Black Library Weekly: The Hive Arrives

Hello and welcome to the inaugural installment of Black Library Weekly, the flagship column here on the Dispatch. For a little over a year I’ve been publishing these over on Goonhammer, but a recent retooling of their literary content saw that run come to an end.

I feel incredibly privileged to have had the support of the Goonhammer crew for Black Library Weekly, and am excited to continue to write Black Library-related content over there. But I also feel just as privileged for the support this column has built up over that time, and that led me to starting up my own Substack to keep the party going.

So in short: new location, same Black Library Weekly. We didn’t even skip a week.

Happy Anniversary, Louisville!

Once again, just like last year I found myself this past Saturday setting up camp outside of my local Warhammer store two hours before it opened. Being the Store Anniversary, I was there to score a copy of Cannibal Gate and Other Stories, the severely stock-limited hardcover. And just like last year, it was a good thing I did, as all copies were again spoken for by the time the doors opened by folks queuing up behind me.

Our local store has been eating well this past year, and the number of available copies was up from four to six. This year’s slate of shorts included:

Cannibal Gate: The Road of the Hollow King, by John French

Age of Sigmar took pride of place this year, with John French’s Vampire anti-hero Cado Ezechiar gracing both the cover and the collection’s first story. Originally part of the Black Library Celebration digital short story subscription in 2024, the tale sees him at the court of a Ghoul King looking to barter safe passage through. Bit of course, everything comes with a price…

It’s good to see French’s Age of Sigmar work getting highlighted after the tremendous year he’s been having thanks to Dropsite Massacre (review), which was the Black Library Book of the Year and runner-up in the Goonhammer Book Awards.

The Beast of Grey Gardens, by David Guymer

Like Cannibal Gate, David Guymer’s Gotrek story was part of the 2024 Black Library Celebration. There’s a slight echo here of William King’s Skavenslayer as Gotrek is again grinding coins on sewer patrol duty, but this time there’s a cockatrice to hunt.

The Nine, by Justin D. Hill

The anthology’s lone Horus Heresy story, Justin D. Hill’s contribution was originally released as part of the Black Library Advent in 2023. While we’ve probably seen the last of the Advents for awhile (the last short story subscription was 2024, and it was skipped last year without explanation), they are still treasure troves of short stories for reprinting.

Here Hill tells as tale of power, ambition, and the Dark Mechanicum as the legions of Horus reach ever closer to Terra.

The Long Promise, by Mike Brooks

Like French, Mike Brooks has been having a helluva year as the Aeldari Corsairs yarn Voidscarred (review) jockeyed with Dropsite Massacre for top honors (it came in second for the official Black Library award, and claimed the Goonhammer Book Award for Best 40K Novel).

This story features Solomon Akurra, hero of his most recent novel Ghost Legion, infiltrating a Deathwatch installation. As one does, when you’re part of the Alpha Legion. Readers who stopped by their Warhammer stores during last year’s Celebration may have picked up the Celebration softcover anthology, which featured Akurra on the cover (and this story printed within).

Brooks recently set Alpha Legion fans alight with his mention of seeing a Solomon Akurra miniature, with many assuming it would be unveiled as part of this year’s Black Library Celebration. It wasn’t to be, and when we’re going to get Akurra in plastic remains, suitably enough, shrouded in mystery.

The Price of Morkai, by Marc Collins

While this story- a lead-in tale for last year’s Space Wolves novel Krakenblood (review)- was also part of 2023’s Advent, it’s since seen a couple of reprints in paper form. It had been included in the excellent Blood of the Imperium anthology (review), and then again as bonus content in the Krakenblood Special Edition.

Distinctly unlike last year I wasn’t chasing the extra goodies, so in addition to the book I limited myself to just the two Store Anniversary minis this time- just enough to nab me the Custodes Coin for the Museum. Job done.

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The Giveaway

To celebrate the launch of the new Black Library Weekly (and thank you early subscribers), we’ve got a giveaway!

I’ve got two extra copies of the Black Library Celebration softcover anthology needing new homes, and in a week I’ll be grabbing two winners at random to send them to.

All you have to do to enter is:

1. Be a subscriber to the Black Library Dispatch

2. Tell me in the comments what the best Black Library book you’ve read so far in 2026 is.

That’s it and that’s all!

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Sharing a Six-Pack With… James Swallow!

You won’t get far in the Horus Heresy before bumping into James Swallow, author of Flight of the Eisenstein as well as other mainline novels Nemesis, Fear to Tread, and The Buried Dagger. He’s also written the Blood Angels novel series as well as the recently-reprinted (as a 20th Anniversary Edition) Faith & Fire- the latter seeing him take his place amongst his fellow greats in the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame.

He’s also been nominated for a BAFTA, won four Scribe Awards (including Best Original Novel for Star Trek: Terok Nor – Day of the Vipers), and his Marc Dane series of spy thrillers is currently in motion picture development. He’s clearly been a busy scribe, but took some time to jump in on the “Six Pack” series, where Black Library authors share their book recommendations.

Three Four Black Library Books He’d Recommend…

“Crossfire, the first Shira Calpurnia novel by Matt Farrer (or I could cheat and recommend Enforcer, which is an omnibus edition that also includes this one and the other two Calpurnia books Legacy and Blind). Matt’s writing is like a rich, sumptuous banquet, it’s vivid and dense. Savour every bite.”

(It’s worth noting here that Crossfire itself was inducted into the Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame as well!)

Silver Skulls: Portents, by Sarah Cawkwell. “This is a Silver Skulls space marine novel,
but it’s so much more than just your regular bit of bishy-bashy bolter
porn. Sarah does a top job building real depth and nuance to this
underrated Astartes chapter.”

The Bloodied Rose, by Danie Ware. “I love what Danie’s done
with the Sisters of Battle, and this short volume blasts into the story
with real strength of plot and brilliant, well-drawn, compelling
characters.”

”And I’m going to cheat again and add a fourth one, just because I think
it’s unfairly overlooked and I love audio stuff.”

Taker of Heads, by Ian St. Martin. “Taker of Heads is an
audio drama by Ian St. Martin that has some really brilliant sense of
place and fantastic use of the audio medium. Listen to it on good
headphones and get lost in the jungle.”

Two Non-Black Library Books He’d Recommend…

Thunderball by Ian Fleming. “I distinctly remember the photo cover edition that featured a shattered SCUBA mask, and the slick opening line”

It was one of those days when it seemed to James Bond that life, as
someone put it, was nothing but a heap of six to four against.

“I’m still fascinated by Fleming’s descriptive method and that certain kind of whip-crack sentence structure he excelled at. Reading this taught me lessons about the essential pitch and moment of a thriller, and it stoked my ambition to one day write my own spy stories.”

Neuromancer by William Gibson. “Another book with a killer opening line
here:

The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a
dead channel.

“Neuromancer hit like a shockwave when I read it in the Eighties, around about the time I was starting to convince myself that I might try to be a writer, and his laconic authorial voice and penchant for hyper-nuanced detail absolutely left an imprint on me. There are few books I’ve read that have resonated so strongly with me- decades later, I thumb through the pages and feel the same pull to put aside whatever I’m doing and start reading it all over again.”

And Finally, One of His Own Books He’d Recommend…

“Nomad, the first in my Marc Dane thriller series. It’s the 10th anniversary of this book’s release in 2026, with a new edition coming soon, and it’s among the work I remain the proudest of. An MI6 technician finds himself the sole survivor of a terror attack and goes on the run to clear his name and find the people behind a global
conspiracy. It’s contents under pressure stuff, all the things I love about action-thrillers in a fast-paced page-turner beach-read.”

Terrific stuff, thank you James! I particularly appreciated your sneaking in an audiobook, because I’ve only started discovering the joys of the format this past year and will definitely be adding that one to the list!

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Up for Preorder

Just one this week, but boy is it a doozey! While Hive being released as a Limited Edition was probably a sure bet, I’ll admit I was expecting Dan Abnett’s new double-novel story of life in a hive world to drop much later in the year.

Here’s Rob Young (Master of Rites, Longshot) with a reaction take that could have come straight out of my head too:

Rob might be a touch effusive here (we’ve had the occasional ‘miss,’ such as Vagabond Squadron), but he’s not wrong in calling out the beauty of the Hive Limited Edition.

No mention of price, of course, but I’d expect it to be around USD $150, since single-volume LE’s tend to list at $75. It will be very interesting to see how this one performs when preorders open up this Saturday, since “overdemand” (my term for interest in a product by the scalper community) for Abnett releases can be a bit variable. The recent Horus Rising deluxe edition reissue had opportunistic consumers foaming at the mouth, but you may recall that the Mega Box release of Interceptor City at the end of 2024 sat on shelves for a long time.

My suggestion is to be better safe than sorry. If you think you’re going to want this one, plan accordingly.

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ICYMI

The first thing you might have missed this week or was the soft launch of this new Substack! In my introductory piece I talked about my aims and vision for my new venture here, and what you can expect to see. In short, this will be the new home for Black Library Weekly, though of course I’ll still be continuing to write for Goonhammer.

Then I also debuted a new weekly feature, the Warhammer RPG SITREP, which aims to do for Warhammer role-playing games what this column does for the Black Library. Longtime Black Library Weekly readers may recall I’ve occasionally covered the RPG news in this column, but going forward that content will be part of the SITREP.

Over at Goonhammer, I reviewed Chem Dog by Callum Davis, declaring it an early contender for my personal 40K Book of the Year. Davis wrote it with a great deal of restraint and maturity, things you wouldn’t necessarily expect from someone’s debut Black Library novel.

Then for those who enjoy wandering the Mortal Realms, Saelfe’s latest review is a look at Evan Dicken’s First Marshal, the sequel to Lioness of the Parch (review).

Then over at Warhammer Community, we had another tranche of Black Book lore get released, this time all around the Word Bearers. Considering the price these books have historically gone for on the secondary market, this is a gift of no small value to fans of the lore.

Speaking of gifts, there was also a new Chronicles of Ruin mini-story, Heart of Blight. I always enjoy extra fiction, though I do wish they would provide author attribution for these. “Anonymous” doesn’t have quite the same punch.

Finally, you may recall this year’s April Fool’s gag from Games Workshop centered on a Warhammer 40,000 musical, and WarhammerTV had a subscriber-locked mini-featurette that went even further with it, presenting as a behind-the-scenes look at the production. GW went ahead and opened it up to everyone this week, so if you’re not a subscriber to Warhammer+ you can still get in on the joke.

Meanwhile, around the webway, there’s deep dives and then there’s whatever awesome stuff Mira Manga is getting into. This week she held up the magnifying glass with a new video called Let’s Workshop: 10 Things I Love about Horus Rising by Dan Abnett.

Then the Fluffenhammer gang dropped the latest installment of their issue-by-issue crawl of Warhammer Monthly, the comic magazine series. This time around they tackle issue #25, “a great issue let down by yet more meandering Darkblade.”

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Quick Hits

• Jonathan D. Beer (Tomb World, Dominion Genesis) sat down with Civilian Reader for an interview this week. They cover a range of topics from the writing process to his thoughts on the Warhammer universe, and if you’re curious why he would say that “the truth is that I’m a deeply uninteresting person,” make sure to check it out.

• If all that leaves you wanting more Beer, here’s a friendly reminder that I had interviewed him awhile back for Goonhammer, including getting under the hood of Dominion Genesis in advance of Tomb World.

• Big congratulations to Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan (Castle of the Exile, Grit in the Wheels) and Kieron Gillen (The Chosen, Marneus Calgar) on successfully crowdfunding their latest project for DIE RPG, The Metadungeon. What is DIE RPG? In their own words, “it’s an exploration into how much the events of the 1980’s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon would mentally and emotionally scar the kids who got sucked into their own campaign. It’s goth Jumanji. It’s postmodern Gygaxian Isekai. It’s roleplaying games squared.” With just under three weeks to go, there’s still plenty of time to get involved!

• Radiance Films- which produces deluxe releases of ‘classic, cult, and arthouse films’- is releasing a new UHD edition of Vampire’s Kiss, the 1989 Nicholas Cage film. Helping provide the commentary track is none other than Kim Newman (Drachenfels, Beasts in Velvet), and it’s available for preorder here.

• Josh Reynolds (Nagash: The Undying King, Lukas the Trickster) seems to write fiction at the same pace I write non-fiction, and he’s got a short story coming up in the Solar Pons: A Year of Mystery 1919 anthology. “My contribution, The Infernal Mr. Cinder,” notes Reynolds, “is a nasty little tale of a foggy October full of blackmail and murder.” The book was successfully crowdfunded and can, amongst other places, be found here!

• Juliet McKenna (Fear Itself) announced that the next book in her BSFA Award-winning Green Man series, The Green Man’s Debt, will be out this September from Wizard’s Tower Press.

• So apparently there’s a hallucinogenic mushroom that grows in Southwestern China that possesses a most curious property. Rather than sending its consumer off on some wildly variable trip, everyone who eats it reports seeing the exact same thing: hundreds of tiny, smiling, dancing human beings. Nicholas Kaufmann (A Child Foretold) explored this most curious curiosity on the latest episode of The Spooky Science Lab Podcast.

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Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming releases from the Black Library based on the available preorder information we have. As always, take all of this with a grain of salt unless it’s Games Workshop-confirmed.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, and anything in bold has been added (or updated) this week.

Upcoming but Undated

• Hive, by Dan Abnett (hardcover)

• Rynn’s World, by Steve Parker (Special Edition)

• Veterans of the Fall, by William Crowe

• World Ablaze, by various

• Da Freebooterz Code, by Justin Woolley

• Ghazghkull Thraka: Prophet of the Waaagh! (Illustrated and Annotated Edition), by Nate Crowley

Current PODs in Production

• Era of Ruin, by various (POD Special Edition, window end 12/24)

• Anarch, by Dan Abnett (POD hardcover, window end 1/12)

• Blood Pact, by Dan Abnett (POD hardcover, window end 1/12)

• Salvation’s Reach, by Dan Abnett (POD hardcover, window end 1/12)

• The Warmaster, by Dan Abnett (POD hardcover, window end 1/12)

Upcoming in 2026

• Aestred Thurga: Pyre of Faith, by Danie Ware (hardcover, 4/18)

• Paragon of Faith and Other Stories, by various (softcover, 4/18)

• Carnage Unending, by various (paperback, 4/18)

• Zardu Layak, the Crimson Apostle by Rich McCormick (Special, hardcover, 4/25)

• Hive, by Dan Abnett (Limited Edition, 5/2)

• Legends of the Waaagh!, by various (paperback, 5/19)

• Yarrick: The Omnibus, by David Annandale (paperback, 5/19)

• Horus Rising, by Dan Abnett (paperback, 6/2)

• Tomb World, by Jonathan Beer (paperback, 6/30)

• The Remnant Blade, by Mike Vincent (paperback, 6/30)

• Voidscarred, by Mike Brooks (paperback, 6/30)

• Krakenblood, by Marc Collins (paperback, 7/14)

• Vagabond Squadron, by Robbie MacNiven (paperback, 7/14)

• Starseer’s Ruin, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (paperback, 7/14)

• Siege of Terra: Flames of Betrayal, by various (paperback, 7/28)

• Warhammer Age of Sigmar: The Ultimate Guide (hardcover, 8/4)

• Archmagos, by Guy Haley (paperback, 8/11)

• The Relentless Dead, by Steve Lyons (paperback, 8/11)

• Words of Waaagh!, by DK Books (hardcover, 10/1)

Thanks for joining me in the new digs, and see you next week!