Book Review: Vorax by Matthew Farrer

Continuing my way through the collected short stories from Eye of Terra, this week’s entry takes us into the unsettling world of the Dark Mechanicum. Always a dangerous place to visit… let’s see how this one goes.

Title: Vorax

Author: Matthew Farrer

Blurb: The Ring of Iron encircles Mars like a broken halo, standing as the last contested outpost of the Dark Mechanicum within the Imperial Fists’ blockade. Deep within its shadowed depths, rogue priests and adepts plot and scheme.

But a new enemy is coming—and soon the hunters may find themselves becoming the prey.

Review

Well, that was short! Despite its brief length, Vorax delivers a fun and fast-paced story. It’s always enjoyable to follow the villains for a change, and Matthew Farrer does a great job making the Dark Mechanicum both fascinating and unsettling. Farrer is an author I’m seeing more of lately, and after enjoying his opening novel in the Enforcer series, I’m starting to feel confident that I’m in safe hands whenever his name appears on a story.

The tale is set within the Ring of Iron around Mars, where we follow a Dark Mechanicum adept preparing traps for the loyalist forces closing in. While this setting hasn’t been explored extensively in the fiction, it’s arguably one of the most important battlefields of the Horus Heresy, second only to Terra itself.

Given the limited page count, Farrer does an excellent job building tension. The growing sense of panic and pressure is palpable as the Dark Mechanicum suddenly find themselves being hunted by the terrifying Vorax battle-automata. Watching the hunters slowly become the hunted makes for a gripping little slice of Heresy-era warfare.

I’d definitely recommend giving this one a read or listen. However, because it’s so short, it’s probably best experienced as part of the anthology rather than on its own.

And as a final note: Black Library…give Matthew Farrer more page space, please!