The Colonel's Monograph, Graham McNeill

Boy, I think I might've left this too long. It's been over a month now since I read this one, and though this seems to have been a bit beneficial for my opinions on it, I confess I can't remember much on the particulars of it. Maybe that's for the best, because what I do remember is that I was quite annoyed when I finished the story.

Recently widowed archivist Teresina Sullo has been invited to catalogue the personal library of one of the heroes of the imperium, the late colonel Elena Grayloc, the valiant commander who led the only surviving Astra Militarum regiment out of the madness of the infamous Dark Suns campaign.

She travels to Grayloc manor, where she is aided by those left behind after the colonel's apparent suicide. But it swiftly becomes clear that there is a mystery at work in Graylock Manor and darkness and danger besides. Gripped by the deepening mystery of the colonel's past Teresina follows up on the mad ramblings of the last archivist to work at Graylock manor, and she fervently begins to search for the tome that is rumoured to hold all the answers she seeks: the colonal's secret Monograph.

The main problem I had with the Colonel's Monograph is that it is the first of all of the Warhammer Horror stories, both the novels, the short stories, and the middling length fiction I've read so far, that seems to validate the arguments directly against a Warhammer Horror label, the idea that these stories wouldn't differ so much from the rest of the Warhammer fiction, and that there was no real warrant for a special Warhammer Horror branch.

It's not so much that the story isn't horrific, but rather that it feels terribly run of the mill. It is a story that pretty much goes exactly the way you expect it to go. The kind of story that I believed would inevitably be put out in this range; "Warhammer but specifically Horror!".
The Colonel's Monograph is the kind of hack writing that seems to validate general reader opinion that all that Warhammer fiction is is this kind of derivative throw-away fiction , filled with sensationalist elements, that is written specifically to cater to a juvinile and immature audience that hasn't read all that widely.

I'm being unduly harsh, but it's also pretty much the way I do see it.

There's a place for this fiction, and I frequently do enjoy it, but it would be nice if we could just get better.

Derivative is underlined above because it's my main problem with the story. Maybe it's just that it adheres so much to classic horror and gothic fiction, in such a way that it feels less like a pastiche and more just of a straight up copy of what's come before. Sure, the elements are 40k, but pretty much nothing else is original.

I have read some reviews of this one on Goodreads and apparently this is precisely what the audience wants: It wants those tropes and familiar situations, but just set in the Warhammer settings, and all I can do is shake my head in annoyance.

Another problem, one with 40k fiction, Warhammer fiction/ lore, in general, is that there is so little that is mysterious and will continue to remain mysterious. These are massive universes, that have articles, lore books, game rules and what-have-you dedicated to conveying as much information as possible, and of which more are put out every so often, and, as a result, everything that is being written is required to adhere to certain rules. Originality does not thrive here, and so horror as well can not really thrive. There's always a usual suspect, there's always a name that'll dispel whatever tension has been built up...
Whatever evil is afoot in the Warhammer Universe, whatever phenomena, whatever terrible and mysterious thing there might be crawling in the shadows, needs to fit in a familiar mold.
And there's already some definite precedent for the evil in the Colonel's Monograph.

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Honestly. it's really not that bad. I actually was going to write something way more positive, but I think I just wanted to vent a bit about the nature of Warhammer in General.
Sometimes I get too serious about the dumbest things.