cheywood

By my count there are 8 announced books left to release this year, if you include the standard edition of Abraxia. So hopefully 2 per month until the end of the year.

Sea of Souls is excellent and can be read standalone without missing much of anything.

Finished this last night. As someone who usually likes Haley this didn’t really hit the notes it needed to for me. There are some good moments and the prose is enjoyable enough, especially where Cawl and Athagey are involved, but it all felt disjointed and weightless. As a whole I think Dawn of Fire failed in large part because it wasn’t able to introduce recurring characters worth caring about. The Heresy, for all its failings, is filled with rich and memorable characters, both those preexisting in the lore and created for the novels. Dawn of Fire has resulted in a few characters I enjoyed, such as the cast of Sea of Souls, but there’s no where near the same degree of presence in most of the writing as I expected going into it. I would go on in my criticism, but I’d honestly rather forget the series and move on. I suspect that’s what BL is going to do. The Silent King feels like a relatively clean break, setting up Dark Imperium and introducing little in the way of new plot threads that would demand Dawn of Fire be read. Good riddance I have to say, hopefully whatever follows is more inventive, cohesive and overall enjoyable.

Oddly enough the only place you can find evidence of Final Deployment existing is a digital library app called overdrive, which has a sample here. It says the book’s out on the 30th so maybe it’s just delayed a week? Either way it obviously exists and is ready to be published. My assessment after reading the sample: pretty good. The prose honestly isn’t the best or the worst, there’s a lot of reused words (colors other than ‘ochre’ do in fact exist) and instances where it feels like a thesaurus was used, but there’s also good descriptive language and engaging dialogue. The characters seem lively and had decent interplay. It felt appropriately detailed and crunchy, you can tell Wilt has military experience. Looks like it’s going to be a relatively brutal novel as well. I think it’s exactly the sort of slightly exaggerated, American military fiction inspired piece the Scions deserve.

Still no sign of the Final Deployment ebook on any platform. Bummer, was looking forward to checking that out. Hopefully the paperback still comes out next week. I wonder what happened.

They did say the Heresy would become a setting eventually. As long as it’s used selectively I think that’s a wonderful thing. More detail on the Dropsite Massacre from French is desperately needed (as much as fiction can be)

Probably just forgot to upload it, should be available this upcoming week. It’s happened once or twice before.

If Tomb World’s anything like Beer’s previous works it should be a delight.

I hope you don’t think I’m saying BL isn’t publishing good stories anymore, meta plot or no meta plot. They definitely are, even if this year is more than a little barren. I’m just talking about what I value in a story, and waxing nostalgic for the days when the universe was a little more mysterious.

I don’t think anyone’s questioning BL’s pursuit of novels that get people’s attention and capture the casual fanbase more. That’s obviously a good business model. But I’ve been reading the novels for 15 years give or take and I don’t care about any of that. Give me beautiful stories that capture the horrific universe I love reading about. Metaplots, progression, new lore? That’s nothing for me next to meaningful stories, interesting themes, and beautiful prose. Different strokes for different folks.

Homebound alone makes this anthology worthwhile. It’s a perfect coda for Wraight’s heresy work, and one of the best short stories BL has published. I cried multiple times. What an incredible writer he’s become over the years. I’m so excited for Ashes of Imperium.

I miss the days when everything was on the margins. Yeah there’s lots of good stuff that centers ‘important’ characters, but 40k is at its best when it’s a small, relatively insignificant cast set against the opaque majesty of a vast and cruelly indifferent universe. Sea of Souls is inarguably the best DoF novel partially because it takes that approach.

It’s just a collection of McNeill’s existing Siege novellas, nothing new in there.

Reading this now and it feels very paint by numbers. I believe Haley once said he approaches his BL work with a ‘one for me, one for them’ mindset, alternating between what the studio wants and what he’s more interested in writing. I’d bet all the tea in china that this is the former. That said it’s still a perfectly fine book, lacking mostly for its total disconnect from the series it ostensibly ends.

We’ve barely gotten 5 40k novels this year. They need to pump the numbers up significantly all around. It’s weird because all the authors who are active on social media say they’re still writing for BL, there hasn’t been a mass exodus or anything, but the number of releases has slowed to a trickle.