A twenty-minute Shadespire audio drama from David Guymer, A Place of Reflection sets a story about identity, memory and purpose in the Mirrored City, a place of endless twisted reflections and tricks of the mind. Told from the usual Stormcast Eternals perspective it sees Moribus of the Sons of Mallus on the hunt for an elusive foe, focusing his mind by thinking back to the various deaths he’s suffered since his forging.
All the ingredients are here for a tense, creepy story, but it doesn’t quite deliver. First of all it’s let down by an over-reliance on narration – while John Banks always makes an engaging narrator, there’s little sense that Guymer is really taking advantage of the audio medium. It reads a bit too much like a short story, with almost no conversation or real source of tension, and while Steven Conlin does a good job voicing Moribus there’s little for the rest of the cast to do. Narratively, it falls a bit flat as well – Guymer aims for a sort of downward spiral for Moribus but there’s not enough time for that to really develop. Overall it feels like a wasted opportunity; it’s not bad per se, just uninspiring.