Warhammer Horror (v2)

[DarkChaplain]

Looks like we may be in luck. Both Drachenfels and Genevieve Undead are slated for audiobooks on the 6th, the week following Apocalypse. Considering these are the only other "novels" released under Warhammer Horror, and BL's general tendency to not cover anthologies, this gives me hope that audiobooks may become a standard for Warhammer Horror. The books are marketed more neutrally than their other stuff, and should appeal to a general audience of horror fans as well, so this would make sense.

 

....alternatively, it may just be Kim Newman being a guaranteed seller.

[aa.logan]

Right, I’m resurrecting this thread rather than starting a third incarnation, though ‘Alec Worley: he’s dead good’ would be a nice topic title to see.

 

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I think the imprint is going from strength to strength, and while I’ve still not been brave enough to make the jump to the AoS stories, the 40k-set ones are pretty much auto-buys for me now.

 

Annandale is doing some excellent work, but I think Alec Worley has produced the standout title to date.

 

Not Perditions’ Flame, though that is still very good. Framed as a fireside ghost story, your enjoyment of it may be determined by your tolerance for Andrew Wincott’s somewhat smug ‘Vostrayan’ accent; I liked it but can see how it might grate. The Penal Legions are rarely seen in BL fiction, and the

Oreo Chronos

are even rarer still, so it’s nice to have them fleshed out. There may be a little too much running around corridors shouting for my liking, but the performances are solid, and if you can guess what

the Inquisitor’s cargo

is, you’re probably due a ticket on the Black Ships as a latent psyker.

 

No, the standout title for me to date is Watcher in the Rain. Great performances, fantastic script combine to produce a genuinely unsettling hour of audio. Again, we have some running down tunnels and corridors but we do it in the company of two very compelling characters. Chaos is an ever-present and vague threat as the characters race against the clock but, big spoilers here

it’s every bit as much about the banality of evil and the crushing indifference of the institutions of the Imperium. From the oppressive bureaucracy of the Imperium where a number not being carried over in a ledger can doom an individual to the development of the required callousness to protect humanity as part of the Holy Ordos; it’s clear how the ruinous powers can slowly erode and corrupt. I’m not going into any more detail here

it’s damn good and I’d almost go as far as saying is *essential* listening.

[DarkChaplain]

I'll second The Watcher in the Rain. It's a standout drama that I managed to recommend to a friend, who then in turn also got his girlfriend, who had even less (read: zero) prior interest or knowledge about 40k, to love it after they listened to it together. It's incredibly accessible for what it is, while being a powerful slice of Imperial bureaucracy and the weird darkness below the surface of everything. It conveys an astounding level of dread and atmosphere even before you get to the specific characters and their own roles in it all.

[Red_Shift]

Dark Harvest was fantastic.

 

I'm into Invocations now which is good but if it didn't have the warhammer horror label I would have pegged it as a standard black library short story anthology.

 

I'm loving the green paper it gives the books a really distinctive feel.

[KhorneFlakes]

Aye Dark Harvest was a good read. i finished the Oubliette the other day - read it twice as think missed some bits the first time around. good little tale, ending was a tad abrupt. and a bit puzzled about the 

 

type of creature the nightfiend was. he/ it mentioned mon-keigh so did think it was a dark eldar, but then on about nt being able to move around in the light...any info would be appreciated

 

but would definitely recommend the book to folk. slow build and some nasty deaths...

[DarkChaplain]

I was really bummed that Dark Harvest didn't get an audiobook (the first new WHH novel that did not, and even Drachenfels and Genevieve Undead had audios; still waiting for Beasts in Velvet and Silver Nails, though).

 

Well, turns out there WILL be an audiobook. Audible lists it for January 25, just two months late to the party. Looks like audio productions were slowed down a bit due to holiday stuff and the advent audios left and right. Hopefully this also means we'll be seeing an audio for The Oubliette when it officially launches next month.

 

Truth be told, the lack of audio made me wait on Dark Harvest so far. I got it lying on my bed-shelf with my other current reads, but that seeming inconsistency frustrated me enough to prioritize other stuff first. I've been enjoying the Horror imprint's audiobooks too much to want to give up on them. Hopefully Warhammer Crime will get the same treatment.

[Grey Angel]

I’m a big fan of Black Library horror books, Edited January 10, 2020 by Grey Angel

[Gongsun Zan]

Started on Maledictions, but so far I've been pretty disappointed by the first few 40k shorts. 

 

Nepenthe was painfully cliche, and I wasn't a fan of the prose or character work. 

 

No Good Deed starts out ok with some intriguing world building, but then falls apart with one of the most blandest executions of perhaps the most common "twist" in 40k. 

 

Hoping this gets better. 

Edited January 14, 2020 by Gongsun Zan

[cheywood]

Started on Maledictions, but so far I've been pretty disappointed by the first few 40k shorts.

 

Nepenthe was painfully cliche, and I wasn't a fan of the prose or character work.

 

No Good Deed starts out ok with some intriguing world building, but then falls apart with one of the most blandest executions of perhaps the most common "twist" in 40k.

 

Hoping this gets better.

It gets better in my opinion, though not dramatically so. No Good Deed was the low point for me.

[Shinros]

I was really bummed that Dark Harvest didn't get an audiobook (the first new WHH novel that did not, and even Drachenfels and Genevieve Undead had audios; still waiting for Beasts in Velvet and Silver Nails, though).

 

Well, turns out there WILL be an audiobook. Audible lists it for January 25, just two months late to the party. Looks like audio productions were slowed down a bit due to holiday stuff and the advent audios left and right. Hopefully this also means we'll be seeing an audio for The Oubliette when it officially launches next month.

 

Truth be told, the lack of audio made me wait on Dark Harvest so far. I got it lying on my bed-shelf with my other current reads, but that seeming inconsistency frustrated me enough to prioritize other stuff first. I've been enjoying the Horror imprint's audiobooks too much to want to give up on them. Hopefully Warhammer Crime will get the same treatment.

Dark, read dark harvest, it's great, in my opinion it's just as or almost as good as Requiem Infernal. I know it's a 40k forum, but we need more authors writing AOS books like this. Hell I want more 40k books like this as well hence why Dark Harvest and Requiem Infernal are my top picks for 2019. 

[DarkChaplain]

Oh, I will, don't worry. At this point, though, I might as well wait til the 25th to start with the audiobook. My Audible credit is set aside already!

 

On another note, Josh Reynolds also had an audio drama for WHH released this past weekend with Darkly Dreaming. I absolutely loved it, although the obvious horror elements come into play about halfway through. It's a bit more of a politicial intrigue story in the first half.

 

Has anybody read the advent stories for WHH so far? My reading in December has been pretty.... slim, so I haven't gotten to them yet.

[theSpirea]

If you mean The Child Foretold then yeah, I've read that one and didn't like it that much. Probably the weakest story in the Advent and WHH so far. Very generic, predictable and the writing wasn't the best. It was written by Bram Stoker Award writer so maybe the problem was me and not the story.

[DarkChaplain]

Looking at what's been winning awards these couple of years in general, I wouldn't be so sure, to be honest. They've been awarding a lot of drivel with all manner of medals when their only merits are on a meta level / political. The only awards I still care to listen to among media are probably for board games.

[KhorneFlakes]

would definitely recommend Dark Harvest - one of the best ones in the Horror line so far.

 

The Oubliette a very close second. 

 

Will be getting Darkly Dreaming today for a listen. 

[DarkChaplain]

I finished Dark Harvest yesterday (excellent, potential for a follow-up left open) and am on to The Oubliette now. There's one thing that keeps popping up, though:

 

Valgaast.

 

Originally, Valgaast was introduced as a world in The House of Night and Chain (or possibly a short story from the summer batch, although whichever was finished first is up for debate), but has since appeared numerous times.

 

First, I found it referenced as a key term of unknown nature in The Colonel's Monograph, the novella by Graham McNeill. While that one does cross-reference a bunch of in-universe books, like Gideon Ravenor's The Spheres of Longing, Valgaast is used not only to title books (The Elegy of Valgaast, Lament of Valgaast & Valgaast Theogonies), but also as an important phrase or event that is connected to a deeper mystery that quite literally might drive people who learn the truth behind it to insanity. It is not really elaborated further what it really is, though.

 

Now, in The Oubliette, the name is dropped again, in reference to a "over a century old" play called The Last Revel of X'amot by Reimgold of Valgaast. This popping up again made me check the other book I hadn't touched yet: Invocations. That anthology collects the summer stories on top of new stuff. Just searching the ebook brings up the term in yet more stories: The Confession of Convict Kline by Justin D Hill, where the term doesn't provide further results beyond the question of what it is. The next story to feature it is Stitches by Nick Kyme. It appears to feature a Guard regiment from Valgaast, the 66th.

The next reference is in Blood Sacrifice by Peter McLean, which continues the story of Corporal Cully. It is set after Baphomet by Night, which was set after Malediction's Predation of the Eagle. Another story iirc set on the same planet as Eagle was No Hero; Blood Sacrifice features a survivor thereof. Neither of the previous two stories have mentioned Valgaast (in fact, none of the stories in Maledictions seem to mention it yet).

From the Halls, the Silence, by David Annandale himself, is making reference to Valgaast City, and the house of Malveil in particular. I'm not clear if it is a prequel or a sequel to the novel, though - gotta read it asap, at any rate.

The last story in Invocations mentioning Valgaast is in The Summons of Shadows, another Annandale story. It references a troop transport of the title Exaltation of Faith. It reports that the ship had a fractured plasma reactor, which did not get fixed as intended and thus blew to bits during its next warp jump warp-to-realspace translation. This, I believe, is the wreck from Annandale's contribution to The Wicked and the Damned, The Faith and the Flesh.

 

Lastly, Valgaast appears to be an important element in Nick Kyme's upcoming Sepultrum. Thís time, though, it might not be referring to the planet/city.

 

So there you have it. Not having properly read Invocations, I'm probably missing a good deal of details and context, but right now, it seems pretty obvious that BL have decided to create links between various pieces in the Warhammer Horror imprint. It has me mighty intrigued already. So far, they seem like minor bits and pieces, outside of Annandale's revisit of Malveil in a short story, but taken together, and especially when looked at all the things the stories don't tell us, or leave us hanging with, I'm pretty confident that we'll be seeing something more down the line. All this setup can't be for naught, especially with how McNeill used it. There's got to be something big. We'll probably find out a lot more once Sepultrum hits shelves.

 

Has anybody else found any overlap, cross-references or recurring characters yet?

[theSpirea]

Having read Invocations, I also noticed lots of links to the Castle of Blood.

 

In summer I plan to re-read all the Horror books and keep track of hints/characters, etc. I as well believe BL, or at least authors, have a plan and are trying to pull off something big.

[KhorneFlakes]

I finished Dark Harvest yesterday (excellent, potential for a follow-up left open) and am on to The Oubliette now. There's one thing that keeps popping up, though:

 

Valgaast.

 

Originally, Valgaast was introduced as a world in The House of Night and Chain (or possibly a short story from the summer batch, although whichever was finished first is up for debate), but has since appeared numerous times.

 

First, I found it referenced as a key term of unknown nature in The Colonel's Monograph, the novella by Graham McNeill. While that one does cross-reference a bunch of in-universe books, like Gideon Ravenor's The Spheres of Longing, Valgaast is used not only to title books (The Elegy of Valgaast, Lament of Valgaast & Valgaast Theogonies), but also as an important phrase or event that is connected to a deeper mystery that quite literally might drive people who learn the truth behind it to insanity. It is not really elaborated further what it really is, though.

 

Now, in The Oubliette, the name is dropped again, in reference to a "over a century old" play called The Last Revel of X'amot by Reimgold of Valgaast. This popping up again made me check the other book I hadn't touched yet: Invocations. That anthology collects the summer stories on top of new stuff. Just searching the ebook brings up the term in yet more stories: The Confession of Convict Kline by Justin D Hill, where the term doesn't provide further results beyond the question of what it is. The next story to feature it is Stitches by Nick Kyme. It appears to feature a Guard regiment from Valgaast, the 66th.

The next reference is in Blood Sacrifice by Peter McLean, which continues the story of Corporal Cully. It is set after Baphomet by Night, which was set after Malediction's Predation of the Eagle. Another story iirc set on the same planet as Eagle was No Hero; Blood Sacrifice features a survivor thereof. Neither of the previous two stories have mentioned Valgaast (in fact, none of the stories in Maledictions seem to mention it yet).

From the Halls, the Silence, by David Annandale himself, is making reference to Valgaast City, and the house of Malveil in particular. I'm not clear if it is a prequel or a sequel to the novel, though - gotta read it asap, at any rate.

The last story in Invocations mentioning Valgaast is in The Summons of Shadows, another Annandale story. It references a troop transport of the title Exaltation of Faith. It reports that the ship had a fractured plasma reactor, which did not get fixed as intended and thus blew to bits during its next warp jump warp-to-realspace translation. This, I believe, is the wreck from Annandale's contribution to The Wicked and the Damned, The Faith and the Flesh.

 

Lastly, Valgaast appears to be an important element in Nick Kyme's upcoming Sepultrum. Thís time, though, it might not be referring to the planet/city.

 

So there you have it. Not having properly read Invocations, I'm probably missing a good deal of details and context, but right now, it seems pretty obvious that BL have decided to create links between various pieces in the Warhammer Horror imprint. It has me mighty intrigued already. So far, they seem like minor bits and pieces, outside of Annandale's revisit of Malveil in a short story, but taken together, and especially when looked at all the things the stories don't tell us, or leave us hanging with, I'm pretty confident that we'll be seeing something more down the line. All this setup can't be for naught, especially with how McNeill used it. There's got to be something big. We'll probably find out a lot more once Sepultrum hits shelves.

 

Has anybody else found any overlap, cross-references or recurring characters yet?

never noticed anything like that but now will re-read to see. would be great if there was a 'grand plan' linking all this together

[aa.logan]

Tangentially related, I listened to rather than read the House of Night and Chain- is the govenor’s vehicle a Taurox or Tauros? It’s certainly said funny. The uncertainty has been nagging away at me for weeks now.

[DarkChaplain]

It's a Taurox.

 

I wonder if we'll see anything about the Dawn of Dark Suns, apart from what is explained in The Colonel's Monograph. It does seem somehow linked to Valgaast, at least.

[Lord_Caerolion]

Aye Dark Harvest was a good read. i finished the Oubliette the other day - read it twice as think missed some bits the first time around. good little tale, ending was a tad abrupt. and a bit puzzled about the 

 

type of creature the nightfiend was. he/ it mentioned mon-keigh so did think it was a dark eldar, but then on about nt being able to move around in the light...any info would be appreciated

 

but would definitely recommend the book to folk. slow build and some nasty deaths...

 

It was a

Dark Eldar Mandrake.

Edited February 20, 2020 by Lord_Caerolion

[DarkChaplain]

I'm ~75% through The Oubliette now and I'm seriously hoping the horror will ramp up significantly in the next few chapters. I really am enjoying it as a political thriller, but as far as the horror goes, it's... very rare and not really a focus. There's no real overall feeling of dread and the atmosphere remains largely normal, if tense for political reasons. Coming to it after Dark Harvest, the atmosphere is quite the bummer, truth be told.

 

It's definitely not a bad book so far, but seeing how early things go south and the source of horror gets introduced, it feels somewhat underused so far.

[Lord_Caerolion]

I guess it's more horror in the style of Portrait of Dorian Grey.

[DarkChaplain]

Another chapter further and things crystallize some more.

 

I think my problem roots from one specific thing so far:

Jaezubiel seems very... composed and under control for most of the novel. When let loose, he is horrifying in his artful butchery, but he's holding back almost the entire time. Yes, he's stalking from the shadows, but there's not been a real sign of him being a full-scale threat to Ashielle, beyond somebody finding out about him.

 

While his point of view sections do state that he could do his own thing if he so chose, pretty much, this is told to the reader, while in the story, nobody is really aware of how free or caged he might be by that covenant. If he had more of an active, growing role in some sort of abductions, murders and rising unrest in the city, that'd amp up the urgency quite significantly. Instead, his threat has been subdued from chapter three onwards. His first real kill in the open doesn't happen until chapter 9, out of 15. Somebody getting on the case and making some connections doesn't really come along til chapter 11. Up until the execution, or rather, the mess Jaezubiel made of it - leaving a witness behind, too - there is very little outward threat from him. Instead, all the threat is really of a political nature, or the assassination attempts on Ashielle.

 

Ashielle's search for answers and ways to seal him again make sense, of course, but may be more urgent if she really knew that Jaezubiel is out there, picking off victims covertly. It could've even been married to the refugee subplot or Tanzeg's illegal operations.

 

I guess my disappointment - on chapter 12 of 15 - comes from having a very cool horror element, loaded with potential, and seeing it fairly underused, with very little initiative of its own and no active, everpresent threat beyond being noticed existing.

[DarkChaplain]

Done with The Oubliette.

 

I wish I could like it more. This really seems like it needed a couple more chapters, more pages, time to flesh out the characters better. It has so many parts that brim with potential, but end up falling short due to a lack of exploration - including the horror element.

 

Ashielle's fall to selfish madness is handled so swiftly, with so little emotional turmoil, that it fell kinda flat. You had her balk a little bit about her first murder, but the following ones were just treated too coldly. Yes, that's the destination she needed to get to, but it went too quickly. Her own trauma gets increasingly less attention as the novel progresses. Her brother, Hanrik, is barely a character for most of the story. He just doesn't see much focus, when his own doubts and fears could've been a strong unifying aspect of the novel, and reinforced the eventual descent into madness for his sister.

Characters like the archivist and ecclesiarch are introduced to reach a checkpoint, but have no agency of their own within the story, no real pressure they exert on Ashielle to bring her to tipping point - they just provide her with convenient answers as needed in the chapters they appear. Yes, they serve to highlight her silver tongue, but that's the one part of her character that was firmly established from the start.

Ostap existed as a secondary character to provide views of the politics and scheming, but he, himself, had very little impact beyond that. He encounters Ashielle once, and never gets involved in the mystery itself.

 

Even the antagonists, sans Tanzeg, are a bit too cardboard-y for my taste. We're told a lot about how evil they are and how their underground activities are causing distress, but Eselia and Ireina just didn't do much. We're told that Ireina is scheming her way into the household, but don't actually see it happen until the climax. Eselia meanwhile, being the matriarch, really just keeps tabs on her children and moves conversations along. We don't even get to see their final moments in agony, either.

 

There's so much about the book that I liked when it came to the political intrigue as it was constructed, that it's just a real letdown that so much of the horror happens off-stage, characters seem underused or out of focus, weakening the impact events have down the line, and the mental decline into semi-psychopathy for Ashielle.

 

Heck, I liked the way she was presented as an art appreciator, and then going into the Vaneisen estate to look at their art pieces amid the carnage left by Jaezubiel's kin. That was a really cool final chapter. I just don't think there was really that much horror for her personally, seeing how she's actually the monster here, despite all the schemes of the Vaneisens. But for that to really work, the cracks in her needed to be more pronounced. The immense pressure from inheriting her position unexpectedly, the politics, her brother's suspicion, the loss of her trusted staff, the weight of the responsibility her father left her.... All the elements for her to snap are in place. I just didn't feel like they were played up as much as they needed to when it came down to the snapping.

 

Hells, I'd have been baffled if, instead of just telling her brother that she's not their father and how her privilege is absolute, she had also told him, before blowing his brains out, that it was her who sabotaged the shuttle with her father and elder brother aboard. Now THAT would've painted her character in a whole new light right there and then, in a crucial moment, reinforcing that she was a monster to begin with, playing the game all along, not being thrust into it. That her lust for power was always there, and Jaezubiel was just a means to an end after all. It could've even recontextualized the Vaneisen's a little by proving them innocent in that assassination, at least. It's a huge missed opportunity in my opinion.

 

It really would've benefitted from an additional 50-100 pages. It shouldn't be too much to ask, considering they chose to release it as hardback first, as a premium-level Warhammer Horror entry. As such, I'm even more baffled, considering how disproportionate the horror was when compared to the politics. To me, it seemed definitely like a weaker Horror entry than The House of Night and Chain, Castle of Blood and Dark Harvest as a result.

[Shinros]

My opinion mirrors your own Dark, I wanted something more and the horror sections were in such small ounces I was wondering when the big moment would come, unfortunately it didn't.