Bloody Books Review: The Colonel’s Monograph

I feel I need to apologise. I appear to be unable to get out from under the Warhammer Horror Imprint. I say apologise, but I’m not actually sorry as I’m loving it. I will do some of the Crime stuff soon, I promise.

However, with that in mind, let us jump into Graham McNeil’s 40k set entry into the second run of the Novella series, and we are wasting no time with getting a set-up in place.

Teresina Sullo is a retired archivist who is dealing with the loss of her husband. To take her mind off her loss, she accepts a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: cataloguing the rare book collection of Colonel Grayloc. Grayloc was a renowned war hero who survived the catastrophic Dawn of the Dark Suns campaign, which saw Guard units turning on one another. The campaign is shrouded in mystery, as is the Colonel herself. After her untimely demise, her son is eager to sell her rare and valuable books in effort to recoup the family fortune.

Sullo dwells alone in a mansion with her only companion being a Servitor that all visitors will insist on calling by a human name. Sullo spends her time cataloguing Grayloc’s impressive book collection, in which McNeil is able to throw in some truly wonderful references to books mentioned in the setting before, some of them being so obscure they needed a moment to look up on a Wiki. The majority of these tomes are banned within the Imperium, and Sullo, whilst shocked, does not shy away from the books. Sullo is a truly likeable creation, strong-willed and reasonable in equal measure but also still processing her loss and the grief of the loss. She never falls into the traps of these stories, she understands full well the dangers she faces, and truly knows how far into damnation her path with lead, and the discover that she is not the first to take on the task to list the books signals how this will end, but she acknowledges she is too far lost to be able to come back. McNeil often uses the theme of knowledge is not always best learnt, and that is as the front and centre of what the story is, more of the corrupting nature of the universe rather than an out and out horror, and has a smaller end rather than a gut punch climax.

But it’s a journey I am glad to have taken,