[Apsalar]

The biggest standout for me, which also happens to be a 2019 release, was The Buried Dagger by James Swallow. It marked the end of the 54-book-long Horus Heresy. I cried when it was over. (Even though it's book 54 of a series, the synopsis isn't a spoiler, due to the way the universe is set up - this series is ten thousand years prior to "current" Warhammer 40K lore.)

For long years, the Horus Heresy has ground on. Now, the Death Guard have been sent to begin the final battle. But Mortarion and his sons must face their gravest challenge first – for Nurgle has claimed them as his own, and he will not be denied…

The skies darken over Terra as the final battle for the Throne looms ever closer... As the Traitor primarchs muster to the Warmaster’s banner, it is Mortarion who is sent ahead as the vanguard of the Traitor forces.

But as he and his warriors make way, they become lost in the warp and stricken by a terrible plague. Once thought of as unbreakable, the legendary Death Guard are brought to their knees. To save his Legion, Mortarion must strike a most terrible bargain that will damn his sons for eternity.

Meanwhile, in the cloisters of Holy Terra, a plot is afoot to create sedition and carnage in advance of the Horus’s armies. Taking matters into his own hands, Malcador the Sigillite seeks to put a stop to any insurrection but discovers a plot that he will need all of his cunning and battle-craft to overcome.

The book I enjoyed the most which wasn't due to my being a rabid Games Workshop fangirl, and which also wasn't released in 2019, was The Terror by Dan Simmons. The ending was a bit ... left-field, but I do love fictional accounts of "unsolved mysteries"!

The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.

When the expedition's leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. With them travels an Inuit woman who cannot speak and who may be the key to survival, or the harbinger of their deaths. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear that there is no escape.

I also began reading Japanese horror this year. By far my favourite, and something I've been recommending to every horror fan I know (whether they tolerate the right-to-left style of manga or not!) has been Uzumaki by Junji Ito. It's a hypnotically, grotesquely evil read and I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Kurōzu-cho, a small fogbound town on the coast of Japan, is cursed. According to Shuichi Saito, the withdrawn boyfriend of teenager Kirie Goshima, their town is haunted not by a person or being but by a pattern: uzumaki, the spiral, the hypnotic secret shape of the world. It manifests itself in small ways: seashells, ferns, whirlpools in water, whirlwinds in air. And in large ways: the spiral marks on people's bodies, the insane obsessions of Shuichi's father, the voice from the cochlea in your inner ear. As the madness spreads, the inhabitants of Kurōzu-cho are pulled ever deeper, as if into a whirlpool from which there is no return.