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.
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!
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