Pariah

Pariah opens a new phase of the Eisenhorn saga by placing a different character at the centre: Alizebeth Bequin, a psychic blank — someone whose very existence suppresses psychic activity — who becomes entangled in a conflict that neither she nor the reader fully understands at first. The novel is set in the city of Queen Mab, a dense and politically complex environment that Abnett builds with the same patience he used to construct Eisenhorn's world.

Blanks occupy an unusual position in the 40K setting: they are simultaneously valuable to the Inquisition and unsettling to anyone with psychic sensitivity. Bequin's perspective on the world she inhabits — one saturated with Warp-touched individuals and organisations — is genuinely distinctive, and Abnett makes the most of it without over-explaining the metaphysics.

The novel's structural novelty is that it begins a trilogy (the Bequin trilogy, or Magos trilogy) that bridges two of Abnett's major 40K series: Eisenhorn and Ravenor. Both figures appear, and their conflict — and the question of whose version of events the reader should trust — sits at the novel's heart without being resolved.

Readers who have finished both the Eisenhorn trilogy and Ravenor will get the most from Pariah. Those who have read only Eisenhorn will still find it accessible and rewarding, but should be prepared for an ending that opens rather than closes. It is the beginning of a conversation, not a standalone story.