The Wicked & The Damned: A Horror Sci-Fi Mixed Bag

The Wicked and the Damned (Warhammer Horror) by Joshua Reynolds, David Annandale, Phil Kelly
Genres: Horror, Sci-Fi
Pages: 320
Goodreads

A chilling mosaic novel by masters of their craft.

On a misty cemetery world, three strangers are drawn together through mysterious circumstances. Each of them has a tale to tell of a narrow escape from death. Amid the toll of funerary bells and the creep and click of mortuary-servitors, the truth is confessed. But whose story can be trusted? Whose recollection is warped, even unto themselves? For these are strange stories of the uncanny, the irrational and the spine-chillingly frightening, where horrors abound and the dark depths of the human psyche is unearthed.

This book is based in the Warhammer 40k universe, which if you don’t know, is a tabletop game but also has some really great lore. I’ll start off by saying that I don’t think that you really need to know anything about Warhammer in order to understand the gist of this book. There might be some terms that you aren’t familiar with (more specifically races or military-type roles), but since it is a sci-fi horror, it’s pretty easy to follow along! (I barely know anything about the Warhammer universe and I followed along just fine)

The story follows three people who have ended up on a cemetary planet called Silence with no recollection of how they got there or why they are there; they then each take turns telling their last memory before ending up on Silence. In other words, it is told in three parts from three different characters.

Each story is only about 100 pages so I can’t go into too much detail without spoiling each one, so here’s a brief review for them seperately:

• The first story follows Valemar, a commissar, who’s duty is to maintain morale in troops during battle – but, frankly, they’ve got a funny way of doing it. Valemar is so over-the-top and fanatical with following rules that, at one point, he executes a guy for taking a piss during a firefight. I thought his story was an interesting start to the anthology, but I disliked his character so much it became distracting.
• The second story follows Vendersen, who is some sort of low ranking officer jealous of the officer above her. She’s a very angry and jealous character, but that added to the entertainment to her tale. This story definitely leaned more towards the paranormal horror side of things rather than sci-fi, which made it my favorite of the three.
• The last story is about Marrikus, a priest, who is doubting his calling when an opportunity presents itself that quickly backfires. It is much more fast-paced and action packed than the previous two. Honestly, it reminded me of Illuminae with a dash of Alien. If you’re into that, this story is right up your alley.

Overall, each story offers something different and covers a range of horror. However, I didn’t find this book scary so the word “horror” is used very loosely by me – it is more thriller than horror – but, hey, we all have different definitions of what scares us! It definitely becomes predictibale how they are all related, but I’m not quite sure it was really meant to be a mystery from the get-go (despite the synopsis), so if you go into this just wanting some quick horror sci-fi tales, it’s entertaining! With that said, I was actually disappointed with how they were connected and all the open ends. You’ll be left with unanswered questions for each story – I mean, they only have 100 pages to tell you their tale and then connect them at the end.

So, basically, this was a mixed bag and I really don’t know how to review it properly!

Rating Report
Plot
Characters
Writing
Overall:	3 / 5