Reviews

Sanction and Sin by J.S. Collyer, Jonathan D. Beer, Victoria Hayward, Mike Brooks, Darius Hinks, Gary Kloster, Danie Ware, Jude Reid, Denny Flowers

thewargrave's review

adventurous dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

A collection of mostly poor short stories with a few standouts:

Up in Arms - Mike Brooks
Blood Ballot - J S Collyer
Service - Jonathan D Beer

The rest are an amalgamation of tropey nonsense that do nothing interesting with the source material.  Service by Jonathan D Beer was the highlight, not only playing with the setting in some interesting ways, but delivering a great 50 pages of reading.

saltb20's review

adventurous dark sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

nraptor's review

adventurous dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

trackofwords's review

4.0

With four of its nine stories written by women, Sanction & Sin is something of a landmark for Black Library with the highest proportion of female authors in any BL anthology yet published. This is far from a token attempt at representation, however. Unlike No Good Men, which (while featuring individually great stories) hammered home its lack of diversity and variety with both a roster of all-male authors and a collection of remarkably similar, all-male characters, Sanction & Sin’s nine female protagonists represent a broad cross-section of character types, roles and demeanours. Across these stories you’ll find tough-as-nails sanctioners, information brokers, drivers, a priest, an assassin, and even a mortuary assistant. Some are loners, wedded to their jobs, while others have families to support or try to tear themselves away from. Some are young, some older, some still filled with hope and others worn down by life.

While the Warhammer Crime imprint feels like the most appropriate place for these stories, you could actually view this not so much as a collection of crime stories but simply ‘domestic 40k’ stories that explore familiar themes from main-range 40k fiction just from a different, more low-key and less militaristic perspective. Sure, they all feature death and violence and other ‘criminal’ activity, but for regular people living in Varangantua that’s just everyday life. If you’re looking for noirish 40k detective stories then this is probably not the place to start, however it’s an ideal collection for anyone interested in examining the mundane realities of life for relatable, real-feeling characters. It’s a nicely balanced anthology featuring a great range of authors, full of invention and interesting points of view, and many of these characters (those who survive – no spoilers) deserve to go on and feature in further stories. All told, if you’re interested in 40k stories that step away from the big battlefields while maintaining the trademark grit and darkness, this is well worth checking out.

Read the full review at https://www.trackofwords.com/2021/09/17/sanction-sin-warhammer-crime-anthology/

manthespace's review

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5