Vaults of Obsidian

A great anthology about the Blackstone fortress and its denizens and dangers, if you haven’t read Darius Hinks Blackstone books (why not!) then this is good introduction to what grim dark deeds go on there and will whet your appetite for more

As usual, Black Library brings some great SF, this time delving into the world of the Blackstone Fortress. It's always challenging to pull together a coherent set of short stories, and with just a few exceptions, Vaults of Obsidian does a great job of putting those together. I'm not as knowledgeable about the history and stories of the Blackstone Fortress, but I now plan on diving into this little piece of the WH40k universe with gusto.

I recently read Darius Hinks’s Blackstone Fortress, which served as a great introduction to this setting. Naturally, I was interested in reading more, and Vaults of Obsidian was available for review. It’s an interesting collections of stories, offering a variety of perspectives on the Blackstone Fortress and its unusual place in the WH40k setting. I enjoyed it.

These stories often evoke how the mystery, superstition, and mythical potential of the Blackstone Fortress leads characters to give in to their worst tendencies: greed, in particular. The game upon which it’s based is a sci-fi Warhammer Quest, so it’s apt that many of these stories are a form of treasure hunt — even if the “treasure” in question is not a chest of gold, or whatever.

We also see a wider variety of characters, and crews comprised of unusual mix of characters and races — something we haven’t seen too often elsewhere in BL’s fiction. For example, there are some new alien species attached to certain bands, or an Eldar and drukhari team up. This helps the stories stand out from much other BL short fiction, and offers up opportunities for new commentary — for example, the different mythologies that have risen around the Blackstone Fortress itself, the altered relations between certain races that are mixing more than one might expect. Pretty good action scenes across the collection, and each of the stories was well-written.

There is plenty of back-stabbing, hidden agendas, suspicion, ambushes and desperate survival. Each story is a nice, quick quest and/or adventure. I spread out reading this between longer works of fiction and non-fiction, which I think worked best for me: sometimes, I really lose steam with anthologies/collections, especially if they have a shared theme or setting, because the stories can blend together. I think this might have happened with Vaults of Obsidian if I’d tried to just read it through (I was feeling very biblio-restless when reading this).

Definitely recommended to all fans of the setting, and/or people who are curious to explore the Blackstone Fortress for the first time. A good read, which I think will whet readers’ appetites for more fiction in this setting.