Issue Five of the Warhammer 40,000 Legends Collection from Hachette and Black Library returns to the Horus Heresy with Horus Rising by Dan Abnett. The opening novel of the Heresy series, first published ten years ago, this is where it all began for what’s become the biggest and most popular series that Black Library have ever published. After a further 40+ novels (and counting) this is still generally held as one of the series high points, and is an obvious entry in the …Legends Collection.
Available in ebook alongside Ghosts Speak Not or in print in The Silent War, James Swallow’s Patience is a Knights Errant micro-short featuring Helig Gallor. Once a brother of the Death Guard under Battle Captain Garro’s command, he now finds himself leading troops from Malcador’s Chosen across the annihilated landscape of a conquered world in search of his old commander. Determined to do his duty by retrieving Garro, he’s also keen to find a connection with the other former Death Guard to help him adjust to his new life. What he finds isn’t quite what he expected.
Available either within the anthology The Silent War or alongside Patience as an ebook double header, James Swallow’s novelette (i.e. long short story) Ghosts Speak Not fits into the wider narrative of Malcador’s Chosen but features Amendera Kendel instead of the usual Nathaniel Garro. It sees the former Sister of Silence, now Malcador’s Agentia Tertius, tasked with investigating the possibility that Horus has his seeded spies in a system close to Terra. Kendel looks to Garro’s fellow Death Guard from the Eisenstein to help her as she attempts to root out the truth in the Proxima Centauri system.
The second Caligari Archivum story tying in with the upcoming release of the Inquisitor – Martyr computer game, Above and Beyond (Episode 2) sees Áron Németh continue the story of Captain Theoden Mercer as he and the crew of the Stormskipper brave the warp to reach Rengris VII. When their journey is interrupted by a troubling encounter it begins to look as though there might be more going on than Mercer and Prefectus Stolde originally thought, and that Rengris could be the centre of something that endangers the entire sector.
After its initial publication in the limited-run Games Day Anthology 2012/13, Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s Extinction is finally available as a standalone e-short. Set shortly after the Heresy it sees the Sons of Horus scattered throughout the Eye of Terror, leaderless and embattled against the remnants of the other Traitor Legions. With Horus dead, his sons are the next best thing when it comes to finding someone to blame for the Heresy, so they bear the brunt of the other legions’ ire. As his former brothers are slowly wiped out, where is First Captain Ezekyle Abaddon?
Hello and welcome back to Black Library Weekly for the first full week of 2017. As always I’ll be taking a look at all the Black Library news and releases from the week just gone, from the conclusion of the 12 Days of Christmas campaign to the announcement of some exciting new titles. I’m going back to the usual structure after a few weeks of doing things differently, so without further ado let’s start at the beginning of the week…
Between the 25th December 2016 and the 5th January 2017 Black Library ran a 12 Days of Christmas campaign featuring discounts, bundles and even a free digital short story. The campaign is now over and most of the offers have been and gone as we move deeper into January, but I thought I’d take a quick look back to recap on what the campaign offered.
Two days ago I wrote an article asking why Black Library don’t tend to put much support behind their books when they’re released in paperback. Yesterday I followed up with another article to clarify what I was talking about, using the example of Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s The Talon of Horus. The point, as I saw it, was that all of these great books are being released in paperback after having already had hardback editions, but they’re appearing without any advertising or promotion from Black Library. Well, what do you suppose happened today…?
Yesterday I put up a post talking about Black Library’s approach to marketing their paperback releases, which I was prompted to write after realising just how many paperback editions of existing books have been released recently with barely any acknowledgement from Black Library. Various people chimed in with thoughts and comments, which were all really interesting to read – it’s always interesting to get this sort of response and discussion.
“All releases in all formats” is a catchphrase that’s bandied about a lot in regards to the Horus Heresy series, referring to Black Library’s commitment to a) release all of the audio stories in prose format, and b) make all of the main-range books available in the three different physical formats – hardback, large format paperback, and small (mass market, or legacy) paperback. What’s most interesting about that phrase is the very fact that it exists at all, given that multiple formats is a pretty new concept for Black Library. You only have to go back a few years, to 2012’s release of Angel Exterminatus, to find the first of the main-range Horus Heresy books to be released in hardback; before that it was only the occasional book such as the Sabbat Worlds anthology that came out in hardback.