I’ve been a fan of the Sororitas for a while. There’s always been something striking about the black armor and the black and red cloaks that just caught my eye. That, and I like the fact that they’re just mortal humans. The Astartes are gene enhanced freaks that could live forever if not for the constant battle. And, even then, they have stuff to make their blood more potent, their lungs more efficient, their junk just a little bigger…
But the sisters… they’re women who so believe in the God Emperor they’re going to prove it with flamer and bolter.
Don’t get me wrong, these are exactly the kind of people I would avoid at a party. Radicals of any type are a bore as they usually only have one topic they ever want to discuss but radicals that believe, that know, they have god on their side… well… thats a whole other level.
Can you imagine? You’re standing there, holding a beer, and one of the sisters comes stomping up to you, a whirlwind of skirts and robes surrounding black ceramite armor.
“How can I help you, sister?”
“My faith in the Emperor of all mankind compels me to ask: just where does the mustard lie? Or is this a heretical gathering that only has ketchup? The abbess of my order has decreed that sweet on top of sweet is only ever consumed by followers of the Great Enemy and I will not–”
“It’s on the table sister.”
“May his blessing be with you.”
I’m just saying… probably not a lot of fun in social situations. Fortunately, the barbecue scenario has yet to come up in any of the Sororitas fiction I’ve read and I’ve read a fair amount. In fact, I’ve read mostly Dannie Ware fiction in this area, specifically “Rose” series of stories and the great novel The Rose in Darkness.
Dannie Ware has really captured a good voice of women of extreme faith having that faith tested in various scenarios that are pretty much designed to show off the 40k universe. The Rose in Darkness, especially, is an outstanding book around a planet infested with a Genestealer Cult and it’s about as horrific as one could imagine.
Aestred Thurga stands somewhere between a novella and a novel, so I guess it has to just be called a novel… And Ware continues her excellent characterization of the Sisters of Battle. This time, it’s a Reliquant at Arms and her squad of Sacresants, returning a holy relic to its final owner and resting place. Only… the world is under threat by a cult of Nurgle… and that’s extra bad news because it’s a burial planet.
Overall, the book was a solid read. The sisters do what you would expect them to, they kick ass. The politics between the sisters and the local administratum is also well thought out and compelling enough to drive the plot forward with more than just mindless action. There’s just two things that bothered me enough that I can’t give it a full throated five stars like I would The Rose in Darkness.
The first issue was the sheer amount of repetition. The book barely weighs in at 200 pages and it only got there by repeating a lot of the same information again and again. Do you wonder if Aestred Thurga has doubts about whether she can shoulder her burden? Oh, don’t fucking worry. You won’t be wondering anything by page 100. And, honestly, the war chants grew a little tiresome because there was so much action in this book. It’s the same four phrases, shouted over and over again. That was the big issue.
The smaller issue was, I admit, probably more of a me thing. Look, I know the corpses are reanimated by the chaos warp energy. But, if shooting the revivified creatures in the head kills them (and breaks whatever magic animated them) then why do mouldering skeletons with almost no flesh on them crawl from their graves. There’s nothing in their heads. There’s no flesh to animate, no brain to kill. It’s the same problem I have with bad zombie movies where going through a graveyard is a real threat because the skeletons will reach out from their graves to stop our protagonist. Why? Why are they animated also.
Again, you can wave it all away and say “warp energy” but it just bugged the back of my brain a little.
That said, I always enjoy a good Sororitas story and, even with some of the things that bothered me, I still overall enjoyed it. The ending was truly satisfying in a way I hadn’t predicted and I’d honestly pick up another if this became the first in a series of stories surrounding this character.
