Category Archives: Black Library

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Adrian Tchaikovsky Talks Day of Ascension

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview where I’m delighted to welcome Adrian Tchaikovsky to the site for the first time, to talk primarily about his upcoming Warhammer 40,000 novel Day of Ascension, as well as two more books he’s publishing in 2022. As a well-established, award-winning and incredibly prolific science fiction and fantasy author, it’s great to see Adrian turning his hand to writing for Black Library as well, and with his amazing ability to write compelling non-human characters a novel featuring both the Genestealer Cults and the Adeptus Mechanicus sounds like a perfect fit! Day of Ascension is due out at some point in January, so ahead of its release you can find out a little more about it here – along with a few details of two more sci-fi books coming in 2022 from other publishers: Ogres and Eyes of the Void.

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The Spy Novels That Inspired Assassinorum: Kingmaker – Robert Rath Guest Post

Welcome to this Track of Words guest post, where today I’m welcoming the brilliant Robert Rath to the site to discuss the inspiration for his upcoming Black Library novel Assassinorum: Kingmaker. I’ve been a big fan of Rob’s writing since reading his debut BL short story, The Garden of Mortal Delights, and like a lot of people I was blown away by his novel The Infinite and the Divine! All three of his Assassinorum short stories have been fantastic, so I can’t wait to read Kingmaker and see more of the assassins in action. In this article Rob talks first about his early introduction to Imperial Assassins and then the spy novels that have particularly influenced Kingmaker, so read on and let’s start the hype building for the novel when it’s released sometime in 2022!

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Black Library in 2022

The Black Library online preview has just taken place, squeaking in at the end of 2021 to show off some of the books due for publication in 2022, so now seems like a good time to look ahead and think about what 2022 might be like from a BL perspective. For the first part of this article I’m going to talk specifically about the BL preview and give some of my observations on how it went (TL;DR overall I enjoyed it, even if I’m not keen on how it was structured), and what I think about the newly-announced books. After that I’ll recap the other BL books that have already been confirmed for 2022, and then go on to talk in a fair bit of detail about how I see the year ahead going on the BL front…or at least how I’m hoping it will go.

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The Twice-dead King: Ruin by Nate Crowley – Victoria Hayward Guest Review

Hello and welcome to this guest review here on Track of Words, where I’m opening up the floor to author Victoria Hayward to talk about Nate Crowley’s novel The Twice-dead King: Ruin, which is out now from Black Library. 40k fans may well already be familiar with Victoria as the author of short stories The Carbis Incident and The Siege of Ismyr (featured in the Warhammer Crime anthology Sanction & Sin), both of which are excellent! I knew Victoria had read and loved The Twice-dead King: Ruin, and I was delighted when she agreed to write this review – I think it’s a fantastic review, which brilliantly illustrates what this book means to Victoria while painting a vivid (but spoiler-free) picture of the story as a whole. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

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Don’t Give Up: 2021 as a Debut Author – Marc Collins Guest Post

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words guest post, where today I’m handing the reins over to the brilliant Marc Collins to talk about what 2021 has been like as a debut author. Marc’s debut novel Grim Repast was published this year as part of Black Library’s Warhammer Crime range, and it’s an absolute belter of a book – and likewise all of Marc’s short stories I’ve read have been fantastic. It’s been great to watch Marc’s authorial journey from the outside, but in this article he’s kindly offered some fascinating insight into what it’s been like from his perspective, including his path through the Black Library Open Submissions process. It’s very much a tale of perseverance and determination, and I’ve no doubt these are only the first steps in a long and prosperous career.

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Best of Black Library 2021

2021 is rapidly coming to a close, which means it’s time for my usual roundup of the best Black Library books I’ve read over the last year. As always, I want to open with the caveat that these are my personal highlights based solely on what I’ve read – I’m not suggesting that there haven’t been other excellent BL titles released this year, just that I haven’t read them! I should also point out that I’m basing my selections on books which were first published in 2021, which means I’ve chosen one that only had a Limited Edition release and won’t be more widely available until 2022, and that this year I’m almost entirely looking at novels. In previous years I’ve also covered other formats and split out my choices into different articles based on the main BL settings – 40k, Age of Sigmar and Horus Heresy – but this year I’m just going to do this one article, and concentrate on novels.

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Revisiting Nemesis by James Swallow (Guest Review)

Hello and welcome to this, the first ever guest review on Track of Words, where my good friend Tim is going to talk about revisiting Nemesis by James Swallow, book 13 in Black Library’s epic Horus Heresy series. When I read Tim’s thoughtful, insightful review I knew straight away that I wanted to publish it here on Track of Words – it’s a brilliant piece of analysis in its own right, and I think it works beautifully as a companion piece to my own Revisiting Battle for the Abyss article. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! Without further ado then, over to Tim.

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Revisiting Battle for the Abyss by Ben Counter

Ben Counter’s 2008 novel Battle for the Abyss, the eighth book in Black Library’s vast Horus Heresy series, is widely – albeit certainly not exclusively – considered as one of the weakest novels in the series. I’ve largely steered clear of conversations discussing this particular book, as until recently I had only the loosest of recollections regarding what happened and how much I enjoyed it. However, its poor reputation has nagged at me for a while (you know me, I prefer to look for positives rather than negatives), and an ongoing discussion with a friend about the themes, connections and outliers in the Heresy prompted me to revisit this most reviled of Heresy novels. This article is the result, in which I’m going to discuss my thoughts on the book and make the argument that despite some notable flaws, it’s a book which really doesn’t deserve the reputation it’s acquired.

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Grim Repast – Marc Collins

After a handful of excellent short stories, Marc Collins delivers an exceptional first novel for Black Library with Grim Repast, a new addition to the growing Warhammer Crime range that’s both a gripping, bloody detective story and a bleak exploration of everyday 40k life. In Varangantua’s cold southern district of Polaris, probator Quillon Drask has a reputation that sees him constantly being landed with the darkest, most sinister cases to blight the city. When he’s called to the scene of a gruesome murder, it’s with a grim sense of inevitability that one death leads to another, and Drask soon finds himself chasing a killer and embroiled in a mystery that seems to run through every level of Polaris, both its streets and its society, leaving behind a trail of blood and death.

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Silent Hunters – Edoardo Albert

Edoardo Albert’s debut Black Library novel, Silent Hunters is a tale of sinister predators, familial bonds, the consequences of extreme age and relentless, single-minded dedication to duty, set amidst the horror and wonder of the Warhammer 40,000 setting. Chaplain Tangata Manu of the Carcharodons leads the Hunt, a millennia-long search for a lost relic once entrusted into his Chapter’s care, but when he finally has success within his grasp, he sees the prize snatched away by the devious drukhari. With one final chance to complete the Hunt and regain his honour, Tangata Manu embarks on a journey that will take him to all manner of wildly strange places, and eventually to the Dark City of Commorragh, accompanied by no more than a handful of his brothers and an unassuming pair of Chapter serfs.

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