Justin D. Hill’s Necromunda short story The Sanguinalia Day Massacre tells a tale of greed, power and uprising in the underhive, a grimdark retelling of Spartacus with the violence and brutality turned up to 11. Pitboss Barras has everything in place for the big showdown, pitting Thrax’s crew of low-hive scummers against the pick of his prized Goliath fighters, but when things don’t go quite to plan a chain reaction is triggered that leads inexorably to rebellion. For Thrax, condemned to die in the pits for the killing of his parents, a lifetime of suffering is about to boil over.
Told via a rapid, episodic structure which quickly sets the scene and touches on Thrax’s past before cranking up the pace, this crams a lot into a short space in order to fit the required scale of story into the word count. Pacy and action-packed, it gradually moves from a fairly standard (albeit incredibly bloody, even for 40k) style to something more like a spoken-word saga as the focus widens from Thrax’s individual battles to encompass the implications of his actions as they echo out through the underhive. It’s not a story that concerns itself with in-depth character development, but rather offers a powerful illustration of the brutal nature of life on Necromunda for the downtrodden, using unconventional means to tell a smart and satisfying story.
This was released as part of the 2019 Black Library Advent Calendar – click here to see the main page for the Advent Calendar on Track of Words, with links to all of the reviews.
