Established sci-fi author Justin Woolley makes his Black Library debut with Redemption Through Sacrifice, a Warhammer 40,000 short story featuring penal legionnaires, filthy heretics and the Inquisition. Ex-sergeant Marcus van Veenan, late of the Talissian 51st, joins thousands of other under-equipped cannon fodder – members of the Second Rapture Penal Legion, the ‘Meat Dogs’ – on Vandicius, tasked with shoring up the Imperial defences against a rampaging heretical cult. The disciplined days of his past in the Imperial Guard are gone, replaced by the chance to earn the Emperor’s forgiveness with his death, but van Veenan’s usefulness to the Imperium isn’t over yet.
It’s a confident debut, nailing the overall tone of 40k even if this particular combination of characters and events stretches in-universe credulity just a little. Put that aside, however, and it’s an entertaining, action-packed depiction of life on the bottom rung of the Imperial military, quite conventional in structure but elevated by van Veenan’s dry and occasionally darkly-humourous observations and dialogue. Nicely written, easy to read and with a deft balance of nihilism and heroism, despite the subject matter this leans ever-so-slightly towards the less-grimdark end of the spectrum (in context of 40k, at least) while still feeling entirely appropriate to the setting.
