The Oubliette

Imagine House of Cards (the good British version) but all the characters were written by a third-rate Jane Austin who lost her sense of humour. That's kinda what The Oubliette is like.

If that sounds like an unpromising premise for a horror novel, that's because this is not in the least bit horrifying. Honestly, I think I've watched scarier episodes of Garth Marenguie's Dark Place. There is a bit of gore, which is probably a touch more graphic than your average Black Library novel, but there is absolutely no tension and the plot lacks any kind of mystery of suspense.

What if we put aside the whole horror thing and just treat this book like any other Black Library novel?

There are certainly some promising elements here. We've had plenty of novels about ordinary Guard troopers and even bog-standard law enforcement in the, far more successful, Warhammer Crime series. But I can't think of a book that focuses exclusively on the high politics of planetary governors before. Ashielle, the book's main character, takes on the throne after her farther and older siblings are assassinated by a rival aristocratic family who seem to be super into BDSM for some reason. She has to assert her authority while avoiding meeting a similar fate and stabilise the political tensions now threatening to boil over on her home world. It's a promising start.

Unfortunately, I think that without the usual set-piece action scenes which characterise Black Library, nor any kind of proper mystery or plot twists, the book just didn't really have much to sustain my interest for a full novel. I cared a little bit about Ashielle, but she is neither particularly deeply, nor sympathetically, sketched out. The book is further slowed down by a largely pointless side plot involving a lower-ranking politician in which he spends most of the time being pretty bored and frustrated, leading to much the same emotions in me.

If you want palace intrigue in the 41st millennium, I'd recommend perhaps the Warhammer Crime novels Bloodlines or Flesh and Steel which play in somewhat similar territory and are far more compelling reads.