Generalstoner wrote:Not a big Fantasy reader. The last series I read was the Gotrek and Felix novels which I lost about halfway through. I think though I am gonna pick up The Sundering series and start reading.

lords2001 wrote:Read Brunner - great book - liked it a lot.

About to embark upon the first of the Ulrika series - hope its good.

Melissia wrote:It's basically just SM vs SM almost all the way through.

Abadabadoobaddon wrote:

Melissia wrote:It's basically just SM vs SM almost all the way through.

So it's basically just like 40k?

Melissia wrote:

Abadabadoobaddon wrote:

Melissia wrote:It's basically just SM vs SM almost all the way through.

So it's basically just like 40k?

Nope. The vast majority of 40k has nothing to do with Marines at all. The most common battle would likely be PDF/Guard versus Orks, for example.

Abadabadoobaddon wrote:
Really? Could've fooled me...

jah-joshua wrote:
i have read every single GW novel at least twice, since the very first books back in the day before BL, even the Dark Future novels...
some have been better than others...
some have been slight torture for a fluff junkie (i'm looking at you Mr. Goto)...
i'm just happy that we have novels, and i get to immerse myself in the settings...

some of you guys have very critical opinions, which is fair as it's your money, but would you be happier if we didn't have any novels???

Flachzange wrote:

jah-joshua wrote:
i have read every single GW novel at least twice, since the very first books back in the day before BL, even the Dark Future novels...
some have been better than others...
some have been slight torture for a fluff junkie (i'm looking at you Mr. Goto)...
i'm just happy that we have novels, and i get to immerse myself in the settings...

some of you guys have very critical opinions, which is fair as it's your money, but would you be happier if we didn't have any novels???

I absolutely agree with you on this. I think some people here are overly critical and expect some sort of new york times bestseller. This is after all, a Scifi boardgame first and foremost. The fluff is the only thing that keeps me in the universe to begin with. I havent played a game in years and I actually dont intend to. But the universe is pretty diverse and colorful and it keeps me interested.

Simonbarsinistr wrote:Swallow's blood angel books can be a bit tough to read, but his HH stuff is way better.

A UNION OF CHAOS
Driven on by their hatred of the False Emperor, the Night Lords stalk the shadows of the galaxy, eternally seeking revenge for the death of their primarch. Their dark quest leads them to a fractious alliance with the Red Corsairs, united only by a common enemy. Together with this piratical band of renegades, they bring their ways of destruction to the fortress-monastery of the Marines Errant.
THEY SEEK ONLY TO BRING DEATH

Generalstoner wrote:Hopefully he can stay in the same mold of writing when it comes to Nemesis.

Alpharius wrote:

Generalstoner wrote:Hopefully he can stay in the same mold of writing when it comes to Nemesis.

I'd say odds are good that will be the case...

What’s the best, most exciting thing about writing for BL? Getting hold of some of the most iconic and recognisable figures in the Warhammer mythos and bringing them to life. What’s the worst, most terrifying thing about writing for BL? Getting hold of some of the most iconic and recognisable figures in the Warhammer mythos and bringing them to life. People care about these guys. In some cases, they’ve been reading about them in codexes and army books for decades. It’s a massive challenge - and a privilege - to put them into a novel.

When I started work on Sword of Justice, I was acutely aware of this. Ludwig Schwarzhelm is the protagonist for this project. The brief from the editorial team was to produce a story for the new Warhammer Heroes series, so he wouldn’t just be a cameo - he’d be the focus. That meant getting behind the short descriptions of him in the Empire army book and elsewhere, and fleshing them out to create a believable figure - the essence of the Emperor’s Champion.

The starting point was simple. Schwarzhelm is famously unsmiling, a grim bulwark against which the Emperor’s foes break like water. He’s an impassive and implacable dispenser of justice, capable of bringing even an Elector Count to heel (as he did to Marius Leitdorf). The miniatures and fantastic illustrations in the army book yielded a little more - he’s a massive figure, clad in heavy plate armour. He’s going to be able to go toe-to-toe with pretty much any mortal unit in the Old World. He’s deadly, dominating, and, most importantly, he’s got a Very Big Sword.

It’s all very cool stuff. But it’s not a character. I wanted to try and show the more nuanced side of Schwarzhelm, so in the story I deliberately placed him in some situations that he’s not so good at handling. He’s not a silver-tongued diplomat, even though he’s required to get involved in the dirty business of Averland’s politics. As a straightforward man, and only really happy on the battlefield, he can be mystified by the machinations of subtler minds. Perhaps most damaging, he’s capable of sullen rages, and can alienate those closest to him. Schwarzhelm is a titan, a true hero, but he’s not perfect, and some of his enemies know of his flaws.

To bring this out in the book, I tried to draw contrasts with some of the other characters in the Warhammer mythos. Most of these are original creations: there’s Pieter Verstohlen, a highly cultured spy; Markus Bloch, a tavern-brawler turned halberdier captain; and Dagobert Tochfel, the officious Steward of Averheim. Most importantly, though, I wanted to highlight the differences between Schwarzhelm and the other great commander of the Empire’s armies, Kurt Helborg. To my mind, these two are like chalk and cheese. Schwarzhelm fights almost like a dwarf - stubborn, unmoveable, utterly committed. Helborg, as the leader of the elite Reiksguard, is a flamboyant and devastating master of lightning cavalry charges. He’s arrogant, charming, and as at home in a noble’s ballroom as he is on the battlefront.

Of course, two characters with such different styles aren’t always going to get on. There’s a nice snippet in the Empire army book about their rivalry, and how they keep a tally of duels (in which, incidentally, Helborg’s currently ahead). That detail is what I love about the Warhammer setting - there’s so much scope to explore the flawed human relations between the major players, and the tensions and rivalries that get in the way of the noble things they really should be doing in unison. In Sword of Justice, I’ve tried to bring that out, to set Schwarzhelm firmly in a web of interwoven ambitions and objectives that make up the Empire of Karl Franz.

Obviously, it’s possible not everyone will like what I’ve done with him, especially those who’ve been Empire players for a long time and have very clear ideas of what he’s like. But I’ve enjoyed working on the character concept enormously, and I hope many long-time fans will find the result both familiar and surprising. Warhammer is all about gritty, flawed individuals fighting the long war in a bleak and compromised world. Schwarzhelm is a hero alright, but he’s a Warhammer hero. That’s what I’ve tried to make him, and that’s how I hope he’ll come across.

Generalstoner wrote:Tell me some about Path of the warrior? Does it follow only the striking scorpion aspect? Does it follow a specific craftworld? Who do they fight?

reds8n wrote:

Generalstoner wrote:Tell me some about Path of the warrior? Does it follow only the striking scorpion aspect? Does it follow a specific craftworld? Who do they fight?

We follow 1 Eldar -- a sculptor initially -- as he moves onto the Path of the Warrior. It is set on Alaitoc. They fight .. humans...

Kroothawk wrote:Any Slaanesh worshipping Eldar in Gav's novel?

Looks like Anthony Reynolds Brettonian series is getting cut short The last two books are not getting full novels just novellas. A bit disapointed cuz I loved those books was really looking forward to read more about the story and characters. Oh well, lets hope they are as good as the other books.

Hi,



You are indeed correct that the 2 novellas in the omnibus replace a singular novel release for the Knights of Bretonnia series.



Sincerely



Ragnar Karlsson

Direct Sales Manager

Black Library

www.blacklibrary.com

reds8n wrote:

Kroothawk wrote:Any Slaanesh worshipping Eldar in Gav's novel?

..hmm... no.... but she-who-thirsts isreferenced and is always a shadow on them.

Waiting.

Spoiler:

you do learn some stuff -- not a lot -- about their Dark Kin, including at least one possibility that ahd never occured to me before, which makes sense when you read it

.

Lord of battles wrote:I just noticed that Aaron Dembski-Bowden got another Night Lords book coming out in may of 2011: Blood Reaver

A UNION OF CHAOS
Driven on by their hatred of the False Emperor, the Night Lords stalk the shadows of the galaxy, eternally seeking revenge for the death of their primarch. Their dark quest leads them to a fractious alliance with the Red Corsairs, united only by a common enemy. Together with this piratical band of renegades, they bring their ways of destruction to the fortress-monastery of the Marines Errant.
THEY SEEK ONLY TO BRING DEATH

No picture but it sounds awesome!

Alpharius wrote:

reds8n wrote:

Generalstoner wrote:Tell me some about Path of the warrior? Does it follow only the striking scorpion aspect? Does it follow a specific craftworld? Who do they fight?

We follow 1 Eldar -- a sculptor initially -- as he moves onto the Path of the Warrior. It is set on Alaitoc. They fight .. humans...

Fantastic.

Lots of "Mon-Keigh" drops then, I take it?

Ugh.

first up, I’ve been working feverishly (ish) on my contribution to Age of Darkness, the Horus Heresy anthology. My story is entitled ‘Forgotten Sons’ and features an Ultramarine left behind when the rest of his Legion muster to Calth and a Salamander who is one of the few survivors of the Dropsite Massacre. The two Astartes are charged with the protection of an Imperial iterator who’s going to try and sway a compliant human world still ’sitting on the fence’ when galactic war breaks out. His only problem? Horus has sent one of his flunkies to debate for his cause. Obviously, there’s twists and turns to this tale, death and violence in abundance but you’ll just have to see where that goes when you read it! I’ve got about 11 pages of roughly scribed notes in my moleskine, relating to character, theme, plot points and more. I’m actually finding this project is a great one for some longhand planning as the tactile nature of actually writing and scribbling is really promoting my thought process. More on that as I progress. I’m actually hoping to have plotted the entire thing in a fair bit of detail, though, before I commit to the keyboard.

reds8n wrote: who comes across as a nice enough chap, but twice now I've failed to get into the book, something about it just don't click.

Questions with Chris Wraight
Author Chris Wraight returns to answer questions about his novel Sword of Justice.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Sword of Justice features two of the most iconic characters in the Empire, Ludwig Schwarzhelm and Kurt Helborg. Was it a challenge to recreate these two characters for the novel whilst staying true to the established background?


It was more of an opportunity than a challenge, as there’s relatively little info on both characters, either in the Army Books or past BL novels. That said, it was very important to get the feel of the two men right – they have a definite role in the Empire hierarchy which needed to be respected. Readers rightly care about fidelity to the established Warhammer background, and, as a writer, I lose a lot of sleep trying to make sure those expectations are met. Thankfully, there’s plenty of room in the Old World to flesh out the key concepts creatively without violating what’s been laid down already – I certainly hope that balance has been struck in the book.

Schwarzhelm and Helborg are portrayed as rivals as well as comrades in the plot. Did you find yourself favouring one over the other?

Difficult to answer, as the last manuscript I submitted was for Sword of Vengeance, which has Helborg in the starring role – I think it’s inevitable you come to sympathise with the heroes of your current project, and he’s such a great guy to write. That said, I have the greatest time for Schwarzhelm. He’s not as refined and polished as the Reiksmarshal, and is much more of an outsider in the Imperial order. He’s sullen and brooding, has flaws aplenty, but he’s virtually unstoppable and he’ll never back down – they’re the qualities you want when the walls have been breached by a gibbering horde of horrors and the reinforcements are still a day away. And after Spaceballs, it’s impossible not to love that name…

Sword of Justice features some spectacular battles against orcs and beastmen. Is there an aspect of these battles that you feel makes them stand out amongst the many BL Warhammer battlescenes?

There have been some fantastic battle scenes in BL novels, so when it came to Sword of Justice I thought very hard about how to make the set-pieces distinctive. I wanted to make sure that the combat sequences were firmly embedded in the unfolding plot, and to avoid having action scenes just because the story is set in a war-torn environment. The battles were part of wider political machinations played out by several of the characters, and they create consequences that go beyond simply surviving (or not). With that established, I worked hard to try and imbue the fights with a suitably epic quality - the opening engagement has a cast of thousands, from Knights Panther to Helstorm crews, and by the end of it there’s a lot of blood on the floor.

As well as massed battles in the Warhammer world, Sword of Justice also deals with the convoluted politics of the Empire. Was it difficult to balance both these aspects of the plot while writing the novel?

Yes! But fantastically enjoyable too, and it was amazing to be given the green light to do some of the things I pitched when the novel was in the proposal stage. The story is rooted in the Empire’s complicated electoral system, and I spent a long time reading various Warhammer and WFRP source material to try and get the politics right. One of the best things about the Empire is the delicate balance between the various potentates and nobles – when they’re not fighting external enemies, they’re fighting amongst themselves. This doesn’t have to be a matter of pitched battles – it’ll more likely involve bribery, rabble-rousing, smuggling, espionage, seduction and assassination. All of these things, as you’d expect, are in Sword of Justice.

You’ve written several novels set in the Warhammer world now. Do you own a Warhammer army? If not do you have a favourite army or faction?

I don’t own a Warhammer Army, but if I did it would definitely be an Empire force. Something massively impractical, involving a squabbling mess of warrior priests, engineers, wizards and halflings. And they’d be fighting fishmen, naturally.

How does one get into the mind of an eldar? Short of a bottle of absinthe or licking some of the more exotic species of frogs in the Amazon rainforest, the best I could do was take our everyday human experiences and turn the dial up to eleven. Imagine the greatest slight you have felt, the highest moment of achievement, the deepest times of grief and sadness; now imagine experiencing that for every second of your life, a life that can last more than a thousand years. There is no description in human psychology that could encompass such a tumult of emotion.

Add to this heightened emotional volatility a physical sensitivity and self-awareness that for us would be considered supernatural. Try to picture an existence in which you can feel the slightest current of air on your skin and hair, the subtlest nuance of taste, the infinitely small degrees of hue in the spectrum, the music in silence. The buzz of an insect is an orchestral work; starlight dappling on water is a rainbow of colours; the scent of a flower a melange of smells that each elicit the most powerful response.

But we are not done yet. Each of those exquisite phenomena, every tiniest experience, is imprinted upon your mind in stark clarity. Not for the eldar the comfort of pain dwindling with time, not the hazy, comfortable recollection of love and happiness. With the turning of a thought, you can experience again every strata of sensation as if it were happening right now. Could you fight the temptation to wander through the joys of childhood forever, the dark abyss of every tragic loss waiting to consume you in a moment’s indulgence?

And still there is another facet to eldar life that we must consider; one which with all of the imagination in the world we cannot hope to emulate with human experience. The perfection of emotion, thought and body is physical, chemical, natural. The eldar existence goes beyond this, into the realm of the psychic. I’m not talking the big stuff – the prophecies of the farseers or ravening blasts of lightning – I’m talking about the everyday empathy, the sense of the wider universe and the crushing awareness of all other living things hovering on the edge of detection. Grief shared is not just social or a matter of body language, it is an unconscious touch inside your mind; joy shared is not just a contagious smile, it is a flood of happiness fuelled by the experiences of others.

No wonder the eldar went insane.

And so we come to the Path. This is the means by which each of these tortuous gifts can be turned off and on. The Path is the net that caught the eldar after the Fall. It is the Path that brings calm to the mental storm, brings peace to the constant bombardment of sensation, dulls the psychic sense and allows the exploration of self.

But for Korlandril, protagonist of Path of the Warrior, the Path brings no peace, only war and death, experienced in a way only an eldar can experience it...

Once in awhile you get something you really wanted. For me, that came with a brief query from my editor asking if I would like to do a series of novels focused on Grey Seer Thanquol. If I tell you it took me all of five seconds to answer that one, I’d be overestimating things.

The skaven have always held a special place for me. They were what first made me really notice Warhammer. All these weird little ratmen with guns and flamethrowers and gas masks were something that piqued my curiosity. Certainly none of the other fantasy settings flooding the market in the late 1980’s had such things. Then I saw an advertisement for Warhammer RPG in a gaming magazine that featured a lengthy text piece written from the point of view of an imprisoned witch hunter. By the end of the piece, the terrified man is turned over to the skaven by his corrupt gaoler. Even these many years later, that evocative bit of writing still sticks in my mind.

Of all the heroes in the Warhammer setting, I’m almost invariably drawn to the bad guys. Nagash, Azhag the Slaughterer, Mannfred von Carstein, Wulfrik the Wanderer, but above them all in my esteem towers Grey Seer Thanquol. Reading William King’s Gotrek and Felix stories, I found the scheming, craven Thanquol to be the star of the show. He was just so damn exciting and you never knew what he was going to do next or how he would try to twist something around to his benefit. There was something positively cathartic to read about a character with absolutely no redeeming values. A villain after my own heart (which, I’m sure, Thanquol would make a nice snack out of).

When I had the chance to write my own Thanquol stories, one thing I took extreme pains to do was keep Thanquol himself true to the way he was written in Herr King’s books. The second thing I decided was to make everything else as different from Gotrek and Felix in style and tone as I could. For the first novel, I pitted Thanquol against a mysterious wizard, the story unfolding in the shadows of Altdorf. In the second novel, Thanquol finds himself in the green hell of Lustria opposing a powerful skink sorcerer. In both instances, I tried to find challenges that would put Thanquol in very different situations from what he encountered against Gotrek and Felix. It was always a delight trying to figure out exactly how Thanquol would flatter, bully or trick his way out of trouble (with the occasional warpstone-fuelled magical assault when the opportunity presented itself, naturally). There’s something about an inveterate coward who doesn’t even understand why he shouldn’t use one of his underlings as a living shield, much less think twice about doing so.

Now, in Temple of the Serpent, we find Thanquol in very dire straits. Conscripted into a nefarious plot by Clan Eshin to help them assassinate the powerful Xiuhcoatl, Prophet of Sotek, Thanquol finds himself completely out of his element. The sweltering jungles of Lustria are just teeming with all sorts of things that want to kill him: dinosaurs, carnivorous plants, cannibal fish, piranha-lizards, venomous frogs, zombies and, of course, the lizardmen themselves. But his trouble doesn’t end there. You see, there’s an old enemy lurking among the skaven expedition and he’s not missing any opportunity to try to settle the score!

reds8n wrote:
I'm really looking forward to the squeekel...oohh...sorry

BrookM wrote:I like CL Werner's stuff, with exception of his Chaos novels, those were pretty boring. But his Brunner and Thulmann novels are ace. I've got the first Thanquol novel lying about and read it a wee bit, some time soon I'll read it proper. After Sword of Justice and Nemesis.

Captain Godfrey wrote:Back to the HH... The only books i found truly disappointing, were the Dark Angels books. As said, SURPLICE. But actually, i dont understand all this criticism for The Flight of the Eisenstein, i truly thought it was a good book. IMO of coarse.

reds8n wrote:Sword of Justice is well worth a read if you're an Empire fan. Actually, slightly, moves on the timeline a step or two as well !

reds8n wrote:The BOTF will be your first 40K work right ? Using both the 1K son and the Space Wolves just after their HH books ? No pressure there then !

ChrisWraight wrote:I'm biased of course, but I think the covers are awesome. Just awesome. The artist is a Korean guy called Cheol joo Lee, and if he wants to do the art for all my future books I'd be over the moon. I blogged about it a while ago: link here

reds8n wrote: How much background materials do you get or request for a project like this then ? It's worth it for a sneaky early look at Prospero Burns alone one would imagine. Mr. Dembski Bowden mentioned being sent a veritable pile of copies of old codices, WD articles etc etc for "Helsreach", I'm guessing you get something similar ?

Just Dave wrote:Well I finished A Thousand Sons earlier today (lagging behind I know) and I was very pleased with it, now I really need another Horus Heresy book - Nemisis - but cannot wait!

Mind if I ask how you got Nemesis pre-release Reds8n? Or is that delving into darkness from which I and my love for the Horus Heresy may never return?

BrookM wrote:There should be a preview of it up on Dan's blog TOMORROW.

BrookM wrote:The whole story behind the delay remains a bit iffy, but I can understand why it has been delayed. There should be a preview of it up on Dan's blog TOMORROW.

Kanluwen wrote:

BrookM wrote:The whole story behind the delay remains a bit iffy, but I can understand why it has been delayed. There should be a preview of it up on Dan's blog TOMORROW.

How is the story behind the delay "iffy"?

Abnett was diagnosed with epilepsy after having a pretty heavy seizure and having to be hospitalized. Then having to go through a lengthy battery of tests, being weaned onto the medications, etc...

That crap takes a loooong time to get the dosages, etc right at a young age. It gets worse with someone older, since there's more health issues to also worry about.

Kanluwen wrote:

BrookM wrote:The whole story behind the delay remains a bit iffy, but I can understand why it has been delayed. There should be a preview of it up on Dan's blog TOMORROW.

How is the story behind the delay "iffy"?

Abnett was diagnosed with epilepsy after having a pretty heavy seizure and having to be hospitalized. Then having to go through a lengthy battery of tests, being weaned onto the medications, etc...

That crap takes a loooong time to get the dosages, etc right at a young age. It gets worse with someone older, since there's more health issues to also worry about.

BrookM wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

BrookM wrote:The whole story behind the delay remains a bit iffy, but I can understand why it has been delayed. There should be a preview of it up on Dan's blog TOMORROW.

How is the story behind the delay "iffy"?

Abnett was diagnosed with epilepsy after having a pretty heavy seizure and having to be hospitalized. Then having to go through a lengthy battery of tests, being weaned onto the medications, etc...

That crap takes a loooong time to get the dosages, etc right at a young age. It gets worse with someone older, since there's more health issues to also worry about.

Okay, I'm not looking to get a ton of gak from you and other people again. When they announced it a Thousand Sons was already released and at such a time the other novel should already be printed and ready for shipping.

Anyway, I'm not blaming Dan or whatever.

Generalstoner wrote:I'll second that. Is Nemesis out yet? I thought it was not slated till August.

reds8n wrote:

Generalstoner wrote:I'll second that. Is Nemesis out yet? I thought it was not slated till August.

It's not out until August, you're right.

With regards to Legion..

Spoiler:

I reckon they both survive the Heresy, but it is then one of the twins that Guiliman kills in their duel, with perhaps this loss being what tips some of the legion over the edge into out and out chaos worship, a schism of sorts between those who follow the memory of the deceased brother and those who follow the surviving one.Perhaps.

Death had them surrounded.
It had come to cut threads, and today, it wore four faces.
A burning death for those too hurt or too afraid to flee the settlement as the firestorm swept through it. A freezing death for those who ran away up the scarp to escape the murder-make: even in spring, the wind came in off the ice flats with a death-edge that sucked an exposed man’s life-heat out through his lungs, and rotted his hands and feet into black twigs, and left him as a stiff, stone-hard bundle covered in rime.
For others, a drowning death, if they attempted to flee across the blue-ice around the spit. Spring’s touch was already working the sea ice loose against the shore, like a tooth in a gum. The ice would no longer take a man’s weight, not reliably. If the ice broke under you, down you went: fast and straight if you plunged through, slow and screaming if an ice plate tipped and slid you in. Either way, the water was oil black, and so cold it would freeze the thoughts in your brain before your lungs were even empty.
For the rest, for those who had remained to fight, a bloody death, the death of the murder-make. This was the death that knocked you down hard onto the ice with an axe or a maul, so you felt nothing except the cold burn of the ice, and the hot burn of your own blood, and the pain-scream of your crippling wound. This was the death that stood over you and knocked you again, and again, and as many times as necessary until you would not rise again, or until you were so disfigured that death could no longer bear to look at you, and moved off in disgust to find another soul to knock.

Any of those four faces would cut your thread as soon as look at you. And those were the faces the Balt were wearing.

The Balt. The Balt had brought the murder-make down on the Ascommani aett. Twenty boat. It was early in the season for a raid. A man had to be desperate to go out making red snow when he could wait for the first grasses and milder weather.
Twenty boat, and all of them still rigged for ice-running under their sea-sails.
If there had been time, the Ascomanni might have wondered why their doom had come so early. Ironland, where the Balt had settled, had persisted twenty Great Years, but many now said its roots were soft. Many now said it would only be one more summer, two at the most, before the ocean sucked it down again into the World-forge.
Ascomanni land ran from the spithead to the ice shelf, and was poor for farming and lacked natural defences, but it was yet just one Great Year old, and the dowsers had proclaimed it strong land, with many years left in it.

So land-thirst. Perhaps it was that.

Fith knew better. Nothing got the murder-urge pumping like fear, and nothing stoked up fear like a bad omen. A broom star. A day star. Colour in the ice. Bloom in the sea. Smoke out on the ice shelf where no settlement was. Some dead thing washed up that should not be. Something born to livestock or to a woman that should not be. Something with birth defects.
Sometimes a bad dream would be enough to do it, a bad dream that told you the tribe down the coast or around the headland was maleficarum. You let land-thirst be your excuse as you reached for your shirt and your blade, but you made sure the gothi marked your face in soot-glue with good cast-out marks like the sun-disk and the warding eye before you opened out your sails.

And there had been a bad omen, all right. Fith had seen it.

Fith had seen the make coming too. He’d seen the sails approaching along the in-shore early enough to blow the scream-horn, but too late for it to do any good. He had merely enabled his kinfolk to die awake.
The Balt main force had come up around the spit in their wyrmboats in the sightless pre-dawn grey, sailing black sails straight out of the water and onto the shore-ice on their rigs, translating from water-craft to ice-craft with barely a jolt. Their skirmishers had put ashore on the far side of the headland, and come romping in over the high back of the snow dunes to fall on the Ascommani settlement from the hind side.
After that, it had been fire and knocking. The Balt were mongrel-big, men with long faces and beards waxed into sun rays under their spectacle-face helms. They were horribly able with axe and maul, and the occasional high status sword that some carried.
But they brought with them none of the screaming vigour of a normal Balt raid or murder-make. They were silent, gak-scared of what they had come to kill, gak-scared of its sky magic. They were silent and grim, and set to murder everything to wipe the magic away. Men, women, the young, livestock, nothing was spared a knock. There was not a shred of mercy. There was not a moment’s thought to claim prisoners or take slaves. Ascommani girls were famously fine-looking, and there were plenty of healthy girl-children too, who would make valuable breeding slaves in time, but the Balt had put away all appetites, except for a fierce desire to be cleansed of fear.

The sound of an axe knocking-in is a wet smack of slicing meat and shattering bone, like sap-wood being cut. A maul makes a fat, bruising sound like a mattock driving pegs into marsh loam or wet ice. Worse than both are the after-sounds. The screaming of the agonised, the ruined and the dying. The begging shrieks of the hurt and maimed. The hacking impacts of death knocking until the fallen stop being alive, or stop trying to rise, or stop screaming, or stop being in once piece.

Fith had just enough time to get his shirt on and loft his axe. Several other hersirs fell to arms with him, and they met the first skirmishers coming in through the walls and window-slits of the settlement, head on. The panic was up already. It was blind blundering in the dark, a reek of urine, the first nose-full of smoke.
Fith’s axe was balanced for a single hand. It was a piece of proper craft, with a high carbon head that weighed as much as a decent newborn boy. From the toe of the blade to the heel of the beard, it had a smile on it wider than a man’s hand-span, and it had kissed a whetstone just the night before.
The axe is a simple machine, a lever that multiplies the force from your arm into the force delivered by the blade. The rudiments apply whether you’re splitting wood or men.
Fith’s axe was a bone-cutter, a shield-breaker, a helm-cleaver, a death-edge, a cutter of threads. He was a hersir of the Ascommani aett, and he knew how to stand his ground.

It was a throttle-fight in the settlement itself. Fith knocked two Balts back out of the tent wall, but the tight confines were choking his swing. He knew he needed to get out. He yelled to the hersirs with him, and they pulled back.
They got out of the tents into the settlement yard, wrapped in swirling black smoke, and went eye to eye with the Balts in their spectacle-helms. It was mayhem. A free-for-all. Blades swung like windmills in a storm.
Fenk went down as a Balt axe split his left calf lengthwise. He bawled in rage as his leg gave out, useless. Seconds later, a maul knocked his head sidelong, and snapped his neck and his thread, and he flopped down on the earth, his shattered skull-bag leaking blood.
Fith drove off a Balt with a mattock, scared him back with the whistling circles of his swinging axe.
Ghejj tried to cover Fith’s flank, using the basics of shield-wall tactics. But Ghejj had not had time to collect a decent shield from the stack, just a tattered practice square from the training field. A Balt spear punctured him right through, and tore him open so thoroughly, his guts spilled out onto the snow like ropes of sausage. Ghejj tried to catch them, as though he could gather them up and put them back inside himself and everything would be all right again. They steamed in the spring air. He squealed in dismayed pain. He couldn’t help himself. He knew he was ruined unto death.
He looked at Fith as he squealed again. It wasn’t the pain. He was so angry that he was irreparably dead.

Fith put mercy into his stroke.

Fith turned away from his last picture of Ghejj, and saw that there were fingers scattered on the snow, on the yard snow churned up by scrambling and sliding feet, along with blood by the bowl-full. They were the fingers of women and children, from hands held up to protect themselves. Defensive wounds.

There on the snow, a complete hand, the tiny hand of a child, perfect and whole. Fith recognised the mark on the ring. He knew the child the hand had once belonged to. He knew the father the child had once belonged to. Fith felt the red smoke blow up in his head.

A Balt came at him, silent and intent, and Fith flexed the lever of his axe, and hooked it in, and made a ravine of the Balt’s face.
Four hersirs left. Fith, Guthox, Lern and Brom. No sign of the aett-chief. The chief was probably dead and face down in the red snow with his huscarls.
Fith could smell blood. It was overpoweringly strong, a hot copper reek spicing the freezing dawn air. He could smell gak too. He could smell Ghejj’s insides. He could smell the inner parts of him, the ruptured stomach, the yellow fat of Ghejj’s belly meat, the heat of his life.
Fith knew it was time to go.
The Upplander was in the furthest shelter. Even the Ascommani knew to keep him away from people.

The Upplander was propped up against cushions.
“Listen to me,” Fith hissed. “Do you understand me?”
“I understand you. My translator is working,” the Upplander replied, looking pale.
“The Balt are here. Twenty boat. They will knock you dead. Tell me, do you want the mercy of my axe now?”
“No, I want to live.”

“Then can you walk?”
“Perhaps,” the Upplander replied. “Just don’t leave me here. I am afraid of wolves.”

reds8n wrote:

Spoiler:

I reckon they both survive the Heresy, but it is then one of the twins that Guiliman kills in their duel, with perhaps this loss being what tips some of the legion over the edge into out and out chaos worship, a schism of sorts between those who follow the memory of the deceased brother and those who follow the surviving one.Perhaps.

reds8n wrote:It does seem that any prolonged exposure of/to chaos will ultimately lead to corruption of a sorts.

I think that well have been what our more cuddly Alpharius was implying...

Daenyathos, the next in the webstore only collectors edition type book is now available for pre order.. http://www.blacklibrary.com/Exclusive-Products/Daenyathos.html

it is £30 and will set you back £10 in postage as well.... I'm weak so my order is already in ( and I do dig the Souldrinker series a fair bit as well) ...but this really is something for the die hard fans only IMO.

Space Marines and shaping worlds

With the recent release of Space Marine as part of our new Print on Demand service we took the opportunity to chat with the author of this now legendary novel Ian Watson.

Space Marine was first published in 1993 but the manuscript was finished a couple of years before that. Do you recall the reason for this delay?

The first medieval Warhammer fiction, and the Dark Future books by Kim Newman writing as Jack Yeovil, and the first 40K fiction by me were all published by GW Books edited by David Pringle in Brighton. David Pringle edited the leading British SF magazine Interzone, and prevailed upon some of his stable of writers to provide the then-owner of Games Workshop, Bryan Ansell, with his dream come true of 'real books by real authors' set in Bryan’s beloved Warhammer domains. This arrangement came to an end in about 1991, and new management at GW spent a while before settling on the media packagers Boxtree as a new publisher. (This was long before the Black Library.) So some books got delayed, such as also the second volume of my Inquisition War trilogy, and Space Marine.

How much input did Games Workshop have into the plot of the book? Did they request any changes once they saw the finished manuscript?

The original idea behind Space Marine was that it would be a collective novel written by half a dozen authors charting the career of a particular Space Marine, a sort of linked anthology. So GW organised a get-together of potential writers at GW HQ in Nottingham, followed by rather good food and vino, to sort out a plan. I vaguely recall Kim Newman being there, and Barry Bayley, and Storm Constantine and Brian Stableford amongst others. I volunteered to do the set-up story, establishing the main characters and background, which I duly did, using Necromunda as a starting point. But then none of the other authors seemed keen on continuing with any particular urgency, so I simply carried on and finished the book.

Peering through the mists of time, I seem to recall GW feeling that maybe I should modify a few little delights in Space Marine such as the highly appropriate and much relished bum-branding episode, but they never actually instructed me or Boxtree about this, so the book was published just the way I wrote it; of which I’m jolly glad. Thus, perhaps, its popularity, or do I mean notoriety?

GW seemed quite happy at first at any rate, since a big section of Space Marine appeared in White Dwarf 165 in Sept 1993, although I do seem to recall a murmur in my ear that the section appeared because an important article on games rules wasn’t ready on time, and consequently the pages needed to be filled. Never mind! A collector’s item, issue 165 (for me, anyway)!

Did you have plans for any other Warhammer 40,000 novels beyond those that you completed?

I did have a further Inquisition War novel in mind, because by the end of Chaos Child one of my characters was insane, another was hopelessly lost, and a third was dead, and I had come to care for the characters, so I thought I should get them out of these particular scrapes, even though in the world of 40K there aren’t exactly going to be happy endings in the usual sense, and all will remain whelmed in darkness. If I were ever to write such a book, for the sake of consistency it would really need to use the tech and organisational structures of the Inquisition, Harlequin, and Chaos Child, which mightn’t delight the games designers too much since almost 20 years has gone by in the evolution of the games.

Looking back now, would you say you were still happy with Space Marine or, knowing what you know now, would you change anything about it?

Personally I’d change nothing about the book itself, since changing it would lose freshness and spontaneity. I do myself regard Space Marine as part of the Inquisition War series – and indeed it is thus in the gigantic Hungarian language omnibus edition – since my Space Marine, Lexandro d’Arquebus, plays a role in Harlequin and then a major role in Chaos Child.

What sort of background were you given before writing the four books in the series?

GW gave me all the manuals existing as of about 1990 plus printouts of material still under development, regarding Necromunda for instance, and the eldar; not to mention a stream of White Dwarfs where such material was appearing bit by bit. I was very well briefed, and in fact I still have all that material in a couple of boxes. Writing 40K required encyclopaedic study, whereas medieval Warhammer could be generic fantasy within the less enormous medieval Warhammer setting.

Did these books influence any later, original writings?

The book I wrote after the GW ones was my science fantasy epic, The Books of Mana from Gollancz (consisting of Lucky’s Harvest and The Fallen Moon) set on an alien planet inspired by Finnish mythology. This is my only epic, a rather weird one, and indeed it’s really one long book rather than a book and a sequel, for practical reasons of publishing. So I guess something epic and weird carried over from my 40K books. Fans of my 40K fiction might like the Mana books too. (Or might not.) Ah, and now I realise that the Mana epic is probably quite gameable, although I never thought about gameability when I was writing it, nor when writing the 40K books themselves.

Does it amaze you that after all these years the original copies of Space Marine are still much sought after items?

It’s gratifying in one way, as likewise are the many fan emails over the years imploring me to give a clue as to where to get a copy… But when the price on e-Bay sometimes got close to $100 I couldn’t help but feel that I was losing out somewhere… um, could that have been in my pocket? So I hail the reissue with relief!

Do you ever inject yourself into the characters you wrote?

I did my best to hallucinate myself into their roles, despite the fact that a Space Marine isn’t exactly me! On the other hand, it was nobody at all until I first wrote fiction about 40K persons since no writer had done that before, and I wasn’t using role models except perhaps various obsessed individuals in the history of, say, the 14th Century. The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, as historian Barbara Tuchmann referred to that grim epoch in the title of her book which Bryan Ansell loved and told me to read.

Who are more fanatical ­ Games Workshop fans or general SF readers?

GW fans are very enthusiastic and focussed. Games Days (at least the ones I’ve attended) are rousing events, a bit like rallies. And the calibre of art and model work is pretty amazing; this is devotion. The sort of general SF readers who go to conventions are of course enthusiastic, though generally in a milder way, and are interested in a very wide range of stuff, quite a bit of it not even SF. Journalists hoping to poke fun at geeks should avoid SF conventions since they’ll be disappointed; to find fans wearing Spock ears and such they probably need a specialist media convention. I say probably since I don’t go to media cons. I guess Star Trek and Star Wars fans might be a bit fanatical, but I shouldn’t generalise, the way journalists do. To each, his and her own.

.Thoroughly enthralled by what I'd seen so far, I continued to the Black Library studio where I found Mark Newton, who was eager to show off some of the thrilling titles that will be available at Games Day.

"Ghosts and Heretics lead the way at UK Games Day 2010," Mark said excitedly. "The story of the Word Bearers and their fall to Chaos will be uncovered for the very first time in Horus Heresy: The First Heretic, written by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. Meanwhile, Dan Abnett's been working on the Sabbat Worlds anthology which celebrates the realm of Gaunt's Ghosts. It features stories from Dan's favourite authors, including New York Times Bestselling author Graham McNeill, and features a new story starring the Ghosts. It's a collection not to be missed!

"And White Scar fans, watch out," Mark goes on. "Black Library's next Space Marine Battles novel features the sons of the Great Khan as they hunt down the titular daemon prince, in Hunt for Voldorius.

"Our limited edition chap book will really blow readers minds," Mark concluded. "It features two linked Blood Angels stories by Jim Swallow; one set within the Horus Heresy period and one within Warhammer 40,000. The chap book will have a limited run of 1500 copies, 750 on sale on the day and 750 from www.blacklibrary.com.

"And beyond the novels, we will be showcasing our plans for the digital range - fans are going to be really excited."

.Other exciting releases on the day will include: Sandy Mitchell's new hardback Ciaphas Cain novel, The Emperor's Finest; the next Warhammer Heroes story, Wulfric by CL Werner, whose next Thanquol & Boneripper novel, Temple of the Serpent is also available; Garro: Oath of Moment, the new Horus Heresy Audio Drama by James Swallow; and more Imperial Guard action with Dead Men Walking by Steve Lyons.

Darius Hinks unleashes Warrior Priest, the latest Empire Army novel; the brand new Gotrek & Felix adventure, Zombieslayer; more searing action from Nick Kyme's Salamanders in Firedrake; plus special guest author, Matt Farrer, has made it all the way from Canberra, Australia!

It does seem that any prolonged exposure of/to chaos will ultimately lead to corruption of a sorts.

Flachzange wrote:

reds8n wrote:It does seem that any prolonged exposure of/to chaos will ultimately lead to corruption of a sorts.

I think that well have been what our more cuddly Alpharius was implying...

Daenyathos, the next in the webstore only collectors edition type book is now available for pre order.. http://www.blacklibrary.com/Exclusive-Products/Daenyathos.html

it is £30 and will set you back £10 in postage as well.... I'm weak so my order is already in ( and I do dig the Souldrinker series a fair bit as well) ...but this really is something for the die hard fans only IMO.

ugh, dont get me started. i think the series is alright, but i really want this book. too bad my card wont work and its an additional 15 quid outside the uk. so, no dice for me :( its a sad day, it looks pretty hawt.

reds8n wrote: I've heard the odd titbit about this and it all sounds very promising, as GW leap into..well...the tail end of the 20TH century but hey ! It's progress.

BrookM wrote:

reds8n wrote: I've heard the odd titbit about this and it all sounds very promising, as GW leap into..well...the tail end of the 20TH century but hey ! It's progress.

They're finally doing e-books?

Temujin wrote:I just received my copy of Nemesis, which is pretty impressive since I had to get it sent to Osaka and it isn't supposed to be released until August. I also got Helsreach, Cadian Blood and Titanicus. They should keep me occupied on the endless hours of flights I'll be stuck on over the next few weeks. I hope Path of the Warrior, Throne of Lies and the Eisenhorn and Ravenor omnibuses arrive before I leave.

Alpharius wrote:BrookM - where's that new Avatar from?

That's got "Valkyrie Nose Art" written all over it!

Any chance of a link to the full pic?

Pyriel- wrote:

It does seem that any prolonged exposure of/to chaos will ultimately lead to corruption of a sorts.

Dunno, the Grey Knights seem to do allright.

Alpharius wrote:I think it really does depend on the individuals/group involved.

If you've the willpower, you *might* be able to resist!

Human nature being what it is though certainly will make it difficult!

Alpharius wrote:Annoying!

Temujin wrote:

Alpharius wrote:Annoying!

Eversor Rage!

Captain Roderick wrote:

Temujin wrote:

Alpharius wrote:Annoying!

Eversor Rage!

I somehow imagine Eversors being very petty individuals. Murdering thousands because they stubbed their toe...

Alpharius wrote:I thought they were a bit more 'programmable' than all that!

Temujin wrote:

They are programmable, as long as you don't ask them to do something that doesn't involve a crazed killing spree.

Games Day 2010 is fast approaching, and the Black Library crew are gearing up for another bonanza event; as mentioned downblog, I'm going to be there promoting my new Horus Heresy novel Nemesis, but I can now announce that two all-new releases from me will also be available on the day as well.

The first is Oath of Moment, an audio drama featuring the character of Nathaniel Garro from my previous novel The Flight of the Eisenstein; Oath picks up Garro's story some time after the events of Flight, as the ex-Death Guard is given a new mission against the backdrop of the unfolding galactic civil war. Oath of Moment will be on general release in December (and via the BL website Here), but Games Day attendees will be able to pick up advance copies early at the event.

The second is something very exclusive. Each year Black Library produce a special limited edition chapbook for Games Day, and this year it's written by me; the title is Bloodline.

The chapbook is a single tale made up of two parallel Blood Angels stories, one within the Warhammer 40,000 timeline and one set during the Horus Heresy period. The 40K story follows on from the events of my last Blood Angels novel Black Tide, and as for the Heresy story...

Bloodline will have a strictly limited run of just 1500 copies, half of which will be on sale at the event, and half from the BL website Here.

Games Day 2010 takes place on Sunday 26th September at the Birmingham NEC. Click Here for more info.

reds8n wrote:..err..how do you come to that conclusion then ?

BrookM wrote:Guess I'll be getting that chap book then, I can't stand missing a story in the HH arc.

I’m impressed by the moral neutrality. Similar to the work of Tom Lloyd, this is a book about warring factions, each of them convinced that they are in the right… To paraphrase (badly), no one has ever marched into battle thinking they were the bad guy. Mr Thorpe had that nailed. Even the proper “hero” of the book is a dodgy character – Ullsaard is convinced of his cause, but, ultimately, he is left in judgement before the reader.

…this book is hairy, gory, sweaty, shameless… and perhaps even a little bit thoughtful.

reds8n wrote: I still don't quite get you..

Captain Roderick wrote:

Temujin wrote:

They are programmable, as long as you don't ask them to do something that doesn't involve a crazed killing spree.

"Ah, Slaughtarius, as nobody needs killing today I thought perhaps some other employment might be gratifying for you. This litter of adorable kittens require feeding and grooming, please see to them...

...Ah, Slaughtarius, that is not what I meant by see to them. Please fetch a mop...

...Ah, Slaughtarius, although admittedly her hairstyle could have been described as a mop, the severed, bleeding head of my eldest daughter is not a suitable tool for cleaning up spillages..."

and so on.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

How do they assassinate through information manipulation.

Lord of battles wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:

How do they assassinate through information manipulation.

Why did Russ go to Prospero and try to kill Magnus?

BrookM wrote:

Lord of battles wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:

How do they assassinate through information manipulation.

Why did Russ go to Prospero and try to kill Magnus?

Because that was the doing of Horus.

BrookM wrote:Horus altered the message, changing the "bring back" bit into "kill them all". Besides, Magnus did not want to fight back one bit, he was actually very passive during the sacking of Prospero, up until the end that is.

Kanluwen wrote:The Assassins during the Heresy weren't organized as Temples, as such, from what I remember. They were more like the Death Cults that the Inquisition sometimes recruit from.

reds8n wrote:Yeah.. it's not a fault just of the HH series but generally the bad guys are much more interesting than the good guys...
... roll on "First Heretic" I guess.

Alpharius wrote:I do, however, look forward to more scenes where the loyalists start to kick ass and take names, especially the Primarchs...

You know, where possible, as they were often wrong-footed in the whole mess!

So, more RAVEN'S FLIGHT, only in print this time!

And really, the sequel to LEGION must be written!!!

reds8n wrote:We can hope and wait.

Artwork for the "Fall of Damnos" Space Marines Battle book.

Alpharius wrote:So, what's up with Damnos, and why did it fall?

Alpharius wrote:Yeah, but the Necrons probably got an assist from the Blood Angels that counteracted any help from the Tau...


(Yes, I am kidding!)

BrookM wrote:I'm hoping we'll get the mental raping of the Blood Angels in novel format sometime in the future.

Loyalist ass-kicking: PROSPERO BURNS. The cover says it all really.

Alpharius wrote:Yeah, but the Necrons probably got an assist from the Blood Angels that counteracted any help from the Tau...

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Alpharius wrote:Yeah, but the Necrons probably got an assist from the Blood Angels that counteracted any help from the Tau...

We're never going to let Matt "C.S. Goto" Ward live that down, are we?

BrookM wrote:Okay, Nemesis was okay, it started out strong but the end is rather.. meh.

Just Dave wrote:I'd love to get the visions book, but at £30 I'm not that loving!

However, yeah, I doubt they'll get to the Siege for a LONG time, which, frankly, is a good thing IMHO, as I love the HH series so if it keeps going then I'm a happy bunny!
So basically, you want a Horus Heresy book of tank-porn? Nice.

skrulnik wrote:

Just Dave wrote:I'd love to get the visions book, but at £30 I'm not that loving!

However, yeah, I doubt they'll get to the Siege for a LONG time, which, frankly, is a good thing IMHO, as I love the HH series so if it keeps going then I'm a happy bunny!
So basically, you want a Horus Heresy book of tank-porn? Nice.

Heh, I got the Collected Visions book with a torn dust cover for $7.50.

It is an awesome book, just for the inspiration it gives. Everytime I read a HH book, I flip through it again.
And think about making a PreHeresy army. Then it passes.

Just Dave wrote:I'd love to get the visions book, but at £30 I'm not that loving!

However, yeah, I doubt they'll get to the Siege for a LONG time, which, frankly, is a good thing IMHO, as I love the HH series so if it keeps going then I'm a happy bunny!
So basically, you want a Horus Heresy book of tank-porn? Nice.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Alpharius wrote:Yeah, but the Necrons probably got an assist from the Blood Angels that counteracted any help from the Tau...

We're never going to let Matt "C.S. Goto" Ward live that down, are we?

skrulnik wrote:its in reference to an incident in the BA codex. Necrons and BA are fighting each other.

Tyranids show, so both armies turn their guns on bugs.
After the bugs were defeated, neither side carried on the fight with each other.
The use of the phrase "impromptu alliance" got a lot of peoples' panties in a bunch, so now BA and Necrons are referred to as best of friends.

Captain Roderick wrote:Oh no but that makes PERFECT sense.

Vampire counts fight alongside skeleton warriors all the time, right?

warboss wrote:

Captain Roderick wrote:Oh no but that makes PERFECT sense.

Vampire counts fight alongside skeleton warriors all the time, right?

see, it does all make sense!

Alpharius wrote:

Say, when you put it that way...

ACK!

NO!

The answer is still "NO!"

Captain Roderick wrote:

Alpharius wrote:

Say, when you put it that way...

ACK!

NO!

The answer is still "NO!"

Ah, a 40k purist eh? I bet you never even missed the Squats...

Alpharius wrote:
Remember, I started back in the days of the gap between 1st and 2nd Edition!

Age of Darkness heralds an important new piece of the Horus Heresy story arc, so we thought it was time to drag the grumpy old warmaster out into the limelight and drop him on a cover. Lincolnshire's most heretical artist, Neil Roberts, was at the helm and once more he's gazed deep into the 30K abyss and plucked out something rather wonderful.

When are Black Library eBooks going to be available?


October!

Does that mean you will stop printing books at some point?

Absolutely not - we will continue to produce printed paper books alongside eBooks.

Will all books be available as eBooks?

We are looking at both our forthcoming releases and backlist to decide how best to make them available, nothing is set in stone at present.

In which formats will eBooks be available?

We will most probably produce our eBooks in Mobi (the Kindle format), ePub (most other eReaders such as the Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble Nook) at the very least. We are still looking into this; more info to come.

Where will I be able to buy digital products?


As with our release schedule, we have not yet confirmed the outlets through which our digital range will be available. As soon as the range is launched, it will be available to buy from this website. More outlets will be confirmed later.

How do I find out more?

Keep an eye on our website, Facebook and Twitter feed and make sure you visit us at UK Games Day for a sneak preview.

reds8n wrote:..and they didn't even mention "The ****** and ******" yet either !

Alpharius wrote:As for people hating Roboute Guilliman more now?

After that excerpt?

I'm not seeing it.

If anything, people will hate the Word Bearers more now, since they were the start of all this! Which we already knew, of course, but now we'll get the sordid details.

Though, A. D-B love him some Chaos Marines, so I'm sure they'll come out of it OK...

Well, you know, Gulliman's all like, up his own bottom like, and Lorgar actually has like some emotion, yeah like? But I fink that the reader might like, dislike Gulliman as he's all like, unemotional and like a pawn for Malcador like. I personally don't mind the chap all like yeah like, but I like expect many will like look for any excuse to criticise him.

ThirdUltra wrote:

Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out there, before the hate-train steams in.....

I think it was because:

1) They were the largest legion
2) They were extremely loyal, and there was no way they were going to be swayed
3) Roboute Guilliman's abilities were such that they, combined with his legion, would have virtually guaranteed a Loyalist victory

So by virtue of all this, the Ultramarines were the largest Legion left at the end, and basically got to write the rules thereafter...

Knights of Bretonnia
Our main instruction to cover artist Clint Langley was: 'Make sure he looks nails-hard'. Nicely done, Clint. This fella looks like he ate twelve puppies for breakfast* and sharpened his sword on his face. Knights of Bretonnia is an omnibus edition of Anthony Reynolds' Bretonnian novels, including two new novellas and a short story. It goes on sale next April.

*No puppies were harmed in the making of this cover.

Simonbarsinistr wrote:The heresy has a great number of books left before it's been told, but this conversation has got me wondering if the series is going to go on after the battle on Terra and cover the retreating traitors and regrouping loyalists. And will the do series on other major events like the age of apostasy and what not?

BrookM wrote:There was talk by Dan and Graham about doing post-Heresy novels featuring some big names. But it'll be some time until we finally get there though.

Black Library
Frequently asked questions - ebooks and audio Downloads

When are Black Library eBooks going to be available?

October!

Does that mean you will stop printing books at some point?

Absolutely not - we will continue to produce printed paper books alongside eBooks.

Will all books be available as eBooks?

We are looking at both our forthcoming releases and backlist to decide how best to make them available, nothing is set in stone at present.

In which formats will eBooks be available?

We will most probably produce our eBooks in Mobi (the Kindle format), ePub (most other eReaders such as the Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble Nook) at the very least. We are still looking into this; more info to come.

Where will I be able to buy digital products?

As with our release schedule, we have not yet confirmed the outlets through which our digital range will be available. As soon as the range is launched, it will be available to buy from this website. More outlets will be confirmed later.

How do I find out more?

Keep an eye on our website, Facebook and Twitter feed and make sure you visit us at UK Games Day for a sneak preview.

Simonbarsinistr wrote:Definately becoming tempted to get the ipad.

Simonbarsinistr wrote:Definately agree that bringing back inferno and all the old graphic novels would be good, and making new content would be awesome.

I want to get an ipad already, so the e books are just one more reason. I'd never buy a device just for books, but the Internet and ease of my itouch (that I'm writing this on right now) makes me want the bigger version to replace an aging laptop.

fullheadofhair wrote:

Heck, here is another though - why not start it up again on electronic. I would subscrive.

Bloodforged cover art
Those of you with oddly pointy teeth have probably already noticed how fangtastic the cover of Nathan Long's Bloodborn novel is. Well, if you thought that was tasty, take a peek at this. It's the cover art for the second Ulrika the Vampire novel, Bloodforged. The series artist is called Winona Nelson, and by the looks of this piece, she's really starting to get her teeth into the character. The book's not released until next summer, so there's plenty of time to find a nice silk-lined coffin to read it in.

Lord of battles wrote:
As with our release schedule, we have not yet confirmed the outlets through which our digital range will be available. As soon as the range is launched, it will be available to buy from this website. More outlets will be confirmed later.

Black Library wrote:I am afraid that at present we do not have any plans to release our
audio dramas via audible.

pixelpusher wrote:Seriously, I want to talk to whomever is doing "graphic design" over at Black Library. Checking if AV / VA is kerned properly is one of the first things you do when using any typeface. I know it's a "minor detail", but it's not like it's the only newbie mistake they've done. >_<

Ruckdog wrote:Here is a link if, like me, you had no earthly idea what Pixelpusher was talking about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning

BrookM wrote:There was talk by Dan and Graham about doing post-Heresy novels featuring some big names. But it'll be some time until we finally get there though.

pixelpusher wrote:Hey, kerning is serious stuff!

I was actually reading Helsreach earlier today, and they make so many blatant mistakes in the text, which in turn just makes it harder to read.
The A/V issue in the cover was just such a good proof of Black Librarys inability to typograph a book properly. Which is weird since they're actually making... books. And it's such basic stuff. The devil is in the details!!!

(Ok, I admit, I'm not only a 40K nerd. I take my job way too seriously as well.)

I lol'd. Thanks

pixelpusher wrote:TNot to mention the GW products. I was actually expecting the collectors edition of WHFB to be very well typographed since they splashed out on the fancy paper and all. But no, there was the same "desktop publishing"-typography in it as is in the codexes and regular rulebooks.

Ruckdog wrote: It is interesting that a obstensibly professional publishing outfit is making these kinds of errors, isn't it?

Hi XXXXX,

Many thanks for pointing this out, whilst we do try our best to catch
such typographical errors some do get past us occasionally as we are
only human! The offer of the book is very generous of you and we do
appreciate the gesture.

Sincerely

Ragnar Karlsson

Flachzange wrote:Cover art for the next SM book victories of the space marines

Flachzange wrote:Cover art for the next SM book victories of the space marines

Flachzange wrote:Cover art for the next SM book victories of the space marines

Just Dave wrote:

Flachzange wrote:Cover art for the next SM book victories of the space marines

Stepping away from the horror that is Kerning, I think that is a quite nice looking cover, maybe a bit cartoony for my liking however...
Have the Space Marine Battles books been any good, because I hope they can do the Grey Knights justice.

Flachzange wrote:Cover art for the next SM book victories of the space marines
http://www.blacklibrary.com/Images/BL/blog/2010/08/victoriesOTSM.jpg

Generalstoner wrote:Just finished Throne of Lies audiobook and it was not bad. Interesting to see further insight on what drives the VIII Legion 10000 years after the Heresy. Now onto Fireborn.

As for the Print on Demand books, I am hoping to see the Sabbat Worlds Crusade books reprinted.

James Swallow wrote: Level Up! = Author +1
It is with no small amount of pride and some certain degree of smugness that I am pleased to announce my new Horus Heresy novel Nemesis has, with steath and guile, assasinated its opposition and made its way on to the New York Times Bestseller list, following in the trail blazed by m'colleague Graham McNeill with his novel A Thousand Sons.

Aaron Dembski-Bowden is a new author for The Black Library, Games Workshop’s publishing arm. Though only three novels into his Black Library writing career, he has fast developed a devoted following of both die-hard Warhammer 40K fans and people only recently brought into the fold. His radical approach to writing and his outspoken and uncensored view of both the 40K world and the challenges of writing within it have sparked discussion and controversy in equal measure.

His standing as a fan of the very world in which he writes is for me the key ingredient to what I can only describe as his meteoric rise as a writer. This is, of course, as an aside to his prodigious talent. Every book he’s written demonstrates a deep understanding of the 40K universe and leaves the reader in no doubt that this is a writer who loves the world he’s writing in. For a hardcore fan like myself, one amongst millions, there can be no greater reassurance.

As an unashamed fanboy, I’m very grateful that he took some time out of his very busy writing schedule to talk to me about his work and the world of the 41st Millenium.

Phillip Sobel: What part has writing played in your life before Black Library?

Aaron Dembski-Bowden: I’ve been writing full-time pretty much since I left university. In a lot of ways, I was dead lucky to hit the ground running like that. My insane good fortune isn’t something I’m blind to.

I knew I wanted to be a novelist eventually, but “eventually” is a powerful word. I had it in my head that I should bounce around first and try to get into all the other areas I was interested in (especially if they, ahem, paid more). I hopped from RPG to RPG, then dabbled a little in video games, until making up my mind that none of those were exactly the life-changing thrill-rides I’d hoped they’d be.

When I hit my late 20s, I figured it was time to stop delaying. That was when I started hitting fingers against keys in a slightly more serious manner. It was also when I realised I could probably make a living from writing novels. I mean, before that realisation, I’d kind of laboured under the fear that novelists were only self-sustaining creatures in middle age and onwards.

So the terror of abject poverty kept me at a distance for a while. Y’know, because I’m a coward.

I know you’ve been involved in the Games Workshop hobby for a while, but what made you take the jump from hobbyist/fan to writer?

Where Warhammer 40,000 was concerned, it was (again…) just luck. I was working on a video game with a couple of guys who – among their bajillions of other projects – also let Black Library publish some of their fiction.

That was kind of like a bolt from the blue. I’d read 40K novels before, in fact, I already had a massive mancrush on Dan Abnett and his work, but I’d never even considered writing anything but my own original fiction. Getting to play around for a while in a license I’d loved for 20 years was just too awesome, and felt way too unlikely. It’d never even crossed my mind to try.

Glad I did, though. Another example of how you should dive right in, instead of waiting for ages and hoping you’ll grow some balls.

The 40K universe has held me enthralled for the best part of two decades, as well, What is it about this universe that so inspires you?

I’ll try to keep this brief. 40K has, at its core, a simple dystopian premise: “What if everything that could possibly go wrong in the future actually did go wrong?”

It’s a setting like no other, where every Fantasy and Sci-Fi trope is rusted, ruined, and tarnished.

The human race has reached out to explore the stars, but all we’ve found is a galaxy at the mercy of advanced alien races that are inexorably driving mankind to extinction. We’re capable of making interstellar cruisers the size of small cities, but they are born from forgotten technology, powered by thousands of slaves, and are all devoted to an endless war. Humanity is on the edge of evolutionary ascension, but it feeds its psychically-gifted souls into the tyrannical engines of the Golden Throne, to power the machinery – and the dictator – that makes space travel possible. Society spans millions of worlds, but most of them are hellholes full of nameless citizens living lives of indentured slavery and drudgery.

We’ve raised unbelievably huge armies…yet we feed them into the ceaseless meat-grinder wars against the enemies attacking the edges of our failing empire. Most unique of all, mankind has perfected the most incredible genetic engineering, but this most precious of lore is used entirely on stolen children to create an autistic warrior caste that live their lives in war.

I mean, it’s 38,000 years in the future, but invention – the very act of societal progress – is heresy.

The desperation in all of that inspires the hell out of me. Yeah, you’ll get some who are in it for war porn with chainsaw swords, and that definitely has its place. Chainswords are impractical but awesome, after all. But for me, I’m fascinated in the human stories that rise from trying to live in that decadent, dying empire’s boundaries.

For over twenty years the 40K universe has grown and evolved together with a legion of loyal fans, each with their own unique take on the details. How have you approached this particular minefield and what has been the overall fan response to your ‘take’?

I’ve been very, very lucky.

Like you said, everyone has their own perspective on the setting, and I’ve been fortunate in the sense that pretty much all fan response to my stuff has been either that they agreed with my angle, or liked it enough to smile at book signings and not stab me in the throat.

Which, by the way, I totally appreciate. Thanks, guys.

I think a lot of fan reaction comes down to what you do once you’re in the sandpit. If you take all the toys and break them to bits, you’re going to piss off the fandom. There’s a fine line (and one that’s easy to cross) where originality in a narrative becomes a grind against established canon. When that happens, it’s a little like that how that fat guy died in Jurassic Park. You can see people smiling at you, but you can tell they’re thinking about what your blood tastes like, and any second they might pop up a neck-frill and spit gross black ooze into your eyes.

The flip side of the coin is to come at it from a new angle that people find new enough to be original, but intriguing and familiar enough to be comfortable. But that’s true in any writing, in any genre, when an author is looking for their niche. It’s just more obvious when writing stuff in an established universe.

I’ve mentioned the 40K universe’s long development and consequent depth. When writing your novels, have you tried to make the books accessible to anyone, or have you written for devoted fans?

This is a tough call. I’m not going to lie, a lot of my stuff so far has presumed a certain level of foreknowledge, but I think that’s probably the wrong way to do it. I’ve stopped that recently – it always made me uncomfortable doing it, but I was new and still finding my feet. I like the sense of completion you get from a novel that doesn’t assume anything. Trust your readership, absolutely. But don’t assume they’ve wasted (uh, I mean “spent”) the last 20 years of their life reading the exact same stuff as you.

That’s not cool. It’s dystopian sci-fi and it rocks for that fact, there’s no need to screw around with the formula.

I think that presumption has harmed a lot of 40K fiction in the past, leading it to be overlooked in the wider community’s eyes. That’s changing now, so it’s a killer time to be part of everything.

Based on your recent (at time of writing) online conversation with Black Library stalwart, Dan Abnett, it seems as if he’s become a mentor of sorts to you. What have you learned from that relationship and have there been any insurmountable differences?

Oh, man. I need to be careful here.

I’ll never be entirely casual around Dan. I can tell that bugs him a little – he’s a modest guy, very grounded and sane for someone with sales figures that size, and was only flattered by my trembling praise for about 3 seconds. But he’s one of my favourite authors, so them’s the breaks.

Again, I’ve been extremely lucky with how my publisher treats me. I was invited into the inner circle (the Horus Heresy team) before my first novel was even published. Beyond the obvious ways that’s been awesome, it also had the effect of the veterans seeing just how absolutely terrified I was. Like slightly-amused wolves, they circled me, scented my fear, and were pretty gentle with me when they welcomed me into the pack.

Jim Swallow and Dan Abnett have been more useful and more appreciated, than just as mentors. I think we shuffled fairly quickly into being pals, which is more down to them being decent human beings than me being easy to hang out with. We discuss each others’ work, but that’s actually the least of what goes on. They’ve got the funniest, best stories about the industry you’ve ever heard. They know everyone. They have educated opinions on everything, and they can actually voice them without insulting people, which is a skill I’ve never learned. They’ve written their own fiction, and they’ve written fiction in every freaking universe you can imagine.

Now, unlike me, they carry themselves with dignity and professionalism, while still being cool and interesting behind closed doors. I appreciate that, and the marketing division at my publisher is always keen to point out that this is how I should be acting. They say “What Would Dan Abnett Do?” as a mantra for me to stop turning up to signings hung over, or wearing sunglasses indoors, or whatever else I’ve done that particular week.

I mean, I don’t actually listen, but it’s good to have role models.

Unlike many of the old school writers, you seem to engage with your fans very directly by participating in online discussions, most notably on the Heresy-Online forums. Would you describe the experience as a positive one or are you slowly coming around to the old school approach to the internet–i.e., steer clear?

Seriously, there’s a reason they warn authors against interacting too much. Actually, several reasons.

Firstly, it takes time. feth me, it takes ages. I reply to about 10% of my private messages, forum posts, blog replies, Facebook posts, and whatever else out there. And that’s considered serious interaction compared to a lot of writers. In a good week, I’ll reply to 20% of it, but that’s face-meltingly rare and means I’m trying to avoid doing any writing.

Secondly, it’s the internet. The internet, as we’re all well aware, is a shitpit of faceless, deliberate obtuseness, where people miss the point with ball-aching regularity, and seem to be born with the desire to start fights based on their own primitive opinions. I know this because I have a bajillion primitive opinions myself, and I like to annoy Star Trek fans by voicing them in tones of sneering condescension.

Now, where I’m concerned, 99% of the time I get positive responses and the kind of feedback that borders on overwhelming. I wouldn’t trade my fan response for anyone’s. But there’s always an annoying side. Once in while, you come across That Guy who says your writing is “gak because X doesn’t do Y”. And it’s almost always down to his perspective of the license’s ‘loose’ canon. (Loose cannon? Get it? I kill me.)

It’s not that your writing is actually bad. It’s not even usually that he hated the book up until that point. It’s that he “hates this novel” because of some minor point of canon that he doesn’t see the same way you do. It doesn’t matter that his source is outdated or was retconned 10 years ago. It doesn’t matter that you have 800 sources to back yourself up, and 6,000,000 people telling him he’s insane. You were “wrong” to him, and he. Will. Not. Shut. The. feth. Up. About. It.

Think of the veterans who have 12 times more novels out than me. Think of the writers that deviate further from the canon, by choice or otherwise. Now you can likely see why they avoid getting into this jazz online.

There’s a debate online that has raged for ‘millennia’ regarding the quality or status of tie-in fiction. Where do you stand on this hotly debated topic?

The debate here is slowly dwindling in professional circles, but I think it’ll always exist. It’s not something I concern myself with all that much, at least not to the degree a lot of the Big Names in licensed fiction do. Part of that is because I’ll do more than licensed fiction soon enough: my career isn’t likely to be “a licensed fiction author” much past age 30, it’ll be “an author”, who sometimes loves to write licensed fiction. Neil Gaiman did episodes of Babylon 5 and Dr. Who. Michael Moorcock is writing a Dr. Who novel. Most authors who write for licenses also do their own original fiction at some point. Many authors who do their own stuff will also show their own take within a license at some point. Swings and roundabouts. Depends what you like.

However, I think a certain bias lies in the fact that plenty of them don’t do anything more than licensed fiction. They remain purely tie-in writers, and to the layman’s eye, that can look like “they’re only comfortable writing in other people’s universes”. That’s a shame, and it’s bs. People don’t write in licenses because it’s easier. They do it because they love the licenses. Do you like Buffy? What if Joss Whedon asked you to write an episode of a new season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Do you like Star Wars? What if George Lucas asked you to write a novel about the Clone Wars? Wouldn’t you be thrilled and honoured? Is it a sin to like something, and to add to it, if you didn’t gestate and breed the entire thing yourself? It’s not like it’s any easier to write a whole novel just because the guns and planets already have names.

When I was asked to be on the Horus Heresy team, I didn’t think “I’ll be judged for writing in an established setting”, I thought “Jesus Christ, I get to write about something I’ve loved for 20 years.”

But I digress.

Writing for a license rather than publishing your own stuff comes equipped with irritating prejudices. It’s seen as easier to get into, and you know what? I’m sure that in some licenses, that’s absolutely true. In others, it’s a publishing house like any other. What I find interesting is that in no other arm of publishing is a blanket prejudice applied. I’ve seen plenty of people say “All Star Wars novels are badly written” (or whatever). You don’t see “All Random House novels are badly written” or “Penguin publishes nothing but bad writers”. You have loads of very skilled, very good writers publishing their work in the Star Wars setting, but they often get tarred with the same brush. The sins of the least among them will stain the talents of even the best. Tie-in fiction gets a lot of that.

I’m not a fan of most novels set in licenses I like. I admit that. I’m not big on most Star Wars novels. I’m not even a fan of most Warhammer 40,000 novels. But I don’t look at everything Harper Collins, Penguin (or whomever else) releases and say “Everything with this publisher’s logo on sucks”, because I recognise they have dozens/hundreds/thousands of different authors. A publisher is an engine to release work. Not an arbiter of quality.

Tie-in fiction lacks that crucial defence. It’s all lumped together, considered the junk food of literature. Some of that is justified – standards have been low in a lot of licenses, as luring decent writers past the prejudice has been hard. But a lot of it is just bs, and part of the whole writing deal.

I know that this question is an author interview regular, but I have to ask: who would you say have been your main inspirations as a writer?

Um.

Inspiration is a strange beast. I have several authors that I absolutely adore – I have their work on eternal preorder, and take a day off with every release to read their stuff immediately – but I don’t really want to write anything like they do. They already write like that, after all. They do it better than I would, anyway. I write like me.

My favourite author is Robin Hobb, for her detailed, immersive worlds and ludicrously-, painfully-, deliciously-involving characters. No one makes you feel someone’s life story like Robin Hobb does, and her worldbuilding is so nuanced, subtle and careful that I can’t help but fall in love with everything she does.

Conrad Williams is a British horror author whose mind is forever zigging and zagging to the coolest, darkest places. His work is both vicious and surreal, which is incredibly difficult to combine, and resonates with me for months after every book. When I’m reading his stuff, I go back several times a chapter to read a previous paragraph, because I’m amazed at how it all makes a sick kind of sense. A dead man appearing in your bedroom to watch you sleep, after having been buried under the floorboards. A tumour under your armpit that wriggles and contains the embryonic queen female of a race of monsters. Ugh. He makes weird, wacky stuff very gritty, realistic, and personal. That’s the trick. I don’t usually even like horror, but his prose is incredible and keeps me hooked.

Dan Abnett needs no explanation, but it’s my interview, so I’m doing it anyway. Dan turns a poetic phrase in a war story like no one else, and makes you care (or hate…) characters as well as any writer that ever lived. That’s one of the cruxes of brilliant writing, and he never seems to struggle with it. He also writes some ferocious battle scenes, by focusing on the human elements among the surreal madness and insane scope of it all. That’s how you write classic fiction. Dan’s practically the only writer I’d listen to when it comes to offering writing advice. When he talks, common sense outweighs my arrogance, so I shut up and listen. I sent him an early draft of The First Heretic, and he sent it back with the suggestion I look at it again, and try to chill out and write like I usually do, rather than writing with stage fright. That helped immeasurably. “Kick in the door and take no prisoners”, he said. That changed my entire perception of the book, and I rewrote huge chunks of it.

Neil Gaiman is…Neil Gaiman. Nothing I say can do that guy justice. He has the most amazing vision, and takes his ideas to the most amazing places. He’s a genius. I feel slowed just talking about him. I feel pretty much the same way about David Gemmell. There’s a reason he’s considered the king of heroic fantasy, and that’s because he earned it through telling great stories.

Edgar Allen Poe is, y’know, dead. But he’s not included here as a nod to the classics – I genuinely go back and read his work every year, the same way I re-read Frank Herbert’s Dune, and a bunch of Arthur Miller plays. I also know a bunch of Poe’s poems by heart, which I thought was really clever until I saw Tom Hanks do it in The Ladykillers remake, and now I feel like a copying donkey-cave.

What are you working on at the moment and what projects are you pursuing for future publication?

I hate this part. The part where it’s so obviously totally an advert for your future stuff. This is the part where it always feels crass, and now I’m doing it, because I have to. Most authors use their blogs for this kind of thing, but as you might know, I use mine to discuss why I’d join COBRA (and other fictitious cartoon terrorist organisations), or to judge the merits of 1980s theme tunes.

I just finished The First Heretic, my first Horus Heresy novel, detailing how the Legions begin their descent into Chaos. It’s essentially the story of the very first Possessed Astartes, and how he witnesses (and contributes to) the events that lead to the greatest civil war in the history of the species. That’s coming out in October/November, as far as I know.

Currently, I’m heading into Blood Reaver, the sequel to Soul Hunter. (Marketing totally annihilated my preferred names for these books, by the way: Birthright and In Midnight Clad.)

Blood Reaver focuses much more on getting behind the eyes and into the skull of the main characters: how they see the world, how they see their ignoble, endless defeats, and so on. In the way Act II is often the darkest part of any play, that’s what happens here. Talos is much more driven, and sees that it’s no longer enough just to survive. The galaxy hates them, and everything is going to hell. It’s time to deal with that, else they’ll all die in silence, forgotten and irrelevant, starved of the vengeance they profess to desire.

Happy days ahead, clearly.

More from Aaron, including book excerpts, further musings on his work and why he’d join C.O.B.R.A, can be found on his blog at http://aarondembskibowden.wordpress.com

Alpharius wrote:I probably won't be able to get THRONE OF LIES, but I am curious to know what the 'motivation' of the Night Lords truly is.

Because as much as I enjoyed SOUL HUNTER, their motivations were pretty reed thin in there.

Can someone boil it down and spoiler-vision it for me?

Kanluwen wrote:It's not clear-cut as them all having one motivation.

There's three factions: one trying to keep things the way Night Haunter had them, one trying to make a new way without the Haunter, and then one saying screw it all let's do everything we possibly want and blame Chaos!

BrookM wrote:Somewhere along the way, they went from misguided "liberators" whom have fallen to Chaos due to guile and lies to cardboard cut-out villains who only kill because they feel like it or their gods tell them to because it pleases them. I'm really hoping that the motivation of the choices behind the Alpha Legion are explained sooner or later.

Alpharius wrote:

BrookM wrote:Somewhere along the way, they went from misguided "liberators" whom have fallen to Chaos due to guile and lies to cardboard cut-out villains who only kill because they feel like it or their gods tell them to because it pleases them. I'm really hoping that the motivation of the choices behind the Alpha Legion are explained sooner or later.

Yeah, me too!

But to the best of my knowledge I think the most we've heard about that is something along the lines of Dan Abnett saying "I'd like to write it."

And meanwhile, we've already had TWO Dark Angel books...