Category Archives: Books

I Am Slaughter – Dan Abnett (The Beast Arises Book One)

With the Horus Heresy series at 30+ books and counting the last thing anyone expected Black Library to do was to start a brand new headline series, but that’s exactly what they’ve done, with Dan Abnett’s I Am Slaughter providing the opening book in a 12-strong series entitled The Beast Arises. Set after the Heresy but thousands of years before the main 40K timeline, with an Imperium essentially at peace, it sees almost the entire chapter of Imperial Fists in action on Ardamantua against the xenos Chromes. With the Fists fully occupied and Terra left unguarded, Grand Master Vangorich of the Officio Assassinorum watches and analyses the Imperial Senatorum, concerned about the petty politics which he believes risk the safety of the Imperium.
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Wolf King – Chris Wraight

For his second Horus Heresy novella, Wolf King, Chris Wraight picks up a story thread left hanging in his novel Scars, returning to the battered forces of the Space Wolves as they take shelter in the lethal twists and turns of the Alaxxes nebula. Hounded by the overwhelming firepower of the Alpha Legion and abandoned by the White Scars, the Wolves find themselves trapped, outmaneuvered at every turn, but while Bjorn and his brothers hunger to bring the battle to the Alpha Legion, their primarch Leman Russ hides himself away from the rest of the legion and broods on their future.

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Sons of Wrath – Andy Smillie

His second novella in Black Library’s Space Marine Battles series, Sons of Wrath sees Andy Smillie continue to delve into the psyches of the brutal Flesh Tearers chapter, this time setting his story almost immediately after the events of the Horus Heresy. Still struggling to come to terms with the emotional and psychological impact of Sanguinius’ death, Chapter Master Amit and his brothers rail against their new identities as Flesh Tearers – as they vent their rage first against each other and then in battle with a tricksy foe, it remains to be seen whether the blood-thirsty Flesh Tearers are truly able to control their thirst for violence.

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Ahriman: Unchanged – John French

The third and final novel in John French’s ambitious Ahriman trilogy, Ahriman: Unchanged sees the Thousand Son sorcerer firmly back at the peak of his powers. Using knowledge gleaned from the Athenaeum (see Ahriman: Sorcerer) he prepares to enact a new Rubric, a grand undertaking that will correct the mistakes of his past. To do so he has to lead his forces back to Prospero and the scene of his legion’s darkest hour, and from there to face their father Magnus deep within the Eye of Terror. Standing in his way are foes both seen and unseen, from within the Imperium and without. Keep reading…

Ahriman: Exile – John French

Released back in 2012, Ahriman: Exile was John French’s first novel for Black Library, and you’re unlikely to find a more assured, complex, detailed debut novel than this. The first in a trilogy regarding one of the most famous villains in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, when we first meet him Ahriman is at his lowest ebb, years after the failure of his Rubric and his exile from the Legion he tried to save. Masquerading as a lowly sorcerer serving a motley warband of Traitor Marines, he’s a far cry from the former Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons, resigned to his fate as an exile and hiding away from his past, his enemies and his own power.
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Ajax Penumbra, 1969 – Robin Sloan

If ever there was a book which deserved a prequel it’s Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, and Robin Sloan has kindly obliged with the delightful novella Ajax Penumbra, 1969. There was so much implied backstory in the original novel that it would have been a crime not to have explored it further, so here we get to take a look at a young Mr Penumbra, just starting out on the path that would lead to 1960s San Francisco, a 24-hour bookstore, a sunken ship and two men who would come to shape his life.

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Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore – Robin Sloan

The kind of book that you’ll find shelved under Fiction simply for the sake of ease, Robin Sloan’s Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore confidently straddles modern fantasy and mystery with a dash of nostalgic epic fantasy and even a little social commentary thrown in. That might sound like a strange mixture, but this is a story – of Clay, a young man who finds himself working the night shift in a mysterious bookshop full of coded tomes studied by eccentric, nocturnal scholars hunting for an ancient secret – that gleefully mashes its influences up into a delightful whole that just works.

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Roboteer – Alex Lamb

Judged purely on its title and cover, Alex Lamb’s Roboteer could very well be mistaken for the sort of third-rate pulp fiction that many people still associate with sci-fi as a genre. In fact, upon closer inspection it turns out to be a gripping, characterful epic set to a grim future backdrop of religion, morality, and mankind’s inherent flaws. It features Will, a young man genetically engineered to be capable of programming and controlling thousands of semi-aware robots, who is thrust into a new crew aboard a high-stakes mission that might affect the very future of his race.

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I Shall Wear Midnight – Terry Pratchett

I Shall Wear Midnight marks Tiffany Aching’s fourth appearance in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, and the thirty-eighth book in the series overall. After her previous adventures in The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky and Wintersmith, here we see fifteen year-old Tiffany back on home turf, caring for her steading on the Chalk as only a witch can. Things seem settled at first, but soon she finds the mood of the people turning against her, as a strange influence is in the air.

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Wintersmith – Terry Pratchett

Two years and three books after A Hat Full of Sky came Wintersmith, the thirty-fifth Discworld novel and the third in the Tiffany Aching storyline. Once again jumping forward in time it picks up the story with thirteen year-old Tiffany sharing the cottage of one hundred and thirteen year-old Miss Treason, who on the face of things appears to be the very picture of the typical witch – old, creepy and surrounded by tall tales. When Tiffany accidentally draws the attention of the spirit of Winter onto herself, her already busy life becomes a whole lot more interesting.

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