The Emperor's Will is a sampling of art from across the 25 years of the game Warhammer 40,000 AD and it's various RPG and card game spin offs. It focuses on the Emperor's human servants such as Inquisitors, Arbites and tech priests rather than the daemons and Space Marines seen in other art books.

Most of it has been seen before, but there are a few previously unpublished pieces by Games Workshop's Art Director John Blanche. Blanche's work makes up about a quarter of the images with the rest from Jes Goodwin, David Gallagher and other artists. I'd name them but one frustration is the lack of proper credits for each image.

Another frustration is the complete lack of design notes, explanations or even much organization. Artists, eras, games and themes are mixed together willy nilly. We have an assassin on one page, hive gangers on the next.

On the plus side the book includes some rare images from the Inquisitor game and from Confrontation, the unproduced predecessor to Necromunda.

And the art really is good.

But other art books like Jes Goodwin's Gothic and Eldrich do much more to provide context and information. It's a shame the Black Library didn't put more time and effort into making this as informative as it is good looking.