Black Library Books of 2019

[StrangerOrders]

There have been an awful lot of books, true, but what I didn’t mention earlier is how damn good so many of them have been/how much I’ve enjoyed reading them.

 

Narrowly missing out- Spears of The Emperor (listened to the audio this year, read the LE last, loved the book but *hated* the audio purely because of the awfully bad ‘African’ accents used for the Celestial Lions), Valdor (really good, but shared too many of it’s good points with another book to fully stand out), Requiem Infernal (deserves a reappraisal as part of a Coil re-read, still really good), Apocalypse (really good fun, some outstanding passages), Terminal Overkill (fantastically grim) and Apocalypse (great fun, some *amazing* passages).

Glad someone else liked Apocalypse, I honestly think it is a bit of a hidden gem.

 

I really like Reynolds takes on philosophy and theology, even in the perverse lens of Chaos. I kind of love how he has more or less established the different gradients of piety among the Chaos Marines. ADB is fantastic but he and other writers seem to have a somewhat edgy understanding of theology at times (or that of those whose experience with large organized religions is limited to the more zany and newer ones). Reynold's is really pleasant to me (in a grotesque 'literally satan' fashion). 

 

Spears accent was passable if they were deliberately going for a really cheerful Nigerian, save for the somewhat slow cadence. African is a pretty wide spectrum in fairness so it might have been accidentally correct, sort of like saying 'european' accent. There are so bloody many that you have a great chance to be accidentally correct. 

 

It also really worked for me in the sense that I liked to imagine the Chapter Master as a really cheerful soul. Namely because I can't fathom how he could function in his stated history without it, and because I think we are all on the verge of a collective stroke from overdosing on Grim!Marines.

 

Weirdly enough, I found the accent on the Spears to be painful at times. I think the intent was something vaguely celtic as spoken through a very highly fever dream from the 70s. I've actually joked that the Spears clearly eat sacred mushrooms as part of their morning ritual.

 

I need to read Valdor though, can;t wait for it to come out. I've invested too much time debating in its thread not to

Edited December 13, 2019 by StrangerOrders

[aa.logan]

 

Wait, Slaves to Darkness was 2019? Definitely adding that to my list as well, in that case.

 

 

2018. The Hardback was out in June 2018, followed by Titandeath, and finally The Buried Dagger in February 2019. Slaves to Darkness is waaay disqualified this time.

Large format paperback was published in 2019, therefore the it is eligible

[aa.logan]

 

There have been an awful lot of books, true, but what I didn’t mention earlier is how damn good so many of them have been/how much I’ve enjoyed reading them.

Narrowly missing out- Spears of The Emperor (listened to the audio this year, read the LE last, loved the book but *hated* the audio purely because of the awfully bad ‘African’ accents used for the Celestial Lions), Valdor (really good, but shared too many of it’s good points with another book to fully stand out), Requiem Infernal (deserves a reappraisal as part of a Coil re-read, still really good), Apocalypse (really good fun, some outstanding passages), Terminal Overkill (fantastically grim) and Apocalypse (great fun, some *amazing* passages).

 

 Spears accent was passable if they were deliberately going for a really cheerful Nigerian, save for the somewhat slow cadence. African is a pretty wide spectrum in fairness so it might have been accidentally correct, sort of like saying 'european' accent. There are so bloody many that you have a great chance to be accidentally correct. 

 

It also really worked for me in the sense that I liked to imagine the Chapter Master as a really cheerful soul. Namely because I can't fathom how he could function in his stated history without it, and because I think we are all on the verge of a collective stroke from overdosing on Grim!Marines.

 

Weirdly enough, I found the accent on the Spears to be painful at times. I think the intent was something vaguely celtic as spoken through a very highly fever dream from the 70s. I've actually joked that the Spears clearly eat sacred mushrooms as part of their morning ritual.

 

I need to read Valdor though, can;t wait for it to come out. I've invested too much time debating in its thread not to:sweat:

I can handle, even appreciate a cheerful chapter master; I’ve no issue at all with any chapter master having a ‘Nigerian’ accent. As I’ve banged on about many times before, it’s the fact that BL give such things as a default to non-white characters; just because the Celestial Lions draw on Broadly ‘African’ tropes, there is no real reason for them to sound like they’re pretending to be from Lagos. Give Calgar a voice like that, make it sound like Yarrick grew up in Delhi, give Leman Russ a campy lisp and I’ve no problem. But giving it to one of the few non-white characters in the setting feels at best lazy and at worst lazily racist.

 

Anyway.

[byrd9999]

As for the Spears of the Emperor, I always had Ekene Dubaku as looking and sounding like (the awesome) Khary Payton (Walking Dead, Teen Titans Go, Critical Role).

 

But I am frequently disappointed by Space Marine voice actors in BL audio.

[StrangerOrders]

 

 

There have been an awful lot of books, true, but what I didn’t mention earlier is how damn good so many of them have been/how much I’ve enjoyed reading them.

Narrowly missing out- Spears of The Emperor (listened to the audio this year, read the LE last, loved the book but *hated* the audio purely because of the awfully bad ‘African’ accents used for the Celestial Lions), Valdor (really good, but shared too many of it’s good points with another book to fully stand out), Requiem Infernal (deserves a reappraisal as part of a Coil re-read, still really good), Apocalypse (really good fun, some outstanding passages), Terminal Overkill (fantastically grim) and Apocalypse (great fun, some *amazing* passages).

 Spears accent was passable if they were deliberately going for a really cheerful Nigerian, save for the somewhat slow cadence. African is a pretty wide spectrum in fairness so it might have been accidentally correct, sort of like saying 'european' accent. There are so bloody many that you have a great chance to be accidentally correct. 

 

It also really worked for me in the sense that I liked to imagine the Chapter Master as a really cheerful soul. Namely because I can't fathom how he could function in his stated history without it, and because I think we are all on the verge of a collective stroke from overdosing on Grim!Marines.

 

Weirdly enough, I found the accent on the Spears to be painful at times. I think the intent was something vaguely celtic as spoken through a very highly fever dream from the 70s. I've actually joked that the Spears clearly eat sacred mushrooms as part of their morning ritual.

 

I need to read Valdor though, can;t wait for it to come out. I've invested too much time debating in its thread not to:sweat:

I can handle, even appreciate a cheerful chapter master; I’ve no issue at all with any chapter master having a ‘Nigerian’ accent. As I’ve banged on about many times before, it’s the fact that BL give such things as a default to non-white characters; just because the Celestial Lions draw on Broadly ‘African’ tropes, there is no real reason for them to sound like they’re pretending to be from Lagos. Give Calgar a voice like that, make it sound like Yarrick grew up in Delhi, give Leman Russ a campy lisp and I’ve no problem. But giving it to one of the few non-white characters in the setting feels at best lazy and at worst lazily racist.

 

Anyway.

 

Its a fair point, although my bone to pick with Ekene in the book is an entirely different reason. You can probably guess the one

 

This does bring an interesting point up.

 

Can a good or bad narration turn an audiobook into a different quality of product than the written form? I personally think that an iffy book can be saved by a good narrator, especially those like John Banks that like to add to the characters beyond just what is written. Things like adding unique cadences, mannerisms and pronunciations which are hard to write naturally but allow for the character to really 'pop' with genuine humanity. 

 

Then you have some readers that make entire swaths of characters sound exactly the same, to use an example I could scarcely tell one spear from the other.

[Apothecary Vaddon]

The Hollow Mountain, Shadowbreaker, The Great Work are top tier for me.

[theSpirea]

There are still so many books published in 2019 I haven't read. Mostly I was trying to catch up on older books this year.

 

From the little I've read, I absolutely loved The Hollow Mountain, I'm almost done with Requiem Infernal and I bet it's going to be one of my favourite books this year.

 

I've also read quite a few short stories. Blood Sacrifice by Peter McLean and He Feasts Forever by Lora Gray in the Horror series were superb.

 

I know this is a 40K/30K forum, however, the thread is BL books. This year I decided to give AoS another shot and I was pleasantly surprised by The Red Feast by Gav Thorpe. It read more like a historical fiction and wasn't heavily focused on lore so I wasn't getting lost.

 

And the best short stories of the year were A Tithe of Bone by Michael Fletcher and The Garden of Mortal Delights by Robert Rath.

[Knockagh]

The red feast was ace as was gloomspite; but there wasn’t much else from AoS this year. Everything else hasn’t even been worth buying. So much 30/40k stuff has come out this year it would have been impossible to do much AoS anyway, which bar Nick Horths brilliant series has been pretty atrocious from day one.

Since I’m off topic my biggest disappointment this year was Celestine. I had high hopes for this and ended up absolutely hating it.

[Taliesin]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/12/25/favourite-novels-of-2019gw-homepage-post-3/

 

Track of words picks. Unsurprisingly all stuff listed here already.