Harrowed Paths and Warped Routes

Following on from Maledictions, Invocations, and Anathemas, The Harrowed Paths is the latest short story anthology in the Warhammer Horror line. It departs somewhat from the format of the previous entries in the series by sandwiching a cluster of shorter stories in between two novella-length works. Given that The Deacon of Wounds had wide margins, a big font, and a small page count, one wonders whether the original plan was to put out another portmanteau like The Wicked and the Damned consisting of that and the two novellas found here.

Warhammer 40,000

The first of the two novellas is The Colonel’s Monograph by Graham McNeill – this is the one which was previously released in 2019. It depicts a widowed archivist tasked with cataloguing the library of a deceased Colonel; the titular Imperial Guardswoman had been a hero of the sector, but died recently in great debt, and her son declares he’s planning to sell off the books to pay the debts. Supposedly, somewhere in there is an unpublished monograph by the Colonel, a personal account of her last major campaign – if that could be found, it would be very valuable indeed. As our archivist investigates, she discovers – obviously – that all is not as it seems.

This is nothing less than an attempt by McNeill to write an M.R. James-esque story within a Warhammer 40,000 context (there’s even a supporting character named “Montague Rhodes”); there is a bit of perilous lesbian eroticism towards the end of a sort which James never touched, but aside from that it’s a rather nicely-observed take on the style, with the antiquarian mystery, the unexpectedly grubby backstory it’s concealing, and a “ghost” which might not technically be a ghost after all. In this bit of literary cosplay McNeill manages to deliver a better story than any other I’ve read by him.

Invocations Or Impertinances?

Invocations is the second in the series of short story collections in the Warhammer Horror series which were kicked off by the preceding Maledictions. As with Maledictions, what you get here is a brace of stories, some in the Age of Sigmar setting, some in the universe of Warhammer 40,000, but this time around there’s a notable attempt to include more Age of Sigmar content: whereas in Maledictions only 4 of the 11 stories were based on that setting, here 7 of the 12 stories are based on it.