‘Execution (Severina Raine)’ – Rachel Harrison (Black Library)


A shorter post today as I’m scrambling to get stuff done before I go on leave next week, and there is a lot of ‘stuff’ to get done. In the meantime though…

The traitor fortress of Mone is under siege. The Astra Militarum of the 11th Antari Rifles Stand against the rebels, desperately seeking a way to break the siege and claim victory. When their captain refuses an order to advance in the face of devastating enemy firepower, it falls to Commissar Severina Raine to marshal the Antari forces and lead them on their dangerous mission.

I’ve been meaning to read Rachel Harrison’s ‘Honourbound’ for a long time and I’m finally going to have the chance to do just that in the next couple of days, when Amazon gets its act together. While I’m waiting, I thought I would see if there was any shorter fiction doing the rounds so I could get a feel for what Commissar Severina Raine was all about. And as luck would have it… Black Library’s ‘short reads’ series (not sure if that’s exactly what it’s called but you know what I mean) had just what I was looking for.

‘Execution’ is one of the longer ‘short reads’ (I feel like I’m really mangling the English language this morning, sorry!) that I’ve come across and there’s plenty going on inside, handily divided into ‘siege breaking’ and ‘character building’.]

The siege breaking comes across as a little ‘by the book’ to start off with but Harrison is clearly a master of timing as it all kicks off at just the right moment and all of a sudden, you’re in the middle of a particularly brutal fight for survival. I had trouble keeping up with all the names, and where they were at any given moment, but to be fair I guess that’s war for you. You’re not meant to be able to keep track of everyone, not when you’re staring down the barrel of a lasgun. In that respect then, Harrison writes some bloody good battlefield prose.

What was more interesting to me though were the brief glimpses that we get into the mind of Commissar Severina Raine and what is keeping her going during this siege. Ibram Gaunt to one side, Commissar’s tend to be these dour, ‘execution happy’ types and while Raine is of a similar nature, Harrison not only shows us why this is but also the emotional cost that Raine must bear as a result of her every decision. The end result is that most rare of breeds, a Commissar that you find yourself backing. Being a Commissar is a rotten job but someone has to do it.

‘Execution’ is very much a tale of two halves then and while the shooting match may take a while to get going, this is more than made up for by the look we get at Raine herself. I’m really looking forward to reading ‘Honourbound’ now.  

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