Thirteen years after the publication of Lasgun Wedding, Will McDermott returns to Black Library and Necromunda with Soulless Fury, moving his focus from Kal Jerico to one of the underhive’s other famous names – D’onne Ulanti, otherwise known as Mad Donna. While the estranged daughter of House Ulanti tears through the underhive in search of a young man captured by Cawdor gangers, Scrutinator Primus Servalen is dispatched by Lord Helmawr to reel her in once and for all. As the two women embark on a lethal cat-and-rat chase, it becomes clear that there’s more at stake for both of them than just survival and the death of an enemy, and chaos ensues in the underhive.
With D’onne’s backstory already established in Andy Chambers’ Survival Instinct there’s little need here for looking backwards – instead it launches straight into the action as she smashes up Sludge Town, and the pace never really lets up. From angering (and possibly bankrupting) guilders to taking on gangers, enforcers, muties, spiders and even psykers, D’onne approaches all of the pitfalls and obstacles in her path head on, and overcomes them by a combination of brute force, quick thinking and sheer nerve. As befits one of Helmawr’s enforcers Servalen tries to stick closer to the law as she pursues D’onne, but she’s every bit as ruthless and, as a psychic null, she makes full use of her unsettling presence to make sure she gets what she wants. Nowhere and nobody in the underhive is safe, as the two opponents move towards their inevitable confrontation and beyond.
At its core this is a pacy and entertaining face-off between two great characters, set to the backdrop of the many varied and interesting(ly disgusting) locations of the underhive. D’onne is a wild, impulsive risk taker, but she hides a lot of sense, pragmatism and even a little bit of compassion (occasionally) behind her apocalyptically violent facade and horrifying reputation. On the face of things Servalen is the rigid, lawful foil to D’onne’s chaotic presence, but in fact she’s more nuanced than that, and while D’onne remains essentially the same throughout the story, Servalen is capable of changing in response to what she goes through. In a nice touch from McDermott, both women have few attachments except an unexpected fondness for their ‘pets’ – in D’onne’s case that’s Dog the ogryn, while Servalen is accompanied by cyber-mastiff KB-88.
The narrative mostly alternates between these two viewpoints, with a few scenes in between which add a little context to what’s going on elsewhere, but while this is definitely D’onne’s novel, Servalen gets just as much page time, to good effect. With two enjoyable characters, masses of relatively small scale but powerfully visceral – and occasionally genuinely brutal – action sequences and a plot which drives unrelentingly forward, it’s a lot of fun from start to finish. There’s nothing too complicated on offer, but rather plenty of enjoyable ups, downs, betrayals and about-faces, an evocative sense of place for the various underhive locations, a handful of entertaining supporting characters and a pair of central protagonists who it’s hard not to relate to, despite their flaws. All told it’s a welcome return for McDermott and Mad Donna alike, and a strong introduction for Servalen.
See also: RAPID FIRE: Will McDermott Talks Soulless Fury.
