‘The Long and Hungry Road’ – Adrian Tchaikovsky (Black Library)

After not finishing ‘Witchbringer’ (not the book’s fault, I still think it could be worth your time), I thought I’d change pace a little and go for a short, sharp burst of something instead. Something that would blow a few cobwebs away and wake me up a bit :o) Now in my experience, there’s nothing shorter and sharper than a Warhammer short story so that was the direction of my reading taken care of. And as far as the focus went… I’ve read a few Warhammer tales, in my time, but I’ve never read a tale that looks at the events of the 41st Millennium through the eyes of the rapacious Tyranids. So when I saw ‘The Long and Hungry Road’ on Amazon, it pretty much chose itself.

To face a Tyranid invasion is a waking nightmare. The skies darken with spores, your mind echoes with alien screeches, and countless weapon-organisms descend upon you with razor teeth and claws.

How much greater would your horror be, to realise that the hive ship above thinks nothing of your fate – that it crushes your resistance and devours your home on instinctual stimulus-response alone, seeking nothing more than the calories your world will yield? Witness a planet consumed, through the eyes of those who defend it – and through the blind, hungry gaze of its conquerors.

The problem with setting your enemy up as this coldly impersonal force of nature, devouring on instinct alone, is that while it makes your tale all the more chilling, there’s only so much you can do with it. Point your swarm of space insects at a planet, let them feed and… that’s it. Stick with that and I can guarantee you won’t have enough story to meet the word count for a Warhammer short story.

Luckily for us, this has already occurred to Tchaikovsky and he has already adjusted his tale accordingly. We are shown the blind hunger of the Tyranids and it has the appropriate affect of really making the reader aware of just how uncaring this universe is. You can be rendered down, and your biomass devoured, but the Great Devourer doesn’t have any feelings about you, one way or the other. It was hungry and you were there, kind of like me and the McDonalds round the corner from my house. What a great way of making you fully aware of your place in the universe.

Like I said though, there’s only so much scope for a plot with that approach so Tchaikovsky widens the view and shows us that a Tyranid invasion isn’t just about the eating. The defence of the planet is well told but the inevitability of the invasion can work against how the tale is told. How do you mitigate against that? For Tchaikovsky, it’s simple. Just tell the tale from another angle at the same time, an angle that deals purely in betrayal. Those were my favourite moments and a little reminder that I have a copy of ‘Day of Ascension’, lurking somewhere, that I really need to pick up now.

‘The Long and Hungry Road’ ended up being just the tale I was after. A short read that somehow managed to make room for itself to tell its tale in some style at the same time. If the Tyranids ever come back, Adrian Tchaikovsky is clearly the writer to tell their tale.