“Faith and Fire”, by James Swallow

416 pages, The Black Library, ISBN-13: 978-1844164226

In this, his third Black Library novel set in Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40K universe, James Swallow uses female heroines of the Adepta Sororitas: Sister Miriya, an elite Celestian Superior, and Sister Verity, a non-militant Hospitalier. The story is a rather standard action plot, with no additional personal journeys or significant character development to get in the way. From the moment the book begins, you can feel the hopelessness and overwhelming odds that face humanity in that distant future. Sister Superior Miriya tries her best in all things, but the darkness just always seems to overcome her; she always survives, but with more and more tragedies and loss to burden herself. Towards the end of the book, however, I began to wonder if the author pulled out the Evil Overlord checklist and began picking things to do: it seemed every action the villain took was from that list – have your enemies in your power, but leave them alive; give lengthy speeches about your plans; leave their weapons where they can be found; turn your back; ignore signs of them coming up behind you – and my desire to laugh made it hard to stay in the grimdark mindset. Ah, well, with all that, the plot is fast-paced and interesting; some of the scenes are particularly good – such as Torris Vaun’s escape from prison, the attack of the city or the attempted murder of Sister Verity in the library – while others were a bit overdone, particularly towards the end of the book where almost everything seems to go up in flames at the same time. But I like the Sisters of Battle and I overall like Faith and Fire, so here’s two thumbs up for this helping of brain candy.