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…)