Tag Archives: Dan Abnett

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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Short and Sweet – November 2023

Hello and welcome to my Short and Sweet review roundup for November 2023, where as usual I’ve picked out a trio of books that I’ve recently read to talk a little about, in lieu of my usual longer reviews. For this month’s roundup I’ve gone for books with quite a range of page counts, from a novella all the way up to a 750+ page doorstopper! Across these three books you’ve got magic, demons, demigods, transhuman soldiers, immortal hunters, wizarding bureaucracy, mystical prophecies and loads more. There’s plenty to enjoy in all of them, although if I’m honest none of them entirely worked for me, personally.

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Short and Sweet – March 2023

Hello and welcome to my Short and Sweet review roundup for March 2023, here on Track of Words. I’ve picked out another three books to talk about this month, and I suspect I’ll be hard pressed in coming months to find another set with such a wide range – there’s a 650-page Warhammer novel that’s only actually half a book, a 130-page dystopian novella (I guess) about a spry 100+ year-old man in a future Japan, and an anthology of Star Wars short stories from no fewer than 40 authors! As always, these are books that are well worth talking about, but which for one reason or another I don’t have the time or headspace to cover in a full standalone review.

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RAPID FIRE: Dan Abnett Talks The End and the Death Volume 1

Hello and welcome to this Rapid Fire author interview, where I’m delighted to be joined by the brilliant Dan Abnett to discuss The End and the Death Volume 1, the first instalment of the final Siege of Terra novel from Black Library. It’s been a long time coming – Horus Rising, the first Horus Heresy novel, was published in 2006, then the Siege of Terra opened with The Solar War in 2019. Book 8 of the Siege is actually going to be multiple volumes, beginning with this one, but the end is almost upon us, so I felt like I really ought to speak to Dan about this momentous novel. Whether you’ve read it already or you’re looking forward to making a start, I’m sure you’re as excited as I am about the end of the Siege.

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Short and Sweet – February 2023

Hello and welcome to February 2023’s Short and Sweet review roundup here on Track of Words. This month I’ve got three books to talk about, and unusually (and sadly) one of those was my first DNF (Did Not Finish) of the year. I don’t often talk about books that I don’t finish, but I’d got far enough through this one that I do actually have a few things I’d like to mention about it, and even though I didn’t quite get along with it I do actually think it’s an interesting book that a lot of other people might well enjoy. My review isn’t, perhaps, actually all that short…but this felt like the right place for it, rather than a dedicated review post which I don’t think would feel right given that I didn’t finish the book.

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QUICK REVIEW: Lepidopterophobia – Dan Abnett

First released in the special edition hardback of Penitent and then included in the Inferno! Presents: The Inquisition anthology, Dan Abnett’s Lepidopterophobia is a slow, sinister tale featuring Medea Betencore, and a welcome addition to the large collection of short stories that support and enhance the Eisenhorn/Ravenor/Bequin trilogy of Inquisition trilogies. Best read after Pariah to avoid spoilers for that novel, it sees Medea scouring the city of Queen Mab for information that might help her and her master Gregor Eisenhorn understand or even locate the mysterious King in Yellow. When the discovery of an unusual tome in one of Queen Mab’s many book markets leads her into the maze-like stacks of a dark and dust-laden store, little does she realise she will soon have to face her oldest fear, amongst other things, simply in order to stay alive.

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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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A Few Thoughts On: The Magos by Dan Abnett

The (unexpected) fourth book in Dan Abnett’s classic Eisenhorn trilogy, The Magos is an unusual book for a few reasons. Firstly, while it’s a (relatively short) novel in its own right it’s presented in a hefty volume with the full title of The Magos & the Definitive Casebook of Gregor Eisenhorn, alongside a dozen of Dan Abnett’s short stories which sit alongside his Eisenhorn, Ravenor and Bequin trilogies. More on these later. Secondly, it’s definitely part of the Eisenhorn series yet it’s a very different kind of story to Xenos, Malleus and Hereticus, told as it is in third person from the viewpoint of magos biologis Valentin Drusher, rather than in Eisenhorn’s own first person perspective. Thirdly, while it was published after Pariah, it works as an effective prequel to that novel, providing a natural evolution of Eisenhorn’s character between the end of Hereticus and the start of the Bequin trilogy.

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RAPID FIRE: Dan Abnett Talks Penitent

Welcome to this instalment of my Rapid Fire series of author interviews, where today I’m delighted to be talking to the legendary Dan Abnett about his new Warhammer 40,000 novel Penitent, the second book in his Bequin trilogy for Black Library. It’s been nine years since the first book in the series – Pariah – was released, but the wait is finally over, with Penitent available to pre-order today in all the usual formats! For those who aren’t already familiar with the whole ‘Inquisition Cycle’ I’ve asked Dan to talk a bit about the whole thing first of all, before giving us the lowdown on what to expect from Penitent.

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A Guide to Dan Abnett’s Inquisition Series

Dan Abnett’s trilogy of Inquisition trilogies – the Eisenhorn, Ravenor and Bequin novels – are among the best that Black Library has ever published, and certainly some of my personal favourites. With the upcoming release of Penitent, the second Bequin novel, there are now more than twenty individual stories across the overarching Inquisition series, with the nine novels (with at least one more still to come) accompanied by a dozen or so short stories. As with many Black Library series, the tricky part is knowing where to start if you’re keen to check out these stories, or where to go next if you’ve read some of them and are keen for more!

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