David Annandale’s Warhammer Horror novel The House of Night and Chain is a bleak tale of trauma and the spiralling descent into paranoia and madness, a 40k haunted house story set far away from the big plotlines. Wounded, traumatised, widowed and grieving, Colonel Maeson Strock returns to the agri-world of Solus to take up the governorship, and the city of Valgaast to take up residence in his family’s ancestral seat, Malveil. Duty-bound to stamp out the growing corruption in the ruling council and determined to rebuild his fragmented family upon Solus, Maeson soon finds himself drawn into a sinister mystery with Malveil at its heart.
Horror has been a clear influence on Annandale’s Black Library writing from the beginning, but this is the first novel which has allowed him to fully step back from the usual Warhammer battlefields to tell an out-and-out horror story which gets into the head and under the skin of its protagonist. Maeson is a soldier through and through so when he returns to Solus, badly scarred both physically and mentally, he approaches his governorship as a soldier would. He thinks he’s in for a political battle in which he will test his wits and will against the dangerous councillor Veth Montfor, but while the politics play an important part in the story, it’s Maeson’s past – in particular the impact of his duty on himself and his family – that’s front and centre. Even as he throws himself into his work, he’s drawn to the mystery surrounding Malveil and the role it might have played in his wife’s untimely death.
With little in the way of the usual Black Library action stakes, the emphasis is instead on atmosphere and the slow build up of tension. The story takes in various locations but always returns to Malveil, which Maeson starts off seeing as an honest representation of his family’s honour before, in his increasingly fragile mental state, he begins to sense a malign intelligence inhabiting its shadowed, gothic halls. For much of the story you’re left to wonder just how much of what’s going on is in his head, and how much is genuinely happening. Suffering the lingering effects of PTSD, increasing guilt over his wife’s death and family’s estrangement, and the pressure of enacting his duty, Maeson’s mourning and self-loathing clash with his self-discipline and sense of honour, and Malveil takes on an insidious, paradoxical presence which clouds and shapes his emotions and decision-making.
It’s a story rooted in the Imperium and which couldn’t quite exist outside of 40k, but that quintessential 40k-ness works best when it’s providing the backdrop, not front and centre. For as long as Maeson questions what he’s seeing and Annandale focuses on what-ifs, this remains if not jump-scary then delightfully creepy and enjoyably ambiguous. The ghosts of Maeson’s past and the ensnaring presence of Malveil combine to great effect, and the personal, everyday nature of the characters gives proceedings an emotional weight that’s often lacking from Warhammer stories. When the inevitable 40k elements show up they undermine a little of the overall impact, taking away some of the ambiguity and ironically pulling back a little on the real sense of psychological horror, but thankfully they don’t detract too much. Overall it’s a breath of fresh air for 40k, an atmospheric story which plays to Annandale’s strengths and captures the essential darkness of the setting, leaving the reader suitably, satisfyingly unsettled.
