Open The Vault!

OUT NOW

The short story ARMY OF ONE.

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My publisher Black Library have just opened what they call 'The Vault'- a place for rare titles from the archives. These include a number of short story collections containing short stories from yours truly. You'll have to be quick, however, as they seem to be selling fast! Available from 'The Vault' are the following collections:

The Imperial Truth - containing my Horus Heresy short story The Hands of the Emperor.

Space Marines: Angels of Death - containing my Excoriators short story Bastions.

Renegades of the Dark Millennium containing my Night Lords short story Bring the Night.

Enjoy!


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'I can no longer contain the carnage I am about to wreak. I am Eversor. And I become vengeance.'

From the short story ARMY OF ONE.

EXCORIATORS!

OUT NOW

The short story BASTIONS.

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Just wanted to share these fantastic miniatures of the Excoriators Space Marines Chapter, 5th Company. The Excoriators feature in my novel Legion of the Damned. They were a chapter I built up pretty much from scratch and so had a great opportunity to give them their own character. One of those features were the way in which the Excoriators repair their armour but leave the blemishes and bolt craters as a reminder of the battles they have fought and the failures they have endured. As a Second Founding Imperial Fists chapter I felt that this form of censure and remembrance went well with their character. Each nick, scorch and bolt blast is annotated on the plate with the date and place of its occurrence.

Gamer and modeller Deathspectersgt7 has devoted some time to bringing the Excoriators 5th Company to the table top with his interpretation of the chapter. I thought they were fantastic and decided to share them here on the blog. I hope you like them too. Deathspectersgt7's ongoing work with the Excoriators can be found HERE. If you haven't read about the Excoriators you can find them in the novel Legion of the Damned and the short story Bastions. Check them out!

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'The Space Marine's face was barely clinging to his blood-stained skull. What flesh remained was ragged putrescence framing the perfection of lipless teeth and a bone-fused bionic eye. The optic glowed with a life its owner clearly no longer possessed.'

From the short story BASTIONS.

ZOMBIE SPACE MARINES

OUT NOW

Archaon: The Fall and the Rise

A 12k short story included in the ebook version of Archaon: Everchosen.

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Continuing with my efforts to catch up with and collate relevant material that I've missed on internet - I've surgically extracted a nice review of my short story 'Bastions', featuring the Excoriators Space Marine chapter from Legion of the Damned. The indomitable Xhalax reviewed Bastions on the commentarial tour de force that is site Fifty Shades of Geek. Here's what she had to say:

A silent star-fort is an ominous sign… But when Chaplain Rhaddecai and his Excoriators board the Semper Vigilare to investigate, they find something far more disturbing as the dead rise, human and Space Marine alike. Beset by rotting horrors and trapped in the star-fort’s depths, the Space Marines must find a way to survive, or to die with honour.



"Bastions by Rob Sanders

Chaplain Raddecai and a half squad of Excoriators have travelled to the star-fort Semper Vigilare to censure its commander for a number of infractions he has committed. However, when the Space Marines board the star-fort, they find it disturbingly quiet and seemingly empty. Yet looks can be deceiving.

The story begins at the beginning (not as odd as it sounds, honest), introducing the reader to the main characters as they board the star-fort and the tone is set very early with the derelict hangar bay that only seems to add to the list of charges the Chaplain has brought to bear. There’s a sense of wrongness woven into the prose too, quite artfully as the both the reader and marines know that something is wrong, and given the nature of the charges, they can guess. However, the marines must complete their mission to its conclusion, regardless.

Bastions is a slow burner of a story, which makes it seem longer than some of the other shorts (and it may be, though I’ve not got the actual word count), but that only adds to the oppressive atmosphere. Something is going to happen, and both the characters and the readers are braced for it, but neither knows exactly when everything will be revealed.

My only slight niggle is that I’m never given a complete sense of who the Marines are. They’re a stoic breed, descendants of Dorn, so the exchanges between the characters are to the point in their directness. It’s not until the end, when the scope of the story is shown that you really get to see who these characters truly are, when they are tested in their loyalty.

However, Bastions is a full story told succinctly in the microcosm of flash fiction and well worth a read.

9/10 "

As well as being released individually (found HERE) the short sotry was also anthologies in Space Marines: Angels of Death. Being a reading and reviewing machine, Xhalax also managed to find time to review the other stories contained within. Her reviews of those stories can be found HERE, HERE and HERE. I have added Fifty Shades of Geek to my growing list of sites on the side bar that are part of the scene and worthy of attention. I encourage you to check it out.

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'The Wastes. Its name was well-earned. A blasted, howling wilderness of twilight, blizzard and mind-numbing temperatures, Helmut Horrwitz considered the waste through which he hacked. The squandered humanity. The cost in blood.'

Archaon: The Fall and the Rise .