Danie Ware continues her excellent run of Adepta Sororitas stories with The Crystal Cathedral, her second Order of the Bloody Rose story to look back to an earlier incarnation of Sister Augusta. The young Sister and her squad are sent to the mining moon Caro to attend the reconsecration of an awe-inspiring cathedral, built as a memorial to a great victory for Sisters of their Order a thousand years earlier. What should be a simple, non-combat mission turns into a profound test of Augusta’s faith, as an unexpected evil reveals itself and the Sisters are forced into action.
It’s a relatively straightforward narrative, essentially an extended vignette detailing a particular moment of crisis which contributed in part to Augusta becoming the woman she did, but it packs in lots to enjoy. Ware’s depiction of these tough-as-nails warrior nuns – singing hymns in perfect harmony even while throwing themselves into danger – is as powerful as it’s ever been, while there’s a phenomenal sense of atmosphere, the beautifully described cathedral (which is oh-so-40k) acting as both an evocative setting for the story and an effective metaphor for Augusta’s faith. Whether you’ve read the other Augusta stories or not, this is an excellent example of how to blend bone-crunching 40k action with compelling questions of faith in the space of a single short story.
This was released as part of the 2019 Black Library Advent Calendar – click here to see the main page for the Advent Calendar, with links to all of the reviews.
