Category Archives: Black Library

Witchbringer – Steven B Fischer

After a trio of excellent 40k short stories, Steven B. Fischer makes his Black Library novel debut with Witchbringer, a bleak tale of the Astra Militarum told from the viewpoint of a newly-trained sanctioned psyker. Once a captain in the Cadian 900th before her burgeoning powers saw her shipped off to the Scholastica Psykana, no sooner has Glavia Aerand completed her gruelling training than a portent-filled vision sees her unhappily assigned back to her old regiment, who are embroiled against Traitor Guard on the miserable, mist-shrouded world of Visage. Finding fear and mistrust where once there was comradeship, Glavia has to fight to find a place in the regiment, while trying to understand what lies behind the mysteries of the gloomy, waterlogged world she finds herself on (including the unusually high rate of psykers it generates), and the fate of her missing mentor.

Continue reading →

QUICK REVIEW: Aria Arcana – Peter Fehervari

The 17th instalment (short story number 12) in Peter Fehervari’s incredible Warhammer 40,000 Dark Coil series, Aria Arcana takes place during the finale of Requiem Infernal, offering a little insight into what the Angels Resplendent of the Ninth Rhapsody were doing as the city of Sophia Argentum burned. In the midst of the madness, Epistolary Ignacio Verlaine and a squad of Angels Resplendent patrol the storm-wracked skies waiting for revelation. When their gunship is destroyed, Verlaine falls from the sky only to find himself on an unexpected path that leads him inexorably towards the light of the Candelabrum, the great cathedral of the Koronatus Ring, and the destiny it heralds.

Continue reading →

Gav Thorpe – Coming Up For Air

Hello and welcome to this guest post here on Track of Words where I’m delighted to be joined by veteran Black Library (and Angry Robot) author Gav Thorpe, who’s written a fascinating article looking back at how things have changed over the course of his career, and how he’s approaching writing Warhammer fiction now in order to avoid burning out. For anyone with even a faint interest in Black Library and Warhammer, Gav really needs no introduction, having written so much and been involved from the very beginning! I can’t think of anyone better placed to write about the changing realities of life for a Black Library author over the years, and I think this article is going to be of interest to a lot of BL (and SFF in general) fans, and to other writers too.

Continue reading →

RAPID FIRE: David Guymer Talks Grombrindal

Hello and welcome to this Rapid Fire interview here on Track of Words, where I’m very happy to be joined by Black Library author David Guymer to talk about his fantastic Age of Sigmar novel Grombrindal: Chronicles of the Wanderer. Released in October 2023 in audiobook, ebook and hardback (if you’re lucky enough to find one) editions, this is an unusual book in that it actually contains six short stories and a (short) novel, all exploring one of the most famous characters in Warhammer history. I loved it, so I was keen to talk to David about how this book came about, what the writing process was like, and (because I’m mean like that) whether David has a favourite from among these tales of Grombrindal.

Continue reading →

Best of Black Library 2022

Every year, as we approach the end of December I look back at the best Black Library books I’ve read over the preceding twelve months, and it’s time now to take a look at 2022’s BL highlights. There are plenty to choose from, but I’ve narrowed it down to just five that I can personally recommend as being genuinely fantastic reads. It was hard to cut things down to five though, so I’ve also added a few honourable mentions that I couldn’t help but include. As always this comes with a few caveats, the first of which being that I can only talk about the books I’ve actually read. Black Library publishes somewhere in the region of 40 novels each year, of which I’ve read 14; that’s slightly more than last year, but still nothing like all of them. I’m sure I’ve missed out loads of great titles simply because I haven’t got around to reading them.

Continue reading →

RAPID FIRE: Steven B Fischer Talks Witchbringer

Hello and welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview, where today I’m very happy to welcome back Steven B. Fischer to talk about his brilliant new Warhammer 40,000 novel Witchbringer. Steve and I chatted recently for an Author Spotlight interview and it was super interesting (you can check that out here), and the little glimpse we got into Witchbringer was more than enough for me to want to chat about the novel in more detail. With that in mind, in this interview Steve gives a great overview of what to expect from Witchbringer, including what it was like exploring the Scholastica Psykana and the nature of being a psyker in the Imperial Guard, keeping character conflict at the heart of the novel, looking for light in the middle of a grimdark universe, and loads more. Oh, and the relative merits of psychic powers in the real world!

Continue reading →

QUICK REVIEW: Lepidopterophobia – Dan Abnett

First released in the special edition hardback of Penitent and then included in the Inferno! Presents: The Inquisition anthology, Dan Abnett’s Lepidopterophobia is a slow, sinister tale featuring Medea Betencore, and a welcome addition to the large collection of short stories that support and enhance the Eisenhorn/Ravenor/Bequin trilogy of Inquisition trilogies. Best read after Pariah to avoid spoilers for that novel, it sees Medea scouring the city of Queen Mab for information that might help her and her master Gregor Eisenhorn understand or even locate the mysterious King in Yellow. When the discovery of an unusual tome in one of Queen Mab’s many book markets leads her into the maze-like stacks of a dark and dust-laden store, little does she realise she will soon have to face her oldest fear, amongst other things, simply in order to stay alive.

Continue reading →

Author Spotlight: Steven B. Fischer

Hello and welcome to this Author Spotlight interview where today I’m chatting to Steven B. Fischer, who may be familiar to Track of Words readers from his Warhammer 40,000 short stories in Inferno!, and his upcoming Black Library novel Witchbringer. With his novel still a little way off, I thought it was a good time to get to know Steve as an author – what he likes to write, how writing for Black Library compares to working on his own IPs, and what it is that appeals about grimdark fiction in particular. We also chat a bit about Witchbringer, just to give you a sense of what you can expect when it arrives later in the year!

Continue reading →

Matthew Farrer Talks Urdesh – Part Two

Hello and welcome to the second part of my in-depth interview with author Matthew Farrer, where we’re taking quite a detailed (but still mostly spoiler-free) look at his Urdesh duology for Black Library. In the first part (which you can read here) Matthew talked about the journey that these books went on (they weren’t originally commissioned as a duology!), and what it was like contributing novel-length stories to the Sabbat Worlds series. In this second part we’re going to look in a bit more detail at some of Matthew’s writing process for these books, from structure and pace (by way of the Discworld) and perspective-hopping to how to really portray the speed and power of Space Marines in motion (by way of Captain America), and what it was like collaborating with both the BL editors and fellow author Dan Abnett.

Continue reading →

Matthew Farrer Talks Urdesh – Part One

Welcome to part one of this in-depth interview, where I’m genuinely delighted to be talking to author Matthew Farrer and going into quite a lot of detail discussing his Urdesh duology from Black Library. After something of a long gestation, Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint was released in June 2021, followed a few months later by Urdesh: The Magister and the Martyr. Between them these two books – telling a single overarching story, really – explore a crucial part of the Sabbat Worlds Crusade from a brand new perspective, as the Iron Snakes and Saint Sabbat lead the armies of the Imperium in the war for Urdesh against the forces of the Anarch. With both books now available in paperback, it seemed the perfect moment to chat to Matthew about the unusual journey that this story has taken and the books that are available now as a result.

Continue reading →