cheywood

It seems like we’ve had a number of titles leaked recently, so I thought I’d provide a list of everything we officially/unofficially know about: Fulgrim: The Perfect Son - up for preorder Era of Ruin - June - Amazon The Silent King - July - Amazon Void Exile - August - Amazon Grotsnik: Da Mad Dok - July - Amazon (special edition maybe sooner?) RS Wilt Scions novel - September -Amazon Ferren Areios novel - September - Amazon The Remnant Blade (Night Lords?) by Mike Vincent - leaked in recent short story collection - date unknown Richard Swan novel - mentioned in his recent AMA - date unknown Veterans of the Fall (Kasrkin?) by William Crowe - mentioned in White Dwarf - date unknown (thanks @skylerboodie) I think that about covers everything? In my opinion it’s not an overwhelmingly exciting slate, but there’s a lot to look forward to.

Reid’s biggest issues are lack of scale and an excessive use of action scenes as filler. Her prose and characterization are generally good. Hopefully this fixes the issues I think most of us had with her SoB works.

I feel the same, but Hell’s Last is providing some degree of comfort. It’s Hill’s best work yet in my mind and an excellent guard novel. The Minka Lesk series is clearly an homage to Gaunt’s Ghosts in many ways (the focus on a single regiment, the large number of characters and varied settings, the bleak and relatively grounded tone) and this time I think it comes close to Abnett’s work in quality, even more so than Traitor Rock. I’ve been putting on jungle sounds in the background and it’s a joy to read. Hopefully the back half is as good as the front.

There’a also MacNiven’s next Carcharodons novel and RS Wilt’s Scions novel.

Really hoping we get Ashes of Cadia Jude Reid and not Sisters of Battle Jude Reid for Fulgrim. Usually BL authors improve noticeably after their first novel, but I couldn’t even finish Morvenn Vahl.

Certainly an unexpected result. I liked Vrak more than most, but it’s not even in my top 5 for the year. Just goes to show how most of BL’s readership puts little weight on traditional markers of literary quality.

In general BL doesn’t put out many books I automatically skip these days. They’ve cut down on the generic bolter porn and most of the current authors are decent enough. There are some things that aren’t to my taste, like an emphasis on small scale, semi-YA stories (looking at you, Kloster) but by and large the days of endless space marine battles and fan-fiction level prose are over. With all that said, you’d have to pay me to read this new Farsight novel.

Book of the year is either Interceptor City or Elemental Council. Went with the latter since Abnett already has all the laurels and Van Nguyen deserves to be recognized.

I don’t think it’s a proofreading issue or that anything else is coming. Kyme’s just a fitting person to interview because he’s a BL author and this is the BL ‘celebration’.

Yet the number of titles per year remains relatively consistent. I wish GW would recognize that BL novels aren’t as hype based as GW products. The game and miniatures are a relatively social experience as far as nerdy hobbies go. You need to retain a certain constancy of engagement or else people fall off because they have fewer friends to play with, fewer events to go to, fewer people to talk about it with online/in person and fewer products to buy. Books are different. I love discussing them on here, but that’s not why I (or most people) read them. We read them for the story itself. No others need be involved. Thus marketing is less about retaining constant attention and more just about ensuring people can easily know what’s coming and have books available to buy.

Two new books? Not exactly much of a Celebration. I’m reasonably excited for Hell’s Last but was hoping we’d get more.

It’s usually right at the end of February, so not surprising they haven’t announced yet. If we don’t hear about it this weekend I’d start to suspect a delay.

Two weeks from tomorrow I believe.

Decided to read Wilt’s Scion short story, Eradicant. It was clearly commissioned to show off the Aquilons and World Eaters, but I think Wilt does an excellent job telling an interesting enough story within the limits of an extremely familiar concept. The characters are engaging/distinct and the prose is good. The action feels punchy too. The Scions are written as exaggerated versions of contemporary SOF, which makes sense because Wilt is an ex US-Army officer. I think his novel will be enjoyable for those who like that style of IG story. 8.5/10

If you’re looking for ‘realistic’ military dialogue that doesn’t feel overly filled with machismo and aggression I would check out Elemental Council. Yeah it’s about the Tau but Van Nguyen is a USMC veteran and it shows on the page. It’s also just a really good read.