The fifth novel in Black Library’s Warhammer Crime range, Jonathan D. Beer’s The King of the Spoil is another gritty tale of everyday life on the brutal streets of Varangantua, this time exploring the socio-political implications of a power vacuum forming in perhaps the poorest sector of this gargantuan city. When Andreti Sorokin is murdered, the vast gang of which he was the undisputed king – the Har Dhrol – begins to fall apart, bringing chaos to the Spoil. As the shockwaves caused by Sorokin’s death race through the city, information broker Melita Voronova is tasked by the Valtteri cartel (for whom she begrudgingly works) with uncovering the culprit behind Sorokin’s murder. Meanwhile Haska Jovanic, a wannabe ganger on the fringes of the Har Dhrol, finds herself swept up in the upswell of anger forming on the streets of the Spoil, which can only lead to violence and pain.
Unusually for a crime novel this isn’t about preventing something terrible from happening, or even really about bringing a criminal to justice. Instead, it’s about a criminal power struggle in which nobody can really win, and a fascinating exploration of the shady politics and economics underpinning a particularly poor, under-privileged and over-exploited sector of Varangantua. And while it does contain a detective character he doesn’t get a lot of page time (although he’s interesting enough to easily sustain his own stories – see Old Instincts in Broken City), with the focus mainly split between Melita and Haska’s contrasting viewpoints on the disaster befalling the Spoil. Interestingly though, the ‘A Melita Voronova novel’ subtitle on the cover is slightly misleading, as while readers might be familiar with Melita from previous short stories (Service and Chains) it’s arguably Haska who provides the emotional heart of this story.
Melita does make for an interesting, unconventional point of view character for her parts of the story, uncomfortable in her role as impromptu murder investigator (which is somewhat outside of her usual milieu) and struggling to reconcile both her substance abuse and her feelings about working for the cartel. She’s pretty reactive most of the time though, as she stumbles from crisis to crisis, and not a lot really changes for her by the end of the book (although if you read the short stories too, a bigger picture does emerge). Haska on the other hand has greater agency throughout and more of a chance to develop; she has to decide who she wants to be, and what part she wants to play in the rapid, dangerous changes taking place in her world. She’s also just the more sympathetic of the two characters, with greater opportunities for building connections with other people around her.
Characters aside, as we’ve come to expect from the series this continues to enjoyably flesh out some of Varangantua as a setting, this time really digging into the power dynamic within the city’s criminal underworld. In fact, while Black Library seems to have largely abandoned Necromunda fiction in favour of Warhammer Crime, this has a definite feel of the Underhive to it, centred as it is around the interplay between an illicit cartel and a huge criminal gang. This is very much a good thing! Through both the locations and the backdrop of (criminal) socio-political change, Beer brilliantly channels a sense of old-school 40k, reminiscent also of early Black Library novels from which none of the characters emerge unscathed, with not even a sliver of happy ending.
Without spoiling anything though, those old-school 40k-isms do extend to a certain amount of ambiguity towards the end of the book, leaving a lot still to be explored for these characters. Your appreciation of this may well depend on your tolerance for open-ended stories, but there’s something to be said for leaving readers wanting more! Hopefully there will be further stories to continue what this has started, as it’s hard not to want a little more sense of completion to these characters’ arcs. As it is though, there’s a lot to enjoy here in this somewhat unconventional but entertaining addition to the range.
Review copy kindly provided by the publisher
See also: Warhammer Crime – the Range So Far for details of other titles in the series and links to further reviews and interviews
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