‘Argent (Vaults of Terra) ‘ - Chris Wraight (Black Library)

 


Page Count: 23 Pages

What with one thing and another, Wednesdays are always busy, in and outside work, and while I wouldn’t swap it (well, I wouldn’t swap the bits where I get to hang out with my daughters); there’s never enough time at the end of the day to settle down with a good book. So, I settled down with (what I hoped would be) a good short story instead. And it was :o)

I had seen that Chris Wraight’s ‘Vaults of Terra’ trilogy is due to be published soon, collected in one volume, so I thought I’d go and see if any of the accompanying short stories were available on the Kindle. ‘Argent’ was the first one that I came across so that’s the one I went with. And...

Interrogator Luce Spinoza’s hunt for a traitor brings her to Forfoda and into the company of the Imperial Fists. Unearthing a den of corruption, Spinoza learns what it means to fight alongside the Emperor’s Angels, and vows to prove herself worthy of this honour or die in the attempt.

It has been a long old time since I read the first two books of the ‘Vaults of Terra’ (I still need to read the third book…) but I do remember Interrogator Luce Spinoza and the crozius that she had been gifted by an Astartes Chaplain. If you read that and thought to yourself, ‘now there’s a story that needs to be told’… You’re a better person than I am ;o) I’ll be honest, I never gave it much thought at the time, it was a neat little bit of backstory that didn’t feel like it needed expanding any further. Wraight clearly thought it did though and there’s no shame in admitting that I was wrong not to wonder more about it at the time.

You only get twenty three pages of story here but Wraight really makes every single word count. The story itself is fairly straightforward but the backdrop and atmosphere is anything but. Wraight lands you on a war-torn world then proceeds not only to throw right you right into its war-torn midst but to also teach Spinoza what it’s like to fight alongside the Imperial Fists. And in a twist I didn’t see coming, Wraight even finds the time to teach an Imperial Fist what it’s like to fight alongside regular base-line humanity. Like I said, Wraight really does make every word count.

The end result is that I was hooked the whole way through. The plot may not surprise you (although if this is your first time meeting Spinoza, well… that’s different) but the sights that we see along the way (along with the introduction to a younger Spinoza) were more than worth the price of entry from where I was sat. I’m pretty sure that I still have a copy of ‘The Dark City’, I’ll have to dig it out now ;o)

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