The Island of Doctor Moreau, Beehive Books Edition

Here's an extended look at Beehive Books' Edition of The Island of Dr. Moreau, as part of their Illuminated Editions series.

Started in 2016 by Maëlle Doliveux and Josh O'Neill Beehive Books is a small publisher catering to a selective crowd of art enthusiasts, and rely primarily on crowdfunding for their publishing. They've been enormously successful already.

Take a look at their mission statement on their site. It's a little much, but you can easily understand why they have been so supported in their venture. The passion claws your eyes out.

Beehive Books Mission Statement

If, like so many, you just can't bother clicking a link, click on this picture instead:

Apparently they conduct their business (or do they actually live?) in the clock tower of what used to be a church somewhere in Pennsylvania, which is... just awesome.

Anyway, my copy came in this cardboard box made specifically for this particular novel, which is just incredible.

It's a massive book that quite dwarfs my table.

The sturdy slipcase is embossed with vaguely reflective foil, which as I write it down sounds awful, but in reality the effect isn't intrusive and indeed quite beautiful to look at.

The cover's artwork is stunningly beautiful and completely delivers on evoking the eerie mood of the story itself.

Designed by Maëlle Doliveux, art by Bill Sienkiewicz.

Introduction by Guillermo Del Toro.

The book really features some incredible artwork. There are also some 10 pieces of full colour art in total and all are impressively moody. Though I didn't really imagine the beasts to be looking like how Sienkiewicz depicts them, they do look extremely brutal so... awesome.

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This is my favourite chapter.

By the way here's my review of the novel from last year.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

As an aside: Here's some extra artwork, (as if this post didn't have enough pictures already), and which is not included in the Beehive Books' edition (obviously), but which is instead from Eric Powell's The Goon, and which will show just how strange this chapter is. Powell's adaptation is such an unsettling take on the creatures and I just completely love this issue to bits. I can not help but hear the Sayer of the Law madly screaming the Law to the rest of the beasts.

The very image of insanity.

The specific issue that these pieces are from is from when the Goon has some time to kill at a train station, as he is waiting for the two mob assassins that are coming for him. It's an incredibly dark moment, in a series that has come to be filled with them. Powell draws a nice parallel with his own work, by delivering a direct quote from the novel's ending, to show the Goon's alienation from the rest of humanity as he stands over the brutalized remains of the men that were coming to kill him. It's beautiful and savage.

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Adorable hounds.

Also included: A note by the artist, on the artist (who I was surprised to find I had actually seen something of already; in the Sandman comics), an appreciation of the artist by Guillermo Del Toro, some words on H.G. Wells, Special Thanks to various backers and people who gave their support to the fledgling publisher (some of which were thanked in their online names, though thankfully none of them cringe-worthy), and of course a list of the rest of the Illuminated books... which are out... now? 

Now, apparently The Willows and The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde are already available from the Beehive Books site itself, but as I pre-ordered them from the Book Depository instead (for the discounts and free shipping as I'm not bloody made of money) I will have to still wait a while for my copies to arrive. For The Fairy Tales practically a year. Bugger.

May Book Haul

Not too many books came in through my door this month but the few that did were of exceptional quality.

Let's start with the biggest one first:

I've posted some pictures of this one here and there by now, but I'm so taken with the Beehive Books edition of the Island of Dr Moreau that I'm going to give it it its own post. It is that beautiful.

Same here: the Limited Edition of Konrad Curze's primarch novel will also receive its own post.

I've already read it too, so expect some of my thoughts when I get to it. I was pretty negative until about halfway through when I just started to give in and enjoy myself. The writing and choice of storytelling are... not great, but damn me if the presentation isn't gorgeous.

Two science fiction Masterworks that I've been aware of for the longest time.

I have no clue what The Stars My Destination is about, but I do know that its main character is on a quest of vengeance, and ever since I read the Count of Monte Cristo I've always been very much into vengeful characters and apparently this is also one of those genius-level works of literature.

Roadside Picnic is famous for inspiring pretty much every work of Chernobyl-disaster-style fiction. It all began when 1979 saw the release of "Stalker", a very loose adaptation of this little novel, which is a very moody, very weird movie about a man, a 'Stalker', who takes two visitors into the forbidden 'Zone' in order to search for a room that can grant the desires of anyone who enters it.

I saw it a while ago after I learned that this is where the Stalker videogames came from. I've only played the Shadow of Chernobyl one, but I remember it had some incredibly eerie atmosphere. I don't think I ever finished it, mainly because my computer was so bad that I ended up getting too frustrated too continue.

Picnic is also partially responsible for the Metro universe, which is just phenomenal.

The Crying of Lot 49 I picked up because Abalieno from Loopingworld has a reference to it on his book/idea blog, in the blog's layout itself where he quotes: "We Await Silent Tristero's Empire."

The book's title itself too just summons up crazy imagery, in my mind at least.

John Gardner's Grendel, which I'm already reading as I post this, as my 4th out of 5 reading goal of this year.  Though its page count is small, Grendel is a Gollancz Fantasy Masterwork and as such I will be taking my time with it.

I finished reading Beowulf, which was genuinely eye-opening; it's such a hugely influential work and still very readable, depending on your translation, though I did find that the barrage of names and references to earlier bits of Geat history did get rather tiring after a while, though the active-Beowulf stuff was very engaging.

Yes, I know, I know: I'm a barbarian. I'm even appalled at myself.

Anyway, Grendel is obviously based on the Beowulf poem, and it revisits the beginnings of the poem as Beowulf faces off against Grendel, but this time in the first-person view of the monster himself, whose past and psyche are put on display and who is portrayed as the anti-hero to Beowulf's villain.

It's eh... very down to earth.

Weirdly compelling though.

And then, lastly; the Manga Horror Fantasy Epic: Berserk.

Deluxe Edition Volume 1.

And it is Horror firstly, fantasy second.

I've read pretty much all of this crazy, nasty, gruesome, fucked-up, shocking, excessive volume already, and I was genuinely shocked at some of it. The book collects only the first 3 of the 40 volumes out now, so there's a lot deluxe editions still to come.

It's very good in a guilty pleasure sort of way.

From the first page it's obvious that this we're in the realm of Grimdark with this one.

Sex, violence, nightmare darkness, demons, sometimes all of it at the same time.

If you're not easily shocked and if you like your thrills, this one might be for you. 

I wasn't really that much into it until the Guardians of Desire arc was done, but by then I was very much sold on the whole thing.

Strangely, a lot of the mood and elements remind me of the earlier Slaine comics.

I find Manga hard to swallow, and I'm pretty new to it really, having only read some Junji Ito for my Horror fix, But I always knew I wanted to check out Berserk.

Dark Horse's Deluxe editions seemed like a good way to get into it, being cheaper than buying the volumes separately and of course, the prospect of having a whole collection of sexy hardbacks on my shelves is just too damn appealing to resist. 

Pick the best of every type of fiction and genre to read, watch and listen to, go to the top to find enjoyment, and if they come in eye-catching editions, all the better.

...This is again going to be expensive, though.

As if I didn't have enough stuff left to collect.

Review: The Heirs of Babylon

Man, the read and review for this one took longer than needed. Reminds me that I don't especially like doing reviews, actually. Sometimes they end up taking longer than the actual read.

The Heirs of Babylon is Glen Cook's first novel (not counting The Swap Academy under the pseudonym Greg Stevens), a post-apocalyptic naval military story, inspired by Cook's own tour of duty aboard the USS Moale in 1963 and by the anti-war sentiment of Vietnam-era America.

And eh... It's alright. Yeah.

Though Night Shade's edition of the novel comes with its own perfect blurb that manages to be pretty engaging, and almost manages to be something of a (necessary) exposition-dump in order to ground the reader in this world, I nonetheless felt I had to try and do some blurb of my own.

It is 200 years after the world came to an end. And yet the war that ended it continues to grind on.

Out of the ruins of a fallen society a whole host of ships are called to gather. They are to make the journey halfway across the world to take the fight to an ever-present enemy.

In what little remains of Germany, the muster is called. Recently married, new father-to-be Kurt Ranke has joined the destroyer-ship the Jäger as its quartermaster. He has no real stake or allegiance in the war, and every reason to stay with his young wife, but he is impulsive and stubborn and filled with a young man's foolishness.

The voyage is a long and hard one. Past the shattered coasts of Europe, the history-laden Mediterranean, to India and beyond the fleet sails, and every swell of the way will be made in the broken-down, archaic vessels of the past, the nigh-on incomprehensible remnants of more advanced technological age.

During his duties Kurt finds out that there is an underground group operating to thwart the designs of the High Command, the leading body responsible for the Gathering, but that they are woefully outmatched by the cold and terrible political officers accompanying the ship.

As the bodies of his friends and family start to pile up Kurt realizes that High Command has sent an undercover officer along for the ride, to sniff out rumours of subversion and mutiny. And soon Kurt finds himself targeted, by High Command and underground alike, and a deadly game to uncover the identity of the agents begins.

You can't, and shouldn't, rush your read of a Cook novel.
     Of course, you shouldn't rush through any novel you're reading, but sometimes there's too many books yet to dive into, and when you're too aware of that, of the great stuff yet to come, reading a novel that requires time to breathe, to settle, in order to linger, can be, if not downright unpleasant, definitely unsatisfying. Time is finite, after all, and there's so much yet to read.
But Cook's novels, due to his style of writing, are those that require some time to sink in, lest they will refuse to linger in the mind. With Darkwar I made sure I had the time, but with this one, I'm sad to say, not so much. I confess I felt impatient to continue on into my next read.

Either way, despite my flaws and those of the book itself, I did quite like this one.
Cook delivers with The Heirs of Babylon a naturally compelling narrative, his recognizable style already very much present and even here already very readable. The story is decent although almost one-note, with a cynical note of sadness running throughout, an oncoming doom, and a foregone conclusion waiting to happen.

Unlike with his fantasy work, this one doesn't break much new ground and instead feels more like it homages various other works, from anti-war novels to dystopian literature.
Though the world-building is lacklustre it's almost extravagant by Cook's standards, or at least, it feels this way. Given that this universe that the story takes place in is our own in the immediate apocalyptic future, there are a lot of blank spaces filled in by our own knowledge of our own world. Meaning until that Cook specifically says otherwise; this is all recognizable, and even in its ruination familiar.

The story isn't as engaging as some of its elements are. Kurt Ranke is an interesting protagonist, very much unlike your usual hero, and is instead filled with enough flaws to float a derelict battle ship.
The (almost) game of cat and mouse is probably the most engaging aspect of the novel, as Kurt tries to identify the undercover agents, and coupled with the question of why the war is going on, and the nature of the grand enemy, and whether there even is one, despite the very clear overarching end goal Cook manages to keep you pretty interested in the proceedings until the very end.

However, the ending itself is confused (but not confusing) and a bit unsatisfying, though spectacular in a distant sort of way, and almost poetic in another, but all in all, there's too much questions remaining to completely satisfy.

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The main question that really remains is why that the war is still going on. There is no definitive answer to this. you can deduce, and you can guess, but you can't really know. And maybe the fact that there aren't any real answers to the questions we want answered is part of what Cook set out to do with his first story.
There can be no good answers to why this war is going on. Let me rephrase that: There can be no good answers for why war is going on. Any answers anyone would want to give, to validate the waging of war, will always fall short.

Review: The Wicked and the Damned

     The Wicked and the Damned is the second short story collection under the new Warhammer Horror imprint. Unlike Maledictions this one takes place entirely in the 40k universe and showcases three very different types of horror tales. If you are up for the dispassionate ramblings of a psychopath, an actual honest-to-the-God-Emperor haunting, and some good old fashioned Warhammer splatterpunk, then this is definitely one to pick up.
     Like with the Maledictions anthology, people's favourites seem to vary and most are still unconvinced of the imprint's merit. But for my part; any doubts I had about whether or not The Black Library could actually deliver horror that could stand out from the rest of the Warhammer fiction are now laid to rest. I had a lot of fun with this one, and it's been a while since I have been so taken with any amount of horror prose.

On the cold and misty cemetery world of Silence three strangers meet.

Led here by the guidance of the half-dead mortuary servitors they have been corralled together, and for some reason they are now not allowed to leave. Mystified with how they got to this remote place, normally only suitable for the burial of the God-Emperor's servants, they begin to question each other, trying to discern a common thread.

And as the servitors chatter and look on in the distance, they each tell their story. 

You can pretty much guess what is going on here, but that shouldn't really be a deal-breaker. The framing story of Silence is just a little extra on top of three well-crafted novella-length short stories.
But because of how the framing device is laid out, any reader will also likely be able to guess where these stories end up and as such, they will individually need to be able to deliver some serious tension, mood and dread if they're going to keep the reader engaged. It was a bit of a gamble, but wouldn't you know it: it worked out quite well in the end.

    The first one up, The Beast in the Trenches, is an absolutely riveting read.
Through the eyes of a commissar we are regaled to the horror of trench warfare. Under a sky filled with shrapnel and fire, while drowning in boiling mud and choking on cloying smoke, he begins to become aware of an insidious enemy hiding among the troops. With calculation and violence he starts to root out the threat, but as he slowly becomes aware of a vast conspiracy, he begins to realize that he'll have to take more drastic measures if the Imperial Guard are to win this conflict.
   This one is a tense affair, one moment seamlessly leading into the next, compelling any reader to keep turning the page. Josh Reynolds, who is also responsible for the overarching Silence narrative, delivers an interesting character piece of a complete sociopath in the middle of war.

    The Woman in the Walls is my favourite Warhammer horror experience, bar none, and as that horror hasn't got a capital, this means that even outside of the imprint it's been my best horror experience from Warhammer as a whole. And I've read a lot of those books let me tell you.
     The second story is a chilling little tale of a vengeful haunting. A beating gone wrong delivers a woman to the top echelon of power, but her murdered rival was well liked and now someone seems warp-bent on vengeance, legal or otherwise. But as long as she keeps her head cool and her henchmen in line, the investigation into the murder will most likely blow over. But as her allies start dying in brutally violent ways, and as her dreams begin to spiral into an almost continuous nightmare, she knows that something is already well on its way to get her.
     Phil Kelly delivers a phenomenal horror story.
Part mystery, part slow-burn gothic horror story that turns into full-on violent nightmare-vendetta, this is the cream of Warhammer Horror Fiction. This is how it should be written. This is what Warhammer can offer.
   Tension building throughout, a tapestry of military characters all at odds with each other, politicking and scheming, with strange new beasts and engaging lore that might just have expanded the rules of the universe a little, and an ending in perfect serendipitous convergence where all the threads get solved, preferably bloodily. Just perfect.

The third story, The Faith and the Flesh, is a mad sensory overload of imagination, peppered with brief bursts of gore. While it isn't my favourite tale here, David Annandale nonetheless delivered a story that goes above and beyond in its depiction of how absolutely insane Warhammer can get. In the Warhammer universe there are forces that can come to be understood as unending description in themselves. This is fine in theory, and honestly quite a neat concept too, but in practice there always comes a point where an excessive level of description can cross the line from horrific straight into cartoonish, and this story crosses that line at several points. Despite of this, the steady escalation of the insanity on display makes it all very readable.
    To go with the rampant levels of body horror, we have the Wicked and the Damned's most introspective and annoyingly apologetic character.
    On what is likely to be his last tour of duty around a system, a missionary priest stops at a Ship-Wrecker installation to find guidance and support from his lover. No longer willing to meet his obligations to a religion that has grown empty, he has come here desperate for a way out, to ask her for a miracle. Leaving himself open to the guiding will of the God-Emperor he prays for help, for a sign that faith is what this bleak and uncaring universe warrants, and that the Emperor would show Himself to dispel his creeping doubts.
    And then one of the Ship-Wreckers approaches the station with a derelict vessel in tow, and a mysterious signal coming from deep within.

Given that all three stories are relayed to us by unreliable narrators, there are obvious fabrications, and it can be quite fun to spot where exactly the truth ends, and the lies begin. But don't hold it against them though; because sometimes the truth is just too hard to face.

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    I've seen a lot of complaints about the ending either being predictable or abrupt, but it should be obvious that the Silence chapters, about 2 or 3 pages in between the bigger stories, are merely meant to serve as the narrative framing device to tell 3 individual tales. They're not meant to be hiding some grand twist; they're here for framing, and to serve as mood makers.
    Any reader will likely quite quickly figure out, after the first Silence chapter even, what exactly the deal is with these characters and why they might be here. The moody environment of Silence, its nature, the audience that looks on as the characters tell their tales, they all speak for themselves.
   
But outside of that I did think this was interesting enough to merit some thought as I found there is a strangeness here. You see, what is interesting in these Silence chapters is how the characters whose stories we have learned appear to still have an influence on the world around them, and after their respective narratives had drawn to a close, this plainly should not have been possible. It is this that I had the most questions about. There's a fascinating enigma here, but to be given an answer to it would dispel the mystery, of course. I wonder if this might become something interesting; some sort of new folklorish element to the Warhammer universe. I'm not sure why this grabbed me so. But I really, really liked it.

Obviously, I hugely enjoyed this collection. I'm already looking forward to the Warhammer Horror yet to come. Drachenfels and Genevieve Undead will get a re-read and a respective review after I've done the Grendel Reading-goal, else I might just keep stalling it, and that just won't do anymore.

And so, though it is for now gone from us, rest assured; Warhammer Horror will return!

Review: Maledictions

For the First of the Warhammer Horror range I chose to dig into Maledictions. There's eleven short stories in total here, 7 of which take place in the 40k setting, 4 of which in the Age of Sigmar. People's favourite stories seem to vary from person to person, so, needless as it is to say, all of what comes next is my subjective experience. The ones I consider true horror will have the word bolded in their respective write-ups.

   The first one up; Nepenthe, is a genuinely good Horror tale. I got flashes of Event Horizon here, with body horror, a strange and mysterious mood that was definitely unique and inventive, and heaps of shocking violence. Nepenthe is exactly the kind of stuff that I want to read when I'm looking for space horror.
    Guided by a mysterious voice, two tech-priests close in on a space hulk adrift in the void. After decades of searching, revelation and glory is at hand. But the drifting vessel harbours many much more than they're prepared for.
   This is it: the best story in the collection and one worthy for the Warhammer Horror imprint.               Cassandra Khaw, despite choosing a faction and a setting with a high barrier of entry for new readers, nonetheless manages to easily engage and horrify. Though not excellently written, this one sets a high bar for the rest of the stories to come. Alas, the license problem holds this one back from being perfect; as a host of creatures is being described I found myself riveted, trying to make sense of the horrifying creatures attacking our protagonists, only to find myself deflated as soon as they were named; all the detailed description driving my imagination fell away in favour of the familiarity of the known. Still, a very good opener.

   Richard Strachan and his The Widow Tide have the dubious honor of being my first brush with the fiction of the Age of Sigmar. I've held off for a long while, but with the promise of stories written with the express intent to deliver horror to the adventurous reader, I could restrain myself no longer. But alas, horror this really was not.
   Half a year now, a young widow has been spending her days staring out over the ocean where her husband has gone missing. Though she knows he must be dead, and the villagers urge her to get on with her life, she still can't let go of him and when she finds a wounded alien creature, washed up on the beach, she takes it in her home and tries to nurse it to health. But in a superstitious village, secrets have a habit of not staying hidden.
   A confusing, unsatisfying ending to a story that is as rote as it can be. I mean, for pity's sake, the Wolf Riders short story collection, the very first Warhammer short story collection, had stories very much like this one. It's almost as if a shoreline setting has a great potential to suddenly introduce a huge change in the daily life of a village or something -hmmmm?-. If in all the Mortal Realms a village by the sea is what you're choosing for your setting, and if the plot of your tale is uneventful as the plot here then you're doing something wrong. Hard pass.

    On the bottom level of a hive, a few children from an orphanage find a man wasted away to the point of death. They decide to bring him back with them, and nurse him back to health. As the man convalesces he slowly begins to repay them their kindness by healing the sick in their halls. All seems well, but they'll soon find out that No Good Deed goes unpunished.
    Graham McNeill is probably the big draw for this collection as he has already made his name with a lot of pivotal Warhammer fiction and it's pretty disappointing then that this little tale wasn't all that memorable. It's pretty rote as far as 40k goes even, and I also got the idea that this one tied into Mcneill's earlier fiction. Lastly; it's horror in the way that all things Nurgle, the dark god of decay, are: Pretty horrible but it does not stand out at all, especially as the other Nurgle tales in this collection were vastly more engaging and memorable.

   Lora Gray is different than other writers in this collection as they are the only one to embark on an Age of Sigmar story while going full out-on the lore, making this one inextricable from the Mortal Realms setting. As someone who has not kept up with the evolution of the Games Workshop's fantasy setting I found myself pretty bewildered by the idiosyncrasies of the Sylvaneth faction. Gray, though being a new writer to any of the licenses, must be very passionate about the particular faction, as the background for Crimson Snow is really quite necessary to understand its plot, and I had to look up what was what after its ending.
   At the edge of a battlefield, a young Dryad, anxious to help out her kinsmen who are battling for the survival of their grove, helplessly looks on as her Sylvaneth kin fight the Rotbearing Chaos forces. As figures stumble from the melee, the lines between ally and enemy are blurred as she finds herself confronted by an Outcast, one of those Sylvaneth driven insane by a mysterious contagion, craving indiscriminate bloodshed. As their eyes meet and she wonders what could have turned a once noble warrior into this unstable monster, little does she know that she'll soon find out.
   Even though the amount of lore can be quite detracting from an easy reading experience, the body horror in this one makes it stand out from others in this collection. Memorable and visually entertaining.

   Last of the Blood is a bit of an odd one. I didn't think it was bad, but neither did I think that this one had enough horror to merit being in this collection.
That being said, though seemingly rote, the story was engaging enough as CL Werner is an old hand at Warhammer fiction and pretty good at writing engaging storylines.
   Under rumours of death and persecution, the last members of the Nagashiro family gather at the behest of the head of the family, who reveals that they are being hunted by a vengeful ghost in retaliation for an old grievance. He reveals that he has brought them to his castle to stave off their curse by the use of a dark necromantic ritual. But as the ritual begins events immediately take a turn for the worst and soon it seems that the time of the Nagashiro bloodline has run out.
   I confess I find it strange that there is a story in an Age of Sigmar setting that might as well have taken place in the Old World, but that this same story nonetheless never would have been allowed to be written, given Games Workshop's ban on fiction to do with their Japanese-influenced factions. Not bad, but not stand-out either.

   In Predations of the Eagle we follow a company of Guardsmen stationed in a meat-grinder-war on a hot and humid jungle world. As more and more of their company go missing in their fights against the orks, morale starts to ebb, and as their missing comrades start to show up in gruesome displays; with bodies maimed and cannibalized, and contorted in mad imitations of the Imperial Eagle, the desperation starts to grow.
   I loved this one. Peter Mclean has the attitude of a Guardsman down pat, and even injects some welcome humour here and there, though as you might imagine, the longer the story goes on, the less humour remains, to make way for a more tense little affair. There were some nice moments of horror, and this short story is probably the best-executed of the tales in here. Likable characters, believable characterization and a tight plot. I had no niggles when it was done, and I'm certain that this one is accessible to any newcomers. Top-tier.

   The Last Ascension of Dominic Seroff, despite having a cumbersome name, proves to be one of the better ones. On a backwater hive world, the last stop for those fallen from grace, a has-been inquisitor and a disgraced lord commissar find solace in each other's misery, as they toast to the imagined destruction of old enemies. When they bear witness to an object crashing down somewhere in the city they set out to investigate, realizing that something in the object's trajectory made it stand out from the usual rain of debris and meteors. They soon find themselves face to face with true horror.
   Though this story does rely a little too much on name recognition and reader investment in what has come before (license and other stories), as someone who hasn't read anything else by David Annandale, I found that this wasn't a problem as I was swept along by the lugubrious developments and wild descriptions as the Inquisitor and the Commissar flee from the nastiness gibbering at their heels.
   A very well-known name to the 40k universe shows up, and does so in a way that makes you realize that some of these characters have become figures of true terror to the galaxy at large, that they have become boogey-men, monsters with the statures of well-know horror movie villains, and Annandale, bless him, treats them as such. Very satisfying.

   An ex-guardsman made governor of a planet is slowly going mad because of strange dreams, but as things begin to escalate, as his dreams begin to impinge on reality, it becomes clear that there is something more going on.
   Triggers by Paul Kane is not really good, because even though events can be horrific enough for our protagonists, they will not always be so for us as observers.
More than that; in the world of 40k, we, as the readers, will be most of the time generally aware of the names behind entities, creatures and phenomena, and too-clear descriptions or flat-out revelations, names splashed on the page, can be quite deflating. A good story, and great authorial skill, can still keep going despite of it (see Nepenthe) but this one, even though not always divulging names, suffered in another aspect in that it seemed to mix and match what it wanted from the lore, at the very least bending the rules if not breaking them outright, in the manner that made it feel like a very old Warhammer 40k story. Outdated and very definitely less than thrilling.

   Probably the most enigmatic story in this collection, A Darksome Place is engaging enough while at the same time also managing to easily garner some interest in the Age of Sigmar. In the sewers below the city of Greywater Fastness some foul thing seems afoot. The rats have disappeared and the occasional patrol as well, and strange singing has been heard. Padmar Tooms, one of the Underjacks who safeguard the dark waterways, out to investigate with his patrol, searches for his mentor and the root of the sewers' ills.
   Now, this feels like a unique realm that lives and breathes outside of its bloody but stale battlefields. Josh Reynolds is a prolific writer of Black Library's own stable who currently has the most work out in the Mortal Realms. He's a huge influence apparently and it's visible here as well: He's quite comfortable in this place, and he's the only one of the four Sigmarite writers in this collection who made the setting itself come alive.
He's also clever enough, the only one in this collection, to know that if he were to name the antagonistic force he would dispel a lot of the horror that has built up over the story.
   A Darksome Place reminded me quite a bit of Clive Barker's Midnight Meat Train; with an ancient power brooding in the darkness beneath a buzzing metropolis, hidden and secret, worthy of veneration yet inexplicable. It is horrific, but is it horror? I'm going to say yes.

   The Marauder Lives is a tense little story that while not being really horror at all did manage to keep me reading at a fast pace.
   In an asylum, an inquisitorial agent convalesces after her years-long captivity. But the past and the sadistic tortures of the Dark Eldar are always with her, and leave her unable to even begin to heal the scars of her mind. The asylum is a safe place, but on the horizon storm clouds gather and she is certain there is still danger to come.
   J C Stearns' story is rather well written, and the paranoia of its main character, coupled with the nature of the Dark Eldar faction, leaves you guessing whether something is really going on or whether it might all be in our protagonist's head. Tense.

Life in the Cradle is beautiful and slow for the orphans. Sent here to live away from The World Beyond,  in the vale they are under the protection of the horned deity, and they are kept safe and blessed by his grace. But only for as long as they uphold the law, give veneration where it is due, and above all: Never leave the cradle.
   But young Cade has a friend who has dreams of seeing the sights of the world beyond, and she tells him she's sure that the tales the villagers tell are just that; tales of boogeymen, stories to frighten children. she's sure that The Nothings aren't real. And then when, one evening he returns from a hunt to find the village in an uproar, with Abi missing, he knows that the tales are about to be put to the test.
   Alec Worley's short story probably should have been at the forefront of the anthology, as it manages to ease the reader into a familiar and comfortable setting (at least ostensibly) while gradually introducing more and more intriguing and mysterious elements to the story until it finally pulls the rug out from under them. Readers with mileage in the various settings will probably sniff most of it out quite early, but the story is at least written in an easy, engaging manner.
   As for horror: there is some, though it isn't enough to write home about, apart from some existential dread there at the end which, even though the licenses usually have heaps of that stuff, this particular segment was written quite well, with almost an almost nightmarish, apocalyptic quality to the imagery. Pretty good.

    An interesting collection of short stories, and a good journey into the realm of genuine horror for Warhammer fiction. But is this it?

    Madness and disease are the usual suspects, and the gore is welcome as well, of course, but barring Nepenthe, most of these were just slight exaggerations of what can be found in other Warhammer fiction. The Black Library will have to up their game if they want to stand out.

Don't be afraid to shock, guys.

Bring it on. Everybody wants it.

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Warhammer Horror

I have a lot to say about this one. I initially put this at the start of the Maledictions review but it blew up to such an extent that it's received its own post.

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A horror imprint for Warhammer...

Let's be honest: Though we all really want and endorse it, there is simply no need for a horror imprint for Warhammer, because pretty much all of it already is horror. You'll be very hard-pressed to find a story in any of the settings; Old World, 40k, Age of Sigmar, or Heresy, that doesn't have any conventional horror in them.
   I say conventional horror, because there are always elements in any of the Warhammer tales, old or new, that in any other world, license or setting would be deemed horrific or worthy of the label of horror, but in terms of a Warhammer tale would still be considered quite tame.
   There is an expectation of heightened violence and horrific imagery with any Warhammer story. Half the races are made up out of hordes of ravenous aliens, demons or adherents to some seriously dark gods, and all of them inimical to mankind, who are in most cases our protagonists. There is always violence and gore, and overwhelming odds, and desperation and death are pretty much a given. Last stands are common and happy endings pretty much nonexistent. The intro blurb to the 40k setting explicitly make it clear that this setting is nightmarish to the point of overkill, and it's not for nothing that 40k is credited with the coining of the Grimdark label.

   Maybe Warhammer fiction should come with a disclaimer that it is liable to desensitize any regular reader to other horror fiction. This has certainly been my experience.

    As such, if you're going to label a tale in any of these settings explicitly as horror, where all of this is already very much present, there needs to be something more than what is commonly expected when reading in these realms.

This does not mean that what we should be given has to just be more of the same, but rather that it has to exist, having been created from a different mind set, and with a different goal in mind. The story must have more than just the common horror tropes and settings; these worlds will have elements of any horror property you can think of, and likely will have already expounded on many of them, and evolved and explored them in others.

Sadly the intro blurb could have used some more exploring...

   The main problem with this whole thing though arises from the fact that writing in a licensed setting comes with a few problems.
   Any new reader to the Warhammer licenses is going to be bewildered and very much confused about all the names unique to these settings. And the Age of Sigmar and the Dark Imperium eras went a step further and provided the opportunity for Games Workshop to evolve old races and tropes, likely already recognizable and accessible to new readers through their familiarity with other properties, and it also allowed GW to make up new names for their own older stuff, in order for their properties to be easier to trademark. This gives all of this a unique flavour, yes, but it also creates a huge barrier for people who are not in the know, who do not have this background. Quite frankly it WILL put new readers off, as the Goodreads page for the Maledictions anthology easily demonstrates.

    For those already invested in the setting, familiar with the names, the ideas and history behind them, the naming of antagonistic forces can have another effect, very much detrimental to horror: the revelation of the identity of the malign forces ranged against the protagonists can summon up a whole host of associations, leading to a sense of deflation. The act of revelation almost always takes away dread and horror, unless the story has enough other qualities to hold it up, which is why the best stories try not to divulge the names of their antagonists, or they name them but let them be different from whatever associations the reader might already have, subverting expectations and throwing them into a realm of uncertainty.

   Lastly, given how Games Workshop does things, I don't think that this Horror imprint will be around for very long. This company tends to drop what isn't selling well, and though I hope I'm wrong, I'll be surprised if we'll end up getting more than ten new original novels under its banner.
Either way, if this new project of theirs proves to be successful or not, I'll be there for all of them.

Apart from the novels (Maledictions, The Wicked and the Damned, Drachenfels) and the audio drama (Perdition's Flame) already out now and the re-issues of the Genevieve novels yet to come, later this year will also see three original novel releases: The Castle of Blood by CL Werner, The House of Night and Chain by David Annandale, and Dark Harvest by Josh Reynolds. There will also be a new short story anthology that'll try to creep us out. I'm unsure if these'll be original stories under the Warhammer horror imprint, or if they'll be the ones being released now on e-Book for the Warhammer Horror week.

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    Since the Vampire Genevieve novels will be re-released under this new Horror imprint and given that these merited the label of Horror, in part because Kim Newman is a very recognizable horror author, and also because they are pretty damn good, then surely; there will also be other older novels that will be repackaged and collected under the label.

   I have some suggestions, and keeping in mind that I've not read a bunch of what's been written in the realms of Warhammer, I believe that for 40k Ben Counter's Grey Knights' Trilogy would merit a Horror reprint, also the Architect of Fate series of of novellas, and possibly also Dan Abnett's Only in Death, which ended up being one of my favourite ghost (pun intended) stories.

    For the Old world there's far fewer options, as a lot of this side of the fiction tended to focus more on delivering adventure rather than horror or desperate warfare, but there were nonetheless some notables: Steven Saville's Vampire Wars trilogy is bleak and horrific enough, as is Chris Wraight's Swords of the Emperor duology, though mainly because of the nastiness of the antagonists and the bleak sense of the End Times yet to come. And to round out my suggestions three I would also nominate The Witch Hunter novel, individually at the very least, if not the trilogy as a whole.

Update.

Just a short and quick update, with some details about the novels and comics I won't get around to writing about.

With Winter's Dreams done and dusted with, I have now already finished 3 out of 5 of this year's reading goals. For some reason this is all going a lot faster than expected. A side product of having more free time on my hands obviously. My health is still going up and down, an infection in my eye requiring heavy medication and limited time in front of the telly and pc for the moment. It's currently stopping a steady reading and writing speed from manifesting itself. But I'll be right as rain at the end of the week I expect.

I hope to finish off the Grendel reading goal this month, which means reading Beowulf and the Fantasy Masterwork Grendel, and do a Fantasy masterwork post for the latter, which could take some time. I'm also dedicating some time to the Warhammer Horror imprint this month: as long as I have the time I better make good use of it.

Also, besides what was on my to do list for this year, and besides the novels and short story collections that have already merited their own posts on the blog, I've also finished 2 novellas of Warhammer's Old World in rather quick succession. The Life of Sigmar limited edition; an ancient book responsible for heavily inspiring McNeill's Life of Sigmar trilogy, and the Bloody-Handed novella by Gav Thorpe; a short story easily slotting into the Sundering trilogy. Both had their merit, with varying shades of readability.
I breezed through the absolute gothic horror classic the Turn of the Screw, which has become better and better the longer I have it in my rear-view mirror.
I also paced my way through two out of the three remaining Penguin Red Classics I still had left to read and though they ended up being 'just ok' I'm glad I did get round to them. They were collections of short stories by MR James and Ambrose Bierce, and it is the Gaskell collection which is still left.
The Old Man and the Sea and Slaughterhouse 5 were beautiful and stunning respectively, and as they're short and absolute classics, they can be recommended to just about everyone. I'm very glad I spurred-of-the-moment on these as they definitely gave me a unique experience each.

I've also plowed through a host of comics I had lying around.
Most notably, I've now read everything that's available in the Hellboy universe, excepting the trade paperback of Being Human. In my opinion the main BPRD series is very much a disappointing mess, with most of the merit to the Hellboy universe coming from the stories featuring the titular character, most of the spin-offs, which tend to be very focused and coherent, and several isolated stories such as The Long Death, in particular. But the central BPRD storylines just tend to fail again and again, due to rushing their storylines, having too many characters to juggle with, and just by having too many different things at play, frequently jarring the casual reader and requiring the reader who has read all of it to have an almost eidetic memory in order to enjoy the stories to their maximum potential. They also are very much too sprawling and unfocused. The Mignolaverse is very definitely overrated.
Hellblazer I'm practically through half of the entire 300 issue run, and still very much enjoying it, even though Constantine has shifted back and forth in characterization between absolute bastard and plaything of fate along the way. The artstyle has shifted to more contemporary art which is lovely, because as good as I found most of the earlier stories, the art almost always felt lacking.
Alan Moore's Light of Thy Countenance comic adaptation also deserves a mention, as I thought it was absolutely gorgeous and mesmerizing in concept and execution.

There's much more I got around to finishing off, but those are the big ones.

Up next: Some Warhammer Horror!