A collection of 13 short stories from 10 different authors, Black Library’s Warhammer 40,000 anthology The Successors looks beyond the usual First Founding Chapters of Space Marines and sets out to explore some of the Chapters who haven’t been seen as often in 40k fiction. It does actually feature some Chapters who have had plenty of their own stories before (Crimson Fists, Flesh Tearers, Soul Drinkers), but the majority of the stories focus on Chapters from the semi-familiar (Angels Penitent, Black Dragons, Carcharadons, Emperor’s Spears, Mortifactors) to the new or much more obscure (Consecrators, Iron Lords, Wolfspear). There’s even a rare Exorcists story, and most – although not all – of the stories take place in the ‘current’, post-Great Rift era of 40k.
While I bought this primarily to read Peter Fehervari’s new Angels Penitent short story The Sins of My Brothers (which is amazing – check out my review here), I was interested to see what the other stories would offer, as there’s definitely something to be said for looking beyond the Chapters who have always tended to dominate BL’s Space Marine-focused stories. With that in mind I was surprised to see so many stories about Chapters who are, if not as popular as the First Founding, still pretty darn popular, and who have featured in plenty of stories before. The quality and enjoyment of specific stories notwithstanding, it does feel like a little bit of a missed opportunity not to have dedicated the entire anthology to genuinely obscure (or at least lesser-known) Chapters.
That being said, let’s not judge this on what it isn’t (or what it could have been) but rather what it is…and what it is, in my opinion, is a bit of a mixed bag. There are some great stories in here (more on these shortly), but there are also several that left me completely cold. I’d rather focus on those that I did like, but suffice to say I was disappointed at the inclusion of a few by-the-numbers stories that featured plenty of fighting but very little actual insight into the Chapters they were depicting. There’s nothing wrong with being action-packed, as long as the action serves a purpose within the story, but there are too many stories here where the plot feels like it’s there just to facilitate the fighting, rather than the other way around. Some readers may enjoy these stories of course, but for me they let the anthology down.
It’s also worth mentioning that several stories assume a surprising amount of prior knowledge, to the extent that I wonder how much sense they would make without their full context. I’ve read Silent Hunters so I could see how Edoardo Albert’s The Last Planet worked as a prequel story, and likewise I’ve read Spear of the Emperor so Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s The First Primaris and Son of the Storm World made sense in light of the novel’s events. For readers not familiar with those novels though, I do slightly question the value of including these stories in a general anthology. Dembski-Bowden’s two in particular are essentially short little vignettes, which rely on the reader having read Spear of the Emperor. Even Fehervari’s tale, fantastic though it is, is heavily linked with other Dark Coil stories – I think it still has plenty of value in its own right, but it definitely works best if you’ve read The Reverie and Crown of Thorns.
I’ve been quite critical up to this point, but I don’t want to suggest that it’s all bad – far from it, in fact. The good stories definitely outweigh the bad, and there are several clear standouts for me. Rather than talking about every story individually (which would make this a long review) I thought I’d pick out a few favourites to point out what I think they bring to the anthology, and I’ll start with a few more words about The Sins of My Brothers. While I still think it’s a slight odd choice to include this in a general Space Marines anthology, the sheer quality of the story means it elevates the whole collection – this is comfortably my favourite of the lot, beautifully written and featuring one of the most fascinating Chapters I’ve ever come across, and I really hope it encourages more readers to check out more of Fehervari’s fantastic Dark Coil stories.
The other three stories I want to mention all achieve what I think this anthology’s goal is – they offer interesting, original insights into genuinely unfamiliar Chapters. David Guymer’s Living Relics is a tale of the Consecrators, a Dark Angels successor Chapter who seek out relics of their founding legion to use in the search for the Fallen, exploring the shattered remains of an ancient Dark Angels warship. It’s tense and creepy, and it gives a real sense of the Consecrators being connected to their progenitors but still with a distinct personality of their own. Meanwhile Graham McNeill’s The Empty Place is, I think, the first dedicated Exorcists story, and while its plot is a touch predictable it does a great job of illustrating both the costs and benefits of the Exorcists’ extreme methods of deliberately allowing daemonic possession. It’s classic McNeill – gruesome, brutal, but satisfying.
Lastly, Guy Haley’s The Wolves of Raukos gives the first depiction that I’ve come across of the Wolfspear, a rare Space Wolves successor Chapter, and a name I’d heard before but never actually read anything about. It’s typical of Haley’s work, delivering a simple but intriguing concept – the ceaseless defence of a world plagued by nightly daemonic incursions – through great characters and easy, entertaining dialogue, and I would 100% read more about these characters. It also explores the tension between Primaris and firstborn Marines, a recurring theme in a lot of recent 40k fiction, and probably does the best job of any story in this anthology – alongside Gary Kloster’s Patience Kills, perhaps – of folding that theme naturally into the story, cleverly balancing the Space Wolves’ inherent suspicion of outsiders with their natural boisterousness.
So all told it’s not the most consistently enjoyable BL anthology I’ve read, but there are some really interesting stories in here which make it worth picking up. Does every story provide an insight into the character and nature of the Chapter in question? I wouldn’t say every story, but most of them, even though some only really scratch the surface where others really succeed in delivering something interesting and unexpected. I think the problem for me, however, is that it’s let down by playing things a bit safe. Of the 12 Chapters featured here, seven have previously had at least one novel of their own (or a lot of novellas/short stories/audio dramas, in the case of the Flesh Tearers) and one – the Mortifactors – has had an audio drama, so that makes only four genuinely ‘lesser-known’ successor Chapters.
From a commercial perspective I can understand wanting to include familiar, popular names like the Crimson Fists, Emperor’s Spears and Flesh Tearers alongside the obscure Chapters, but I don’t think the balance is quite right here. If every story about a more familiar Chapter offered something genuinely new about that Chapter (and didn’t rely on any prior knowledge of other stories) then perhaps the balance wouldn’t have been quite such an issue, and likewise if every story was of a similarly high standard then I would have been more forgiving of some of the choices. As it stands, I’d say this is worth reading for 40k completists, but misses out on being an essential read by not quite knowing what it wants to be.
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