Goonhammer Reviews: No Peace Among Stars, a Warhammer 40,000 Anthology

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It's been famously noted that the English language isn't actually a language, but rather three of them in a trench coat. In a similar vein, No Peace Among Stars, one of the Black Library's most recent anthologies that released just this past November, can be seen as three Theme Weeks up to the same shenanigans.

eShort Story Theme Weeks are one of the Black Library's primary vectors for the development of new talent and bench depth (the other being White Dwarf, which just last month introduced an Astra Militarum serial by new-to-Warhammer writer Neil Andrew Miller₁). Released several times a year, each has their own theme- typically around one of the game's many factions- and are vehicles for a once-a-day debut of a new short story.

With No Peace Among Stars, the Black Library has released (most of₂) the stories from three different Theme Weeks into print for the first time. It's terrific to see these stories arrive in a format you can hold in your hands or put on a bookshelf, though if I've a grievance here related to the anthology as a whole it is with the arrangement.

This gets to something I've discussed before, notably in my review of the fantastic Blood of the Imperium anthology:

Before the era of digital music, one of my favorite things to do was to make mix tapes. The best of these were more than just collections of good songs, but rather each song played its part in helping craft a full experience. Tempo and tone shifted from one song to the next in a way that flowed with purpose and intent, taking the listener on a journey. Each song I chose to include not only needed to stand on its own, but also contribute something to the whole.

Getting to blend three different Theme Weeks' worth or stories seems like a terrific opportunity to craft a banger of a mixtape. Instead, No Peace Among Stars simply reprints the Theme Weeks in their original publication order. All the same, "thematic sections" is a more than defensible approach, and there's plenty to enjoy here regardless of how the loaf is sliced.

Now, on to the stories!

Space Marine Successors Week

Kicking off on 8 April, 2024, this was a full seven days' worth of stories, a contrast to the five, weekdays-only approach we generally see for a Theme Week. Each of the tales concerned a different Successor Chapter of the Loyalist Astartes, kicking off the anthology with loads of Space Marine action.

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Death's Toll, by John Flindall

The anthology opens with a tale of Imperial ruthlessness when confronted with a xenos menace. A band of Iron Lords have been dispatched to rescue a planet from a T'au incursion, but the native rulers soon find the cost of their assistance is almost too much to bear.

Originally part of 2024's Space Marine Successors Week, Death's Toll is a fairly straightforward tale whose most interesting expository bits are the tale's opening and closing moments, with the middle taken up largely by a series of gunbattles. It's a fine opener, one of the author's six Black Library shorts which includes two other stories we've reviewed. Cold Vigil was part of last year's Black Library Celebration eShort Subscription (review), and the excellent Tome Keepers: Legacy of Defiance- originally serialized in White Dwarf- was collected in last year's Blood of the Imperium anthology (review).

John Flindall is a 14-year veteran of Games Workshop, currently serving as a Product Designer after a stint in IP Review.

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The Blooded, by David McDougall

The book's second story has a bit more in it, at least in terms of highlighting one of the universe's less common Successor Chapters. Death's Toll didn't reveal much for me about the Iron Lords, but David McDougall takes a similar approach (painting a splash of lore paint on top of a straightforward action tale) and works it in just a little deeper. Without spoiling anything, I'll just note that the use of the Angels Vermilion here brings the reader towards a conclusion not entirely unlike the legendary 1962 Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man."

Honestly, the Angels Vermilion lore in general skirts a little close to "author's thinly-veiled fetish trope" territory, but you get none of that here in McDougall's telling. He plays it straight, and it pays off in a nicely poignant ending. This was- and remains- McDougall's only contribution to the Black Library to date.

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The Guns of Enth, by R. S. Wilt

R. S. Wilt's background as a retired U.S. Army officer infused his debut novel, Final Deployment, with a gritty realism (review), and the same is on display here in this terrific tale of Astartes action that's one of the anthology's standouts. Brothers of the Howling Griffins have joined forces with Fire Angels Chapter to help reclaim the planet Enth, but there's just one problem. Massive macrocannons dot the surface of the planet. The easy answer is to send a team to destroy a battery of them, using the now-liberated airspace to establish a foothold, but there's a problem. The Guns of Enth aren't just weapons, they're sacred relics, and the Fire Angels will brook no such blasphemy.

That means demolition is off the table, leaving only the far more perilous option of capture-and-hold. But they aren't the only ones with designs on the Guns, as they've also drawn the attention of one of the most mysterious and enigmatic of the traitor Legions...

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Tally of Slaughter, by Mark-Anthony Fenech

There are a number of areas of 40K lore that I've sort of kept 'on the shelf,' because you only ever get to experience something for the first time once and what's the rush? The Badab War is one of those, driven in no small part by how many interesting Successor Chapters have had parts to play in that part of Warhammer history.

The Executioners are one such Chapter, which turned from the Emperor in the War but ultimately repented and were granted a conditional forgiveness at the end. In Mark-Anthony Fenech's Black Library debut, a Death-Speaker (aka Chaplain) refuses to let the past stay in the past. Will he risk the Chapter's rebuilding in his hunt to right an old wrong?

Mark-Anthony Fenech, like Andras Millward (Unthinking Justice) before him, is an interesting figure in that he's written science-fiction in his native language. Rather than Millward's Welsh, however, Fenech's first novel, 2018's It-Tawmaturgu, was written in Maltese.

As for this story, it was entertaining but won't have a lot of appeal to those whose enjoyment of long action sequences is limited. Novels can more easily contain extended battle scenes because they've had a lot of room to develop the character and establish the emotional stakes. Short stories are studies in economy, and there's a risk of leaning too much into fights to carry the tale.

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The Vengeful Dead, by Mike Vincent

Another of the book's standout stories, this was Mike Vincent's debut for the Black Library. Vincent clearly has an appreciation for the Night Lords, who play the villains here and are featured in every story he's written (including, most recently, the novel The Remnant Blade).

This story centers on a Red Talons Dreadnought, Ingalion Carthis, the sole survivor of a Night Lords trap. As the warband of murderers and killers closes in, the question is less about survival and more about how many he can take with him.

Vincent's terrific here, alternating between backstory and action in a way that keeps things engaging while you wait to see what fate ultimately becomes of Carthis.

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The Shot that Kills You, by William Crowe

The last time I experienced the Raptors in Black Library fiction was in Noah Van Nguyen's sublime Elemental Council (review), and William Crowe does them justice here in this short story that pits them up against the Drukhari. By leaning into the essence of the Chapter's tactics- involving ambush and infiltration- rather than surface-level trapping, it's a terrific example of show-don't-tell storytelling that gives you a feel for the Chapter it's about.

Another Crowe short story is also included in this anthology (Tattershield), and he's also had a story serialized in White Dwarf 506-510 (Tatters of Hope).

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Tears of Raphaela, by Richard Swan

Another story that pleasantly reminded me of other reading, here Richard Swan's depiction of the world of Raphaela overrun by late-stage Tyranidism had me recalling Victoria Hayward's 2024 Deathworlder. While the Lamenters portrayed here seemed to lean into meme territory at times (one weeping as he lined up a shot), the story was a serviceable action tale of a Lamenter sniper stalking a Winged Tyranid Prime through a ruined city.

Swan's other story for the Black Library was the excellent Blood Harvest, contained in the Blood of the Imperium anthology and also centered on the Tyranids menace.

Astra Militarum Week

Moving on to October of 2024, we were treated to a quintet of tales featuring the Imperial Guard.

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Tattershield, by William Crowe

The Tattershields are a unit of Kasrkin formed after the destruction of Cadia, and in this titular short story Sgt. Konstantin Taikon hunt a band of traitor Guardsmen in a war-torn city that has turned its back on the Imperium. Crowe weaves a lot of elements together in this delightfully tight story, mixing up different action sequences with the suspense of the hunt- including a local guardsman who may or may not be fully trusted.

Between Tattershield and The Shot That Kills You, I hope we haven't seen the last of Crowe.

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The Strength of Symbols, by Carrie Harris

While like many of this collection's authors Carrie Harris only has a couple of short stories under her belt for the Black Library (so far!), she has a number of other writing credits for properties ranging from Marvel Super-Heroes to Arkham Horror (as well as her own). She brings this polish to her tale of a Valhallan medic transplanted to a Cadian squad who struggles with feeling like an outsider.

When she has the opportunity to recover a regimental banner stolen by Orks, Cathris Korr finds that being Cadian isn't just about what planet you happen to have been born on. THis story didn't quite land for me. It's a solid enough action tale against a largely anonymous horde of Orks, but the emotional arc didn't carry enough of the weight to really set it apart from a combat writeup. That's not necessarily bad, but if a story is mostly combat I'd like to see it either have a little more emotional resonance or a clever twist on the usual, such as with the story I awarded 'Best in Show' for 2025's Black Library Celebration Subscription (review), Finest Hour by Sam Ryan. That story also focused on a battle standard as an essential part of the story, but saw multiple POV changes as the standard kept changing hands.

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Those Without Mercy, by Callum Davis

Well well well, what have we here. Callum Davis? Savlar Chem-Dogs? Could this be the prologue to Davis's Chem Dog, which hits the bookshelves tomorrow? It sure looks that way, right down to the inclusion of Commissar Hasp. And it makes for some grim reading:

Behind her chem-inhaler, she had no teeth. Commissar Hasp had taken one for each time she’d sworn at a Cadian officer who said her boots needed polishing. The ramrod-backed man had run out of teeth to yank out, and so had moved on to her fingernails. When it was pointed out to him that that might make handling her lasgun more difficult for her, he ordered her tied to a post and lashed. A dozen scars now criss-crossed her back.

I've found that the further away from a POV character a Commissar is in a story, the more likely they are to be a miserable bastard and that certainly seems to apply here. I'll be keen to see how Davis treats Hasp when he's a main character in a novel versus this Chem-Dog-centered tale. In the meantime, this is a terrifically gritty and grim slice of life that does justice to the griminess that comes along with the drug-dependent Savlar.

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The Last Psyker, by Shauna Lawless

If you were looking for an allegory of the tragedy of the Imperium writ small, you could do worse than Shauna Lawless's lone Black Library tale. We've seen plenty of times where the Imperium's bitter soil has nurtured the seeds of its undoing, and all of the same ingredients are present in this tale of a bullied psyker.

With his squad's prejudices on full display, there's little Lieutenant-Psyker Karleth can do to earn the respect of his squad. Isolated and ostracized by his fellow Guardsman, Karleth finds validation and acceptance from an unlikely source- but one that isn't everything it seems.

Chaos seduction stories are a bit like roller coasters-the more time you spend going up the more fun you're likely to have on the way down. With Karleth fighting other characters for POV time (Lawless uses an alternating-chapter-POV structure) in an already-short story, there wasn't enough of Karleth for readers deeply engaged. Still, a solid effort.

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Exterminator, by Mike Vincent

If Mike Vincent has a through-line in hos small but growing body of work in the Black Library, it's the 8th Legion. In both of the first two stories he wrote in 2024 (this one as well as The Vengeful Dead), the Night Lords are present as the tale's antagonists. This changed the following year with Blades of Atrocity, the short story that served as prelude to his debut novel The Remnant Blade and gave us our first taste of Dalchian Rassaq, the "Skin Taker."

Of course, we're getting ahead of ourselves a bit there, but I always like to see how each piece contributes to a writer's own canon. Here for Astra Militarum Week, Vincent gives us the story of a group of Guardsmen involved in transporting a cargo-8 of "priority supplies." As we quickly learn, however, this is a case of "mushroom management" (as in, kept in the dark and fed shit). When the convoy is caught in a raging blizzard and the hauler overturns and ruptures, the crew discovers what they've really been transporting all along- and it's not happy.

From the intriguing premise to its gripping execution (no pun intended), this is one of the anthology's standouts.

Ave Dominus Nox, baby.

Cult Mechanicus Week

Cult Mechanicus 2025 ran from May 5-9, offering five tales that put the Adeptus Mechanicus at the front and center.

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Nightfall on Stygies, by Stark Holborn

When famed explorator Isonovere Holt returns to Stygies after a ten-year absence with a mysterious xenos artifact in tow, the promise of hidden knowledge is just enough to keep her out of trouble with the Mechanicum. But not, it seems, with the Inquisition.

So I wrote in my review of the Cult Mechanicus Week when it premiered last year, and Holborn's (to-date) lone Black Library entry held up well with another reading. The tale is centered on Tech-Adept Thess 4/90, and like the best Adeptus Mechanicus stories Stark Holborn evokes the techno-mechanical nature of the Cult in her prose. Thess 4/90 emerges from shock as if she'd "emerged from what felt like a deep defragmentation procedure," or feels butterflies in her stomach like the "setting off [of] a series of logic problems in my chest"

Another excellent inclusion, I hope we haven't seen the last of Holborn.

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Dream of the Locust, by Tom R. Pike

The race is on for a coffin-shaped MacGuffin in this tale of AdMech-versus-Orks on a derelict spacecraft. Technoarchaeologist Kem Okhotnik₃ leads a retrieval team to the Dream of the Locust, a Mechanicus vessel that's mysteriously reappeared intact after being lost to the Warp for a decade. On the other side you've got a band of Ork scavengers led by Gekdug, and caught in the middle is the ship's feral machine spirit which sees both parties as invaders- and welcomes them accordingly.

Another writer debut, Tom R. Pike's Dream of the Locust was a bit of a tonal miss for me as it split the difference between serious and silly. For example, a Skitarius who kept his severed head in an oil-filled jar around his neck invoked echoes of Futurama, which isn't quite the vibe I'd normally look for in my grim, dark future.

Still, the interaction between Okhotnik and Gekdug was the standout joy here. The story went in a different direction, but I'd have loved to have seen a buddy movie sequel with the two of them.

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Beneath the Ashes, by Mark Barber

There's a bit of chocolate and peanut butter coming together whenever you're able to mix military action and horror, such as in the films Aliens, Predator, and Dog Soldiers, and Mark Barber really invoked it here to terrific effect.

Beneath the Ashes sees a combined team of Guard and AdMech on a search-and-rescue op to find a missing Mechanicus expedition on a bleak ash world. They gain entry into a pyramidal structure and descend into its depths, where an ancient horror awaits them.

Barber weaves the tale with a horror writer's sensibility. Straggling troopers suddenly disappear amidst a sense of claustrophobic darkness, and when the missing expedition is found hanging from their heels completely flayed, well, all bets are off.

Fans of happy endings will be pleased to learn that the ending isn't as grim as that of The Mist- but it's close.

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Imperfect Engines, by Avalon Irons

The anthology ends on a high note with one of its strongest inclusions, the winner of my 'Best in Show' for this theme week. This one shared some DNA with Dream of the Locust where you have heroic AdMech racing for a forgotten prize against their enemies, but the prize here is no MacGuffin. Rather, the Cerastus Knight-Atrapos Clarion Call plays an active role in the story itself rather than just being the passive object of attention.

Where Imperfect Engines really shines is in the character of Skitarius Ranger Iota-11, whose technological nature sits unsettled within him. This is at odds with the 'typical' member of the Cult Mechanicus, who proclaim the weakness of the flesh as they rebuild their own physical form with that of the machine. That unsettlement of spirit is the story's through-line, and the emotional impact at story's end sticks every bit of the landing. Little surprise, then that Avalon Irons was the co-award winner of Best Black Library Debutant (alongside Russell Zimmerman) in the 2025 Goonhammer Book Awards.

And that brings us to the end of No Peace Among Stars. While it didn't quite feel like the leap-off-the-shelves collection that last year's Blood of the Imperium did, that more than half of the stories contained within was plenty to carry the anthology.

I'll be interested to see how the short-story pipeline continues to function in the Black Library, given that we've seen some absences of late. Both last December's Advent Calendar subscription as well as the traditional Black Library Celebration one posted missing, without any explanation from Games Workshop. What that might mean for future anthologies is uncertain, but for the now we've got plenty to keep us busy.

Footnotes

Also known as established, bestselling-author Nick Spalding, author of Love from Both Sides and Bricking It.
The only one that didn't make the roster was Opportunity Cost by Jonathan Beer, which featured the character Explorator Talin Sherax from Dominion Genesis (review).
Which my stupid, pop-culture reptile brain soon turned that into "Robotnik" and I was never quite able to shake it.

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