In the creepily titled short story Casts A Hungry Shadow, Peter Fehervari weaves a dark, apocalyptic story set between the prologue and the main body of his novel Legends of the Dark Millennium: Genestealer Cults. On the troubled world of Redemption, two rival cults each seek out a newly-revealed power for their own ends, gathering their forces and striking out to lay their claims. The worshippers of wildly different gods, both are equally horrifying in their appearance and ideals…
The seventh Horus Heresy book of 2016, the thirty-ninth in the main numbered series, and John French’s first ‘full’ novel in the series, Praetorian of Dorn comes with high expectations. Not least because it’s set in the Solar system, where the Alpha Legion launch a coordinated attack on Terra’s outer defences, testing the resolve and skill of Rogal Dorn and his Imperial Fists. With legion operatives, both human and legionnaire, activating across the system, Dorn and Archamus – Master of the Huscarls – are pulled two ways as they attempt to maintain Terra’s defences and stop the Alpha Legion.
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EDITED 24th June 2017 with the inclusion of 40k 8th Edition
Someone asked me on Twitter recently if I’d written anything about where to get started with reading Black Library books, for someone just getting into Warhammer 40,000. That’s actually a really interesting question which I thought deserved more of an answer than I could give on Twitter, so here I’m going to have a go at answering it in a bit more detail.
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A couple of weeks ago I announced that I was running a competition to win a full subscription to the new Warhammer 40,000 Legends partwork collection, courtesy of the kind folks over at Hachette. The competition was pretty easy to enter – just get in touch with me on the blog, Facebook or Twitter and, using the hashtag #my40klegend, let me know who your favourite 40k character is from the Black Library catalogue.
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Mike Mason’s Potentia is a new short story from a new name, at least as a Black Library author. Billed as ‘an Inquisition short story’ it’s essentially a micro short focusing on an unequal exchange between two men in a jail cell. A murderer and an Inquisitorial interrogator, the power is nominally in the hands of the interrogator, except that the murderer – who turned himself in of his own volition – appears to know more than he’s letting on. The question is, what prompted him to hand himself over?
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After a handful of excellent short stories, Justin D. Hill gets his first Black Library novel with Storm of Damocles, in the Space Marine Battles series. Tying in nicely with recent Deathwatch releases as well as the ongoing story of the Damocles Crusade, this follows Nergui of the White Scars, now Captain of the Deathwatch, as he investigates the loss of two full squads of his brothers. What he learns suggests that the war in the Damocles Gulf might be about to take a turn for the worse, unless he can find a way to neutralise the latest weapon in the tau’s arsenal.
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Q3 2016 has been all about the Deathwatch, and in his debut novel Ian St. Martin takes us back to where it all started with Legends of the Dark Millennium: Deathwatch featuring Captain Artemis, who was first introduced back in the 2001 Inquisitor game. Now tying in with the latest iteration of the Deathwatch, this sees Artemis and his squad pulled into a huge conflict as a previous mission proves to have had horrifying unforeseen consequences. Facing both an ork Waaagh! and a tyranid hive fleet, the Deathwatch must resort to desperate measures in order to find victory.
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One of Andy Smillie’s excellent Flesh Tearers stories, Death’s Shepherd is a micro-short that’s previously been available in the Black Library Anthology 2013/14 and Trial By Blood collection before its release as a separate e-short. On the blood-soaked world of Zurcon, a Flesh Tearers chaplain leads the last remaining loyal soldiers into battle to redeem their world. Full of rage and drenched in blood, the chaplain has forged the surviving guardsmen into a weapon with violence and well-chosen words, in order to retake Zurcon for the Imperium.
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IMPORTANT: This is book nine in a series – there will be spoilers unless you’ve read I Am Slaughter; Predator, Prey; The Emperor Expects; The Last Wall; Throneworld; Echoes of the Long War, The Hunt for Vulkan or The Beast Must Die.
The ninth book in Black Library’s The Beast Arises series, Watchers in Death is David Annandale’s third and final contribution, following on closely from Gav Thorpe’s The Beast Must Die. With the Primarch Vulkan lost on Ullanor and the remaining Space Marine forces having taken a pounding, Koorland finds inspiration in an unlikely source, leading to a decision that’s as unpopular amongst the High Lords as it is inevitable given the title of this book. With the fate of The Beast unknown but the attack moon over Terra broadcasting terror across the airwaves, Koorland’s new tactics provide a glimmer of hope for the Imperium.
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Black Library’s long-running Space Marine Battles series continues with Paul Kearney’s Calgar’s Siege, Kearney’s first properly available Black Library novel after the seemingly cursed Dark Hunters: Umbra Sumus. Taking inspiration from a brief piece of background text, this deals with the Siege of Zalathras, where the Ultramarines’ Chapter Master Marneus Calgar held the gates against the greenskin hordes for a day and a night. It’s safe to assume that there’s more to the story than that, and Kearney fills in the gaps including where Zalathras actually is, and what Calgar was doing there in the first place!
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