Category Archives: Books

The Master of Mankind – Aaron Dembski-Bowden

The clue is in the title. Book forty-one of Black Library’s colossal Horus Heresy series, Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s The Master of Mankind brings The Emperor front and centre. Set five years after Magnus the Red’s intrusion into the Great Work it sees the forces of the Imperium losing the webway war against the endless hordes of daemons and traitors pouring in. Even the combined might of the Custodes, Sisters of Silence and the Mechanicum isn’t enough to avoid being them pushed ever further backwards, as long as The Emperor remains away from the front lines. Meanwhile something stalks the fringes of the conflict, unseen.
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Barricade – Jon Wallace

Barricade by Jon Wallace, the author’s debut novel, is the first in a trilogy set in a post-apocalypse Britain. It’s a pretty standard dystopian setup – humans build artificial life, stuff goes wrong, war ensues and ruins everything for everyone involved – except, unusually, it’s seen through the eyes of one of the artificial beings, or Ficials. A construction worker by ‘optimisation’, Kenstibec is now a taxi driver, and is hired to take a journalist (another Ficial called Starvie) from Edinburgh to London. To do so he has to find a way out of the Edinburgh barricade, past the besieging army of Reals (normal humans to you and me) and through a country prowled by tribes of half-feral humans out for Ficial blood.
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Shadow of Ullanor – Rob Sanders (The Beast Arises Book Eleven)

IMPORTANT: This is book eleven 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, Watchers in Death or The Last Son of Dorn.

Shadow of Ullanor is the eleventh, and penultimate, book in The Beast Arises series, and Rob Sanders’ second contribution after the excellent Predator, Prey. After the disastrous end to The Last Son of Dorn, the Imperium stands on the edge of the abyss. Gathering together on Inwit for a solemn Festival of Blades, the Imperial Fists successor chapters form a plan which will honour their First Founding chapter and see one last, all-in attempt to end the greenskin menace once and for all. Meanwhile First Captain Zerberyn begins to see the implications of his alliance with the Iron Warriors.
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The Hanging Tree – Ben Aaronovitch

Ben Aaronovitch’s latest novel in the Peter Grant/Rivers of London series – The Hanging Tree – brings us back to London after Peter’s foray into the countryside in Foxglove Summer. The focus is on Mayfair this time as Peter investigates a drug-related death where one of the suspects is the daughter of Lady Tyburn, physical manifestation of one of London’s rivers and not one of Peter’s biggest fans. As the fateful events are gradually revealed and the implications uncovered, new players in the magical scene are introduced, some familiar faces reappear, and a bigger mystery might just be solved.

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The Dumas Club – Arturo Perez-Reverte

First published in English in 1996, translated from the Spanish by Sonia Soto, The Dumas Club is Arturo Perez-Reverte’s third novel. Though narrated by Boris Balkan, Madrilenian editor, writer and Alexandre Dumas obsessive, its protagonist is one Lucas Corso, a ‘mercenary of the book world’ who approaches Balkan to verify the authenticity of a supposed Dumas manuscript. Finding himself subsequently dispatched by a different client to seek out a rare book on demonology he’s soon caught up in a bizarre trail of events bearing striking similarities to the story of Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, much to Corso’s scorn.

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Legends of the Dark Millennium: Genestealer Cults – Peter Fehervari

The latest in this burgeoning series, Legends of the Dark Millennium: Genestealer Cults sees the welcome return of Peter Fehervari with his second Black Library novel after a three-year wait since his first, Fire Caste. Set on the troubled shrine world of Redemption, the coming of an insidious alien menace results in the rise of a strange religious sect in place of the planet’s previous defenders. When distant sect members make pilgrimage to the shrine world, instead of welcoming arms they’re met by harsh, paranoid guardsmen led by officers who treat the sect with deep suspicion.
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Fire and Ice – Peter Fehervari

EDIT (26th June 2017) – this is now available as a standalone ebook novella, branded as an ‘Inquisition and T’au Empire’ story…

Despite being only available in the Legends of the Dark Millennium: Shas’O (or Tau Empire, depending on which version you have) anthology, Peter Fehervari’s novella Fire and Ice is as much an Inquisition story as a tau one. Hunted by a conclave of his Inquisitorial masters, Interrogator Mordaine searches for evidence of a tau conspiracy that might clear his tarnished name. Though guided by the mysterious Calavera, and aided by the savage Iwujii Sharks regiment, time is not on Mordaine’s side with the Inquisition looming and a tau-inspired uprising about to erupt.

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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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Savant – Nik Abnett

From Solaris Books comes Savant, the first full novel from Nik Abnett, who might be more familiar to some under the name Nik Vincent. A brave, adventurous book, it’s set in a recognisable but clearly different world where the Earth is protected from the rest of the galaxy by a shield generated by the minds of certain key individuals. A complex system of roles and organisation keeps minds like these around the world calm and functioning in order to safeguard the shield, but when one man begins to stray from his usual routine the entire system risks falling apart.
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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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