Hello and welcome to another instalment of Black Library Weekly, my regular look at what’s been happening in the world of Black Library – and the first to be published on the brand new trackofwords.com (more on which later). After the last Titanic week, things started off on a similar scale before calming down a little during the week, only for the weekend to bring with it some great new releases. As ever, here’s the start of the week…
Monday
March of the Titans ground on with presumably the penultimate Titan-related short story, for the time being at least. Ian St. Martin’s Hunting Ground, available as an eshort for the usual £2.49, was an interesting story given that it quite closely resembles Rob Sanders’ The Ember Wolves, only this time the action was from the loyalist perspective. It was another fun story for those of us who enjoy a bit of Titan action (sorry skylerboodie), and a much-deserved reminder from St. Martin that he’s one to watch in future.
Midweek
Another quiet few days in the middle of the week, with nothing much of note to discuss. The one Black Library-related snippet was the announcement that Warhammer Digital and Black Library will be parting company sometime soon, with a brand new website being launched for the rules content while the Black Library website will return to being entirely focused on fiction. Seems like a sensible idea to me – I don’t mind there being another URL to remember, and it should make the Black Library site a little easier to navigate. No details yet in terms of the date that will happen, but the announcement did say that “we’re taking the opportunity to make blacklibrary.com even better, with loads more for you to enjoy.” Exactly what that means remains unclear, but I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.
The biggest news within the hobby was Adepticon taking place over on the other side of the Atlantic. Many, many websites have done a grand job covering this, so all I’ll say is that with the news that new Death Guard miniatures are on the way…hopefully we’ll see some Black Library fiction to accompany the sons of Mortarion. I know I’m always up for reading about the disgusting followers of Nurgle!
Weekend
Technically there weren’t any brand new releases this weekend…but given that the limited edition Primarchs novels are both limited-number and excruciatingly expensive, it’s safe to say that the standard hardback/ebook release is when they first start to hit the fan base as a whole. As such, Graham McNeill’s Magnus The Red: Master of Prospero is essentially a new release – available in the usual format/price combinations of hardback (£12.99), ebook (£9.99) and MP3 (£19.99), the third book in the series looks like being another cracker!
Three more releases, each one a paperback edition of an existing book. For Horus Heresy fans who don’t want to fork out £20 on the hardback, now’s your chance to read Gav Thorpe’s Corax, which is now available in the £12.99 trade paperback edition along with the other three existing formats. It’ll be a while yet before that sees a mass market paperback release, but don’t despair – Black Library are sticking to their guns and making sure each Heresy novel gets released in every format!
Also in paperback were Phil Kelly’s Space Marine Battles novel Blades of Damocles, available for £9.99, and Josh Reynolds’ Age of Sigmar Realmgate Wars novel Fury of Gork, available for £8.99. By my count there are now only four Space Marine Battles novels yet to be released in paperback (Eye of Ezekiel, Slaughter at Giant’s Coffin, Tyrant of the Hollow Worlds and Storm of Damocles), and three Realmgate Wars novels (Bladestorm, Mortarch of Night and Lord of Undeath).
Amusingly, the Black Library Facebook page briefly displayed an advert for CL Werner’s upcoming Genestealer Cults novel Cult of the Warmason, but that post soon disappeared. Don’t worry if that got your hopes up though, as you won’t have to wait long – by my reckoning that should be up for release on the 8th April.
Thoughts on the week
A decent, if not awe-inspiring week for Black Library fans, I’d say. March of the Titans is producing some enjoyable short stories for fans of the God-Machines, while the Primarchs series continues with the third instalment ahead of the upcoming limited edition release of Guy Haley’s Perturabo novel. As always I’m pleased to see some new paperbacks see the light of day, especially as (for the time being) they’re promoted on the Black Library homepage.
If you’ll forgive me a brief moment of self-promotion, I’d also like to draw your attention – if you weren’t already aware – to the fact that you’re reading this on a brand new domain. The trusty trackofwords.wordpress.com domain has now been given a welcome retirement in favour of trackofwords.com, and while you probably won’t notice too many changes just yet, I hope this new site is ever so slightly easier to get around. Over time I’ll be making other improvements, so watch this space.
Coming up…
This coming Monday is the final one in March, so presumably it’s going to bring with it the final March of the Titans short story – I certainly hope it does! I recently saw something on Twitter suggesting that David Guymer might have a short story coming out soon, so perhaps his will be the next one to see the light of day.
The big release looks like being David Annandale’s Warlord: Fury of the God-Machine, which is coming out in standard and limited edition formats – at present it doesn’t look as though the limited edition one contains any additional content (like the extra short stories in Dante and Fabius Bile: Primogenitor) so that might be a factor worth considering if you’re thinking about taking the plunge on the posh version.
By my calculations I think there’s a good chance we’ll see the Coming Soon section updated on Wednesday with July’s new releases, as well as May’s upcoming releases being made available for pre-order. Get your clicking fingers ready if you’re after the limited editions of Jain Zar: The Storm of Silence or Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne as they might be quite popular!
As always, if you’ve got any thoughts on the week’s news and releases please do give me a shout to let me know!