'The Bookkeeper's Skull' – Justin D. Hill (Black Library)

Prior to last week's annual leave stint, everything was starting to pile up and I'm not going to lie, I was starting to struggle a little bit. My kids totally ran me ragged last week but I'm feeling a lot better now though ;o) There was a slight silver lining in that while I was reading a little, I couldn't quite get reviews written which meant that a nice pile of books built up for times when I was able to write something but didn't have the time to finish anything first. Times like right now when I'm back at work and fighting to quell a rebellious inbox... ;o)

Today's dip into, what I'm calling, 'The Insurance Pile' turned up 'The Bookkeeper's Skull', another slice of horror from a setting that is full of the stuff. When it's written like this though, I'm more than happy to take whatever comes my way...

On the captital world of Potence, young enforcer cadet Rudgard Howe is caught up in a bitter internecine feud to inherit his father's position of Chief Enforcer. As the tithe fleets approach, he is sent on his first mission to ensure that the planet's distant agri-facilities fulfil their quotas to the God-Emperor. Farmed with serfs and managed by ex-Militarum soldiers, the agri-facilities are places of shocking brutality and hopelessness. But when he is sent to the outlying farmstead of Thorsarbour, Rudgard discovers a community where the crops are left to rot as the inhabitants indulge in the bloody ecstasy of a sanguinary cult. As Rudgard imposes the strict Lex Imperialis upon the farmstead, he begins to uncover a place where sanity is rapidly slipping. Just a single step into his nightmarish mission though, a series of cruel deaths threatens to dismantle everything he has ever known about the Imperium, his faith in the Emperor, and the strength of his very soul.

And there I was, thinking that Agri-Worlds were all lovely and pastoral, sort of like Thomas Hardy but in space... Shows what I know. In the universe of the forty first Millennium, even farming is a dehumanising affair that will eventually kill you. And that's before the horror of Thorsarbour makes itself known...

Justin Hill knows his Warhammer 40K a lot better than I do as he takes the deepest of dives into the background scenery, painting a vivid picture of just how bleak and terrifying life away from the front lines can be. This is where the true horror is, a world where citizens are an expendable resource and are either worked to death or just executed if they are deemed not to be working hard enough. Or does the horror lie in the fact that Howe must be prepared to fight his own family to the death in order to have the privilege of being the enforcer who pulls the trigger? For my money, it's all pretty horrifying but what is truly terrifying is the fact that we're looking in on a world where Howe's childhood toy is a lobotomised criminal programmed to be just that. What happens on the farm is pretty creepy (more on that in a bit) but the moments with 'Gambol' really made my skin crawl.

So, Hill is off to a brilliant start already (in the 'horror stakes') but all of this is pushed to one side when the mystery of Thorsarbour Farm kicks in. One part mystery, at least two or three parts creeping dread as you wait for the next person to die... And they do.

I won't lie, I thought Hill showed his hand a little too early with one clue in particular but the journey to that point is classic horror/ghost story material and uses those tropes to great affect as well as, again, tying it all into the cosmic horror of the setting. I saw it coming but that just made it creepier if that makes any sense? If you miss that clue, I reckon the read (and eventual payoff) will be even better.

'The Bookkeeper's Skull' has a lot of horror to throw at you in not very much space (just under two hundred pages) and it's all credit to Hill that so much of it sticks. It's a properly creepy read that will get right under your skin and stay there. You could do a lot worse than check it out.