Alec Worley’s 40k Sisters of Battle series moves into audio territory with Broken Saints, a gripping audio drama (originally released as three individual instalments) in which Sister Adamanthea, no longer a Repentia and now considered a Living Miracle, finds her faith tested like never before. Troubled by rising doubts during a holy day for the garden-temple of Concordia, when disaster strikes Adamanthea is quick to put aside her religious responsibilities and throw herself into the fray. Her presence is meant to help unify the fractious factions on Concordia, but first she must come to terms with her own faith, and lead her sisters to victory against a worryingly co-ordinated heretic uprising.
Across the three instalments/acts, Adamanthea faces increasingly tangible fears and opponents as Worley gradually reveals the details of the plot. It is, unsurprisingly, a story dealing with faith – as with pretty much every Sisters of Battle story – but in this case it’s about the pressures of faith, and how Adamanthea copes with a powerful personal crisis. At this point in the series, while she’s been reunited with her sisters and held up as a miraculous example of a Repentia returned and forgiven, she’s clearly ill at ease with the esteem in which she’s held, and has yet to learn how to forgive herself. She’s perfectly in her element while embattled against heretics, but religious politics and the expectations of others leave her uncertain, defensive, and increasingly affected by doubts which impair her judgement and eat away at her confidence.
She makes for an intriguing protagonist, played with a compelling mixture of heartbroken fragility and frenzied abandon by Claire Wyatt, with an added brittle edge courtesy of the SFX representing her mechanically-augmented larynx (a side-effect of a previous story). There are plenty of opportunities for Adamanthea to get stuck in (cue wild shrieks of manic laughter and copious chainsword effects), but in general it’s quite dialogue-heavy with the focus on how she interacts with the various priests around her as the situation deteriorates. Sean Connolly’s oily and obsequious Edmund Sark takes the brunt of her ire as he struggles to involve her in the ceremony, while fabled preacher Nicolau Van Castrum – given powerful presence by Richard Reed – engenders a very human sense of awe from her, and is able to draw out her fears in a way no other character can.
It’s a story with a lot of familiar 40k themes and stylings, but with Adamanthea and her sisters as the focus it feels much less formal, more varied and emotional than a lot of Space Marine-led stories. The whole cast put in the sort of strong, engaging performances we’ve come to expect – Penelope Rawlins and Genevieve Swallow playing a pair of Sisters, and Steve Conlin pulling double duty on the side of the antagonists (even if the excellent Jonathan Keeble is a bit under-used) – but Adamanthea and Van Castrum, and Sark to a lesser extent, form the emotional core of the story, keeping things grounded and emotionally focused even when the action really ramps up. Whether or not you’ve read Worley’s previous Adamanthea stories (not essential to enjoy this, but worth doing), if you’re interested in a character-led story which delves into the emotional and psychological core of a Sister of Battle, this should be at the top of your list!
This was released as part of the 2019 Black Library Advent Calendar – click here to see the main Track of Words page for the Advent Calendar, with links to all of the reviews.
