After a trio of excellent 40k short stories, Steven B. Fischer makes his Black Library novel debut with Witchbringer, a bleak tale of the Astra Militarum told from the viewpoint of a newly-trained sanctioned psyker. Once a captain in the Cadian 900th before her burgeoning powers saw her shipped off to the Scholastica Psykana, no sooner has Glavia Aerand completed her gruelling training than a portent-filled vision sees her unhappily assigned back to her old regiment, who are embroiled against Traitor Guard on the miserable, mist-shrouded world of Visage. Finding fear and mistrust where once there was comradeship, Glavia has to fight to find a place in the regiment, while trying to understand what lies behind the mysteries of the gloomy, waterlogged world she finds herself on (including the unusually high rate of psykers it generates), and the fate of her missing mentor.
With a Primaris psyker (and ex-soldier) as the protagonist this has an unusual feel to it, combining elements of a classic footslogging Imperial Guard story with some of the more cerebral and warp-related stylings you might expect in an Inquisitorial (or even Chaos-POV) novel. There’s a lot of entertaining action as Glavia and the Cadians battle Traitor Guard, dangerous native psykers and even Visage itself – all sodden mists and tangling corpsewood trees (which are exactly as grim as they sound) – and as a Guard-focused novel it does a great job of demonstrating why Cadians are renowned as such fierce, capable soldiers. Glavia is the focal point of the story and so she gets the most page time, but Fischer has created a solid core of interesting supporting characters within the Cadian 900th – they’ll be more familiar if you’ve read the prequel short stories The Weight of Silver and The Taste of Fire, but there’s plenty for them to do here too.
There’s a lot more to this than just fighting though, as Glavia tries to reconcile the sureties of her old life with the isolation she now feels after a long five years away and the changes she’s undergone, and the fear with which her old comrades now view her. Those themes of change, isolation and fear of the other run throughout the whole story, with Glavia’s unusual perspective offering a fascinating viewpoint on the Imperium and its uncomfortable reliance upon psykers. There’s more detail here than ever before on the life of a psyker, from training in the Scholastica Psykana to some intriguing practical uses of psychic powers, and all from a human (ish) point of view (rather than the usual Space Marine POV) with all its inherent weaknesses. It doesn’t make for happy reading, and at times the delving-into-the-bleakness perhaps takes precedence over keeping the momentum of the plot going, but as a character study it offers something genuinely different to the usual 40k fare.
The book’s antagonist – largely referred to as just ‘the Colonel’ – doesn’t get as much page time as Glavia but he makes for an interesting, engaging opponent nonetheless, with compelling motivations that elevate him above the generic ‘turned-to-Chaos’ cliches. It takes a little while for him to really come into focus and for the details of the plot to properly become clear, but when it all comes together it makes for satisfying, if bleak, reading. Between the Colonel and his allies, the grim nature of Visage, and Glavia’s internal and external struggles, this book is properly dark, and for an action-heavy Imperial Guard story in particular there’s a lot here that really digs into some of the core concepts of 40k, the warp, and the hypocrisy of the Imperium – in particular the vast efforts and resources it throws at little more than maintaining the status quo. 40k fans who enjoy Guard stories but want something a bit different to usual will find a lot to like here, and taken as a whole alongside the two prequel stories this represents a brilliant start to what will hopefully be a fruitful Black Library career for Fischer.
Review copy provided by the publisher
See also: my interview with Steven discussing Witchbringer
See also: my Author Spotlight interview with Steven
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