Category Archives: Black Library

The Last Son of Dorn – David Guymer (The Beast Arises Book Ten)

IMPORTANT: This is book ten 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, The Beast Must Die or Watchers in Death.

The Beast Arises reaches book ten of twelve with David Guymer’s The Last Son of Dorn, his second in the series. After the disastrous events of The Beast Must Die and the subsequent regrouping in Watchers in Death, Lord Commander Koorland now has a plan to defeat the Beast, albeit a desperate and as yet untested one. Making good use of the newly formed Deathwatch and the once-mythical Sisters of Silence he sets out on what is essentially a dry run, as his forces return to some familiar locations with something specific in mind.
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QUICK REVIEW: Casts A Hungry Shadow – Peter Fehervari

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…

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Black Library Weekly – w/c 19/09/16

Hello and welcome to another instalment of Black Library Weekly, where I take a look at the Black Library-related news from the preceding week – announcements, pre-orders and new releases.

Week commencing 12th September had a massive announcement in the shape of Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s Master of Mankind being confirmed for Black Library Live! 2016, so I was keen to see whether Black Library would follow that up with more big news, or stick to the usual new releases. As it happened, the main excitement came in the form of Genestealer Cults – a new codex and an accompanying Black Library novel. Read on for more details…
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Praetorian of Dorn – John French

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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Getting Started with Black Library: Warhammer 40,000

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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And the winner is… #my40klegend competition

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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QUICK REVIEW: Potentia – Mike Mason

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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Black Library Weekly – w/c 12/09/16

Welcome back to Black Library Weekly, a look at the Black Library-related news that filters through to us each week – announcements, pre-orders and new releases.

It’s been an interesting week, with a pretty massive announcement mid-week and quite a lot of releases, but not a lot in terms of genuinely brand new material available to read right here, right now. Read on for more details…
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Warhammer 40,000 Legends Issue One – First Impressions

The Warhammer 40,000 Legends collection from Hachette and Black Library has officially launched, and I’ve got my hands on Issue One to take a close look at, featuring fan favourite The First Heretic by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. Before we take a look at the book itself though, let’s take a step back and talk about the collection as a whole…
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Storm of Damocles – Justin D. Hill

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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