List of unfinished/cancelled series

[theSpirea]

Thank you everyone, the list is updated. I'm not going to track Fantasy/AoS here, that would make me way too depressed.

[skylerboodie]

David Guymer's third Iron Hands book is/was(?) due to be titled "Sapphire King".

 

Paul Kearney's third Calgar book also outstanding - "Calgar's Reckoning". According to Amazon he is still writing for BL ("Kerenski Diaries" coming December - no idea who that is), so maybe we'll see this one day.

 

The Phoenix Lords series died after Gav's two books - he said a different author was due to write the next entry, but never materialised.

 

Would be nice if the much called-for new edition of Battlefleet Gothic one day came with the third book in Gordon Rennie's Gothic War trilogy but I highly doubt it!!

[DarkChaplain]

Kerenski Diaries might as well be a stray entry at this point. The December placeholder was simply that: A placeholder. They moved that from last December to this one. The same thing happened with The Keeler Image, which was originally slated as a novel on retailers, and then got replaced by a simple short story years later. iirc the listing was left up for a while even after the short story released...

[Lord_Ikka]

I wouldn't really label the Bequin series as unfinished- Abnett got slated for the last bit of the Siege of Terra books and is apparently weaving some things from those into the third book. We know its coming, just not where in the process it is. It will definitely be finished, as BL fans are pretty rabid for Abnett's continuation of his Inquisition tales and both Pariah and Penitent were very well received. 

[theSpirea]

I'd still label it as unfinished. Not cancelled but it is unfinished. We know it's coming but there's no date. The same goes for many other titles on the list. Black Legion 3 was confirmed by ADB it's coming so was Horusian Wars 3. Until the books are officially announced and out, I'd prefer to keep them on the list.

[Dzirhan]

On 7/16/2023 at 4:31 AM, grailkeeper said:

There are doubtless plenty of series from years back that never got finished.  Some series even had author changes mid way through - I'm thinking here of a few of William Kings series.

One story that I hear from people is that the later Space Wolf books that followed Wolfblade was written by William King under a pen name

[RikuEru]

Then there is the odd case of 

"Renegades: Harrowmaster"

With "Renegades" getting a special design on the cover, as if it was a new series.

...but not Huron, Luther, Cypher or any other "recent" Chaos book that could fit into that box (depending on interpretation, of course) were branded as such either.

 

Weird...

[cheywood]

20 minutes ago, RikuEru said:

Then there is the odd case of 

"Renegades: Harrowmaster"

With "Renegades" getting a special design on the cover, as if it was a new series.

...but not Huron, Luther, Cypher or any other "recent" Chaos book that could fit into that box (depending on interpretation, of course) were branded as such either.

 

Weird...

Huron, Luther, and Cypher didn’t receive the ‘Renegades’ branding because they were already part of the Characters series. The character series are all short novels centering on their titular character, all of whom are quite significant to the setting at large. Harrowmaster’s a full length novel about new characters, and my guess is future Renegades books, if they’re coming, will be similar. In my opinion it doesn’t really make sense for BL to brand a bunch of disparate books under the Renegades label just because they all feature Chaos characters. 

Edited July 17, 2023 by cheywood

[RikuEru]

9 hours ago, cheywood said:

Huron, Luther, and Cypher didn’t receive the ‘Renegades’ branding because they were already part of the Characters series. The character series are all short novels centering on their titular character, all of whom are quite significant to the setting at large. Harrowmaster’s a full length novel about new characters, and my guess is future Renegades books, if they’re coming, will be similar. In my opinion it doesn’t really make sense for BL to brand a bunch of disparate books under the Renegades label just because they all feature Chaos characters. 

 

Mea culpa. I phrased it weirdly, due to lack of sleep.

What I meant was:

This one-off (for now) book is already set into a "Renegades" series -going by it's own header!- we have actually heard nothing about.

 

Meanwhile the "Character" series has no header, which is why I didn't even realise Huron's book was part of it.

 

[DukeLeto69]

6 hours ago, RikuEru said:

 

Mea culpa. I phrased it weirdly, due to lack of sleep.

What I meant was:

This one-off (for now) book is already set into a "Renegades" series -going by it's own header!- we have actually heard nothing about.

 

Meanwhile the "Character" series has no header, which is why I didn't even realise Huron's book was part of it.

 

Well that’s Chaos for you :-)

[Xenith]

On 7/16/2023 at 6:25 PM, theSpirea said:

Thank you everyone, the list is updated. I'm not going to track Fantasy/AoS here, that would make me way too depressed.

 

And nor should they be discussed here ;)

 

The Ahriman Eternal novel seemed to be setting up for another installment, however who knows what will happen there. I think a lot of books in production would have had to be scuppered to fit into the new lore.

 

There's also a new flesh tearers series I think, there's 'Wrath of the Lost, by Chris Forrester, I'm sure I read there would be another.

Did you list Cadia Stands by Justin D Hill, proclaimed to be book 1 of the Cadian Series?

I'm also sure there was supposed to be another Dark Hunters book, but with the issues the first had getting printed, I think they might have canned a sequel. 

[grailkeeper]

Henry Zhou's series is super super cancelled. I enjoyed it though.

[cheywood]

2 minutes ago, Xenith said:

 

And nor should they be discussed here ;)

 

The Ahriman Eternal novel seemed to be setting up for another installment, however who knows what will happen there. I think a lot of books in production would have had to be scuppered to fit into the new lore.

 

There's also a new flesh tearers series I think, there's 'Wrath of the Lost, by Chris Forrester, I'm sure I read there would be another.

Did you list Cadia Stands by Justin D Hill, proclaimed to be book 1 of the Cadian Series?

I'm also sure there was supposed to be another Dark Hunters book, but with the issues the first had getting printed, I think they might have canned a sequel. 

Ahriman: Eternal is set well before the present day I believe. No idea if it will be followed up, but I doubt lore changes from the studio have had much effect on its prospects.

 

I haven’t heard any reference to Wrath of the Lost getting a sequel. The fact that the book was released to a desultory whimper suggests it won’t see one, but you never know with BL. 

 

Cadia Stands is book one of the Minka Lesk series. The fourth book, Shadow of the Eighth, goes up for preorder this weekend. 

 

Kearney’s Dark Hunters was originally pitched as a trilogy I believe, but they’re definitely cancelled. Kearney also mentioned he had a third Calgar novel to write, but that was years ago.
 

[theSpirea]

1 hour ago, Xenith said:

 

The Ahriman Eternal novel seemed to be setting up for another installment, however who knows what will happen there. I think a lot of books in production would have had to be scuppered to fit into the new lore.

 

There's also a new flesh tearers series I think, there's 'Wrath of the Lost, by Chris Forrester, I'm sure I read there would be another.

Did you list Cadia Stands by Justin D Hill, proclaimed to be book 1 of the Cadian Series?

I'm also sure there was supposed to be another Dark Hunters book, but with the issues the first had getting printed, I think they might have canned a sequel. 

 

As mentioned in the previous post, there are 4 books in the so-called Cadian series

Cadia Stand, Cadian Honour, Traitor Rock, and on Saturday coming out Shadow of the Eight. I was just going through these books in my Calibre library and debating how to track the series. Officially it's Cadian series but BL started labelling them also as Minka Lesk novels starting with Cadian Honour.

 

Any chance you remember where you read about a follow-up to the Wrath of the Lost?

[Dzirhan]

1 hour ago, grailkeeper said:

Henry Zhou's series is super super cancelled. I enjoyed it though.

I think his Bastion Wars trilogy was done with Blood Gorgons, and both Flesh and Iron and Blood Gorgon were actually prequels to Emperor's Mercy , not sure if there were actually plans for him to go beyond that and then the whole issue with Flesh and Iron broke out

[PikkuEero]

Long time lurker, first time poster.

 

One of my alltime favourites has been Steve Parkers Deathwatch series. Two novels and a few short stories. No new entries to the series has been made since 2019. No Twitter activity regarding that and I've messaged Black Library asking but they gave me the "Thank you for asking but.." message.

It really is such a shame since the characters were excellent and varied, the setting was nice and different and the subplots needed more time to cook. And now we don't get any of it.

[lansalt]

44 minutes ago, PikkuEero said:

Long time lurker, first time poster.

 

One of my alltime favourites has been Steve Parkers Deathwatch series. Two novels and a few short stories. No new entries to the series has been made since 2019. No Twitter activity regarding that and I've messaged Black Library asking but they gave me the "Thank you for asking but.." message.

It really is such a shame since the characters were excellent and varied, the setting was nice and different and the subplots needed more time to cook. And now we don't get any of it.

I love that DW series. The last stories, Shadowbreaker (2019) and Messiah Complex (2020), ends up in a double cliffhanger and it's due a sequel/finale.

[cheywood]

55 minutes ago, PikkuEero said:

Long time lurker, first time poster.

 

One of my alltime favourites has been Steve Parkers Deathwatch series. Two novels and a few short stories. No new entries to the series has been made since 2019. No Twitter activity regarding that and I've messaged Black Library asking but they gave me the "Thank you for asking but.." message.

It really is such a shame since the characters were excellent and varied, the setting was nice and different and the subplots needed more time to cook. And now we don't get any of it.

You could always ask Steve Parker on Twitter. His handle is @TalonAlpha. As far as I can tell he’s now working in Japan as a personal trainer. No idea if he’s still writing.

Edited July 19, 2023 by cheywood

[Dzirhan]

2 hours ago, cheywood said:

You could always ask Steve Parker on Twitter. His handle is @TalonAlpha. As far as I can tell he’s now working in Japan as a personal trainer. No idea if he’s still writing.

It's pretty difficult I think for most authors writing for Black Library to comment or say anything on current and future plans unfortunately, wondering how much also the current timeline has caused novels which were set pre Great Rift such as the Deathwatch and Castellan Crowe series to be left as is with the focus on books that tie in with the current timeline

Edited July 19, 2023 by Dzirhan

[cheywood]

52 minutes ago, Dzirhan said:

It's pretty difficult I think for most authors writing for Black Library to comment or say anything on current and future plans unfortunately, wondering how much also the current timeline has caused novels which were set pre Great Rift such as the Deathwatch and Castellan Crowe series to be left as is with the focus on books that tie in with the current timeline

I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. It’s true that a lot of the younger authors are careful about not saying anything too specific regarding commissioned work (the older ones not so much), but the authors are generally free to say if they’re still writing for BL or have further potential plans for a series. Big difference between ‘I still write for BL and I have ideas for more books about these characters’ and ‘this is what’s happening in my next novel that BL just commissioned’. 
 

Yeah only the biggest names can get away with setting stories pre-rift (outside the Heresy), but would it be that hard for Parker to transition his Deathwatch stories from the pre to post rift era? Annandale did it with Crowe and Wraight did it with Jarnhamar I believe. 

[Dzirhan]

Funny enough Annadale's book 3 of Castellan Crowe appear to be in Limbo, Wraight's Jarnhamar didn't go post rift, was the early battles around the Cadian system. Well hopefully Parker does reply but seems hard to tell really, think even talking on potential series or ideas seems to be also hard, I expect really that some authors actually have no indication whether Black Library has got work for them or not, sort of like, "we'll call you if we have something for you" hence they can't say where they are at in case it annoys someone at GW or BL, I probably expect the situation with Thomas Parrot really put a clampdown on BL authors posting on social media. TBH I find the restrictions on BL authors on what they can say about their work etc somewhat odd, its not as if someone can actually come up with a similar/competing work and because the author posted on what their next 40k book will be or what they are working on currently for BL or if there is to be a sequel for their work since its all an IP setting. EDIT: Reworded last line it to sound clearer, that's what happens when you post at midnight here :)

Edited July 20, 2023 by Dzirhan

[cheywood]

57 minutes ago, Dzirhan said:

Funny enough Annadale's book 3 of Castellan Crowe appear to be in Limbo, Wraight's Jarnhamar didn't go post rift, was the early battles around the Cadian system. Well hopefully Parker does reply but seems hard to tell really, think even talking on potential series or ideas seems to be also hard, I expect really that some authors actually have no indication whether Black Library has got work for them or not, sort of like, "we'll call you if we have something for you" hence they can't say where they are at in case it annoys someone at GW or BL, I probably expect the situation with Thomas Parrot really put a clampdown on BL authors posting on social media. TBH I find the restrictions on BL authors on what they can say about their work etc somewhat odd, its not as if someone can actually come up with a similar/competing work given the its an IP setting just because the author posted on what their next 40k book will be or what they are working on currently for BL or if there is to be a sequel for their work

The Helwinter Gate was absolutely Wraight transitioning the characters to the post-rift era. It only covers the inciting event, yes, but it sets the main characters up for more potential adventures and agonies after the rift yawns wide. No idea what’s up with Crowe, but the second one went largely unremarked on upon release. Just as likely to be sales as it is a lore issue. 
 

I’d think most authors know where they stand with BL. Contrary to what many believe BL is largely pitch driven as far as I know. Authors submit ideas and BL decides whether to commission a story or not. There are of course plenty of exceptions for major tie-ins and big series, but I believe pitched novels still outweigh solicited ones. Deathwatch being a solicited series would surprise me. 

 

Thomas Parrott got in trouble for arguing about the lore with someone ‘important’ online and supposedly leaking info about upcoming model releases I believe. Personally the whole thing sounded more political than anything, but I don’t really know the full truth. Parrott’s firing certainly wasn’t enough to stop Haley or Wraight (before he left Twitter) talking about future plans for specific novels. The newer authors are definitely more circumspect, but Brooks and Rath have both mentioned that they have further ideas for their ork and Necron series, respectively. 

[theSpirea]

Going a bit off-topic but happy to see this thread kicked off an interesting discussion. Might be worth a separate thread (listing BL authors and their public websites/Twitter/Insta/whatever accounts).

The majority of readers here very likely aware of trackofwords.com website but in case you're not, highly recommend it as a source for interviews with BL authors, they often talk there about what they'd like to write or at least hit whether they're working on anything BL related)

[wecanhaveallthree]

How long did it take Thorpe to delete that post he wrote showing he was working on a Votann novel? About half a picosecond?