eBooks?; Imperial Glory Cover Art; Prospero Tour Dates; Pre-signed God King
Regular readers will have noticed that there are no new eBooks to download today. I’m going to blame it on the snow because I’ve no idea what the phrase ‘invalid data-packet’ means. Anyway, we’ll have a bunch of new eBooks for you to download on Monday. Normal eBook service will be resumed next Friday.

Right then, on with the cool stuff - Clint Langley’s fantastic piece of artwork for Richard Williams’ Imperial Glory.


In other news, Dan Abnett will be out and about in January to celebrate the launch of his latest Horus Heresy title, Prospero Burns. He’ll be in Games Workshop Hobby Centres up and down the UK, ready and waiting to sign your books and chat about all things Heresy. Though, he probably won’t mind if you want to talk about Gaunt’s Ghosts or any of his other books either. You’ll find a list of where and when he’ll be signing below.


Date Time Location
Saturday 8th January
10am - Noon
Games Workshop Nottingham

Saturday 8th January
2pm - 4pm
Games Workshop Meadow Hall

Sunday 9th January
11am - 1pm
Games Workshop Leeds

Saturday 22nd January
11am - 1pm
Games Workshop Thurrock

Saturday 22nd January
3pm - 5pm
Games Workshop Bluewater



Yesterday, we shackled Graham McNeill to a desk and ‘convinced’ him to sign a stack of God King. So, as an extra treat, there will be a limited amount of signed copies of God King available from the Hobby Centres that Dan is signing at.

Tired and broken by war, the men of the Brimlock Eleventh Imperial Guard are a force on the verge of collapse. Having been stretched across the galaxy by their loyalty to the Emperor, they are presented with one final battle that will allow them reward they all seek: to colonise the distant world of Voor and live out the rest of their days in peace. All that stands in their way is a force of savages – a plague of feral orks that has spread across the planet. But can the Brimlock’s battered bodies and minds hold up to this greenskin invasion?

reds8n wrote:Yeah, Relentless was cracking and I loved Reiksguard

Tired and broken by war, the men of the Brimlock Eleventh Imperial Guard are a force on the verge of collapse. Having been stretched across the galaxy by their loyalty to the Emperor, they are presented with one final battle that will allow them reward they all seek: to colonise the distant world of Voor and live out the rest of their days in peace. All that stands in their way is a force of savages – a plague of feral orks that has spread across the planet. But can the Brimlock’s battered bodies and minds hold up to this greenskin invasion?

Sounds good to me.

reds8n wrote:.. didn't read page 47 eh ?

New eBooks; Graham McNeill on BL TV; High Elf Artwork
As promised on Friday, we’ve some new eBooks for you to download today. And not just any eBooks but a fine selection of firsts. There’s Gaunt’s Ghosts: First and Only, the first book Black Library ever printed; Bill King’s Trollslayer, the first book in the Gotrek and Felix series; and The Daemon’s Curse by Dan Abnett and Mike Lee, which is the first book in the Dark Blade series.


Also today, episode 16 of Black Library TV. This time we catch up with Graham McNeill as he reminisces about 2010, a year in which he won the David Gemmell Legend award and featured on the New York Times best-seller list. He also talks a bit about his forthcoming High Elves novel, Sons of Ellyrion, and drops some hints about his next Horus Heresy novel.

Spoiler:

An astropath eh ? Who'd have thought or mentioned that eh ?

Speaking of Sons of Ellyrion, check out this great picture by Marek Okon, which will feature on the book’s cover.





As Graham mentioned in the interview, Defenders of Ulthuan (the prequel to Sons of Ellyrion) is getting re-released with a new cover.





And here’s both covers as they were initially drawn – as one fantastic piece of art.

Chris Wright's Sketches for 'Battle of the Fang'
Our studio manager Darius was sifting through his drawer today and came across Chris Wraight’s sketches for Battle of the Fang. Here, take a look.




Space Marine Battles books are different from our other books in that they contain force diagrams, maps and such. Normally what happens is that the author will sketch (in some cases doodle) roughly what they envisage going into the book and then our art department turns them into what eventually appears in the book. The drawings also provide the author with a handy resource, helping them to visualise the story.

Battle of the Fang is out net summer, while the latest addition to the Space Marine Battles series, Gav Thorpe’s The Purging of Kadillus, can be pre-ordered now.

Exclusive Age of Darkness Extract


From the short story ‘Forgotten Sons’, by Nick Kyme:
Heka’tan was naked but for a pair of training fatigues. He had prepared the ash and the brazier. He had observed the rites and warmed the branding iron. The flame was born in the cradle, and within its blazing grasp he found purity and a sense of truth. Repressed memory came with it…

The dropship was taking fire from all sides. Much of its armour plating was punched through by lascannon blasts and several of its heavy bolter armaments were destroyed. Heat emanated from the interior. Shadows lurked there, of broken bodies silhouetted a visceral red from the incendiary fires inside. The guts of the ship lay strewn across the Isstvan plane where a cloying fug of smoke roiled. Hot tracer whickered through air screaming with the discharge of bolters and heavy cannon. Somewhere in the distance, by a shrouded ridgeline, an explosion blossomed.

‘Ta… king… vy… ire…’ The broken vox report crackled in Heka’tan’s ear.

‘Gravius! Is that you, brother?’

‘Affir… mative, brother… aptain…’

‘Fall back immediately and assume defensive postures.’

Around him, the fight was intensifying. Gunfire, scores of overlapping bolter bursts, rose to a deafening frenzy. Enemy cohorts were massing from the east and west, and advancing on their position.

Enemy cohorts.

The notion was insane, a crazed nightmare brought to life on a dead world with only the dead to witness it. For surely, that’s what they all were.

‘Brother… aptain…’ There was a pause not caused by the static interference.

Figures were resolving through the artificial fog. Their hulking forms wore the colour of hard steel, of grey unyielding metal. Iron.

The Urgall Depression was no place for a last stand. The ravine resembled a charnel field and not a place about which great deeds were sung. There would be no glory face down in the blood-drenched tundra slain by one’s own brothers.

Gravius continued and for once the link was clean. ‘What’s happening?’

Heka’tan had three hundred and sixty-two Astartes left in his command. They had forged a ring around the shattered dropship. Over half that number again was forever entombed inside their vessel, lost before the fight had even begun, a fight the brother-captain didn’t understand.

‘Assume defensive postures,’ he answered, for want of something better, something that made sense.

The line of iron opened up its weapons. Fusillade met fusillade as both sides engaged, hundreds of muzzle flares ripping up the smoke like jagged knives of hot light.

It was but a skirmish in a maelstrom of death. This was a battle like no other. It was a reckoning. It was a show of force. But above all else it was fratricide on an epic scale.

Heka’tan’s words to Gravius sounded hollow even to him. ‘Hold out as long as you can.’

It was over. Even before he’d seen the armoured column advancing behind the infantry, Heka’tan knew it. He took a round to the shoulder, the explosive impact nearly tearing off the pad and spinning him. A second struck him in the chest and he staggered.

One of his own, Ikon he thought, died to a throat wound. More followed, too numerous and rapid to count. Apothecaries were a pointless luxury during this nascent massacre. The air shimmered with the heat of shells passing so close that some struck one another and deviated from their original targets. Above, Thunderhawks and Stormbirds tried to affect an escape. Heka’tan saw several in the livery of the Raven Guard and Iron Hands plunge from the smoke-blackened sky like fire-wreathed comets. Distant explosions announced their destruction.

Bleak was not the word for their chances.

Fatalism, yes, but capitulation was not amongst Heka’tan’s emotional vocabulary. Sons of Nocturne were born of sterner stock. They came from the earth and its fiery heart-blood. They would not go to Mount Deathfire with the foe unbloodied.

‘Burn them!’

This is the hub/page for all the Nominees for the 2010/11 David Gemmell LEGEND Award!

We will be listing and linking to the Nominees as the information comes in from the various publishers worldwide...

...and the first ones in...

( and if one scrolls down.. )



BLACK LIBRARY:

THORPE, Gav - Shadow King