Rachel Harrison’s novella Blood Rite, the second in Black Library’s Space Marine Heroes series (after Phil Kelly’s entertaining Death Knell), is a mournful, characterful exploration of the Blood Angels’ twin flaws and what it takes to resist them. Luminata, an Imperial world protecting a chalice said to have been crafted by Sanguinius himself, has fallen to the corruption of the Word Bearers and their warp magic. Captain Donato leads his Archangels in a lightning assault to destroy the heretics and retrieve the chalice, but to succeed they’ll have to battle their own flawed nature as well as the Word Bearers and their tainted allies.
It’s pretty standard for Blood Angels stories to focus on how the Thirst and the Rage affect the protagonists in battle, and unsurprisingly this novella takes the same approach to a point. What sets this apart from other similar stories is the way Harrison handles the subject matter, layering history upon these characters to lend weight to their actions and emotions, and structuring the story in such a way as to force each key character to face uncomfortable truths about themselves and each other. The story is split across three viewpoint characters with calm, thoughtful scenes of reflection – as they’re questioned by an apparently unwelcome speaker – interspersed amongst vivid action as the Terminators battle their way towards an inevitable confrontation with the driving force behind the Word Bearers.
Unlike Death Knell, which made a point of giving relatively even weighting to each member of the squad for a balanced overview, this focuses primarily on three characters – Captain Donato, Company Ancient Darrago and one particular Terminator (no spoilers). The remaining Archangels (there are 12 Blood Angels in total) are well drawn and make for interesting supporting characters, but Harrison doesn’t try to cram in too many perspectives and in this situation it works well, providing depth and backstory to each of the three main characters. As the story progresses and the Archangels fight their way closer to their goal, more details emerge of the relationships between them, what the mission really means,what’s at stake and how they interact with the plans and intentions of the Word Bearers. It’s less about how the Terminators operate on the battlefield and more about the ties that bind them in a wider sense.
Ultimately this is intended as a tie-in story to a particular set of tabletop miniatures, so inevitably there’s lots of action involving relatively (though not entirely) conventional enemies, and the shape of the plot is relatively easy to anticipate. Despite that, there’s a satisfying weight behind these characters that makes the story feel deeper and more solid than the short page count would suggest, and it’s hard not to want to read more about both their histories and what might happen next. Harrison brings the Blood Angels to life in a way which largely avoids the usual cliches and imbues them with a powerful sense of melancholy, and on the merits of this it would be very interesting indeed to see her tackle a longer story with these characters. As it is, this is a low-cost (£3 in the UK) but high-impact story and an essential read for Blood Angels fans.
