Accursed or Acclaimed?

Black Library’s Warhammer Horror line continues with The Accursed, another in the range of short story collections which includes Maledictions, Invocations, Anathemas, and The Harrowed Paths, the last of these being a bit of an oddity because so much of its page count was taken with two novellas. I didn’t like Harrowed Paths, but I did like the first three, so let’s see if this is a return to form.

Age of Sigmar

The book leads off with Jake Ozga’s Skull Throne, which had previously been published as a standalone story. It’s quite good – it’s rather odd in its opening sections, but the oddness actually comes together and ends up making sense in a way which increases rather than defusing the power of the story – always a good trick – and I’m a bit more patient about extremely trippy stories when they’re using the Age of Sigmar setting, because the Mortal Realms are basically a death metal variant on a Roger Dean landscape and if a story set in them doesn’t at least somewhat reflect how bizarre they are, it might as well be an Old World story. (Not that Black Library are including any Old World stories in these collections, despite reprinting an entire series of Old World novels in the Warhammer Horror range…)

The Name of the Rose, With More Dakka (Second Generation Photocopy)

The Angels Resplendent are a Space Marine Chapter descended from the Blood Angels. Like all of the Successor Chapters who can trace their lineage back to the Primarch Sanguinius, their history has been stained by the curse of the Black Rage, an overwhelming fury in which the dying memories of Sanguinius can overcome a Space Marine who bears his geneseed and cause them to fall into a slathering fury. However, for some six hundred or so years the Resplendent have been able to protect themselves from this through following the tenets of the Arc Resplendent, a new philosophy which has guided the Chapter ever since its Reformation.

Among other things, the Arc Resplendent puts artistic endeavour at the heart of the Chapter as firmly as warfare; between battles, the Marines of the Chapter busy themselves creating masterpieces, and they are attended by Muses, human artists selected as companions for their inspirational creative gifts. Eccentric and heterodox by the standards of Space Marine Chapters – though hardly the only one to have ditched the Codex Astartes as their core doctrine – they rule their homeworld of Malpertuis from a distance, cloistered in their citadel of Kanvolis with their Muses and other human servants.

Yet all is not quite right; an unspoken horror sits right at their doorstep. It has been the longstanding tradition since the Reformation that before Aspirants are accepted for elevation from mere human into surgically transformed Space Marine, they must undertake a journey across the Reverie – a strange forested valley a little way south of Kanvolis, whose paths may not only extend through conventional space. Few Marines of the Chapter remember very much of their experiences there, since the Chapter makes a point of erasing the memories of recruits so that they recall almost nothing of their human life – but the lingering effects lie heavy on some.

At the heart of the Reverie is the legacy of a great atrocity – and a greater atrocity done during the Reformation, as part of a misguided attempt to help the Angels Resplendent command themselves. Soon the truth will become known to Varzival Czervantes, a high-ranking Marine of the Chapter, when the mysterious Paladin Satori involves him in manipulations that have lasted centuries. Can Varzival help keep the lid of this Pandora’s Box shut for just a little longer, or is the whole world of Malpertuis doomed to unravel, torn apart by the hole that lives at the heart of… The Reverie?

The Name of the Rose, With More Dakka

Despite being released shortly after the introduction of the new Warhammer Horror line, Requiem Infernal by Peter Fehervari – a Warhammer 40,000 novel of death, terror, corruption, and the disintegration of objective reality set in a storm-lashed citadel run by the Adepta Sororitas – isn’t billed as a Warhammer Horror release. This, given the general tone of things, seems to be a mistake – I mean, look at that cover art for one thing, that rendition of the protagonist glancing over her shoulder against a dark background hardly suggests the sort of battle-happy guns-blazing military SF which Warhammer 40,000 novels tend to go for.

The protagonist in question is Sister Asenath Hyades; the former name a nod to Lovecraft’s The Thing On the Doorstep, the latter a nod to Chambers’ King In Yellow. Asenath has lived many lives and filled many roles in the Adepta Sororitas – taken in and raised as a hospitaller medic, before winning her spurs as a Battle Sister and being chosen to accompany the mysterious Father Deliverance on a missionary expedition to an unreclaimed area of space, followed by various other roles in the wake of that before returning to the role of a hospitaller… and perhaps something more.

See, initially Asenath was a member of the Order of the Last Candle, a splinter group of the wider Order of the Eternal Candle. The Last Candle are an insular lot, having sought a remote artificial archipelago – the Ring – on a remote world to establish their convent, and spend much time meditating on the mysterious teachings of their founder. When Asenath joined Father Deliverance, she left the Last Candle, and is now a member of the parent organisation – and the Eternal Candle wants someone to check that the Last Candle hasn’t drifted into heresy in its deep isolation.

Asenath is that someone, but she’s not travelling alone. Following a nightmare encounter with an unknown foe, a mangled-up unit of the Exordio Void Breachers are coming with her, the wounded and ailing men’s only hope for recovery being the medical care offered at the Ring of the Last Candle. There’s a man called Jonas Tythe who dresses like a preacher, but in fact is an unwilling heresiarch, his faith in the God-Emperor shattered by the eldritch fate of his world and by his mysterious link to a book which fills itself with his own pessimistic philosophy. And there’s the otherworldly presence which has latched itself onto Asenath, which you could regard as her guilty conscience were it not for its very particular capabilities and interests…