Sanction & Sin, the third short story anthology from Black Library’s Warhammer Crime range, collects together nine stories from a mixture of BL veterans and newer names (including debuts for J.S. Collyer and Jude Reid) exploring the trials and tribulations of some of the women living amidst the blood, the dirt, the crime and corruption on the grim streets of Varangantua. Whether trying to maintain the Lex, care for others’ bodies and souls, make a killing or just make a living, each of these characters is forced to confront the realities of life in this vast and unforgiving city, the inequality and the brutality, the squalid streets and the merciless conditions. While some thrive despite the odds, others aren’t so strong or so fortunate, and justice means little in Varangantua.
With four of its nine stories written by women, Sanction & Sin is something of a landmark for Black Library with the highest proportion of female authors in any BL anthology yet published. This is far from a token attempt at representation, however. Unlike No Good Men, which (while featuring individually great stories) hammered home its lack of diversity and variety with both a roster of all-male authors and a collection of remarkably similar, all-male characters, Sanction & Sin’s nine female protagonists represent a broad cross-section of character types, roles and demeanours. Across these stories you’ll find tough-as-nails sanctioners, information brokers, drivers, a priest, an assassin, and even a mortuary assistant. Some are loners, wedded to their jobs, while others have families to support or try to tear themselves away from. Some are young, some older, some still filled with hope and others worn down by life.
There’s also an interesting mix of story styles featured here, with the emphasis less on investigation than on tales of desperate survival, whether tense and personal or breathless and explosive. The closest stories to traditional procedurals are Gary Kloster’s Confessions of Fire – although protagonist Lira is a priest rather than a probator, lending her services (despite the actual probator’s protestations) to an investigation into a spate of murders harking back to an early part of her life – and Jonathan D. Beer’s Service, in which information broker Melita is forced to investigate attacks against a vicious cartel in order to clear her name. Badass sanctioners feature in Danie Ware’s Bracelet of Bones and Victoria Hayward’s The Siege of Ismyr, but in both cases they’re on the back foot and reeling from assault by vicious gangers, chased through the streets or penned into a remote blockhouse.
In fact, a common theme running through most of these stories is of characters forced onto the defensive, put under intense pressure just in order to survive. Some, like Mike Brooks’ Up in Arms and J.S. Collyer’s Blood Ballot, are almost Necromunda-esque in their depiction of Varangantuan business dealings (fast, dirty and dangerous) and its highly stratified society (the bizarre, gothic upper echelons contrasting wildly with life on the dirty, stinking streets). Denny Flowers’ Bitter Harvest and Jude Reid’s Unnatural Causes explore elements of the 40k setting – tight-knit clan families and the bleak life of a mortuary assistant – that have barely ever been shown before, while Darius Hinks’ Loose Ends offers an interesting counterpoint to his story Exit Wound from No Good Men. What ties all of these stories together is the tone and feel of Varangantua – vast, gritty, dark and dirty – and a grim sense of inevitability that suits 40k perfectly and harks back to an early era of Black Library fiction.
While the Warhammer Crime imprint feels like the most appropriate place for these stories, you could actually view this not so much as a collection of crime stories but simply ‘domestic 40k’ stories that explore familiar themes from main-range 40k fiction just from a different, more low-key and less militaristic perspective. Sure, they all feature death and violence and other ‘criminal’ activity, but for regular people living in Varangantua that’s just everyday life. If you’re looking for noirish 40k detective stories then this is probably not the place to start, however it’s an ideal collection for anyone interested in examining the mundane realities of life for relatable, real-feeling characters. It’s a nicely balanced anthology featuring a great range of authors, full of invention and interesting points of view, and many of these characters (those who survive – no spoilers) deserve to go on and feature in further stories. All told, if you’re interested in 40k stories that step away from the big battlefields while maintaining the trademark grit and darkness, this is well worth checking out.
Make sure you also check out Sanction & Sin: J.S. Collyer, Victoria Hayward, Jude Reid and Danie Ware Talk Warhammer Crime and Women in Black Library.
See also: all of the Warhammer Crime reviews and interviews on Track of Words.
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I think part of your problem with No Good Men is simply that everyone was chomping at the bit to write a hardboiled noir detective story. It sounds like it might have been a good idea to mix the stories up a bit between the two anthologies.
Well yeah, I can imagine many of the authors were keen to write that sort of story. Doesn’t change the fact that the anthology as a whole feels a bit one-note as a result, and personally I would have expected BL editorial to spot things like that. Of course hindsight is a wonderful thing.
That’s understandable authors playing safe for their first pieces in the Crime imprint but the anthology outcome is the editor’s fault and it should be pointed out. The individual stories in No Good Men ranged from decent to very good but it failed miserably as an anthology.