Released as part of Black Library’s digital-only ‘Inquisition Week’ in January 2021, The Carbis Incident marks the BL debut of Victoria Hayward with a tale of the Ordo Xenos and a world recently surfaced from a warp storm. The venerable Inquisitor Venicii and his small retinue land on Carbis and begin to hack their way through its jungles, following in the unreliable footsteps of the last man to escape before the world was swallowed by the warp storm. While Venicii remains tight-lipped as to the purpose of their search, Interrogator Esme Mzinga grows increasingly concerned over the erratic behaviour of her mentor and the unsettling nature of the world upon which they walk.
It’s a classic Inquisition short story, with a small but diverse cast of characters on a dangerous mission requiring all of their specific skills. There’s not quite enough time to really develop a strong feel for Venicii beyond the broad strokes of his character, but Mzinga – who provides the viewpoint of the story – comes across as capable and determined despite her relative youth and obvious idolisation of the Inquisitor. Hayward deliberately hides the specifics of Venicii’s mission from both Mzinga and the reader, gradually revealing the details – the nature of Carbis and its inhabitants, and what’s ultimately at stake – as the story progresses, and while there’s rather less warp-twisted madness than you might expect there’s an enjoyable sense of increasing wrongness throughout. All told it manages to feel very 40k without relying on any of the usual enemies or obvious dangers, and proves to be a strong, confident debut that sets things up nicely for further adventures of these characters.
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Thanks for the review. I shall look forward to reading this short from a new author, new at any rate to me. I find the inquisitions stories especially interesting, and if the enemy is not one of the usual chaos factions or well-known xenos races, so much the better. Some of the usual suspects have been done to death, not that warp corrupted beings can strictly speaking die!