Author Archives: Michael

Forgotten Texts: The Black Pearl by Chris Pramas

“I was afraid…to face up to what I had done…”

In Chris Pramas’ classic Dark Angels short story The Black Pearl, the young Interrogator Chaplain Uzziel leads his brothers in a mission so important it could change the face of the Chapter. The prize, so valuable it’s worth risking everything for, is nothing less than the legendary Lion Sword, the whereabouts of which was revealed during the interrogation of one of the Fallen. Standing between Uzziel and the sword are the Exodite eldar of Lughnasa, but can he really trust the word of the Fallen? 

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Forgotten Texts – Reviews List

Forgotten Texts is an ongoing, weekly series of articles in which I take a look back into the Black Library archives at some of the earliest stories I can find. These mostly cover the (old) Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 settings, although there are a few Necromunda stories in there as well, and the idea is that each article will contain a review of the story as well as a commentary on how it stands up against, and fits in with, the state of the setting as it is today.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Vorago Fastness – David Annandale

David Annandale’s short story The Vorago Fastness, available either in the Deathwatch: Xenos Hunters anthology or as a standalone ebook, brings together Space Marines of some of the most unusual Chapters, including the Black Dragons and the Sons of Antaeus. Tasked with recovering an ancient relic from within the Vorago Fastness, a city-sized prison-turned-mining facility, the Deathwatch kill team must battle against the (at that point) still mysterious Necrons to reach their prize. Along the way they see up close what happens when a world offers up its services as a prison for hire…

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Black Library Weekly – W/C 23/01/2017

Hello and welcome back to another instalment of Black Library Weekly, where I’m taking a look through this week’s Black Library news and releases. After a very quiet week last time round, things have picked up a little this week with an exciting novel release, two short stories on Monday, a few cool paperbacks and the next hardback boxed set. As we always do, let’s start at the beginning of the week… 

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Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar – David Annandale (The Primarchs Book One)

The first in what will eventually be a series of eighteen short novels, David Annandale’s Roboute Guilliman: Lord of Ultramar kicks The Horus Heresy – The Primarchs off with a look at the XIIIth Legion…the Ultramarines. Set during the Great Crusade this isn’t an origin story for Guilliman, instead it sees him leading his legion against the final remnants of an ork empire on the planet Thoas. Determined to honour the legacy of its original human inhabitants, he commits his legion to battle even while he makes moves internally to shake things up and remind some of his sons of the legion’s identity.

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Speculation on the next Black Library boxed sets

EDIT: Two weeks after posting this, what should turn up on the Black Library website but a brand spanking new boxed set of the first Gaunt’s Ghosts trilogy – The Founding. Called it…

A couple of days ago Black Library announced the latest in a growing line of limited edition hardback boxed sets – this time it was John French’s excellent Ahriman trilogy that got the hardback treatment, in a limited run of 500 copies. True to form (I LOVE this series) I put an order in straight away, and I also posted yesterday with my thoughts on the overall concept of releasing these hardback sets. The more I thought about it, the more I realised it would be interesting to do a bit of (completely wild) speculation on what Black Library might release next in this hardback format.

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Thoughts on The Ahriman Boxed Set by John French

Yesterday, out of the blue, Black Library released a limited edition boxed set of John French’s Ahriman trilogy. 500 copies only. It wasn’t on the Coming Soon section of the website, it hadn’t been hinted at or teasered…it was a complete surprise. Well. It is, after all, Tzaanuary – according to Games Workshop – so in hindsight it’s not actually surprising that a series of novels featuring Tzeentch’s favourite 40k pawn should get the posh hardback treatment in a month dedicated to the Changer of Ways…

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Forgotten Texts: The Demon Bottle by Alex Hammond

“All that is foul and pestilent will be washed away…”

Set in the Necromunda underhive, Alex Hammond’s 1997 short story The Demon Bottle follows hapless half-ratskin Sarak as he attempts, without much success, to get his life back on track. Dependent on cheap booze and dubious pills and scraping a living as a pest exterminator, he dreams of life in the heady heights of the Spire as an escape from the harsh realities of the underhive. When his debts are called in however, he finds himself hunting some unusually dangerous pests.

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QUICK REVIEW: Above and Beyond (Episode 3) – Aron Nemeth

Áron Németh’s four-part novella set within the Inquisitor: Martyr ‘sandbox’, Above and Beyond continues with Episode 3 as Mercer and his team attempt to dig beneath the surface of Rengris VII’s government. Using the cover of an elaborate reception to spend some time investigating the planet’s ruling elite, Mercer looks for allies in his mission but soon finds that there’s more going on than he realised at first.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Corpse Road – Graham McNeill

Graham McNeill’s short story The Corpse Road does for Honsou what Do Eagles Still Circle the Mountain? did for Uriel Ventris, picking up after The Chapter’s Due and showing us what the Warsmith did next. While Ventris went off hunting orks, Honsou took an unusual route out of the Ultramarines’ domain…in a corpse-hauler. His mission to see Ultramar burn may not have ended how he’d hoped, but his ‘failure’ certainly hasn’t dented his ambition. Here we get a sense of what he’s got his sights set on next…

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