Rachel Harrison’s debut Black Library novel, Honourbound follows on from several excellent short stories and features Commissar Severina Raine serving with the 11th Antari Rifles as part of the decades-long Bale Stars Crusade. As Raine and the Antari grind their way to hard-fought victories over the chaos cult known as the Sighted, the stress of constant attritional warfare starts to show – even on the resolute Commissar. With the Sighted changing tactics and darkness forming within the Crusade, Raine knows that her faith and determination will be tested like never before as she wrestles with the implications of her past and the dangers of the present.
Similarities with other Commissar-featuring Imperial Guard series are only superficial, as Raine is very different to famous names like Gaunt, Cain or Yarrick and it’s clear that an awful lot of work has gone into developing a rich history and identity for the Antari and the key characters in this story. From folklore-inspired squad names to superstitions and unique traditions, the Antari feel like a cohesive, characterful regiment with a real sense of detail as well as the requisite levels of badassery. Raine, meanwhile, is a stark outsider, as strict and unflinching as you’d expect but also fierce, intriguingly human and comfortable with both her role and her place within the regiment. She’s every bit the upright Commissar, but there’s just enough depth and (impressively) even warmth to her that she makes a genuinely compelling protagonist.
Although it’s not essential to read the preceding short stories first, they do add layers of information, backstory and detail to Raine and several of the other key characters incnluding Stormtrooper Captain Andren Fel, Daven Wyck of the Wyldfolk, and psyker Lydia Zane. While it’s a powerful, gritty action story with a compelling mystery at its heart, Honourbound is essentially a deep character study featuring themes of family, loyalty and faith – ideas straight from the core of 40k and the Imperium, but really explored here in context of characters being sorely tested and coping (or otherwise) with intense pressure. Raine is undoubtedly the star of the show – remarkably engaging, especially as her past is slowly explored – but there’s a real sense of weight and history to the Antari, the Crusade and its hierarchy, and even the threatening, often somewhat disturbing presence of the Sighted.
Execution, Harrison’s first Antari short story, showed real promise and hinted at the potential for these characters. Honourbound goes above and beyond expectations, delivering a complex, characterful, brilliantly plotted and beautifully written narrative that does everything a 40k story should do and then some. It’s a big old book (380+ pages in hardback) and the dialogue does occasionally dip into a slightly over-formal style, but any minor niggles are quickly forgotten amidst the compelling drama unfolding as Harrison explores this fascinating little corner of the 40k universe. For anyone with even a passing interest in the conflicted, bruised and battered, human realities of life for the Imperial Guard (as well as in a rollicking war story), this should be right at the top of the list. It’s that good.
Check out my reviews of the rest of Rachel Harrison’s Antari stories here.
It really is that good!
Where would you place this book chronologically?
Good question. I don’t think it necessarily ties in with the ‘current’ 40k timeline, so in my head it just loosely sits in the ‘at some point earlier’ phase of the timeline. That’s just my perspective though, Rachel might have a specific date/point in mind.
Thank you Michael!
I just read this and thought it was brilliant. Thank you for the review. Hopefully there will be more to come. Do you know if the author has a Twitter handle to follow?
It’s a fantastic book, isn’t it? Glad you enjoyed it too. Rachel is on Twitter, yeah – as @rharrisonwrites – although she’s not all that active on there.