Games Workshop has added a Black Library logo to its official Big Summer Warhammer Preview showcase, sparking speculation the company may announce new novels that finally move the overarching Warhammer 40,000 narrative forward.
Big Summer Warhammer Preview, set for this Friday, July 18, will contain reveals for Games Workshop’s main tabletop games, including Age of Sigmar, The Horus Heresy, and of course Warhammer 40,000. Its initially released digital poster for the event did not feature the logo for Black Library, Games Workshop’s in-house book publishing division. However, on July 16, it released a new version of this poster with the Black Library logo added, sparking speculation that fans will get new novel announcements as well.
Why is this exciting for fans of the setting? There is a great deal of speculation that Games Workshop may finally be ready to move the Warhammer 40,000 narrative forward with either a brand new series of books, the teased meet-up between two returned primarchs, or the long-awaited third book in Dan Abnett’s Bequin trilogy.
IGN has reported on the now mythical Pandemonium before, when fans speculated its delay might have something to do with Games Workshop and Amazon getting their narrative ducks in a row ahead of the Henry Cavill-fronted Warhammer 40,000 Cinematic Universe. It is perhaps the most-anticipated book in all Warhammer fandom. The first novel in the Bequin series, Pariah, came out in 2012. Its sequel, the Warhammer 40,000 lore treasure trove that is Penitent, followed nearly a decade later, in March 2021. Pandemonium does not have a release date, and the wait for an announcement is fast becoming Warhammer 40,000’s version of George R. R. Martin’s M.I.A. Game of Thrones book, The Winds of Winter. Some fans are speculating — perhaps more with hope than expectation — that now is finally the time for a Pandemonium reveal.
There’s heightened interest in Pandemonium because it promises to actually move the overarching Warhammer 40,000 plot forward. Penitent ended with a significant lore revelation (it has to do with the identity of the mysterious King in Yellow, which we won’t spoil here), and so the ramifications of Pandemonium for the wider Warhammer 40,000 universe could be huge.
Perhaps more realistic is a new novel series set during the period known as The Scouring. This is the largely unexplored time in Warhammer 40,000 history when the Imperium ran down the traitor legions following the defeat of Horus 10,000 years before the current setting. With the Horus Heresy seemingly wrapped up following the release of Era of Ruin, The Scouring seems like a natural next step for Games Workshop if it wants to continue filling in the gaps in the Warhammer 40,000 narrative.
Or this may all be much ado about nothing, and Black Library’s presence at the show ultimately goes down as a disappointment. You’d like to think that Games Workshop knew what it would do to fan expectations by slapping the Black Library logo on its preview poster, though.
Which leads me neatly into why Warhammer 40,000 lore fans get excited by teases like this in the first place. As I’ve reported before, the Warhammer 40,000 story, such as it is, is a slow moving beast. The scribes at Games Workshop sometimes take years to inch the overarching plot forward. Take, for example, the return of beloved primarch, Lion El’Jonson, which was announced in March 2023. Now, over two years later, the character is yet to do much of anything in the setting, his hotly anticipated reunion with his brother, Roboute Guilliman, seemingly further away than ever. Could a new novel finally detail this sure to be spicy meet up?
Maybe, on Friday, we’ll finally get some answers. The Big Summer Warhammer Preview is set for 7pm BST / 11am PDT on Friday, July 18.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].
