'The Wicked and the Damned' Josh Reynolds, David Annandale & Phil Kelly (Black Library)

I still can't quite get my head round Black Library having a dedicated line of horror fiction. Don't get me wrong, the stories that I've read have been great but one of the points of grimdark fiction is that there's a vein of horror running through it already and that's what we already had with 99% of Black Library fiction. Having a horror line then feels a little bit like the cake is being over-decorated or how it would look if Mills and Boon suddenly decided to do a line of books focusing on just weddings. Not that Black Library are anything like Mills and Boon but, you know what I mean (hopefully) ;o)

I'm a big fan of the Black Library's output though, and I'm a huge fan of horror fiction in general, so I'll keep reading em', of course I will, especially as the nights get colder and darker. I've had my eye on 'The Wicked and the Damned' for a while now but had to wait until last payday before I could finally grab a copy. Then it promptly got lost, amongst the teetering piles of books in my flat, but I found it and settled down for a read... This will be a shorter review than normal as the book is only just over three hundred pages long.

On a misty cemetery world, three strangers are drawn together through mysterious circumstances. Each of them has a tale to tell of a narrow escape from death. Amid the toll of funerary bells and the creep and click of mortuary-servitors, the truth is confessed. But whose story can be trusted? Whose recollection is warped, even unto themselves? For these are strange stories of the uncanny, the irrational and the spine-chillingly frightening, where horrors abound and the dark depths of the human psyche is unearthed.

After all that stuff I said up the page, 'The Wicked and the Damned' ended up being one of those books where I literally had to keep reading to the end. The ending may be signposted a little too clearly but the stories themselves, and the background scenery that they're wrapped up in, may not be perfect but are compelling. It's one of those books where the journey is better than the destination and that's fine. I'm not going to talk loads about the planet Silence as it doesn't feature a great deal but when it does, it creates an appropriately unsettling locale for the stories to be told.

The first two stories are more supernatural in nature, rather than horror, but they still do a good job. My favourite, of the two, is Josh Reynolds' 'The Beast in the Trenches', a spiraling tale of paranoia that kept me guessing what the fate of our narrator would be. With the focus being on our Commissar's paranoia, we never really find out what his paranoia is all about and that's ok, to a point, because that's what paranoia is all about really, isn't it? It's a bold move, by Reynolds, to leave his story so open ended then (in terms of what the Commissar is actually fighting) but it really works in terms of how the story stays in your head afterwards.

Phil Kelly's 'The Woman in the Walls' didn't fare as well, for me, mostly because it took a little step back from the horror and almost became a detective story (with flashes of horror) as the protagonist seeks to uncover a mystery in her own ranks while making sure that she isn't killed by her own side. As a slice of Astra Militarum life, 'The Woman in the Walls' is a great tale of intrigue and rivalry between regiments. As a slice of horror though, it has it's moments (and they're good, especially the bit in the kitchens, that was awesome) but not enough to really count for me.

And then we get onto David Annandale's 'The Faith and the Flesh', which is my favourite of the three. It not only springs a nasty surprise at just the right moment, it then goes on to become a vicious mix of 'Alien' and 'The Thing' (as far as body horror goes anyway). I couldn't ask for a lot more than that in a horror story, not really.

Like I said earlier, you can see the end of the book coming but I suspect that's the whole point. The stories themselves though are, on the whole, worth the price of entry and made for an entertaining quick read. One for Warhammer 40K fans more than regular horror fans (I think) but either way, if you like horror then I think you'll get something out of 'The Wicked and the Damned'.