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trackofwords's review
4.0
Thirteen years after the publication of Lasgun Wedding, Will McDermott returns to Black Library and Necromunda with Soulless Fury, moving his focus from Kal Jerico to one of the underhive’s other famous names – D’onne Ulanti, otherwise known as Mad Donna. While the estranged daughter of House Ulanti tears through the underhive in search of a young man captured by Cawdor gangers, Scrutinator Primus Servalen is dispatched by Lord Helmawr to reel her in once and for all. As the two women embark on a lethal cat-and-rat chase, it becomes clear that there’s more at stake for both of them than just survival and the death of an enemy.
At its core this is a pacy and entertaining face-off between two great characters, set to the backdrop of the many varied and interesting(ly disgusting) locations of the underhive. The narrative mostly alternates between these two viewpoints, with a few scenes in between which add a little context to what’s going on elsewhere, but while this is definitely D’onne’s novel, Servalen gets just as much page time, to good effect. With two enjoyable characters, masses of relatively small scale but powerfully visceral – and occasionally genuinely brutal – action sequences and a plot which drives unrelentingly forward, it’s a lot of fun from start to finish.
Read the full review at https://www.trackofwords.com/2020/08/14/soulless-fury-will-mcdermott/
At its core this is a pacy and entertaining face-off between two great characters, set to the backdrop of the many varied and interesting(ly disgusting) locations of the underhive. The narrative mostly alternates between these two viewpoints, with a few scenes in between which add a little context to what’s going on elsewhere, but while this is definitely D’onne’s novel, Servalen gets just as much page time, to good effect. With two enjoyable characters, masses of relatively small scale but powerfully visceral – and occasionally genuinely brutal – action sequences and a plot which drives unrelentingly forward, it’s a lot of fun from start to finish.
Read the full review at https://www.trackofwords.com/2020/08/14/soulless-fury-will-mcdermott/
nooker's review
3.0
I love Necromunda, but this was a real slog. This is not how I think Mad Donna or Mad D'onne (name change doesn't bother me at all, kinda seems like a cool call out to her spire origins) should be portrayed. I liked Mad Donna in Survival Instinct, she seemed like a fully formed character there. Here she seemed like a bad parody of Harley Quinn from The Emancipation of Harley Quinn (a movie I really liked). The wig also drove me nuts. It seemed SO impractical as to as to not be amusing even as an insane affectation. I had hopes when, in the epilog, she seemed to find what she was looking for only to her cast away the one thing that showed some humanity. It was nice to see the telepaths foreshadowing play out in a way that I didn't see coming, but over all not a great book.
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