UK Games Day Anthology 2012 Review: Part 2

My Hobby Challenge. Giveaway Prizes. DreadBall Credits. It sure has been a busy week . Yet I did not forget about the second part to my review of this year’s UK Games Day Anthology by Black Library. Here is the first part of the review if you missed it. Now lets move on to the second half of this BL short story collection: Iron Hands  make a prominent appearance and Dan Abnett’s Eisenhorn ends the book with a cliffhanger.

The UK Games Day Anthology 2012/2013

As noted in the first half of my review, the UK Games Day Anthology is a slim, limited edition book that was, as the name says, exclusive to Games Workshop’s last months’ UK Games Day. It is fairly easy to find the book on eBay however.

Games Day Anthology 2012/2012 contents:

• Distand Echoes of Old Night – a Warhammer 40K story by Rob Sanders
• Extinction – a Warhammer 40K story by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
• The Master of Mourkain – a Warhammer Fantasy story by Josh Reynolds
• The Blessing of Iron – a Warhammer 40K story by Anthony Reynolds
• The Memory of Flesh – a Warhammer 40K story by Matthew Farrer
• Perihelion – a Warhammer 40K story by Dan Abnett

Let’s look at stories 4 to 6.

4. The Blessing of Iron (Anthony Reynolds)

This is a fantastic little story. Along with ‘Distant Echoes of Old Night‘, it is probably my favourite one in the book. First, because Anthony Reynolds does a great job writing his protagonist Iron Hands Battle-Brother Dolmech. I admit I never paid much attention to the Iron Hands. I know they have a very loyal fan-base. Yet to me, they always were “one of the others” that never really caught my interest (founding Legion or not).

Without doubt, Reynolds really nails the Iron Hands here. For the most part, the story alternates between first-person narration by Battle-Brother Dolmech – assessing each new development with cold, mechanical logic – and the third person narration of the Mechanicus functionary he escorts through an unfolding prisoner-uprising – filled with terror and alienation at the methodical carnage inflicted by the Iron Hands Marine. It is the perfect set-up to showcase the Iron Hands, both through their own eyes and through the eyes of outsiders, and it is executed perfectly.

Perhaps the only thing better than the character(s) is the story itself. Though it’s short, like all stories in this book, it packs not one but two “plot twists”. Both of them excellent. I’m not going to spoil them (despite the spoiler warning). Just trust me that this is tight 40K story-telling at its best. I don’t think I’ve read work from Anthony Reynolds before, but if he’d ever wrote more Iron Hands stuff, I’d be all over it. This is a wicked story.

5. The Memory of Flesh (Matthew Farrer)

Iron Hands again? More than that. Dolmech returns, easily identified by his trademark power axe and bionics, though he has now risen to the rank of Veteran-Sergeant. This story complements ‘The Blessing of Iron‘, though it is set years later, on a different planet, in a different conflict.

It is a very neat idea to have double-entry of this sort. As I greatly enjoyed the previous story, I was more than happy to read more about the Iron Hands Space Marine Dolmech. Matthew Farrer spins a fine tale from the legacy the previous story (and it does come back to the events of the first one in the conclusion).

That said, it is a different story by a different author and – back-to-back – I don’t think Matthew Farrer nailed the Iron Hands as well as Anthony Reynolds did. The first-person perspective is gone, which I thought was a pity. Hearing Dolmech “calculate” his every action and move with cold, robotic rationality was part of the fun. But even beyond that, Dolmech in this story seems less … “Iron Hand”. He’s angry. He’s rash. He’s afraid to be humiliated before his squad. The plot is in parts driven by these emotions, but it makes for an odd break from the previous story. It’s couched in terms of avoiding “weakness”, which the Iron Hands obviously despise, so it does work on some level. It just doesn’t deliver a truly unique Space Marine character (how often do you still meet those?) in the same way that the previous story did.

It’s still a very good, action-packed and fun-to-read story. I am likely nit-picking this one too much, mainly because I loved the first Dolmech story. The finale is a great little ironic ending to this Iron Hands mini-saga. Iron Hands fans should definitely read this book!

6. Perihelion (Dan Abnett)

I noted how this anthology has an odd (if perhaps not unsurprising) 5x Warhammer 40K vs. 1x Warhammer Fantasy bias.

But maybe that is the wrong way to look at it. In the end it feels a lot more like 4 Space Marines stories along with ‘The Master of Mourkain‘ and Abnett’s ‘Perihelion‘. After four 40K stories of blazing Bolters and carving Power Axes, Abnett’s entry on Gregor Eisenhorn and Gideon Ravenor hits a very different tone. Gone is the brute carnage of the Space Marines. They are replaced with courtly and inquisitorial intrigues, with people careful studying subtle gestures and motions, and the lethal bantering of warring psyker-minds.

This is tricky territory to explore in just a handful of pages, but Dan Abnett wouldn’t be the master-storyteller that he is if he couldn’t do just that with seemingly effortless flourish. His ability to conjure up the world of Warhammer 40K in vivid and “real” detail with his words is truly unmatched. And who but Abnett could write a thoroughly grim-dark 40K story set in a picturesque mountainside scene of blue skies, green trees and scholarly quietude?

To be even-handed, I should probably level the same criticisms at ‘Perihelion’ that I leveled at ‘The Master of Mourkain‘ in the first part of my review: It’s a story chock-full of little references, allusions and name-dropping from other works. If you haven’t read anything about Gregor Eisenhorn or Gideon Ravenor, this one might leave you lost in much the same way’The Master of Mourkain‘ left me lost.

Yet I happen to know Dan Abnett’s Inquisition books a bit better than I do the history of Lahmia and Nehekhara, so this one worked a lot better better for me. Dan Abnett is a fantastic author. He wrote another fantastic story. Little more I can say about it.

Oh.. wait.

Actually, I do. Abnett ends his story (and thus the book) on what might be a cliffhanger of sorts. According to this Black Library Blog Post, this is actually the set-up (and link) to Abnett’s upcoming Pariah novel. Great stuff.

If you’ve read ‘Perihelion’, I’d love to hear your opinion on those last few lines in the story.

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There it is.

Quite a lengthy review for a short book (too short in retrospect). Overall, I think this is a very good collection, even though I could’ve done without the Warhammer Fantasy story and was left somewhat bewildered by Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s story (and slightly disappointed, if only because I expect nothing less than brilliance from him). But that’s the way it goes.

Have you read the UK Games Day Anthology 2012/2013? Do you share my views? Do you disagree? Leave a comment!

Z.