Black Library’s 2015 Advent Calendar continues apace, returning to the Age of Sigmar for the fourth short story with Rob Sanders’ By The Horns. It follows Chrysaor The Wanton, a Slaaneshi warlord leading his tribe to glory in the unstable terrain of The Plinth. We watch through his senses (not his eyes…he doesn’t have those) as he and his warband slake their thirsts on weak prey, but when the Stormcasts approach he realises that he may have made a terrible mistake.
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[This review was originally written after the release of the Limited Edition version of Cybernetica, although it’s now available in standard formats as well.]
While most recent Horus Heresy releases have moved the story forward chronologically, for the latest Limited Edition novella, Rob Sanders’ Cybernetica, Black Library have taken us back to an earlier point in the timeline. Set on Mars just as the Heresy begins, we follow a Raven Guard known as The Carrion, sent to train as a Techmarine after he was grievously wounded and left unable to follow his legion’s way of war. Alongside brothers from other legions he finds himself fighting to survive against the might of the Mechanicum, while on Terra, Rogal Dorn looks for a way to deal with the escalating situation on Mars.
The second in Rob Sanders’ mini-series of short Adeptus Mechanicus novels, Tech-Priest continues the story started in Skitarius, as the forces of Archmagos Omnid Torquora battle to take the Dark Mechanicum forge world of Velchanos Magna. Where Skitarius showed the world of the Adeptus Mechanicus from the front lines, seen through the eyes of Haldron-44 Stroika, this time the perspective switches to Stroka’s master, the ancient Tech-Priest overseeing the battle remotely from orbit. Locked in a stalemate but with enemies on all sides, Torquora’s options appear to be limited.
Once again proving that no Horus Heresy story stands alone, Rob Sanders’ latest release – Ironfire – sees the return of Idriss Krendl, the antagonist in The Iron Within. This time he’s front and centre as this story’s protagonist, having been put back together after the disaster at the Schadenhold, and he’s aiming to redeem himself in Perturabo’s eyes by road testing a new, risky siege-breaking strategy of his own devising. Determined to prove that it’s only in body that he’s broken, not in mind, he’s prepared to risk everything, including the lives of his minions and his supposed allies.
Continuing a recent trend of books released to tie in with new Games Workshop miniature ranges, Rob Sanders’ latest novel – Skitarius – is the first Black Library release to feature the new Adeptus Mechanicus forces. It follows the impersonally-named Alpha Primus Haldron-44 Stroika (largely referred to as just Stroika, or occasionally the even more impersonal Stroika-unit) as he leads his Skitarii cohorts into battle, enacting the wishes of his distant Adeptus Mechanicus masters. After a new discovery leads to the invasion of a Dark Mechanicus forge world, Stroika finds himself battling daemon engines and twisted machine cultists in an increasingly desperate battle for survival.
Released back in 2012 as part of Black Library’s 15th birthday celebration, Rob Sanders’ Army of One was one of the first (perhaps actually the first) Horus Heresy short stories to be released as a standalone ebook. Very much a ‘quick read’, it takes a whistlestop tour of one man’s history as he relives the unexpected way in which he was caught up in the Heresy. Unwanted by the Imperial Army, he finds his place in the war in a less obvious role.
The Death Guard are still somewhat under-represented in the Horus Heresy series, but Rob Sanders’ Distant Echoes of Old Night goes some way to filling that gap. Here we see Death Guard Chaplain Morgax Murnau as he leads a Destroyer squad through a dying world to finish off a detachment of Imperial Fists from a downed ship. The brutal, implacable Death Guard will have to use every awful weapon at their disposal if they are to prise the dug-in Imperial Fists from their tenacious defences.
Published in early 2014 before anyone had even an inkling of just how much Warhammer was about to change with the world-shattering End Times arc, Rob Sanders’ book Archaon: Everchosen sets out to tell the full story of the Everchosen of Chaos, the driving force behind the single biggest change in Warhammer’s 30+ years. From humble (and fairly grim) beginnings to his life as a templar of Sigmar and the events that turn him to a darker path, we watch as one man’s fate is manipulated for sinister purposes that will see the world drenched in blood.
On the twentieth day of Christmas, Black Library gave to us…an Imperial Fists short story by Rob Sanders. The Dread Sentinels of Dorn sees Captain Kontrador of 5th Company investigating the unexplained silencing of one of the Imperial Fist-manned star forts on the border of Segmentum Solar. When the fate of the star fort and its garrison becomes clear, as a tyranid hive ship threatens his own vessel, Kontrador realises that far more is at stake than just the lives of him and his warriors.
From humble beginnings back in the 1990s, there are now eighteen books set within the Sabbat Worlds, a region of space originally invented by Dan Abnett to provide a suitable setting for a story about a Commissar who was also a Colonel, and the ragtag bunch of soldiers he commanded. Look how it’s grown! With anticipation as high as ever for Warmaster, the long-awaited next novel in the Gaunt’s Ghosts series, Black Library are whetting our appetite with Sabbat Crusade, the second anthology of stories set within the wider crusade. Edited once again by Abnett and including stories from eight authors (Abnett included) along with previously out of print background on the crusade, it covers both sides of the story, not only the Ghosts and their Imperial allies but also the forces of the Archenemy at play in the region.