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.