I was delighted to see the heightened level of interest in the Black Library’s latest anthology when Paragon of Faith and Other Stories was first announced, but even I didn’t expect that this book would sell out at preorder quicker than the Limited Edition of The Silent King. Whether that was down to a lower print run/availability or increased demand is hard to say from the outside looking in, but I’m assuming the latter based on how much interest it seemed to generate.
After all, beyond the unifying theme of the Adepta Sororitas, the central structure of the release itself was intriguing: they took all five stories from one of the digital eShort Theme Weeks last year, the Daughters of the Emperor Week, and ran them alongside two new novellas. Given that the Black Library typically has been using short story theme weeks as a kind of auditioning grounds for potential future talent, this book ends up largely being a showcase for some up-and-coming talent.
That’s all great, of course, but the real question is how does it read? Let’s find out.
Paragon of Faith, by Amanda Bridgeman
While I’ve never studied it, it’s probably a truism that, given enough time, a creative industry will eventually find a way to give its most prominent members awards. Things like the Oscars, the Emmys, the Grammys, these are just the tip of the iceberg. And like an iceberg, what you do see is absolutely dwarfed by what you don’t.
That isn’t to say that smaller-industry awards aren’t important- they certainly are- but it may be that you haven’t heard of the Scribe Awards. Started in 2007 by the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, it’s a way to recognize writers who populate existing IP’s with their imagination and creativity.
Warhammer stories have been nominated sixteen times, with five Black Library authors taking the top prize (Nathan Long winning it twice). The most recent winner? Amanda Bridgeman in 2023 for her short story, Reconsecration- a story of a planet in revolt that’s drawn the attention of an Inquisitor and cohort of Sisters from the Order of the Valorous Heart.
Bridgeman returns to the concept in her second story for the Black Library, though this time around it’s a novella and you can swap out the Inquisition for the Astra Militarum. And while to be fair there’s a few parallels between both stories, Paragon of Faith absolutely stands on its own.
This is a very steady, high-octane action story that unfolds crisply in the space it’s given as a novella. It leads with a bit of a mystery, then once there’s the reveal it gallops forward to its conclusion. And while there’s nothing automatically disqualifying about being considered “bolter porn for the Sisters,” Bridgeman keeps the story elevated largely through the sense of reverence and devotion of the Sororitas. It’s a consistent through-line of the story, such that I could not help but get chills when in one later desperate battle scene a hymn begins playing across the laud-hailer speakers and the Sisters join in song.
As with Reconsecration there’s a touch of early misdirection as to the nature of the threat they face, but here too Bridgeman does terrific work. While the hordes of minions and mooks- be they Chaos cultists, orks, tyranids, or most of whatever else the 40K universe can throw at you- are there to be mowed down in their legions by the heroes, the enemy leadership here was particularly fun villains to read. I was reminded of Victoria Hayward’s exceptional Deathworlder, where the enemy (in that case, tyranids) was so well-depicted that it permanently added to the ‘standard of comparison’ I use for any subsequent portrayals.
Ultimately, a solid action story with some terrific highlights- a good starter for the anthology!
Saint’s Judgement, by Ness Brown
In that funny way the universe sometimes has of lining things up in a way that suggests serendipity over coincidence, a poster on the Black Library subbreddit shared some delightful details around the olfactory aftereffects of a ‘double abscess removal surgery.’
“Someone is going to find this post very helpful for their writing,” I responded. Turns out, I don’t think Ness Brown needed any help in this department.
Fresh off Bridgeman’s battle story, Brown gives us a tale of disease and mystery. On a world beset by heretical rebellion, a Sister Hospitaller has been tasking with bringing a battlefield hospital to full operational readiness- but the nature of the contagion that surrounds them defies easy understanding. Could something more be behind it- as well as its cure?
I loved the premise to this one- it reminded me of J H Archer’s The Dust that Remains from the recent Blood of the Imperium anthology (review here)- as it made a terrific change of pace from the anthology’s opener. Ness pours on the graphic details of the disease, keen to give the reader a sense of the horrors of the plague the Sisters are racing to treat. Pustules, boils, flesh liquifying as the pour afflicted tear their wounds apart from the agony… there’s even a moment later on that called to mind the Sue/Predalien scene from AVP: Requiem (linking instead of describing because I’m not a sadist). This isn’t a tale for the weak of stomach.
Unless you’re absolutely new to Warhammer you’ve probably already guessed what’s behind it, and that’s one part of the story that’s a bit perplexing. Sister Docia, the lead Hospitaller, goes a bit past the point of credulity in the length of time it takes her to start considering that perhaps there’s a… supernatural… element to the contagion?
Once the lightbulb goes off over her head, though, the tale moves swiftly towards its more action-oriented conclusion. If you can suspend a bit of disbelief over the Sister Hospitaller’s diagnostic ability, it’s a strong story whose setting within a hospital sets it apart from the usual bolter-combat fare. Brown also makes good use of space in the novella, adding touches of depth and complexity to her character beyond what the story would ordinarily call for.
Finally (slight spoiler here), I loved how Brown approached the Heretic Astartes that make an appearance towards the end of the story. Often in Warhammer they’re depicted as adversaries and foils for the forces of the Imperium, wayward souls that are similar to the Loyalists but happen to be playing for the other team.
Brown leans far more into the ‘otherness’ of Chaos here, the genuine unholiness and wrongness that comes from something not meant to be sharing the same universe as us. When the Death Guard speak, it’s not just “the bad guys” trading barbs and banter with the heroes as it’s often portrayed. Rather, the very sound of their blasphemous voices induces nausea and pain in those hearing it. It’s a terrific effect that reinforces the alienness and otherness of those who have sold their souls to evil.
Infernal Motives, by Jude Reid
Saint’s Judgment was Brown’s second bite at the apple, but when it comes to the Black Library Jude Reid is a veteran quill. Just in 2025 we’ve seen her with a novel (Fulgrim, the Perfect Son, review here), a Theme Week eShort (Perfection and Pain, review here), a short story in an anthology (The Reskard Purgation in Blood of the Imperium), and a story in White Dwarf (Vexation, issue #511).
Infernal Motives is the first of this collection’s five shorts and takes us back to a combat footing. It also served as an introduction to Celestian Sacresant Aveline Aboyé, who would the following month feature in her own novel Daemonbreaker. Games Workshop put a little extra sizzle on the steak too, releasing her in miniature that same month.
Infernal Motives is something of an appetizer of a story, a short in which the Daemonbreaker is pursuing a daemon inside a factory only to realize that maybe the problem is bigger than she’d first anticipated. It has traits I’ve come to enjoy from Reid’s work, including well-executed battle sequences and an interesting secondary character.
Like any good appetizer it doesn’t overstay its welcome or try to do too much, making it a great transition from the longer novellas into the shorter stories in the back nine of the book.
Our Lady of the Voyage, by Kate Flack
This was writer Kate Flack’s debut into the Black Library, and while she hasn’t had another story published since the chops are definitely there. After all, as I noted in our 2024 short story retrospective, she was a writer for the Dark Heresy RPG and the Second Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play, the Editor for the Tome of Corruption supplement, and with Mythic was a developer for Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Now that’s a pedigree!
I actually got pretty solid Dan Abnett vibes from her opener, where a Sister has been seconded to a battle group on a planet battling a rebellion against the Imperium. Tasked with finding a preacher who’s gone missing with a sacred relic, she is partnered with a member of the Guard to track him down and bring him back.
This story was terrific. There’s some genuine buddy-movie vibes between the Battle Sister and the Guardsman as they hunt down the preacher, and as it moves towards its conclusion there’s a turn at the end that made the whole thing come together delightfully. As rto avoid spoilers, let’s just say this story exists at the interchange of the law of unintended consequences and self-fulfilling prophecies.
A genuine highlight.
Joy of the Martyr, by Ness Brown
Ness Brown’s second story in the anthology was her first for the Black Library, though I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I did Saint’s Judgement. A unit of Battle Sisters is sent to a sweltering jungle world to investigate why the population appears to have turned from the Emperor. As they land and make their way to the nearby temple, they begin to find corpses in the trees, corpses that have been torn apart or melted with acid.
If it all feels a bit Predator-y, the comparison is only strengthened when they discover that it’s not some Chaos cult that’s behind the killings, but rather an infiltration of genestealers that have been setting up shop and feasting on the natives.
While I don’t want to single Brown out for the common depiction of the Adepta Sororitas, they do tend to be typecast into a two-dimensional mold- a thing they have in common with the Astartes. Like there’s a certain formula, Faith in the God-Emperor (positive or negative) + Combat prowess = Battle Sisters story. That doesn’t automatically make a story bad, but it does mean that I’m always looking for the things that make the story stand out. Brown did a terrific job with the main character Sister Docia in Saint’s Judgement (and, as a novella, had more space to work in), but this one ends up feeling just a little flat.
Redemption Through Blood, by John Sollitto
This is a good example of what I was talking about above. So yes, it’s a Sisters of Battle short story so there’s plenty of both combat and faith-based sentiment, but Sollitto crisply wraps this tale not around a crisis of faith so much as anger management.
In this story, Sisters of Battle and Imperial Guard have joined forces to rout the leaders of a heresy out of the factory they’re holed up in. Sister Marcella rashly deviates from the attack plan with disastrous results, and must learn to bring her anger in check as a weapon rather than letting it control her.
By making the story’s resolution hinge on Sister Marcella’s need to control her temper, though, it becomes much more relatable. I mean, I may not have been threatened to be sent to the Sisters Repentia before for it, but I’ve lost my temper a time or two in my life.
Sollitto writes crisply here, keeping the story’s momentum going all the way through to its conclusion. An excellent debut for the writer, and I hope to see more of him in the Black Library in the future.
The Fires of our Faith, by Nicholas Werner
Typically when reviewing a short story collection, be it an anthology or one of the regular eShort Theme Weeks we get from the Black Library, I’ll select a story to be my ‘best in show.’ At least for the five shorts in this particular book, Nicholas Werner’s entry in the book’s last pages gets that honor.
Here the Sisters of Battle are backing up an inquisitor as they look to destroy the flames of heresy that have cleaved the world away from the God-Emperor. Before taking the world’s capital they set out to purge the heretical Cathedral of His Benevolence.
Werner has a florid writing aesthetic that really stood out not just for what it was (an enjoyable way of writing that made the story a delight to consume), but also for what it wasn’t (an exercise in navel-gazing that threatened to derail the quick pacing a combat story thrives on). Instead, the writer deftly wove the more poetic passages and devices in and amongst the higher-octane action, elevating this beyond the usual war-story fare.
The repeated motif he opens the story with, Florelia burned. The almost sympathetic regard for the story’s villainous heretics in the line, heretics though they might be, they were, in their way, faithful. The way he frames the deaths of the Sororitas with active agency; they martyred themselves rather than “they were killed.” And this wonderful passage as the Sisters tally up the grim butcher’s bill they paid for taking the temple, as an inquisitor tries to console her that deaths for the Emperor in His righteous cause were a reason for joy:
Florelia heard the wisdom in her words, yet found no warmth in them. Her sisters might now be martyrs- perhaps someday they might even become saints, if fate was kind- but they were gone all the same. She would never again hear their prayers, or their ecstasy when they felt the God-Emperor’s gaze upon them. And though she would never admit it to an outsider, even an inquisitor, her sisters had made her laugh. Kneeling here, in this very heart of heresy, Florelia could not imagine ever laughing again.
The story sticks the landing with a twist at the end, and one I hadn’t seen coming. This was a terrific way to close out the volume, and Werner too is another I’d love to see more from.
Final Thoughts
When last month I reviewed the recent Age of Sigmar anthology, On the Shoulders of Giants and Other Stories, I was a bit ambivalent on the value for dollar given that the book was only available in hardcover with its correspondingly higher price point. Paragon of Faith and Other Stories clears that bar a bit more confidently.
Given that short stories on the Black Library website typically are priced at USD $4 and you get five of them here, that puts the dollar value for each of the two novellas at $7.50. That feels like a steal for Bridgeman and Brown’s contributions here. Both were terrific stories, different enough in their focus to go well in tandem and keep things interesting.
As for the short stories, although I did feel my collective interest wane a little as I read through them due to the aforementioned narrow dimensionality on display for the Adepta Sororitas, there wasn’t a clunker in the bunch. And much like a “future stars” rookie card, I’m excited to see when some of these newer voices will next appear in the Black Library.
Overall, I’m very happy to recommend this as a read to anyone who enjoys the Sisters of Battle, paragons or otherwise.
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