I recently read the Warhammer 40,000 novel Ephrael Stern: The Heretic Saint by David Annandale, and this is my review of the book, with no more spoilers than you'd get from the back of the book. I picked this book up based entirely on its title (a heretic saint? How does that work??) and cool cover image. It never occurred to me that I might be diving in midway through a storyline. I had no idea who Ephrael Stern was, but in the best Black Library tradition, it doesn't really matter. The story is self-contained and satisfying regardless of what you do or do not know about Ephrael Stern, Lord Inquisitor Otto Dagover, the aeeldari Kyganil, or even Warhammer 40,000 itself. Actually, "satisfying" is an understatement. This book is awfully good.
The basics of Ephrael Stern's backstory is revealed pretty early. She was a member of the Adepta Sororitas, the elite female fighting force (a loophole to get around the church being forbidden from having men at arms as members of its ranks) of the Adeptus Ministorum. However, Stern also exhibited lots of scary psychic abilities, so she was condemned as a witch. When this book opens, Stern believes herself to be tainted and beyond help, and so she is travelling with the an aeldari Harlequin named Kyganil to transfer her vast knowledge into the fabled Black Library (the in-world one, not the real world publisher of her comics and novels).
At the same time, Lord Inquisitor Otto Dagover of the Ordo Xenos is searching the galaxy for Ephrael Stern because he believes she is a literal saint of the God Emperor. He believes this despite the recent opening of the Cicatrix Maledictum, that rip in reality itself that has split the Imperium in two. Dagover not only believes that Stern is a saint, he believes that the Imperium itself still stands and that, against all odds, the Emperor is still the protector god of mankind.
In just 200 pages, this humble little Warhammer 40,000 story hits on at least 3 powerfully effective themes, and tells an entertaining tale in the meantime.
Fiction shamelessly fetishizes willpower. If you believe hard enough, anything is possible. In fiction, you can overcome physical wounds or biological imperfection by just believing really really hard that you can overcome. It's fictional stuff that can get annoying when it's brought out to praise the fictional hero of the day, but in Warhammer's universe it works. Faith in your own ability to achieve the impossible is just another opportunity for the Emperor of Mankind to assert his dominance over the power of Chaos.
The myth that sheer belief in the impossible can make it possible is the driving force of the most popular myths of the real world. It's a comfortable and familiar way for readers to become complicit in the book's hero worship. It didn't take long for me to adopt Ephrael Stern as my new favourite Warhammer hero and, as in the real world, for all the wrong reasons. Her faith in her god is indefatigable, but her faith in herself is broken. She believes in the impossible, and she acts on mysterious visions and compulsions she attributes to her direct connection to god. She's a fanatic, but in the Warhammer 40,000 setting that's the most virtuous thing you can possibly be, and better yet it actually manifests.
Ephrael Stern shoots lighting from her fingertips, she wields a sword named Sanctity. She flies. I'm not sure whether she's just got a jump pack or whether she was in an air ship or whether she just flies on her own. She's died twice. She fights daemons. This isn't real world faith, this is update-your-character-sheet fantasy clirical powers. David Annandale wisely taps into modern legends like Joan of Arc and Paul Atredes to make us believe without question in the righteousness of Ephrael Stern, even when Ephrael Stern doesn't believe in it herself.
One of my favourite parts of the Blackstone Fortress book is when Janus Draik is assembling his team. It feels like the beginning of a heist movie, or the backstory of your Shadowrun character. I like it just as much in this book as Inquisitor Dagover hunts down Ephrael Stern. It feels like the beginning of something special (which it is), but also full of danger. Dagover is an Inquisitor. He hunts witches by decree, and xenos by order. He's the exact person Stern and Kyganil wouldn't want to find them, and yet he's the exact person who walks into their hideout one day.
When Dagover first meets Kyganil in the book, I didn't know who Kyganil was or that Stern was hanging out with an aeldari. The thought of an Inquisitor of Ordor Xenos encountering an aeldari without drawing a weapon was so anathema to me, I literally thought the aeldari would turn out to be just a statue. The book isn't ambiguous about Kyganil being a real aeldari, but I just couldn't accept the scene I was reading and had to account for it through a new interpretation. I had to re-read the sequence twice to convince myself that I was comprehending it correctly. That was, oddly, one of the most powerful scenes of the book for me, not emotionally but cognitively. I think, in a way, it was the most powerful introduction to just how unlikely this team really was. Sure, Dagover looking past Stern's psyker abilities would be jarring, but somehow I think I'd have believed it easier than Dagover looking past Kyganil's, well, continued existence.
That's also the power of a dirty and gritty dystopian setting. Nobody (rational, I mean) likes the xenophobia of humans in Warhammer 40,000, nobody likes the feudalism and classism, nobody likes the constant war. These aren't virtues, but they are a driving force of the setting. It's the ugly [pretend] "reality" that allows for moments of exception. When Dagover chooses, for whatever reason, to join forces with Stern and Kyganil, it's only as meaningful as it is because we know that there's probably some other book out there where Dagover is killing xenos and we're compelled to cheer for him. But in this book, we get a little taste of redemption through his uncharacteristic tolerance.
A big part of this book's story is redemption, but not that kind of redemption. Redemption, like faith, has mystical implications to most of us. We learn that redemption arcs are important in fiction because it provides resolution and a sense of balance. It usually means that the main character has to do something selfless, sometimes even self-sacrificial.
The redemption arc in this book tricks you. It's not really redemption, because in this book the main character doesn't need redemption. She's been branded a heretic by her order, and then a saint against her wishes. If anything, the rest of the galaby ought to have to redeem itself to Ephrael Stern.
What happens instead is that Ephrael Stern comes to an understanding about who and what she really is. I won't spoil it here, because it's an amazing moment in the book. She gains redemption through the release of self-doubt. It shouldn't work, but it does. You feel empowered by her inner journey, you feel redeemed by proxy. And I guess, religiously speaking, isn't that the function of a saint?
There's a bunch of other stuff in this book, like daemons and fight scenes. It's a good one, and it's a quick read. If you're a fan of Warhammer 40,000, of the Adepta Sororitas, or the Inquisition, you ought to read it.
All images in this post copyright Games Workshop.