Upcoming BL Stuff 2025

[theSpirea]

Gary Kloster, nice. I might be going for that one.

Brooks is a hard pass for me, never again.

[TheMawr]

Corsair novel

Lovely cover, cheesy but onbrand title font.. perfect new art

[darkhorse0607]

I'm up for a Corsairs novel, especially given the opposition is Ork buccaneers and Brooks' history with that race. Not super excited but definitely one I'll grab

[DarkChaplain]

Another dead week ahead of us, despite a ton of model releases for Thousand Sons and Wood Elves...

[theSpirea]

I'm really surprised there are absolutely no BL publications to accompany ToW.

It almost feels like missed opportunity... oh, well

[LemartesTheLost]

1 hour ago, theSpirea said:

I'm really surprised there are absolutely no BL publications to accompany ToW.

It almost feels like missed opportunity... oh, well

 

I suspect that the ToW imprint doesn't receive another novel until the Grand Cathay model range has been released. GW do love themselves a very by the numbers tie-in for new stuff.

[TheVoidDragon]

21 minutes ago, LemartesTheLost said:

 

I suspect that the ToW imprint doesn't receive another novel until the Grand Cathay model range has been released. GW do love themselves a very by the numbers tie-in for new stuff.

 

Unless it's Leagues of Votann, then it takes 2 years to get a novel because the author of that (who was available. And who wanted to write a book.) only found out about them at the very same time we did....

[darkhorse0607]

2 hours ago, theSpirea said:

It almost feels like missed opportunity... oh, well

 

Saved you some time, applicable all around

[DarkChaplain]

5 hours ago, theSpirea said:

I'm really surprised there are absolutely no BL publications to accompany ToW.

It almost feels like missed opportunity... oh, well

 

I can't fathom how bad their support for ToW has been, considering they released a Bretonnia novel right off the bat and nothing since. Like, they almost had it! And then didn't follow it up at all.

[cheywood]

Support for pretty much everything has been terrible this year. It’s May and we’ve had three 40k novels released. This is arguably worse than the mid 2010s drought.

[grailkeeper]

5 hours ago, cheywood said:

Support for pretty much everything has been terrible this year. It’s May and we’ve had three 40k novels released. This is arguably worse than the mid 2010s drought.

 

 

I've been wondering when would be the "Golden era" of Bl would have been. Definitely not now. I would have thought mid 2010s because I went to a Black Library Weekender in 2013. 

[cheywood]

Just now, grailkeeper said:

 

 

I've been wondering when would be the "Golden era" of Bl would have been. Definitely not now. I would have thought mid 2010s because I went to a Black Library Weekender in 2013. 

It was what, 2013 when Abnett stopped writing for BL temporarily? Then he came back in 2017. That 2014-2016 era was pretty bleak at times, at least to my memory. 

[DarkChaplain]

I'd argue the Golden Era was definitely over by the time Josh Reynolds departed.

[darkhorse0607]

On 5/11/2025 at 7:36 PM, DarkChaplain said:

 

I can't fathom how bad their support for ToW has been, considering they released a Bretonnia novel right off the bat and nothing since. Like, they almost had it! And then didn't follow it up at all.

 

I'd be interested in seeing how they view it from a company perspective. I mean, if viewed as a new edition, then it perfectly matches how they've done the launches of 40k. 9th ed, you had Indomitus, 10th you had Leviathan. Both were about the box factions and then 4-5 years later, the  Pariah Nexus storyline isn't finished, and they literally haven't touched 10th's big thing, being supposedly the largest Tyranid invasion of the galaxy, unless you count codex lore. Yes you've had other books in the mean time, but they weren't about the edition so to speak

 

I think the telling point for Old World is going to be when the Cathay range releases. If they don't have anything to tie into that, then I'm going back to not holding my breath. If they do, then fantastic.

 

Can't really speak into the Golden Age myself, I didn't get more into the hobby until 2016 (I did read a few books as a kid thanks to Dawn of War getting me interested but that's about it). But I will say it did seem like a more exciting time. I think a lot of it had to do with the breadth of things you could jump into. The Heresy was still firing off, if you got tired of that then you could jump into 40k with different things like the Bile series, Black Legion series, Battle series novels, etc.

 

I mean just doing a quick look on Track of Words, and in October 2016 alone you had Master of Mankind, both Magnus and Leman Russ primarch novels, Wardens of the Blade, Sons of the Forge, Fabius Bile Primogenitor, a few Heresy audio novellas,  Azrael's novel, Shadowsword, Tyrant of the Hollow Worlds, Carcharadons Red Tithe, and a another 40k audio book

 

While not every month is like that, Oct 2016 alone gave you enough solid stuff to be alright for a while and it was all spread out over a few different subjects, as long as you didn't want Xenos novels. Now while it seems we have more variety with more Xenos novels (kind of? at the same time it doesn't feel like that, at least to me), but we are happy when we get a new novel, or if Black Library talks about more than a few books at the one preview event for the year that's no longer even a show, just a series of articles

[DarkChaplain]

.....damn, I miss audio dramas so much.... Yeah, those were definitely part of the Golden Age. The Horror ones were particularly great, especially Josh's Darkly Dreaming!

[theSpirea]

13 hours ago, cheywood said:

Support for pretty much everything has been terrible this year. It’s May and we’ve had three 40k novels released. This is arguably worse than the mid 2010s drought.

We got 9 novels so far, 6 are for 40K

 

 

 

 

[cheywood]

5 hours ago, theSpirea said:

We got 9 novels so far, 6 are for 40K

 

 

 

 

It depends how you count it. Two of those came out last year as LEs, while Grotsnik isn’t available for anyone for a couple weeks. For me that’s three books. 
 

edit: also I believe you’re missing Grombrindal: Ancestor’s Burden on the AOS side of things. 

Edited May 13 by cheywood

[Bobss]

RE: the golden age of BL

 

For me, this is 2009 through to the departmental weirdness c. mid 2010s. Alternatively, 2009 through to covid might be a better shout, with this blip taken into consideration. Many authors, both new and old, were knocking their projects out of the park as recently as 2019. I won't pretend 2009 was BL's equivalent of ''you had to be there, man'', but the hype for the McNeill/Abnett Prospero duology was massive, even in a decade when the internet was still a thing for geeks and young people. iirc A Thousand Sons was the first BL book to get a degree of mainstream recognition as it punched into the NYT Bestsellers list - or something like that, and this hype would help many following Heresy titles do the same, even if many of them didn't deserve it. You also had McNeill's Sigmar work win a somewhat prestigious award around this time. This is also the year ADB began writing for the stable. Taken together, 2009 is when BL fully shed its Inferno stage, I like to think. The 2010s, as consumer-turned-nostalgic-historians have debated to death, marks both the high and low points of BL. Tons of releases. Tons of good books. Tons of bad books. Tons of not-even-books books. We saw the shift from mass-market paperbacks to funkier editions, but it wasn't half as bad as today when 50%+ of this thread is people discussing scalpers. Right now, we're living in an era where even popular series remain incomplete, releases are clearly in a bottleneck and the departmental weirdness of the mid 2010s has been back for some time, whether this is recognised or not. I call this era the Tyranny of WarCom, because that's how it feels. Coming Soon? No, you're going to be kept in the dark until we vomit out some ChatGPT-style soc-media post about a reprint of ADB's Night Lords for the 17th time. Some cool xenos books handled by new-and-solid authors like Brooks and Rath doesn't balance out what we had (and perhaps didn't fully appreciate) c. 2013. It is what it is

 

Edited May 13 by Bobss

[wecanhaveallthree]

Look at the stable's output for those 'golden years'. McNeill in particular was pumping out books left and right - multiple HH books, Ventris books, his Mars trilogy - the output was insane and so was the hype. 

[Roomsky]

Waiting for it to turn out Black Legion 3's been done for years but they're keeping it in the vault because they know how many people will stop paying attention to their new releases once they get it.

[DukeLeto69]

For me the “golden era” was approx 2006-2012ish

 

A time when the HH was new and we didn’t quite have the bloat. Books were celebrated for being NYT Best Sellers. BL appeared to actually want to complete trilogies. Exciting new authors like ADB started joining the established roster of authors like Abnett & McNeil. Books actually got promoted. You could walk into a bookstore like Waterstones and see a pretty good Warhammer selection. You could buy MMPB and get in on the fan discussions from the books release without having to try and land a special edition with a mortgage. BL had forums so we could chat. Authors were actively engaging with the fanbase. We had an idea of what was coming soon and could discuss and get excited! Heady days!!!! 

[cheywood]

I think it’s either 2005-2013 or 2017-2023. Those periods felt exciting to me as BL fan. New frontiers explored, new titles and authors appearing regularly, and most importantly a sense of editorial freedom. Right now too many novels feel like forgettable tie-ins for authors who just aren’t particularly inspiring, which was the same issue from 2014-2016 or so.

[Fedor]

I can't see Black Legion three being worthwhile. It has been set up and structured as a longer series, but ADB is clearly not interested/capable regarding that sort of writing schedule nowadays. Could he return to regular output and prove me wrong? I hope so, but I think it's more likely that if we get anything at all, it'll be one book to rush things into concluding as a trilogy.

 

if he's going to be such a sporadic writer, I'd rather see him do more original standalone things, not the sloth slow saga of big tabletop model man.

 

 

Edited May 13 by Fedor

[Bobss]

17 hours ago, Fedor said:

I can't see Black Legion three being worthwhile. It has been set up and structured as a longer series, but ADB is clearly not interested/capable regarding that sort of writing schedule nowadays. Could he return to regular output and prove me wrong? I hope so, but I think it's more likely that if we get anything at all, it'll be one book to rush things into concluding as a trilogy.

 

if he's going to be such a sporadic writer, I'd rather see him do more original standalone things, not the sloth slow saga of big tabletop model man.

 

 

 

Having read the entire Fabulous Bill trilogy since Black Legion dropped, I know nothing will ever top Clonelord 

[OpossumStrong]

New LE's on the way

 

Belisarius Cawl: The Great Work by Guy Haley

 

Space Wolf (with introduction by Dan Abnett), Ragnar’s Claw and Grey Hunter

 

Carcharodons: Void Exile by Robbie MacNiven alongside the short A Tithe of Shadows.

 

The Silent King by Guy Haley