The best and worst of black library - 2010

As I am a bit flu'd up having spent most of the night talking to god on the porcelain telephone and I am so depressed about where Roy is leading Liverpool they I am trying to avoid the tele I thought I would have a look through this years Black Library collection and see what my top 3 and bottom 3 books of the year were.

I should start off by reminding you that I always route for the good guys so its quite funny that all three of the books I have chosen come with Chaos being the main protagonists. ADB makes the top 3 twice as do the Word Bearers.

The first of the top 3 is Dark Creed. The Word Bearers trilogy has been one of the most enjoyable for me. It gives an insight into the chaos legions rather than just the war bands that GW seem to concentrate on now. Dark Creed finds the Word Bearers attacking one of the most important and heavily defended areas of the Galaxy with the help of the Necron device the Nexus arrangement which has the ability to shut down the warp. This book was written in a very grand scale. The battle scenes raged over the whole sector and we get to see multiple armies and it leads very nicely into another series featuring the Despoiler. 9/10 from me.

The second book to make my top 3 was Soul Hunter by ABD. A really enjoyable read very much like Dark creed it gives you a clear view of what is happening in the now defunct traitor legions and an insight into the so far little seen Night Lords legion. The story follows Talos, a Night Lord with his Fathers gift of foresight which may or may not be slowly sending him insane. I loved this book because again it featured the Despoiler, this time we got to hear him speak and it again let you know what continues to drive the Traitor Legions to their acts of cruelty and violence.

The third book in my top three (these are in no particular order) was of course First heretic. I have wrote an in depth review of the book on this blog so I don't really need to go into it in detail bar to say that I loved it.

So the worst?

The start of the year as already mentioned on this blog found me in hospital and reading Rynn's world a book I found very hard to get into. I didn't like the style nor did I enjoy the story line all that. I like to think of the space marines as super humans that can do what no man can do I do not like to think of them as super humans who can do the completely impossible (for example bitch slapping an Avatar, Calgar Style) and that's what this book seemed to be. I enjoy Black Library books in which there is still a semblance of realism tucked away in there. Not a fan of this one at all.

The second has to be Prospero Burns. Again like First Heretic I have talked about it at length on here. Not a Space Wolf book for me at all. Had I not been a Space Wolf player I may have enjoyed it more and I can understand those who do love it but I found it incredibly tedious and a chore to get through. Keep your Skalds and give me more blood.

Finally the worst of the year was the final book of the Blood Angels series Black Tide. One of the few Black library books I have picked up and not finished. It could have been really good. I love the back story to Bile, but this was just awful. It follows Rafen now wracked with guilt over his brothers death trying to destroy the rogue apothecary and stop his evil schemes. I don't often use Internet terms but this one had epic fail written all over it. A non gaming science fiction fan told me that he had been put off all the BL books after reading this one and I can understand why. Its a real shame because I like James Swallow, Flight of the Eisenstein was a really good book and I enjoyed the Garro audio book but this just didn't get out the starting blocks.

I will continue to look forward to Black Library delivering some great stories and this year I will be attending Black Library live in March come hell or high water.