Mark of Heresy by James Wallis

Mark of Heresy Reviews

• 
  Nicola

  old school, Old World, Warhammer Fantasy. I read it in my youth while RPG'ing Warhammer Fantasy and loved picking up immersive novels for the setting. It's a different experience picking up the novels again as an adult when many years have passed since I last read books of this ilk. My tastes have somewhat changed and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much although it was fun to reminisce.
• 
  Stuart

  Marks of Chaos is a print-on-demand book available from the Black Library. It's also the first Warhammer novel I bought online. It comprises of two novels, Mark of Heresy and Mark of Damnation, as well as two short stories, No Rest for the Wicked and A Night Too Long.
  
  The sole reason for me buying this is because I have long admired the author, James Wallis, for his work in the games industry. I was a big fan of his old company's (Hogshead Publishing) output for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay as well as some of the other games he put out.
  
  The man can write innovative games, such as The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen - a game I can boast I have the Gentleman's Version (not the commoner's Wives and Servant's Edition). Sadly not all of his projects panned out - in the twilight times of Hogshead he was going to rewrite the original ending to the award winning Enemy Within campaign until a hard disc crash destroyed his draft and probably his will to start all over again (if only Dropbox was invented 15 years ago).
  
  I have the original ending of Enemy Within - Empire in Flames and on paper it is a relatively good scenario. It's even got a fantastic mcguffin that I think players will enjoy, a fairly epic climax and epilogue that would satisfy any player characters that has slogged through the entire Enemy Within Campaign (and trust I only got as far as finishing running Shadows over Bogenhafen with some players who all-but-mutinied against the dark, dark plot.
  
  Wallis stated his Empire in Chaos would be even better, and given Marks of Chaos I am willing to bet it would have been a really memorable climax. I'd also be glad I was the one sat behind the screen rather than playing as his novel puts the protagonist through the ringer and then some.
  
  The story concerns Karl Hoche, a loyal lieutenant in the Imperial Army. Now at the start this sounds like bog-standard Warhammer but Karl very quickly finds some things are amiss in his unit and is unceremoniously parcelled off to Altdorf to report his findings to the regiment heads. It all goes south and Hoche ends up joining a secret branch of the Reiksguard called the Untersuchung (German for Analyse), a spy organisation that hunts Chaos within the Empire. It is the only way to stay safe from the regiment that want him dead to preserve their honour.
  
  From this point on the novel shifts from the archetypical Warhammer fighty-fighty teen prose to a fairly tense spy-novel full of intrigue and nastiness. Hoche gets trained up in espionage and infiltration but realises pretty quickly that various factions within the Imperial forces are engaged in petty politicking against one another. For example the Witch Hunters view the Untersuchung as heretics. The Untersuchung view the Witch Hunters as unsubtle plods who would rather burn old ladies than do the legwork. Then there's the fact the Untersuchung is only part of the Imperial guard as a technicality, and that both they and the Witch Hunters have also been infiltrated by a group known as the Cloaked Brothers. This is a shadowy faction of ex-witch hunters content to observe Chaos and eventually defeat it by using that knowledge. So content they do not try to stop their plans.
  
  This is also the same Warhammer as the Enemy Within campaign, so that means the upper echelons of Imperial society is compromised by Chaos cultists. The Powers that Be are just more likely to hinder or even actively kill our hero than help - either because they are cultists or because they are duped by their superiors who are cultists.
  
  Plenty of cults abound in the book. The Purple Hand, a deep-cover cult and one of the main villains of the Enemy Within, make an appearance. So does the Ancient Order of Illuminated Readers in Marienburg, explaining what happened to them after James Wallis's (and plenty of other authors) own Marienburg-based Dying of the Light scenario. This was an order of readers who literally pulled their own tongues out to prove they would reveal the cult's secret lore, and since the Dying of the Light they have gone even further downhill into wickedness. There is also a new Khorne cult - the unsubtle Blood Chaos God - who Wallis nicely weaves into the narrative.
  
  As I said this feels more like a spy novel than a wargame novel (not say there isn't a few scraps along the way). The closest I can think of his that Hoche is akin to 24's Jack Bauer, at least in the first season when Baeur was a human being and not an invincible action movie character. He's permanently relying on his wits first and is being hounded by both the supposed-good guys and the bad guys.
  
  About 1/3 of the way through the book the plot kicks in. The Untersuchung is disbanded for heresy (a point some readers regret, although Hoche's mentor is never explicitly seen dead). Due to a botched mission and torture by a highly placed Chaos cultist he is left with a mutation and delivered to the Witch Hunters to be tortured. It is never quite clear how he gets the mutation, it seems to be a combination of tainted meat and a cultist's knife.
  
  This is a point where the book really excels. In other Warhammer novels mutation is used as a McGuffin to give the hero superpowers like some sort of X-Man. Here it is shown in all its horrors - the gradual loss of humanity, the disfiguring of both the soul and the body. Hoche's mutation is rarely a blessing, but often a curse. Over the course of the novels Hoche's physical corruption manifests in more and more overt ways while he tries to stay mentally pure and set himself the task of destroying as much Chaos as he can before he inevitably succumbs to its lure. There is no possibility of redemption, no reprieve and no magic McGuffin that will save him. Only damnation waits, and living each day to fight Chaos is a victory in itself.
  
  The conclusion of the book sees Hoche eventually track down the true followers of Chaos and thwarts their plans, leaving himself branded a mutant and a traitor (which in the roleplaying game is usually a sign you did the scenario successfully). There are sufficient followers of Chaos in the Imperial faction to ensure he is blamed for their botched plan and he leaves alone to hunt down Chaos wherever he finds it.
  
  The second book revolves around the Storm of Chaos event, a big metaplot for the Warhammer tabletop wargame. Sigmar is reborn as a man and the forces of good must find him before the Chaos cults do. These good guys have formed a holy crusade, led by a Sigmarite priest called Luthor Huss, and have been denounced by their church's authorities as heretics. Hoche falls in with the renegades as they search for Sigmar, all the while being unable to show his true nature to anyone. He ends up as a leader of the Crusade and is instrumental as a background player in location the reincarnated god and getting him past the Chaos cultists who have insinuated themselves in the Imperial court to the Emperor.
  
  After an amusing and bloody scene with an enemy Imperial steam tank Hoche is left alone by Huss and Valten, the reincarnated Sigmar, on the gates of the Imperial Palace. He has walked into the stronghold of his enemies and must face the Witch Hunters the Chaos cultists have sent after him.
  
  The book ends with Hoche triumphant however. He thwarts their efforts to kill him again, even proving to some of the good guys that he is truly a good man still in a strange world where the leaders of Order are actually the servants of Chaos, and a mutant is the hero.
  
  It's a relatively deep and horrifying pair of books, following Hoche's descent and struggle for humanity. Other characters join him but ultimately Hoche is alone. This does lead to some excellent set-pieces, whether its interrogating a witch hunter on the privy at crossbow point or commandeering a steam tank to get Sigmar Incarnate through the compromised Imperial forces.
  
  Sadly the "Wallis Unfinished Series Curse" hit again as it did Empire in Chaos. It’s a testament that the books are called "The Chaos Hunter" series but it is only mid-way through the second book Hoche earns that epithet. The author was unable to commit to writing more books in the series, originally planning 4 books but life forced him to leave it at two. The third and fourth books would have seen Hoche sacrifice his life nobly to remove the cancerous cultists at the heart of the Empire in the town of Middenheim, only to be succeeded by one of his followers as the Chaos Hunter. (Snark: Which is better than him sticking around for 12+ novels with a death wish and becoming superhuman, unlike some other Warhammer books).
  
  Given the retconning of the Storm of Chaos (current Warhammer Fantasy Battle presents it as only one possible future for the Warhammer world) I am uncertain as to whether Hoche's tale will ever continue in any form, though without Wallis perhaps that is just and fair. A different author might lose the feel of the novels.
  
  Overall this is an excellent buy. The two short stories are more of a buddy-cop show involving two Palisade members (seemingly Secret Service operatives) investigating shenanigans in Altdorf. Fun stuff, but the novels are the real highlight of this omnibus and can be gotten in 2nd hand bins still.
  
  The only criticisms I have is that sometimes the plot is a bit too smart, sometimes characters (including the hero) can be a bit stupid or razor sharp - but this reflects how I find myself sometimes. There is a little cliché, such as the rabidly fanatical witch hunters who are either corrupt or cannot find corruption when it stares them in the face but are willing to hound the innocent. Thankfully there is a counter-example to this in the second book, but here the witch hunters don't come off well.
  
  C.L. Werner, whose excellent Warhammer Witch Hunter books I will discuss another day once argued the Cloaked Brothers in particular seem unnecessary and somewhat tacked-on. It's worth noting that Wallis admits he was building up to doing something conclusive with them that would have been seen in books 3 and 4. I would argue they drive the entire plot in the first book and are a mirror to Hoche in some ways - people who see Chaos everywhere in its wickedness yet coldly do nothing, while Hoche becomes a folk hero for attacking Chaos wherever he finds it without thought for self-preservation. Which is because the man has nothing to lose in dying.
• 
  Paulo "paper books always" Carvalho

  This is the second book of a duology. I saw somewhere that there was a third book planned but it was never published. Instead these year Black Library released a omnibus containing the two books plus two short stories linked. The two short stories are prequels (or at the same time) of the first book. I found out that there was a book called Mark of Mutation but was never published. Unfortunally for us we never find out what happens to Karl Hoche in them.
  
  So who is Karl Hoche? He is the main protagonist of this duology and what a character he is.
  
  This is undoubtly one of the most interesting reads on the warhammer world. And why? Because James Wallis captures beautifully the grim dark atmosphere of the gothic world. The second book it's twice as good because there is so many conspiracies and sinister cults.
  
  James Wallis was a co-author of Hammers of Ulric and that's it. I wonder why he stop writing books for BL since these two are very good novels. I found out later he was in the games industry but nothing more.
  
  Review
  This two books can be review at the same time because the second follows the events of the first. Unfortunally the second also ends with a major clinfhanger but nevertheless we never learn what happen to him or other main characters. Well, that's not so true. Valten and Huss story is well known but Hoche? I reviewed the first book here but I am going to make here a small synopsis.
  
  In the first book we are presented with Karl Hoche an army officer as he uncover chaos cultists among the Knights Panther. After this incident he enters the Untersuchung, a secret organization inside of the Reiskguard. The following chapters we follow him as he pass some trials and difficults. The end of the first book he battles the Khorne cultists inside the Panthers Knight but later his organization his coined by the witch hunters as an heretic organzation and many are trial and sentenced to death. In the end due to an infection he is slowly turning into a mutant and so he leaves civilization and goes to the wild.
  
  The second book returns after the first with Hoche living as mutant but nevertheless a chaos-hunter. After meeting some people he then tries to find some Untersuchung members living at large since they were all hunted or incoroportated into other factions. This book follows the beginning of Archon attack on the empire and how Huss found Valten and was helped by Loche. I am interested knowing how Chris Wraight is going to talk about this. This second book is even better than the first. Here is spies and counter-spying and triple or quadruple spies working for various factions. Even in the end there are some we never learn who they were or worked for. It's excelent. I never read anything so confusing as these and I loved it. Why? Because it's the way of society noawadays and even in the past. Everyone could be a chaos cultist or a secret organzation to help the Empire and even chaos Cultists fighting for the Empire. Every page turns rapidly as we try to figure out who is who and what happens to our heroes (or anti-heroes). We have some characters from the first book and some new. Unfortunally the only downside of the book is the clinfhanger. Why? We know what Valten did afterwards and Huss but not Hoche. I would like to know if Hoche accompanied Huss and Valten to fight Archeon or if he tried to hunt other chaos cultists that he knew about or even if he return to the wild so he could die in peace. I guess we will never learn because it's now 6 years and James Wallis never wrote another book.
  
  Conclusion
  If there is one book where we learn the spying world hidden from other books is this one. Usually the books are about some character as he tries to find something or fight someone. There are books about witch hunters against chaos but I never read one that dwelve so much into the politics and spying world inside the Empire. It makes you think everything you know about it.
  
  The maxim of this book is "Trust no one" because it's true. Everytime you think you know about someone bang! something happens to him or he turns to be someone else.
  
  Would I advice this book to someone? Buy the duology because they are only one book in my opinion. Go check Black Library website.
• 
  Sleepy

  Pulp Warhammer! Because too much Iain M Banks overheats your brain.