News de la Black Library (France et UK) - 2011

Emperor of Mankind a écrit:Encore une exclusivité pour les grands britons que nous verrons peut-être pas en France, bien dommage.

Shadowhawk: Blood of Aenarion will be your first novel for Black Library after a very long time. How does it feel to come back to the Warhammer Fantasy setting?

Bill King: Great. I’ve always loved the setting and it was a pleasure getting to grips with it again.

Shadowhawk: Tyrion and Teclis are some of the greater heroes of the current age in the setting. What was it like writing for these two and exploring the High Elf society?

Bill King: In some ways it was very different from the sort of sword and sorcery I have previously set in the Warhammer World. Tyrion and Teclis are noble heroes with family connections to some of the most powerful people in the world, not wandering adventurers like Gotrek and Felix. This gives the series a different tone right away.

The twins stand at the centre of a huge chunk of the Elvish mythos. They are lineal descendants of Aenarion. They have inherited at least one of his mightiest enemies. They have ties of blood with Malekith which makes them a focus of his attention. That’s not a comfortable place to be!

This is all to the good because it means they are standing at the center looking out. The politics of the Elves swirl around them, even from a very young age. These can be very treacherous currents to navigate. One of the things I tried very hard to convey in these books is the difference between the surface of the Elvish world and what lies underneath.

Ulthuan is a very glamorous place and the rhetoric of the situation is that everyone is noble and gracious and upstanding. Everything looks bright and shiny and clean, particularly compared to the grubbiness of the rest of the Warhammer world. The reality is that elves are just as self-interested as anybody else, more so since they live longer. They are an intricate, bitchy society of bored immortals who fill their lives with political intrigue while maintaining a superior front.

Writing about the twins themselves posed some challenges, particularly Tyrion. He is absolutely fearless. I mean this quite literally. At age 16, he is prepared to face a Greater Daemon of Chaos. My normal method of generating tension is to have the central characters put in situations that are terrifying and look at their emotional response. This is tricky with Tyrion because he knows no fear. He is also psychopathically self-confident in many ways. In his case, justifiably so. He is just as deadly and as attractive to women as he thinks he is.

Teclis is much more my cup of tea—bitter, twisted, sarcastic and flawed.

Shadowhawk: You have mentioned on your blog and other interviews that you are also currently working on a Warhammer 40,000 novel called Angel of Fire. Can you tell us some more about this project?

Bill King: It is basically the first book in a trilogy, told from the point of view of an Imperial Guard soldier who ends up as one of Macharius’s bodyguards and who thus gets to witness the career of one of the Imperium’s greatest soldiers. I chose to tell it this way because Macharius is a genius and I am not, so I thought I would have a sort of Doctor Watson character there to narrate things.

The first book is basically the story of how the narrator Leo comes into Macharius’s service during the opening battles of the Crusade. It is set on the Hive World of Karsk and features a really vicious Tzeentchian cult.

Shadowhawk: Macharius is one of the most pivotal figures in the setting and especially for M41. What has it been like to write about such an important character in the 40k background?

Bill King: I would not want to give the wrong impression here. The first book is more of an adventure story about the meeting of the main characters. Macharius is not quite the titanic figure he is going to become. Part of the point of the trilogy is to show him turning into the Macharius we know in later years. In Book One, he is still relatively young—ruthless, brilliant but basically decent and idealistic. He is modeled on Alexander the Great in his youth in this. As the trilogy progresses he becomes grimmer and darker and much more ambiguous.

The next Space Marines Battles novel is semi-confirmed as Siege of Castellax by C.L Werner. I say semi-confirmed because the title was leaked on Waterstones and C.L was kind enough to tell us that its right and that he is working on the outline for the novel. So we cannot assume automatically that this will be the novel but we can be reasonably, and we have much to be happy about.

For those who cannot recognize the name Castellax from the SM Codex, that's because its not in there. Castellax is the name of an Iron Warriors Fortress World under attack by an Ork WAAAGH!

Siege of Castellax is the first Chaos Space Marines Battles novel. Iron Warriors vs Orks!

Corax a écrit:Les Iron Warriors Pré Hérésie ou Renégats ?

Warhammer 40,000 5ed rulebook:
- p.163 Graphic story about Ork Waaagh!
CASTELLAX named as one of the Iron Warriors fortress world. Beseiged by orks.

Siege of Castellax is the first Chaos Space Marines Battles novel

Black Library cover artist Jon Sullivan works at a frankly alarming rate. As well as the many covers he produces for the Space Marine Battles series, he also creates the majority of the stunning artwork for the Time of Legends novels like this brand new art for the first book in the War of Vengeance series, The Great Betrayal.
Dwarf versus elf in a duel to the death, with dragons flocking the skies… I do believe that Jon has redefined “epic” with this piece. My favourite details are on the dwarf’s helmet and beard. Let us know on Facebook what you like most about this art.
The Great Betrayal will be out in August 2012. If you want to read up on the events that come before the War of Vengeance, check out The Sundering series by Gav Thorpe, where the seeds are laid for the conflict between the dwarfs and the elves. And speaking of Gav, tomorrow’s blog will have an exclusive extract from Catechism of Hate, his new Warhammer 40,000 novella. See you then.

Aussi sur que l'or brille et que les elfes sont des traitres