (about his Tallarn stories in the Horus Heresy)! With that in mind, to mark the milestone of post number 2,000 I sat down with John for an in-depth, retrospective interview looking back at his work and his career over the last eight years since we first spoke.

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RAPID FIRE: Jude Reid Talks Creed: Ashes of Cadia

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words author interview, where today I’m delighted to be chatting to the brilliant Jude Reid about her debut novel for Black Library – Creed: Ashes of Cadia. With the paperback edition recently landing, now is a great time to take a look at this excellent addition to Black Library’s ever-growing range of Imperial Guard novels, which introduces the character of Ursula Creed and returns the action to the surface of Cadia itself! Read on to find out more about this great book and its characters, Jude’s writing process, and loads more.

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RAPID FIRE: Victoria Hayward Talks Deathworlder

It’s been a while since my last Rapid Fire interview with a Black Library author, but I’m back with my first of 2024 and it’s a doozy – please welcome the fantastic Victoria Hayward to talk about her debut novel, Deathworlder! After several great 40k short stories, I’m sure I’m not the only reader who’s been looking forward to Victoria’s first novel (which goes up for pre-order from BL/GW tomorrow), and joining the ever-growing and consistently impressive range of Astra Militarum novels, Deathworlder promises to be a Catachan novel like no other. If you’re keen to find out more about what to expect, we’ve definitely got you covered with this interview.

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Ten Years of Black Library

It’s been almost 10 years since I started Track of Words, and over that time I’ve read somewhere north of 400 Black Library books (not to mention goodness knows how many short stories), and reviewed a large proportion of those! As I draw to the end of this 10-year period, I thought it might be interesting to look back at all those BL books and pick out my personal highlights from the last decade. I’ve gone through each year from 2014 to 2023 and, from the books that a) were published that year, and b) I actually read that year, selected a single book as my pick for each year – and I tell you, that was not an easy task!

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Best of Black Library 2023

Following on from my Best SFF Books of 2023 article, this time I’m turning my attention to Black Library in particular (as I always do), and picking out the best BL books that I’ve read over the last twelve months. It’s always interesting to go back through and think about what the highlights have been, and as ever there have been some really great releases this year. Compared to previous years (like 2018 for example, when I read a whopping 65 BL books) I haven’t read quite as many BL books in 2023, but the 24 I did read this year still gave me a decent pool to choose from, and all the books I’ve picked out are genuinely fantastic, and very much worth reading!

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40k Reading Order: Minka Lesk – Justin D. Hill

Hello and welcome to this 40k Reading Order article – there’s a whole range of these articles here on Track of Words, but for this one I’m focusing on Justin D. Hill’s fantastic Minka Lesk series of Cadian Shock Troops stories. Black Library’s Cadians range has grown a lot recently, and there are loads of options for where to start, but the Minka Lesk series is really the backbone of the whole range. At the time of writing there are eight stories in this series – four novels and four short stories (although I’m also going to mention a few additional short stories that subtly tie in with the Minka Lesk series) – and with Justin’s generous help I’ve put together a comprehensive list of the whole lot, based on their in-universe chronological order.

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