Category Archives: Short Stories

QUICK REVIEW: Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory – Martha Wells

Taking place after the events of Exit Strategy (novella #4 in the phenomenal Murderbot Diaries series), Martha Well’s short story Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory is a quiet little study of one of the series’ most interesting characters. After the unpleasant events on TranRollinHyfa, Dr Ayda Mensah is back on Preservation Station with SecUnit and all of the survey team, trying to get on with her life. The trouble is, it’s not that easy to get over being kidnapped by corporate murderers, and Mensah is spending more time on finding ways to help SecUnit than she is dealing with her own pain.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Angel of Khan el-Khalili – P. Djèlí Clark

One of several fantastic stories set in an alternate early-twentieth century Cairo, P. Djèlí Clark’s The Angel of Khan el-Khalili is a standalone tale (featuring none of the other stories’ characters) exploring secrets, grief and worker rights. Late at night, when most of Cairo is long asleep, young Aliaa visits the market in search of an angel, hoping to bargain for a miracle. There she finds the Angel of Khan el-Khalili, and asks for its aid in healing her sister who has been grievously injured in a fire at the factory where they both work. The angel’s price seems small at first, and Aliaa pays it willingly, but it’s not long before she realises the cost to her own soul.

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QUICK REVIEW: Galene of Ulgu – Timandra Whitecastle

Timandra Whitecastle makes her debut for Black Library with Galene of Ulgu, a tale of the Daughters of Khaine in the Mortal Realms. Far from her home in the shadowed mists of Ulgu, witch aelf Galene and her sisters march to the aid of Greywater Fastness in the realm of Ghyran, defending against the sinister forces of Nagash. After suffering a terrible defeat which sees her sisters turned against her in death, Galene finds herself in the company of another survivor, a human captain of the Freeguild. Injured and terribly outnumbered, the two of them nevertheless set out to strike back against the necromancer leading the undead invaders.

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QUICK REVIEW: Debtless – Chen Qiufan (translated by Blake Stone-Banks)

Translated into English from the original Chinese by Blake Stone-Banks, Chen Qiufan’s short story Debtless explores bleak but powerful questions of wealth inequality, corporate control and memory manipulation in a sci-fi tale of asteroid mining and the impossibility of debt repayment. In a world where memories, debts and earnings are genetically encoded into people’s DNA, working brutal shifts in deep space mining facilities is a particularly dangerous way of attempting to repay a debt. Square Head stays relatively safe as his specialty is data analysis rather than hands-on work, but as he starts experiencing unusual dreams and his fellow miners begin to die around him at an increased rate, he finds the realities of his life changing around him.

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QUICK REVIEW: Immersion – Aliette de Bodard

Winner of both Nebula (2012) and Locus (2013) awards for Best Short Story, Aliette de Bodard’s Immersion is a powerful, thought-provoking story that belongs to her Xuya series – science fiction stories set in a world of Vietnamese culture-inspired alternate history. On Longevity Station, Quy spends her free time watching the spaceships arrive bringing Galactic tourists to the station, feeling caught between happy memories of her student days and the realities of her life now. When she’s called in to her family’s restaurant to help with negotiations for a Galactic couple’s wedding anniversary plans, she finds herself faced with the shocking sight of a woman who’s so lost in her attempts to fit in that she’s forgotten who she truly is.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Tilean’s Talisman – David Guymer

Long before tackling the Doom of Gotrek Gurnisson in Kinslayer and Slayer, David Guymer’s first contribution to the saga of Gotrek and Felix was the short story The Tilean’s Talisman. First published in Hammer & Bolter Issue 14, and then in Gotrek & Felix: The Anthology, it sees devious skaven Siskritt attempting to steal a magical item of great power – the titular talisman – from a Tilean merchant, while the tavern around him burns. It’s a plan of typical skaven brilliance, using a bigger assault on the human city as cover for Siskritt’s own agenda, but the one thing he didn’t plan for was the presence of a certain belligerent dwarf Slayer and his human companion.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Carbis Incident – Victoria Hayward

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.

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QUICK REVIEW: The Perfect Assassin – Gary Kloster

Gary Kloster joins the illustrious ranks of Black Library authors who have written about Gotrek Gurnisson in Age of Sigmar with The Perfect Assassin, a tale that focuses not on the surly Slayer but on his companion, the aelf Maleneth. The unlikely pair find themselves in the city of Losten in grim Ulgu, but while Gotrek happily drinks a tavern dry of beer, Maleneth relieves her boredom in bloodier fashion. When she’s tasked by one of the city’s nobles with finding and killing a mysterious assassin stalking the streets, at first she’s barely interested, until a sighting of the assassin’s unusual powers piques her curiosity.

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QUICK REVIEW: Salvation’s Crucible – Denny Flowers

Currently only available in the Black Library Events Anthology 2019/20, Denny Flowers’ Necromunda short story Salvation’s Crucible is a brief but fiery tale of the Promethium Guild, or Mercator Pyros. Lord Silas Pureburn has sworn to bring the light of the God-Emperor to the settlement of Under Pipe, and has contracted a gang of hive scum as guides and protectors. Not all of the Underhive’s denizens are fans of the guilds though, and standing in Lord Pureburn’s way are the Waylanders gang, who run their own operation providing light and power to Under Pipe, and don’t intend to relinquish their territory without a fight.

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QUICK REVIEW: Judge Dee and the Three Deaths of Count Werdenfels – Lavie Tidhar

The second of Lavie Tidhar’s supernatural, Golden Age-esque mystery stories for Tor.com, Judge Dee and the Three Deaths of Count Werdenfels is another tale of feuding vampires and the implacable justice of the titular Judge Dee. While travelling through the Alps with his put-upon human assistant Jonathan, Judge Dee is summoned to the Duchy of Bavaria to investigate the murder of a vampire. When they arrive at Castle Werdenfels, the Judge and Jonathan find no fewer than three potential culprits, each one claiming to have murdered the Count and proclaiming themselves the inheritors of the castle as a result.

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