Tag Archives: Gav Thorpe

QUICK REVIEW : Holder of the Keys – Gav Thorpe

On the nineteenth day of Christmas, Black Library gave to us…a Dark Angels audio drama by Gav Thorpe. Another twenty-minute audio, Holder of the Keys sees an unnamed member of the Fallen offering his recollection of events that took place on and around Caliban 10,000 years previously, as he suffers under psychic interrogation by the titular Holder of the Keys. His confession, drawn out of him under duress, paints a very different picture of events to those held to be true by the Dark Angels Inner Circle.

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QUICK REVIEW : The Value of Fear – Gav Thorpe

On the seventeenth day of Christmas, Black Library gave to us…a Horus Heresy short story by Gav Thorpe. A 1000-or-so word micro short, The Value of Fear features the Raven Guard as they fight to quell an Alpha Legion-led rebellion alongside an unlikely ally in the shape of a still-loyal Night Lord. Striking as ever from the shadows, as the mission progresses Sergeant Ashel has cause to question the methodologies of his ally, compared to those of the Raven Guard.

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Honour of the Space Marines – Black Library Anthology

Black Library tend to release a short story anthology to coincide with each of their events. The 2014 Weekender was no different, with Honour of the Space Marines available, a six-story anthology featuring everyone’s favourite 41st-millennium super soldiers. As with the other ‘…of the Space Marines’ collections (except perhaps ‘Treacheries of…’) the title is a bit misleading, as this only loosely a themed anthology. It’s more about showing the next steps in story arcs that the authors are already known for, from long-established characters to newer, less familiar faces.

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Legacies of Betrayal – Black Library anthology

2014 was a bumper year for the Horus Heresy. We saw the 29^th and 30^th books in the series released, Vengeful Spirit and Damnation of Pythos respectively, as well as a goodly number of novellas, anthologies, audio dramas and short stories. Now, on the one hand many Black Library fans are the kind of people who in the interests of completion will buy any new story as soon as it’s made available, while on the other hand many fans are unwilling or unable to fork out vast sums of money for limited edition releases, or just can’t get their head around audio dramas. If you’re Black Library, what do you do? How do you cater to both sets of fans? Well, with Legacies of Betrayal sneaking in just before the end of the year to make it 31 in the series, it looks like you release as much as you can in as many different formats as you can, then bring out an anthology that collects a bunch of those stories together in one place.

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Master of the First – Gav Thorpe (audio drama)

While the Horus Heresy series has been rolling on quite contentedly, reaching 31 books and countless other stories, it’s been a while since we’ve heard much from Caliban and those members of the Dark Angels sent home by their primarch, Lion El’Johnson. What has been happening back on the home world while the rest of the galaxy falls apart, and the Lion has been out chasing Konrad Kurze? Fear not, Gav Thorpe is on hand with a new audio drama, Master of the First, to shed a little light on the situation. This is a 35-minute audio drama available as a standalone MP3 download prior to a future release in a combined package with The Long Night by Aaron Dembski-Bowden.

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Echoes of War – a Space Marine audio drama collection

As the Echoes of War fade (see what I did there?!), the Space Marines hang up their armour and the dreadnoughts are shuffled back into their long slumbers, it feels worth recapping on a week of excellent audio dramas from Black Library. For me, this collection came at a perfect time; the week before I had been digging around on my PC and found Hunter’s Moon and Thief of Revelations, neither of which I had previously listened to. Having devoured those in short order, it was with a sense of delightful serendipity that I saw Echoes of War listed on the Black Library website, and I didn’t need much persuading to get involved.

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Accept No Failure – Gav Thorpe (audio drama)

Veteran Black Library author Gav Thorpe enters the fray on the third day of Echoes of War, the new collection of five Black Library audio dramas released over the course of this week. Accept No Failure continues his work on the Dark Angels and ties in with the Space Marine Battles novel The Purging of Kadillus, following Captain Belial as he returns to Piscina IV, a planet where once before he fought the orks of Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka. Shamed by his failure to stop Ghazghkull when they met in combat, he now petitions Chapter Master Azrael to wipe Piscina IV clean of orks (and at the same time everything else) with Exterminatus in order to free the Chapter to seek out the warlord and stop him for good. As he does so he looks back on his confrontation with Ghazghkull and considers the actions of his younger, more headstrong self.

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Ravenlord – Gav Thorpe

As the seventh limited edition novella in the Horus Heresy range, the release of Gav Thorpe’s Ravenlord will no doubt prove a ripe topic for conversation among Black Library fans regarding cost versus value. Irrespective of price however, the great thing about the Horus Heresy novellas is that they bridge the gap between short stories and full novels, allowing authors to go into more detail on specific characters or engagements than they would be able to otherwise. With Ravenlord we get a second novella featuring Corvus Corax (after Corax : Soulforge), this time focusing on the Raven Guard’s assault on the prison planet of Carandiru.

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Catechism of Hate – Gav Thorpe

Space Marine Battles books are tricky beasts. On the one hand they cover some of the coolest events in 40k history and give us the chance to see a range of different chapters in action, while on the other hand the authors writing the books are constrained by the nature of the series – they are after all, Space Marine battles, so they need to be based heavily around some pretty big scraps. The best of the bunch balance the action with a healthy dose of insight into the chapter(s) in question, and Catechism of Hate just about manages to achieve this balance.

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Renegades of the Dark Millennium – Black Library Anthology

We all love a baddie, right? Fans of Black Library probably do more than most, given the proliferation of great bad guys (and girls) in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000. If that’s you, if you’re a fan of the dark(er) side, then Renegades of the Dark Millennium is for you. Unsurprisingly given the title, this is a celebration of all things dark, twisted and evil in the 40k universe, and is very much a Space Marines release.

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