Black Library: The App

Requires internet connection for you to sign in, in order to access books you ALREADY PAID FOR. No option to download as an epub that I could find, so no way to read if there’s no internet. Disgusting and stupid.

This Warhammer Black Library app is good for several things. It has all the Warhammer novels you could think of. It offers deals on a regular basis, including free books. I am so grateful for the free books! And if you like Black Library content, you’ll never run out of it here. But when I compare this app as a reading app to other notable reading apps, namely Libby and Kindle, I will point out: A. The App does not have a menu when you’re reading. Other reading apps let you navigate through the book via links to chapters or table of contents. This app only lets you read where you are; in-book navigation assistance is non-existent, forcing readers to drag and drop the bottom progress bar. B. The App doesn’t save your place when you interrupt your reading session. If I get a phone call or briefly switch to screen, and the app is no longer on my screen, the app moves my place back to the start of my reading session. The only way to save my place is to manually click “Done,” which is tedious and a clear downgrade from other reading apps having the ability to save your session whenever you drop without manually needing to set anything. This also means that, whenever you come back to read, you have to go through the home page, scroll through your library to find your book, and then click it again to resume. It’s a tedious process when other apps just drop you right back into the book you were previously reading. C. The App doesn’t tell you how long you have in a chapter (or even how long you have in the rest of the book). Kindle gives you an estimated number of minutes based on your reading speed; Libby tells you the number of pages before the chapter’s end. This App has no such feature, only telling you what page you’re on and how many pages the book has while reading. D. The curation is unhelpful. I can click through the store to find the Horus Heresy series, for instance, but every other reading apps tells me the publication number in the series of the book I’m looking at. For some reason, this App doesn’t sort the books in a given series in a way that’s easy to follow, eschewing numbering their titles entirely. I really wanted to like this app, but since the experience is a downgrade compared to other reading apps, I don’t really have a reason to keep using the app now that I’ve read my free books. I’d much rather use competing reading apps to read Black Library stories, as their features are more user-friendly and enhance the reading experience. Unless the experience here is improved overall, I probably won’t come back. Which is a shame, because I was excited for this app’s launch.

Generally an ok app, tons of titles (of course), but some features are lacking. My biggest complaint is no highlighting or adding comments or bookmarks, something pretty much any other ereader has. ALSO had an issue where I wanted to access the stuff in my library that was “downloaded” during a flight but the app wasn’t functioning offline :(

This app, which is an e-reader, loses my place in the book. This is like a car with no steering wheel.

Couldn’t even get the app to launch. I refuse to purchase DRM e-books anyway.

What kind of an e reader forgets what page you are on when you close the app? Won’t spend another dime until the app is at least functional.